Spoilers ahead.
On May 20, 1980, audiences for the first time watched Darth Vader sever Luke Skywalker’s hand with one slice of his crimson lightsaber. As he dangles over the abyss of Cloud City, Luke accuses Vader of murdering his father. Vader towers over him, cape billowing in the Cloud City wind, and tells Luke:
“No, I am your father.”
This scene from The Empire Strikes Back is easily the most iconic in the Star Wars saga and an immortalized moment in film history. It is the definitive cinematic plot twist — and yet, Empire did not receive an abundance of glowing reviews upon release. Though the film community now reveres Empire as one of the best movies ever made, critics at the time initially responded with a collective meh. Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote about Empire:
“It’s not as fresh and funny and surprising and witty [as Star Wars], but it is nice and inoffensive and, in a way that no one associated with it need be ashamed of, it’s also silly.”
The initially lukewarm (pun intended) reaction to the Star Wars sequel reminds me of the widespread disappointment among fans and critics alike to the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones. The latest episode, “The Bells,” was met with a flood of angry reactions and the lowest RottenTomatoes.com critical score in Thrones history. This response surprised me, as I believe “The Bells” features some of the finest direction, story work, and character development in the entire series (as do the two episodes before it, which were also poorly reviewed).
The controversy centers around one of Game of Thrones‘s central protagonists, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). At the beginning of Season 8, Daenerys and her ally and lover, the honorable Jon Snow, are united against the White Walkers and their zombie army, which marches southward to plunge the continent into an endless winter. In the season’s third episode, “The Long Night,” their armies manage to vanquish the White Walkers, a wonderful surprise given that three whole episodes still remained until the end of the series and because the White Walkers had previously been built up as the series’ looming foe.
After defeating the dead, the heroes’ attention shifts south to the ruthless Cersei Lannister, self-appointed queen and Game of Thrones‘s ultimate villain — or so it seemed. A series of losses send Daenerys on a murderous rampage in the fifth and penultimate episode of the series, defeating Cersei and delivering what may be the last of many brilliant twists in Game of Thrones — that one of the show’s most popular characters has become its final antagonist.
People aren’t happy with this revelation. Many critics claim that Daenerys’s killing spree “makes no sense” in the context of her character, referencing the fact that she rose to power by waging a war against slavery.
I disagree. As early as Season 1, we see flashes of ruthlessness from beneath Daenerys’s altruistic exterior. She watches with steely coolness as her husband kills her abusive brother by coating his head in liquid gold. Later, she seizes control of the Unsullied army by commanding her dragons to burn its handlers alive. She executes slave masters during peace talks and incinerates their fleet. She murders the Dothraki rulers to gain control of their legion of horse-lords, and she executes two defeated lords by dragon fire when they refuse to pledge their allegiance.
But it doesn’t really matter whether Daenerys’s tyrannical turn fits into her established arc; her rise to villainy is brilliant anyway.
Game of Thrones‘s greatest strength has always been its characters. It’s hard to find truly complex characters in film or television in a decade defined by superhero flicks whose heroes and villains rarely challenge the boundaries of good and evil.
Cersei Lannister, for example, is one of the most dynamic characters in entertainment today. When we first meet Cersei in Season 1, there isn’t much to like. She and her twin brother, Jaime, attempt to murder a seven-year-old boy when he witnesses their incestuous activities, and she plots the wrongful downfall of protagonist Ned Stark when he challenges her son’s claim to the throne. With the death of her three children in later seasons, as well as her traumatic humiliation by a radical religious sect, we come to sympathize with Cersei, and it becomes clear that her motivations are far more complex than we were initially led to believe.
Season 8 continues this trend of unparalleled story work because it exposes Daenerys as just as complex and flawed as Cersei and any other of the show’s best characters. For most of the first seven seasons, the Dragon Queen is largely victorious in her endeavors. She succeeds in freeing the slave cities of Essos, amasses a huge army and navy, and sails to Westeros to finally retake the throne stolen from her family.
But, by the end of Season 7, Daenerys’s winning streak starts to plateau when the White Walkers fell the first of her dragons. In Season 8, she learns that her lover, Jon Snow, is actually her nephew, and that he has a better claim to the Iron Throne. Soon after, she loses her friend and lieutenant Jorah Mormont in the battle against the dead. Finally, in Episode 4, she watches Cersei murder a second dragon and her adviser, Missandei.
One of the show’s most tense moments comes in the fifth and penultimate episode of the season, after Daenerys and her army swiftly capture the capital city of King’s Landing. Perched on the last of three dragons, she waits for Cersei to ring the bells signifying her surrender. When Cersei finally relents, however, Daenerys does not stand down. She stares angrily toward the enemy fortress with fiery contempt.
With her closest friends murdered, two dragons slain, and the man she loves shaken and distant after learning they are related, Daenerys is alone, broken, and angry. As she tells Jon Snow:
“I don’t have love here. I only have fear.”
Ultimately, the weight of these losses are too much for her. Her most violent instincts — which her victorious streak in earlier campaigns had channeled into a ruthless form of justice — erupt in a fiery frenzy. Even though Cersei has surrendered, Daenerys makes the fateful choice to burn the city and its innocent inhabitants with dragon fire.
Few TV shows or movies have the narrative complexity to acknowledge the fact that, in the real world, nobody is only good or only evil. Of course, Game of Thrones is far from the real world. But, although its world is populated by dragons, giants, wizards and zombies, its characters are some of the most realistically human on television. They are vulnerable to the influence of power, love, and loss, just like any of the show’s viewers. Daenerys’s turn is devastating not because it contradicts her arc, but because it proves she is just as corruptible — just as human — as anyone else.
There’s no other way Game of Thrones could have ended. A massive battle between the White Walkers and humanity would have been too predictable. Furthermore, it would have forced Cersei to unite her forces with those of Daenerys and Jon Snow, thereby robbing the show of its intrinsic notes of subterfuge and greed. Cersei fulfilling the role of final opponent would have been equally lackluster, as the long-building tension between the North and Daenerys would go without a logical payoff.
Plus, Game of Thrones has never been partial to happy endings. Did anyone really think that would change in its final hours?
With Daenerys as the ultimate antagonist, the showrunners have laid the groundwork for the kind of epic, heartbreaking, bittersweet conclusion that Game of Thrones always needed. I only hope that, as they did with The Empire Strikes Back, others eventually come to appreciate its brilliance.
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