Dany’s commentary on items looming larger in one’s imagination is preempted from becoming a majestic monologue.
It’s also no surprise that this episode was one marked by interruptions. In a long line of drastic “Game of Thrones” actions driven by parental allegiances and missteps, the last one rectified on a grand scale comes from what amounts to a son’s justified anger. The resulting scene, with Drogon angrily reducing the show’s landmark symbol of power to globs of molten steel, is in line with Dany’s long insistence that these beasts were her children. After a lengthy holding cell conversation, Tyrion invokes Jon’s (Kit Harington) adoptive sisters as a reason for stopping Dany before King’s Landing’s fate is visited on the remaining kingdoms.įollowing another “Thrones” tradition - characters meeting an untimely end at the end of a sword right after attaining something long sought after - Jon acts on Tyrion’s advice, delivering one literal and figurative heart-piercing blow to Dany within view of the Iron Throne itself. That one of the show’s main characters would rather die than live in the new political reality he helped create is its strongest case that the world “Game of Thrones” built was not destined to survive. Much as Arya’s (Maisie Williams) fight to stay alive during the fiery siege was a tiny mark in the column of wanting to stay alive, Tyrion’s decision to cast off his duties as Hand of the Queen seems like a tick in the opposite direction. And speaking of veeps, as Daenerys condemns Tyrion to imprisonment and almost certain death, it brings to mind another recent HBO series-capping episode that also featured a woman in power realizing she has no one left to trust.
Martin’s framing of the series as an indictment of interventionist policy abroad, it’s surely no coincidence that “ liberators” is the term of choice for Daenerys’ justifications. Looking out over a seemingly endless sea of Unsullied and Dothraki hoards, there’s a hint of a smile as she considers the worlds still left to conquer.
Choosing not to let a city torn asunder be forgotten in favor of lauding the installment of a new ruler, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) surveys a new world shrouded in the ash left behind by her own fury. The dread that pervaded the last moments of “The Bells” very much seeped its way into the following week, from the opening image of a somber Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) walking through the charred remains of King’s Landing.
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