The Dany Heel Turn Failed & Made Game of Thrones Terrible and Here’s Why
When you deprive characters of agency, how can you even have tragedy?
Game of Thrones Season 8 is a bad season. There is nothing wrong with the actors, the cinematographers, the countless hours taken to put this show’s ridiculously elaborate setpieces. Instead, the show has failed to do justice to its characters on its most basic level.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, this was either a pretty solid season finale for possibly one of the last water-cooler TV shows in existence, or it was hot garbage, or somewhere in-between. This latest season of Game of Thrones has honestly been one of the more disappointing seasons of television that I’ve watched. And it’s not for a lack of trying to enjoy it. Game of Thrones was something that I watched and thought it would at least pick up steam, which it did, but I didn’t understand just how big of a show that it would become. It’s been great to see a fantasy series that has been a potential gateway for people who generally don’t like fantasy gain this much cultural prominence that even TV critics who are clearly not fans have to acknowledge the massive impact that Game of Thrones has had on television as a whole.
But this final season is one that I cannot stomach. It feels like a betrayal of what I knew the show to be.
My love for the show started to wane around season 5. I knew this was coming: Benioff and Weiss were running out of novels to adapt. The show was already condensing and adapting the fourth and fifth novels of the series, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons and was burning through the material faster than I expected. Series author George R.R. Martin was (and still is) working on his sixth novel, The Winds of Winter, and its follow-up, A Dream of Spring. In advance, he told Benioff and Weiss several main plot points concerning where he envisioned characters ending up by the story’s end. Coupled with Benioff adn Weiss deciding to end the show in 13 episodes, and potential problems started to rise. While the show had to end, the seams of the show began to show as it rushed towards its conclusion, trying to wrap up and condense as many different arcs as possible. This is inevitable during adaptation. But some decisions are simply baffling because they’re either rushed, or that not enough time is devoted to making these decisions feel as though they fit within the logic and parameters of the show itself.
What put me over the edge was the show’s sudden heel turn for Daenerys Targaryen. In the span of two episodes, Daenerys turns from an ambitious queen out to take back her family’s seat on the Iron Throne into literal dragon-Hitler.
You might have heard about this heel turn. Some people have been alleging that Dany’s sudden turn to evil was prominently foreshadowed, with the Mother of Dragons having a penchant for burning or executing those that she doesn’t like. But for many fans, the heel turn just hasn’t made much sense in the overall story that Weiss and Benioff were attempting to tell.
A major issue with the show this season has been time constraints. The final season of Game of Thrones was only 6, 80-minute episodes, in stark contrast to seasons 1–6, which each had 10 episode runs. With only 6 episodes to finish a sprawling story for dozens of characters, the narrative of the show has seen a drastic compression. Where characters used to have season long arcs that played out in short bits and pieces, now they have sudden about faces in the interest of serving specific plot points. Three-dimensional characters with complex wants, needs, and beliefs are diminished to cliff-notes versions of themselves. Jon Snow literally says multiple times in an episode “SHE IS MY QUEEN,” through some incredibly gritted teeth rather than actually wrestle with the newfound knowledge that he is a Targaryen, a long-running plotline with massive ramifications going all the way back to the first season (this whole plotline is inexplicably dropped because it apparently doesn’t matter that much to the world of the show). But no character has suffered as much as Dany has from this compression.
Daenerys Targaryen began Game of Thrones by being wedded to Khal Drogo in a forced, sham marriage so that her brother, Visyerys, can acquire Drogo’s army of Dothraki screamers in his bid to take back the Iron Throne. Dany is frightened and scared. But what’s great about her character is that she survives and makes the best of her situation. She eventually falls in love with Khal Drogo (which is erm, problematic to say the least), and is pregnant with his child. Viserys is stunned that he can’t abuse or control her any longer, and he gets molten gold poured on his head as he threatens a pregnant Dany who is growing in power and agency.
From there, Dany loses a lot. Khal Drogo gets a pretty bad infection and is dying from it. Desperate, Dany asks a witch to use blood magic to heal her husband. But it doesn’t work, and the witch deceives her. Dany loses her unborn child in the ritual, and her husband becomes a vegetable. She loses Khal Drogo’s khalasaar in the process as well.
Dany has lost everything at this point, until she makes a funeral pyre for her husband, and binds the witch to the pyre for tricking her. She lays three dragon eggs on the funeral pyre, lights the fire, and steps into it. In the morning, she rises, naked, with three newborn dragons. The first dragons in over 100 years. It’s a massive triumph for a character that had suffered so much, to quite literally go through a rebirth by fire and bring an extinct animal back into the world. Not just any animal, but the creatures that her house won Westeros and forged a centuries-long dynasty with. Regardless of what you might think of her as a character, it’s hard to not see the show actively rooting for her to succeed.
From the end of season 1 on, Dany goes on a pretty in-depth journey, one partly of abolition, but also of conquest. She conquers Astapor, Yunkai, and Mereen while earning the respect of the people she frees from slavery. She wants to use her powers for good, and she’s occasionally pragmatic. She surrounds herself with advisors who will check her vengeful impulses and guide her on a path towards the Iron Throne. She even chooses to actively give up her political goals temporarily so that she can help the North fight the Army of the Dead.
But the show decidedly to set her on a very rapid course to ruin in the last season. The transparent rush to making Dany turn evil is most markedly in season 8, episode 4, “The Last of the Starks.” In the course of one episode, the following things happen to Dany:
- Jorah Mormont, one of her most loyal knights, dies during the Battle of Winterfell
- Rhaegal from Euron Greyjoy’s 360-no-scope kill via giant crossbow
- Missandei, one of her most prominent advisors and closest person that she has to a friend, is captured and executed by Cersei
- The confidence of her advisors because they believe that she’s not fit to rule after she angrily insists that they attack King’s Landing and conspire against her
- Everyone finds out that Jon Snow is actually Rhaegar and Lyanna’s lost son, Aegon Targaryen, and may have a better claim than Dany to the Iron Throne.
- Varys actively begins to conspire against her
Already, this is a lot to pack in to one episode. We jump from one place to another, traveling faster and faster from location to location without much pacing in-between scenes. But most, if not all of the plot points involving Dany involve her losing someone close to her, or her being (rightfully) anxious about anyone else finding out about Jon’s heritage because it could threaten her claim to the throne.
This rushed storytelling goes against the show’s entire ethos. Game of Thrones has always been about characters making choices, and living with the consequences of those choices. It’s what has made the show great. Often, the show surprises with some “twists,” but these twists are usually telegraphed well in advance. The groundwork for these storytelling turns is so well-laid-out that often you can trace back some of the show’s more shocking moments to previous choices that the characters made, and their respective outcomes. Joanna Robinson has a great essay about this difference between “shock” and “surprise.”
Tragic characters are tragic because they have agency. I’m going to be really unfair and use Macbeth as an example. Macbeth is told by three witches that he will rise in status and power. They tell him that he will eventually be King of Scotland. Regardless of whether or not this makes the prophecy true or not, it’s what drives Macbeth’s actions in the play. Macbeth murders the king of Scotland as a guest in his own home. Then, fearing that his reign as king will be challenged, he murders his best friend, Banquo. He later on pays for his transgression by misinterpreting a prophecy, believing himself to be invincible. He dies, because of course he does! Tragic characters have hubris, or excessive pride. 9 times out of 10 hubris usually causes the tragic character to die. It’s what makes them compelling figures.
What is frustrating about Dany’s arc is that it is not inherently a tragic one. The groundwork isn’t laid well enough for her story to end in tragedy. We are not consistently sold on the fact that she could be a tyrannical ruler despite her impulses to do otherwise. We also never have Dany face clear choices between good and bad options, and see her succumb to the bad option. She is consistently portrayed as being a ruler seeking to impose justice on people who enslave and oppress others.
(Of course, the optics of Dany’s time in Essos are extremely problematic, but the show does not take great pains to show how problematic that her abolition of slavery in Essos or her methods are, though they are ripe for critique. What is clear that the show wants you to root for Dany from word “go.”)
Because a lot of people are probably going to roll their eyes and simply shout into the internet void “wELl sHe bUrNt aLl tHoSe pEoPlE,” it’s important to note that Dany burns people who are doing the following things:
- Directly threatening her or her people
- Actively undermining her authority as a ruler (this is what any feudal ruler would do, by the way, so if it’s that bad in the world of Westeros or Essos, sue me. Even Ned Stark executes disloyal people).
- People who engage in and promote the slave trade (again someone tried to say to me that burning people who enslave other people was somehow wrong?) Maybe in the real world (but even then, eh? But in a world that’s a fantasy world where people are subjected to methods of execution as a form of justice, yeah. Fine.)
These moments of burnination are consistently framed as moments of triumph for Dany. The show is consistent in tone and in editing with her being a potentially transformative ruler (in a positive way). It also shows that she wishes to surround herself with advisors who will guide her to a path where she can be a monarch who is loved by common people and feared by the powerful.
I’m going to use another example here for those of you who say that Dany is Walter White. Let’s look at an early season of Breaking Bad, shall we?
At the climax of season 2 of Breaking Bad, Walt lets Jane, Jesse’s girlfriend, die choking on her own vomit as they both overdose on heroin. Long story short: Walt lets Jane die. He clearly makes the choice to let Jane die so that he can have control of Jesse again.
That is a clear choice. Walt could have turned Jane back on her side, allowed her to vomit, and live. But he didn’t. He actively chooses to let her die. And for those of you who say that Walt is “sad” in that moment? Those tears are quasi-obligatory for Walt. He’s a totally evil person at this point. The show tells us early on that his cancer diagnosis was just an excuse, and was always an excuse, for his violent behavior.
What makes Macbeth and other tragedies like it so good is that our characters retain agency. Macbeth can choose to not kill the king or his best friend. But because he believes in the prophecy and he wants more power, he does it anyway.
Dany in seasons 7 & 8 does not get to make these kinds of choices in the show.
Dany chooses to not attack The Red Keep early on in Season 7, against the advice of her women allies. She yields to Tyrion’s advice instead, and opts to take the Westerlands and Casterly Rock and press in on King’s Landing from the surrounding areas.
She’s presented with a false choice. The logic of the show dictates that Dany cannot simply attack Cersei in the Red Keep, even though that is a clear option and choice that she has. Attacking The Red Keep with her dragons and attempting to spare the city would be very much in line with Dany’s thinking. Instead Dany can only attack all of King’s Landing and kill everyone in the city, or choose the other option.
The show can only give her a false choice, which eliminates the possibility of tragedy or hubris, which is deeply unsatisfying. Without an actual choice to make and think through, the show’s plot robs a character of agency. The character doesn’t get to make this choice. The choice is already made for the character.
Tragedies are not full of surprises. We know bad things happen. Hamlet dies at the end of Hamlet. Macbeth dies at the end of Macbeth. King Lear dies at the end of King Lear. But that isn’t the story, and if you thought it was, you weren’t paying attention, or you’ve missed the point entirely.
It’s how those characters cope with their faults, or wrestle with their own moralities that make them compelling. We get to see their internal reasoning and logic. We get to see them make choices. But when we don’t get to see them make choices, these choices will always feel forced upon the character as a contrivance of plot, rather than an organic choice.
It’s also near-impossible to ignore the gender politics of this season as well. Women who have smaller ambitions and who don’t want to change the world are rewarded for their goals, (Sansa), while ambitious women who want to change the world are punished and are deemed to be insane or irredeemable. And that’s exactly what the show does in order to get to its end-state. It punishes women with vast political ambitions because the show’s plot commands it. Rather than having powerful women make mistakes, or be driven to do terrible things and pay the price for their actions like their male counterparts, they are simply punished for defying the whims of the script that they’ve been written into.
Game of Thrones’ 8th season consistently denies its audience this opportunity to see our characters go on their journeys. Instead, we have characters without agency or interiority, more puppets on strings than actual people. It’s not the show that it was, and we’re all poorer for it.
