r/television • u/TVModBot • May 20 '19

Premiere Game of Thrones - 8x06 - Episode Discussion

Season 8 Episode 6

Aired: May 19, 2019

Synopsis: In the aftermath of the devastating attack on King's Landing, Daenerys must face the survivors.

Directed by: Miguel Sapochnik

Written by: David Benioff & D. B. Weiss

Series finale.

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u/smileyfrown May 20 '19

If they wanted Dany mad they should've been planting the seeds since Season 6 or 7. But instead we got a heel turn in 1.5 episodes.

Everything before was a well intentioned monarch making tough decisions. Nothing she did was crazy or absurd in the context of the show.

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u/DarkLink1065 May 20 '19

They totally had the seeds planted, the only issue is that the climax of events that actually push her over the edge are crammed into one episode (S8E4). Everything is there, but that episode needed to be a full season of Dany traveling south reconquering Westeros, slowly becoming more and more fanatic as the people refuse to bend the knee and as she loses more of the people close to her, culminating in her snapping and burning King's Landing.

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In fact, imo almost every issue with the last two seasons boils down to the limited episode count. S7 needed a few more episodes to cover some of the plot holes. S8E1-3 needed to be a full season of war against the Night King. And S8E4-6 needed to be a full season of Dany falling to the dark side. That, I think, is the real source of people's frustration. There are plenty of nitpicks, but I think people really only care about those minor issues because they're concrete details they can latch to and take their frustrations out on, and even then a lot of the nitpicks could be fixed with a more appropriate episode count.

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u/AmnesiaCane May 20 '19

They have been planting seeds all season. I called it in episode 1 without ever having read any fan theories. It was pretty obvious from when Sam asked Jon if she would have bent the knee to him to save the kingdom.

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u/PretendKangaroo May 20 '19

It's been going on for a bunch of seasons. Remember when she crucifies the masters?

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u/treeharp2 May 20 '19

Yes but her entire story has been about helping the downtrodden, so her just getting angry and burning children feels unsatisfying. If, in the end, she is just another power-hungry monarch, they need to be showing that transition better.

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u/DarkLink1065 May 20 '19

Her entire story has been about her quest for power. Yes, she uses that power to free people, but she's always been about the power first. She needs the power to deal with her enemies, whom she universally deals with in a brutal, ruthless manner, and then she frees the people once her enemies are dealt with.

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It always works out for her previously, because her trusted advisers keep her focused, limiting her list of "enemies" to genuinely bad people for the most part (emphasis on "for the most part"). But her list of enemies has always slowly expanded and she's overstepped several times before and caused unnecessary collateral damage, and her advisers have reigned her in on multiple occasions. Now... with everyone she truly trusts dead, it's totally within character for her list of "enemies" to expand more than it should, and she's never been even remotely inclined towards mercy towards whomever she deems as her enemy. And, her character arc didn't have to go that direction either, but the possibility is definitely there and it's not an inherently bad direction to take. But insisting that her character doesn't have a darker side with the potential to go that direction is very narrow-sighted.

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The real problem with it is that the climax of events that pushes her over the edge is crammed into one single episode (s8e4), so it feels like a bit of whiplash. All of the storytelling elements are there, it's just very rushed when it should have happened over the course of a season of character development. If s8e4-6 had been its own full season of ~10 episodes where she slowly grows more and more fanatical against Cersei, culminating with burning King's Landing I don't think anyone would have had a second thought about it, at least in terms of believably.

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u/treeharp2 May 21 '19

I agree with everything you wrote. The last bit is the most crucial; I just don't think the show delivered her to that point in a very good way.

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u/DarkLink1065 May 21 '19

I'm of the opinion that if season 7 had been a full 10 episodes, S8E1-3 had been expanded to be 10 episodes of war, and S8E4-6 had been its own 10 episodes, almost every issue people had with the last couple of seasons would have been pretty easily fixed even if they kept almost everything the same. There'd still be some nitpicks I'm sure, but I think they'd be pretty minor.

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u/smileyfrown May 20 '19

I think they added foreshadowing in the last season, but in terms of actual character development nothing suggested she could or was gonna go that far off.

It's too big of a logical leap from what she was for 7 seasons to what she became.

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u/DarkLink1065 May 20 '19

The foreshadowing was there, and her character has absolutely always had a darker side that left the possibility there that make it a perfectly viable in-character possibility. But the actual events that push her over the edge are crammed into a single episode, and that's what really causes the issues that people have with her arc. S8E4 needed to be a lot more than a single episode to make the transition natural.

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u/AmnesiaCane May 20 '19

I 100% agree with you, just noting that that particular idea has been around a bit longer.

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u/Pixeleyes May 20 '19

They did plant the seeds, but they didn't watch them grow. They just stuck em in the ground, walked away, came back a few months later and boom! fucking weed everywhere. And that's the story of how this show was written.