stagmania

I would be more willing to believe this was intentional if they hadn’t dropped the ball on every aspect of Jon’s story this season. But they have. They just don’t seem interested in him.

Yeah I think that's a fair way to spin it since they clearly still want the audience to view him as a hero. You'd think if they knew he was ending up as Hand they'd have him be successful or right about anything in the last couple seasons.

I just said to a friend today that this is the only scene they ever had that came off as somewhat romantic. I do think it was more than a lack of actor chemistry, though - there was no real romantic story written for them. It went from this to one very bad and abrupt sex scene with no dialogue, to then suddenly being told they're together and the incident that would make it fall apart happening in the same episode. The love story, such as it was, literally lasted 3 episodes, and this is what they're hanging their big story-ending tragedy on.

Personally, I'm not hating on that as a character choice for Tyrion. My issue with it is that there are no consequences for it, or anything Tyrion has done for the last three seasons. After the way they've written him since season 5, he really has no business ending this story as de facto ruler.

This is exactly the point I was making in the first place - they did not write the romance well, and it lessens the impact of the tragic ending. Glad we can agree! I will sit with you at this table.

Legitimately have no idea what this means. Jon shouldn't love Dany because she listened to him and her advisers and delayed going after Cersei to help save humanity? Uh, I loved Ygritte and that romance, but she was a straight up murderer who was killed trying to slaughter Jon's people. Weird how there's room for nuance with some characters but not others.

...the idea is he would be in love with her before she commits an atrocity, and then have to kill her after. That's what makes it a tragedy. LOL. They're never living that meme down.

The final humiliation for their Khaleesi. Stripped of every good quality she ever possessed and her dignity, as well.

Given how terrible both their characterizations have been this season, I expect this to be painful on several levels. I also just keep thinking about how badly they’ve set up what is obviously supposed to play as tragedy. How much deeper would this land if they’d written them a proper romance? If Jon actually was in love with Daenerys? If they didn’t have him just avoid her once he found out who he is, but rather sincerely struggle to reconcile his identity issues, his desire for her, his disapproval of her actions and his duty to take the throne for the good of the people. This should have been very meaty material for Jon (and Kit Harrington) and instead it was just a big ol’ nothing. ETA: Jinx, @Soup333!

He spent literally two seasons dissuading Dany from taking out Cersei, so I don't buy this at all.

I'm talking about Cersei. Tyrion's sister. Were your comments about Bran? If so, my bad - you were responding to a comment about Tyrion so I thought that's who you meant.

Does he? Because that is inconsistent with his attempt to help his sister, genocidal maniac, free. Protector of the human species, unless it involves his family.

If I'm understanding correctly, the only people who voted are this small insular group of highborn people who were choosing among their friends, right? Like, they already appointed themselves as the power in the realm and the only real debate was what specific role they would each play. I think calling that a vote or anything in the neighborhood of democracy is extremely charitable.

The common people have never had a real POV on the show. They're just props to be trotted out when they want to illuminate something about the highborn characters. The show absolutely played on feminist sentiment in both the writing and marketing. Khaleesi became a fan favorite for a reason, and it's largely because they consistently wrote her as a survivor toppling patriarchal systems of oppression - becoming the first woman to lead a Khalasar, freeing the slaves from their male masters, "All men must die." "But we are not men.", burning the Khals - just to name the most obvious examples. They don't get to do that for 7 seasons and then pull the rug out from under the audience without consequences.

That hadn't even occurred to me, but you're absolutely right. Some hero that makes Jon, and you gotta love how they're going to model Dany in this scene after the original Hysterical Woman of Westeros.

It’s almost like there’s some kind of bias at play here! The idea that Jon is going to “trick” Dany into thinking he’s on her side offends me for a couple reasons: 1) Jon is a horrible liar and way too simple to pull that off; 2) Dany is not stupid and would have to be blinded by emotion to let him get close after she’s already decided he’s a traitor, so this means they’re essentially going to reduce her to desperation for his love again and have it be her ultimate downfall.

Looked at through this lens, this is basically the story of a bunch of men gaslighting a powerful woman until she snaps.

If Sansa really cared about what happens to Jon, I don’t think she would have betrayed his trust immediately and sent him South with no warning that she’d essentially put a coup in motion. She could have gotten him killed (would have if Dany reacted logically and eliminated Jon and Tyrion after burning the city). I’m by no means a Sansa hater, but I don’t see how you can look at her actions this season and think a primary concern for her was her family. She was looking out for her own security and her desire to rule in the north above all else. Perfectly fine and understandable motives in the context of this universe, but let’s not pretend she wasn’t willing to let Jon be collateral damage in her machinations.

This is ... so bad. Like, even worse than it initially sounded. If this is true, Jon’s identity doesn’t matter even one tiny bit. He’s the true heir to the throne and it doesn’t even factor into the plot. Not one single thing about his story line this season would be changed by him just being the beloved King in the North who the people preferred instead. So glad fans spent 20 years waiting and the show devoted multiple episodes for the reveal of this utterly meaningless secret!

This essay is excellent and brilliantly lays out the feminist conversation around the show’s female characters and the misogynistic undertones in both the show and the books. Highly recommended reading: https://dangerouscharacters.substack.com/p/who-wins-who-dies-game-of-thrones

Also on the grounds that the Iron Islands would help Dany take Westeros, which they super didn't. They got her across the sea, but from there they got immediately taken out by Euron, and when Yara was recovered she went back to the Islands instead of reporting to Dany and getting back in the fight. Dany would be within her rights to renege, I'd think. But I'm not hopeful we'll see Yara again at all. Sansa on the throne makes zero sense, but hey, nothing does anymore so I can believe it.

All of this is spot on. The way they've set it up, Dany has snapped and decided to rule through fear. That means all her enemies, anyone who has ever disagreed with her, should be dragon roasted immediately after the battle. But we know that's not what happens - she has a scene with Jon where they chat, she locks Tyrion up even though she just tried that with his brother who was able to escape. She gives them the chance to keep plotting against her and ultimately kill her, against all logic and reason. They can't even write this horrible turn in her character properly.

One thing I overlooked in my initial reactions was that Tyrion wasn't just trying to save the city and help Jaime with his actions in this last ep - he was actively trying to help Cersei escape! That makes him a traitor to the common good any way you slice it, regardless of your position on Dany. And after three seasons of being wrong about everything and perpetrating this ultimate betrayal of the people, the consequence will be ... he gets to rule the kingdom. LMAO.

Thank you for for stating this so eloquently. Both of these ideas of yours are far more interesting than what the show did. This is at the top of my list of disappointments with this series. The biggest mystery in the books, the key to unlocking the central prophecies, the reveal that the whole damn thing hinges on - and they totally squandered it. We have no sense of why they did what they did, or who Lyanna, in particular, was. Why did she run away with Rhaegar? Did she care about the chaos and destruction she was causing? Was she oblivious? Did she try to do anything to fix it before her death? We'll never know. That's not how this works. His story about a woman ruler doesn't exist in a vacuum - it's part of a whole literary tradition of women characters and the misogynist tropes used to define them - and you can't just remove it from that larger context. His choice to depict a powerful woman in this way plays into those toxic tropes, and it was a choice. Let's assume his ending is the same as the show's, with Dany massacring innocents for no reason after the city is already hers. In that scenario, he has two core protagonists, the ice and fire of this story - one male, one female. His decision was to make the man noble, honorable, morally upright and deserving of power because he doesn't want it, and the woman unstable, erratic, ambitious to a fault and ultimately paranoid and hysterical to the point of madness. That depiction follows a long misogynistic tradition that he has chosen to play into. Personally, my hope is that GRRM's version of this plot doesn't play out in quite this way, that Dany's actions are better motivated and that her characterization is far more nuanced. I want to believe he's a smarter writer than the show ending makes him seem. Yara getting no real ending is a serious bummer. If they had done the King's Landing battle right, she would have been part of it and gotten some closure on Euron. LOL your evil genius Bran theory is the only one that would make sense of him getting the throne.

This is basically just a semantic argument. A decision to burn innocents for no good reason is “crazy.” Jon’s going to kill her next week because she’s out of control. The show is going with the Mad Queen narrative, so that’s what I’m going to respond to.