Game of Thrones stays true to its own story
After Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) set triumphant sail for Westeros at the end of the sixth season of Game of Thrones, and after a rather talky beginning to the seventh season, the end of the most recent episode of the show came as a shock. Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbaek), the recently crowned pirate king of the Iron Islands, got the jump on Dany’s fleet, capturing her allies Ellaria Sand (Indira Varma) and Yara Greyjoy (Gemma Whelan), burning her fleet and slaughtering her troops.
If Dany is so smart and her roster of supporters so stacked, how did Euron get the jump on her? What good are dragons if you’re not using them for longrange surveillance, or to incinerate your enemies? All of these quibbles have varying degrees of legitimacy; Game of Thrones isn’t a documentary, after all. But from a thematic perspective, Euron’s shocking — and shockingly effective — ambush on Dany’s fleet was right on the mark. Dany’s return to Westeros after years of exile seemed to set up her triumphant conquest of the continent, and a final battle between her dragons and the force of the Night King.
But this is Game of Thrones, where traditional fantasy storytelling is the enemy.
A happy ending to Game of Thrones, one where Daenerys and Jon Snow (Kit Harington) are married and sharing the Iron Throne, Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) is their trusted adviser, Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) and Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) are working in various functions in their government, Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) and Tormund Giantsbane (Kristofer Hivju) are running the military and having giant babies and Sandor Clegane (Rory McCann) is off running a land-reform campaign, might be superficially satisfying.
But just as shows from Sex and the City to Parks and Recreation to How I Met Your Mother compromised their best qualities to give their characters all the things their fans wanted for them, Game of Thrones would betray critical elements of its vision if good triumphed completely over evil.
Picking apart audiences’ expectations for high fantasy is the central mission of Game of Thrones. After condemning the venomous misogyny of Westeros’s and Essos’s laws and customs, corrupting influence of absolute power, pernicious influence of slavery, distortions of extreme wealth and the hollowing-out of institutions such as the Night’s Watch, Game of Thrones can’t possibly try to bring about social revolution in a post-battle montage sequence. The consequences of these forces have to stick and be difficult to unwind.
Take, for example, the abuse that Sansa experienced at the hands of her fiancé, Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson) and her second husband, Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon). Though those scenes were difficult to watch, they had a point: Sansa’s past has hardened her into a suspicious, conservative political operative.
Those plots would turn into nothing more than violent, meaningless pornography if the show delivered Sansa’s dream prince and insisted the girlish fantasies that once dominated her life can actually be fulfilled.
In the same way, establishing Dany as a benevolent queen in the next 11 episodes of television would strain our relationship to what has come before. Stormborn spent a great deal of time explaining how difficult it will be for Dany to conquer Westeros in a way that gives her the opportunity to earn the love and respect of the people she hopes to rule. If Game of Thrones cheats on the complicated process of bringing Dany to the Iron Throne and brings peace to Westeros by series’ end, it will turn a lot of dialogue in a show where every scene is precious into just so much hot air.
If Game of Thrones is to be consistent with its diagnosis of just how deep the rot in Westeros runs, the only plausible endings for the series are unhappy ones: where Dany’s family madness manifests itself, where Jon and Tyrion gain their throne but lose their souls, where the remaining Stark children survive but are too damaged to ever really be a family again. You can’t solve society’s deepest problems with a clash of kings.
Game of Thrones’ darkest insight is that it’s not the person on the throne who matters.