Why did Daenery’s Die in Game of Thrones?

Warning, if the title of this article isn’t warning enough, please proceed with caution as there are major spoilers ahead!

Well well well!

Unfortunately we predicted it right in our analysis of episode 5 game of Thrones Season 8 (check it our here) – Daenery’s Targaryen did indeed die.

We didn’t quite predict how she would die but felt that there was no room for two Targaryen’s and one throne. And this proved right.

The turn of events in the episode “the Bells”, spelt no coming back for Dany. Her rule was cemented at the beginning of Episode 6 which was masterfully displayed as the beginning of a new Order with lines of Unsullied and screaming Dothrakhi as she performed her victory speech.

Wheel well and truly crushed!

How sad then that, Dany’s rule was short lived. This has had fans of the show going bananas across the globe and indeed a friend of mine who was literally inconsolable by the end of the episode.

So lets look at Dany’s death.

When you consider everything that she had faced from Season 1 right up to this point where she is at her strongest towards the end of Season 8, it realistically could have only happened in this way – in the arms of the one she loved and trusted. No Army could have defeated her and Drogon.

Dany achieved what she set out to do. So I don’t actually think there is a problem with the writers killing her off. But it was rushed, and not paced correctly. And not thought through properly. What now of Essos and her rule there? Was Westeros and the Iron Throne, really all that mattered?

Also, why was there no pay off with Jon? His true identity, and to be fair his unalterable moral compass, was under utitilised. Which in my view is the bigger crime for the way Season 8 panned out and the story came to a close.

Let me pause a second to say that the cast and production team deserve 10 out of 10 for the show they created. Game of Thrones downfall in the last season or two has come at the hands of the writers- of that I am in no doubt.

Good writing was replaced with entertaining scenes but lacked any substance. For example Drogon melting the iron throne though an accomplishment from a CGI perspective, was one purely for theatrics – even in the magical world of Game of Thrones, who would realistically think that Dragons were so intelligent to know it was chasing the Iron Throne that got Dany killed?

The whole of the final season of Game of Thrones clearly suffered from pacing. What used to take a season to build up in earlier Seasons, (think of Tyrion’s trial, or the time it took Arya and the Hound to travel North) was being shoe horned in to a matter of scenes.

A bizarre meeting of the leaders of the Seven Kingdoms, in the final episode was the best example of this.

After 8 Seasons of battling it out, a group of well tempered and conveniently placed leaders thought that getting round the table like adults to decide who should lead was a good idea. And Bran was appointed the King. I mean, if that’s all it takes in the world right? No one would go hungry. But that’s not reality.

Don’t get me wrong, Bran becoming King is not an issue in my view. But the writers could have made more use of Bran and his power.

A fitting end then to a very botched journey for Game of Thrones? Perhaps.

There is plenty of other wrong with this episode and indeed, the final season.

But I want to finish on what I think was good about this episode.

It was right to kill Dany off. But as they went down this route, it was wrong to not make Jon King. Why? Because Jon was the unalterable moral compass that embodied everything he was taught from Ned Stark, the shows early hero.

I wouldn’t even say that the writers should have made him want it or want to fight for it. He should have been forced with it and Bran be made the master of whisperers. But the lead up to the events meant that something would have to be done with the Unsullied and the Dothrakhi (who they never event covered off in the final scenes anyway). And there just simply wasn’t the time to tell that tale.

Why Jon should have been made King in Game of Thrones?

Jon could not be forced to lie. He could not be forced to kill innocents or be swayed that it was justified. He could see what the Wildlings were when others couldn’t- living Humans. Jon Snow is what Westeros needed. He commanded respect through his actions, not his words.

And his true identity was his key to accessing the Iron Throne. The set up was beautiful for this to happen going in to Season 7.

But flick back to the start of Season 7 Game of Thrones. With what was left to cover in the story with 7 episodes in Season 7 and 6 in Season 8, we should have known then that this could go wrong.

But we hoped, and kept faith in the double D’s writing ability. The reality however turned out that the writers had run out of the source material that George R. R. Martin is still on with (Winds of Winter and then A Dream of Spring) and they were left to tell their own tale.

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