Note: This article contains “Game of Thrones” spoilers from Season 8, Episode 5.
“Game of Thrones” has gifted us one of our culture’s few remaining unifying forces. For a show about prophecies, dragons, and zombie armies, critics are often too fast to accuse the fantasy drama of jumping the shark. But Sunday night’s episode took turns so outlandish that viewers were forced to suspend not just a semblance of disbelief, but any and all rational thinking.
It’s clear that from a meta-perspective, showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss mapped out a coherent story line. But “Game of Thrones” tore through the demise of Daenerys Targaryen so quickly that her inevitable emergence as the Big Bad of Westeros falls flat.
Just consider what “Game of Thrones” has asked of its viewers this season.
In the first season alone, Daenerys suffers marital rape, the death of her husband and son, a witch’s curse she believes renders her infertile, and the loss of most of her khalasar. She then wanders around the desert postpartum, nearly starving, only to wind up in Qarth.
That doesn’t drive her insane, but Cersei Lannister killing one of her friends and one of her dragons does?
The show has sown the seeds of Daenerys’ eventual descent into insanity for nearly a decade. She’s always been more a conqueror than an actual leader who demonstrates her efficacy at governing and that her insecurity over Jon Snow’s popular support could begin to unhinge her almost checks out.
But Daenerys’ entire modus operandi has been to force others to “bend the knee.” Cersei’s armies did just that, and Daenerys already incinerated the Iron Fleet, rendering her the de facto victor of the Battle of King’s Landing. Given the circumstances, the decision to have Daenerys go mad at the precise moment she’s poised to obtain the Iron Throne just feels like lazy writing, a haphazard attempt to connect the dots between Daenerys as a promising empress and Daenerys as the true heir to her father’s madness.
The episode has less structural and more emotionally resonant errors, such as robbing Cleganebowl, Cersei Lannister, and Jaime Lannister of the endings they deserved. But Daenerys’ cheap demise truly deprives “Game of Thrones” of the conclusion it deserves.
