Well, after the climactic battle at Winterfell, we've come to the other major climax the show has been building to - the confrontation between Daenerys and her forces with those of Cersei.
And things go... differently than you might have guessed.
Big spoilers to follow, so, you know, beware.
First, the scene that really sets the stage here: Dany finds out from Tyrion that Varys has suggested replacing her with Jon. She has him executed for treason, burning him with dragonfire. In his last moments, Varys tells Tyrion "I hope I deserve this. I hope I'm wrong."
The battle for King's Landing is arguably a footnote here. The battle is over in minutes. Tyrion frees Jaime hoping he can convince Cersei to surrender. Jaime doesn't get even close to reaching her before the battle starts, though, and Dany comes in from above, torching the Iron Fleet faster than they can aim their ballistae. Once the fleet is gone, she does the same to the city's wall defenses, and then blasts through the front gate, burning most of the Golden Company in instants.
The Dothraki, Unsullied, and Northmen charge forward and it becomes very clear that the battle's won. There's a standoff with some Lannister soldiers, but they ultimately lay down their arms.
Qyburn tells Cersei it's time to just resign themselves to the inevitable and wait for the battle to end in Maegor's Holdfast while they prepare to surrender.
The people of the city call for the bells to be rung and signal surrender. Finally, the tension breaks and the bells ring, and it all seems over.
But then Dany goes fucking crazy.
Dany and Drogon start torching the city - civilians and soldiers alike. No one is safe as buildings are blown apart by dragonfire. This continues for most of the episode, and eventually the stores of Wildfire start igniting as well. Thousands upon thousands of people are killed - soldiers, men, women, children.
Jon watches in horror as Grey Worm and the other soldiers give in to bloodlust and start killing the Lannister soldiers who had already surrendered.
Jamie makes his way around to the dock where a small boat sits that Tyrion had Davos leave there for Jamie and Cersei to escape the city. But he's attacked by a shipwrecked Euron. The two fight, and Euron gets two fatal, if slow-acting wounds, but Jamie kills him.
The Hound and Arya had made their way into the city, but the Hound, seeing the destruction, convinces Arya instead to just save herself.
As Cersei and her entourage flee down the stairs into the basement with the big dragon skulls, the Hound approaches, killing her queensguard and beginning the confrontation with his zombified brother. The Mountain kills Qyburn and Cersei basically says "hey, I'm just going to go now."
So we get Cleganebowl. Despite getting some hits that should have been lethal, including one through the eye and out the back of the head, the Mountain won't go down. So instead, Sandor, one of his eyes crushed in and the other not looking great, tackles his brother off the tower and they plummet hundreds of feet into the flames, presumably to the destruction of both.
Jamie finds Cersei in the keep, and they attempt to flee, but their exit has caved in. As the keep collapses around them, they hold each other and then are killed as the rubble falls.
Arya barely makes it, watching as innocent people die. She ultimately wakes up choking on ash and finds a horse that has miraculously survived and rides out of the city.
So.
What we find is that Daenerys is the villain in the end. She massacred thousands of people and made King's Landing into a pyre. Jon and the other decently-minded people are at a loss, having thrown in with Dany believing she was the good guy. Now what?
And here's the thing: right now I feel betrayed. Because I thought Dany was a good guy.
Yes, we've seen her temper flare and she's done some bad things, but there was always a sense of justice to it. She burned slavers to free slaves. I kept thinking "WHY?" Why massacre everyone when you'd already won the battle?
Yes, she was mad about Missandei.
There's a line earlier where, after she kisses Jon and he basically gives her the old "hey, you know, now that I know you're my aunt this feels weird," and she says that if she can't be loved, she'll be feared. Was that what this was about?
It's definitely something I could imagine being part of Martin's longterm gameplan. Just as Ned was a decoy protagonist who was removed by dying shockingly, Dany could be a decoy protagonist by actually being a villain.
But either the show hasn't earned that or it just doesn't sit right because what this seems to boil down to is that Dany got boy crazy and thousands had to die.
This season, particularly, has hinted toward this eventuality, but it was something I wanted subverted. To have Dany rein herself in, maybe to decide that no one is worthy of sitting on the throne.
Instead, it seems that instead that the Song of Ice and Fire is about two great evils - the Ice of the dead and the Fire of the dragon.
Right now this feels like it's just an upsetting way to end the series. I don't know if it will feel more appropriate in time, but right now I just feel upset.
EDIT: Having calmed down a bit.
As I noted above, Daenerys' turn to outright villainy might be what we've been building toward the whole time. Her drive to claim the throne has, of course, been entirely based on a sense of literal entitlement. She was part of a miracle - the rebirth of dragons into the world. But are dragons actually a good thing? Sure, we like Drogon because he's been like a faithful pet to her. But we're reminded over and over that they're dangerous creatures. Their rebirth at the end of the first season and book was a mythic moment - a portent of great things to come. But even though things were pretty miserable with Robert and then particularly with Joffrey as king, it was a mundane kind of terrible - people being shitty to other people.
One thing that frustrated me logically about what happened with Viserion's rising as an undead dragon is that if it hadn't been for the expedition to secure a wight in an ultimately pointless attempt to convince Cersei to join the war effort, the Night King would never have been able to bring his armies south anyway. The Wall seemed, for whatever reason, to keep the dead at bay - it's almost certainly why it was built in the first place. Yes, the show seems to be reluctant to really lean into the magical ideas - I feel like dragonfire failing to kill the Night King felt wrong, like I'd always thought what made Valyrian Steel and Dragonglass useful against the White Walkers was that they were associated with the real deal, which was a dragon's fire. Anyway, the notion that a dragon's fire could destroy the wall felt, to me, like it would be less about the physical heat than some kind of magical essence to it.
Anyway, to return to my point: the birth of those dragons felt like a cause for hope, but in fact they seem to have been a portent of doom. Dragons allowed the dead to march. But the dead were defeated - yes, somewhat aided by the dragons, but it was really humanity in the form of Arya Stark who saved the day.
And now, a dragon is the instrument of destruction and the means of Dany's fall into evil.
In retrospect, it throws some of her early problematic moves into a new context. The fact that she was using Mereen as a "practice kingdom" always struck me as kind of fucked up, but if she's a bad guy, maybe that's ok?
This certainly does start to feel of a piece with the series' early subversions of expectations. But on the other hand, does it actually feel earned? Ned's death was shocking, but not in the sense that the show hadn't earned it. Ned proved himself ill-suited to playing the eponymous game, and the only reason we could expect him to survive was through some kind of deus ex machina. The fact that we were denied that was subversive and thrilling.
The Red Wedding was more shocking and perhaps less earned, except that it just never looked like Robb was the hero of the story, so it forced us to reevaluate what, exactly, we were rooting for.
But we went a long, long time without that kind of subversion. Indeed, we got literal divine intervention to see Jon restored to life. Given how useless he was in the fight against the dead, was the reason he was brought back to stop Dany? And here's another question: is R'hollor even on the side of life?
Actually, here's a whole interesting thing to consider:
R'hollor, aka the Lord of Light, is supposed to be the opposite number to the Great Other. Given ho we saw Melisandre burning people alive in his name, and using magic that seemed to be granted by R'hollor, it sure doesn't sound like he's such a great guy.
What if dragons are his the way that the White Walkers belong to the Great Other?
Which would mean that both represent extremes. And both are evil. Just that we never thought to consider that the dragons might be just as much of an evil as the undead because, well, we liked Dany and she liked the dragons.
I don't know.
Really, it's frustrating to be in this position where we're hoping that Martin pulls this off more deftly than the show has. A lot of people are claiming that they always knew this was where Daenerys was heading, but while I'm sure some had theorized that to be the case, I kind of call BS for most. She was capable of cruelty and needless violence before - we saw it with the Tarlys - but in most cases, there was a sense of righteousness to it. She gave Dickon a chance to avoid his fate. But here, she very intentionally murdered civilians.
The throne has definitely been a villain, in a way. No one who sits it is really worthy - frankly Robert was probably the best king we saw and he was fucking terrible. And having Jon rally people to fight the real threat - one against whom the war was one of mutually exclusive existence - felt like the way to shift the focus of the story. But now the dead are no longer a threat, it makes everything feel so petty.
Or, we have to accept that the dragons - and it's only now just the one - are just as much of an apocalyptic threat as the dead.
I'm trying to resolve this to feel satisfied with this turn of events. But I really just feel like this turn, even if there was a reading of the previous seven seasons to consider it foreshadowed, still feels just wrong.
And man, I feel really, really bad for any girls named Daenerys or Khaleesi now. Pro-tip: never name a person after a fictional character in a story that isn't finished. Seriously.
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