Game of Thrones Gave Me Everything I Wanted In Its Sixth Season — Is That Good?
(With the seventh season of Game of Thrones upon us, my writing here is getting attention again. If you’ve enjoyed my insight, I have a book on the show being released. Check it out!)
I teared up during the season finale of Game of Thrones, I cannot lie. Twenty years, twenty goddamn years, I have waited for Jon Snow’s identity. It didn’t matter that it was the most obvious answer. It didn’t matter that it was delivered via two actors I didn’t care about. It was what I wanted: resolution to the long-unresolved mystery of Jon Snow’s parentage. It’s emotionally cathartic, resolving a central issue and creating potential new drama. The entire episode was like that: tremendously well-produced, fast-moving, setting up clear conflicts for the show’s endgame in the final two seasons.
As exciting as that was it also created problems. Two things went out the window in the finale, an unfortunate character and the idea of moral ambiguity. With the exceptions of Littlefinger and Jaime Lannister, every major character is now pretty clearly in a Good or Evil camp. This is a bit of a problem — though maybe not quite a series-breaking problem (I’d rather have a high-quality conventional story than the ethically-muddled death march of Season 5). But it’s one that seems to shift the entire thematic focus of the series in a straightforward and superficial direction, after being largely built on subversion of fantasy tropes. But making Jon the traditional hero, with nearly the full Hero’s Journey — returned from the underworld! Secretly the heir to the throne! — is the opposite of subversive.
So what gives? How did a story about the awfulness of the assumptions of fantasy storytelling fall so directly into fulfilling the exact tropes it criticized? For many people, the problem is the HBO show, messing up author George R.R. Martin’s vision the further from the text they’ve gotten. This may be partially true, but I don’t think it’s sufficient at all. The HBO producers know the story’s conclusion, and it fits much of Martin’s original vision for A Song of Ice and Fire.
There are, I believe, several distinct phases of storytelling in Game of Thrones which are somewhat smoothed over by the consistent production of the show. But if you’ve ever wondered why the fifth season in particular was so off compared to the rest of the story, there are distinct reasons.
The four main phases of the series are these: traditional start, subversion of tropes and development of political intrigue, coverage of the entire world, and the endgame. Here’s an outline with some subcategories:
0. Original Pitch — A fairly traditional, if rather brutal, heroic fantasy of the Stark children rising against impossible odds to win a civil war against the Lannisters. Here, Sansa is superficial and remains with the Lannisters, unhappily, instead of rising to power on her own. Also Jaime is a composite of him and Cersei — almost all of his villainous moves are given over to others. Tyrion more specifically switches between Lannister and Stark, and the other Houses and politicians largely don’t exist. Jon is arguably the main character here, with his parentage a crucial question, directly interacting Arya and Bran far more than he has in the series.
There’s still some of this in the original — nothing in the first few episodes of hundred pages of A Game of Thrones actually contradicts any of this premise. But once the focus of the story shifts to King’s Landing, things change dramatically.
1. A Simple Story — The journey into King’s Landing and the introduction of political figures like Renly, Varys, Littlefinger, and the idea of Stannis, as well as knights like The Mountain, The Hound, Beric, and Loras. They all added density and history to a story that still seemed like the start of a fantasy trilogy that might still have become a relatively conventional story, right up until Ned Stark confesses his crimes at the Sept of Baelor. The question of Jon’s parentage, while still important, isn’t totally dominant. Meanwhile, Sansa Stark, via her relationships with The Hound and Littlefinger, is used to overtly critique the sort of conventional fantasy of Martin’s peers.
The first novel and season of the show are largely synced up, but Ned’s death opens up new realm of storytelling.
2. Expansion of Scope — The initial civil war is, I think, the core of what most people think of when they think of Game of Thrones. Martin’s goal at this point is still the subversion of fantasy tropes, but he does so with the density of his world creating new factions and a dynamic new kind of fantasy story. It’s not merely Starks versus Lannisters, but the Greyjoys, Tyrells, multiple Baratheons, the Brotherhood Without Banners, and more become integral members of the cast. The story becomes more focused on women, with Catelyn, Cersei, Margaery, and Melisandre stepping into essential roles.
Still, the focus remains on the core cast of Stark children, Tyrion, and Dany. Arya, Bran, and Sansa are at their best in this section, navigating the incredibly dangerous world with increasing effectiveness. Jon and Dany, the two most traditional heroes, are sidelined the most in this part of the story, particularly early, with Jon wandering Beyond the Wall and Dany stuck in Qarth. Both rise to leadership roles as it progresses, but in somewhat atypical fashion.
Martin — and the show — struck gold in this particular era (seasons 2/3, and book 2/most of book 3). Both the novels and the series exploded in popularity as the dynamic combination of compelling characters and “anything can happen” storytelling won over people looking for fresh, exciting, genre-breaking storytelling. But there’s a problem with that: you have to follow up with “anything” happening. In this case, that’s the Red Wedding, which brought this phase to an end.
2a. Bloody Catharsis — This is a transitional phase — it’s still largely part of the War of the Five Kings, but here’s the core issue: for Martin’s story to achieve its promise, it has to progress. It can’t just spin its wheels with indefinite serialization. The emotional buildup of the second and third seasons needed bloody, cathartic release. And so the fourth season, or the end of A Storm of Swords, pays off. The bad guys don’t win: Tywin and Joffrey die. Jon can’t have a simple happy ending, Ygritte dies. Arya is set free by the Hound’s apparent death.
I’ve often seen people complain that the fourth season of Game of Thrones is an attempt to cram too many shocking deaths into 10 episodes, but I feel like if you consider seasons 2, 3, and 4 part of the same phase of the story, having that season where the apparent status quo and Lannister victory are violently upended seems necessary.
3. The Entire World — The expansion of scope in books 2 and 3 was so successful that George R.R. Martin took it a step further. First he told the story of the Stark children, then the story of the Stark children within an expanded complicated world, but in A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, Martin shifted in scope again to tell the story of the entire world. With point-of-view characters like Arianne and Quentyn Martell, Aeron and Victarion Greyjoy, Arys Oakhart, (no, you shouldn’t know who these characters are) and Barristan Selmy, Martin ended up with a character telling the story of literally every major part of his world, from Dorne to Beyond the Wall, and from Highgarden to Slaver’s Bay.
Meanwhile, the Stark children became increasingly sidelined. Bran, Arya, and Sansa largely stuck in the Westerosi equivalent of training montages while the adults dealt with the aftermath of an apocalyptic war. If you’re a fan of those three, plus Tyrion, well, Season 5/books 4&5 are massive disappointments. (Martin apparently intended to there to be a five year time jump to skip this, but decided he needed to tell the stories of Stannis and Jaime and Cersei and Brienne and Margaery…and Dorne….and the Iron Islands).
But the most fascinating aspect of this era isn’t the grimy, messy, fanatic story of those characters. Its the stories of the two traditional heroes, Jon and Dany, both of whom found themselves in steady leadership roles at the end of the last story section: Jon as Lord Commander, and Dany as the Queen in Meereen.
With both of these stories Martin gave up on giving these characters typical Hero’s Journey roles. Dany, the great idealist, is forced to learn how to deal with changing and learning the long-held, destructive traditions of Slaver’s Bay — and she fails. Jon has to deal with what must be done after winning the war against the Wildlings — and he fails. This quote from Martin on how most fantasy deals with post-war, using Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, is telling:
“Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone — they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?”
His version of this was Jon’s story in A Dance with Dragons, and, in large part, in Season 5 (much of it was changed and simplified on the show, turning it just into a debate over the Wildlings and not including Jon’s desire to defeat Ramsay Bolton before his murder.) But perhaps most tellingly, Jon’s parentage is simply irrelevant to this part of the story. Jon, and to a lesser extent, Dany, aren’t traditional heroes on quests to find magic swords and defeat the Big Bads of the Night King and Cersei Lannister. They’re the only political leaders in Westeros are actively attempting to make the world a better place in the long run! And then Jon dies (“dies”) and Dany rides off on a dragon and everything’s up in the air heading into the final phase of the story.
4. Endgame — Once it became clear that the show was going to pass the books — Martin told the producers the broad strokes of the ending before Season 3, gave details before Season 5 — one of the things I’ve been watching the show for has been thematic or production clues about the endgame. Would it be a continuation of the death march of Season 5, conceptually intelligent but emotionally unsatisfying? Would it be the grand bloodbath of Season 4, good and evil and everyone in-between meeting their deaths? Like Seasons 2 and 3, might the ending be built around a complicated but comprehensible collection of heroism and tragedy? Or would it be Season 1, with the Stark children, Tyrion, and Dany, transcending tragedy and succeeding in saving the realm, even at high cost?
The one thing I totally didn’t anticipate, however, was the story reverting to the original pitch. Remembering that the pitch’s Jaime has largely been replaced by Cersei, we see lines like this: “Jaime Lannister will follow Joffrey on the throne of the Seven Kingdoms by the simple expedient of killing everyone ahead of him in the line of succession.”
Or there’s Dany’s story: the arrival of the dragons “…will give Daenerys the power to bend the Dothraki to her will. Then she begins to plan for her invasion of the Seven Kingdoms.”
One major thing left out of the novels from the original pitch was a love triangle between Jon, Arya, and Tyrion. Jon is described like this: “Their passion will continue to torment Jon and Arya throughout the trilogy until the secret of Jon’s true parentage is finally revealed in the last book.”
As you can see, the focus has shifted back toward the original characters, with the aristocratic power of Jon and Dany’s lineage becoming absolutely essential to their characters. They’re no longer heroes because they’re trying to do the best they possibly can in a horribly violent world, but by the fact that they’re Targaryens.
And this leads us back to Season 6…which seems to follow this template exactly. Jon Snow’s parentage is revealed just moments before he’s crowned. Dany, having successfully recruited Tyrion and gotten really good at the whole fire and blood thing, leaves Meereen for good, apparently having quelled any and all street disturbances by killing a few more slavers. She’s back where she started: at the head of Dothraki horde. Did the last five seasons matter for her? Hard to say.
And if, using the Hero’s Journey as a model, you wanted to say that the proper resolution of a fantasy story is with the main character taking the throne, the reveal of Jon’s parentage makes that resolution possible. Dany has a stronger claim to the throne based on being the king’s daughter and a child of wedlock, but she can no longer produce children. Jon makes a perfect heir for her. Or husband, sticking with the Targaryen incest theme.
Does that sound weird to you? It’s weird to me. The idea that we’ve gone through all that, just to put the two most obvious characters on the throne. Just to create a battle between good versus evil, where Jon and Dany ride dragons using their Targaryen blood in order to burn the White Walkers and Cersei Lannister up, making the Seven Kingdoms safe for aristocracy again.
Maybe there’s a fifth phase. Maybe this isn’t the endgame. Maybe there’s a New Westerosi Republic with Sansa Stark elected Prime Minister. Maybe Littlefinger sets Jon and Dany against one another and climbs the steps to the Iron Throne. Maybe Arya just murders them all. But unless there’s a massive change, the sixth season of Game of Thrones set up an entirely conventional end to a fantasy series that made its name trying to be anything but that — it feels good for now, but will it in the long run?
