Some thoughts on Targaryens, Daenerys, character arcs and more as we wind to the close with "The Bells".
What’s the point in having a pet dragon unless you get to lay waste to and incinerate a whole city with hundreds of thousands of innocent lives inside the walls? When you’ve got a sports car, you need to open that thing up every once in a while. Dragons are no different. And Daenerys opened that mother up.
From the moment Missandei’s capa was detated from her head at the end of last episode and Daenerys did her rather symbolic heel turn away from Cersei and the rest of the city, I suppose we could see this coming. She’s been increasingly unhinged over the last few episodes with the writers building to a not-so-happy ending for Danny, or at least something different than we thought they’d built to over the last seven+ seasons. I think some will make a ruckus that this was, in fact, a complete 180 for her character, going from 0 to nuts all too quickly. I’m not sure I see it that way.
Much has been made in the Song of Ice and Fire canon about the batshit crazy piece of Targaryen blood. Hell her dad, nicknamed The Mad King mind you, wanted to torch Kings Landing when he knew his reign was coming to an end at the hands of Robert Baratheon. He was only stopped because Jamie Lannister “betrayed” him, earning the nickname “Kingslayer”. Daenerys finishing the job does make sense from narrative perspective.
And that she’d be just a little (or in this case, a lot a) bit nuts makes sense as well. After all, she’s essentially inbred, seeing as how her dad (Aerys) married his sister (Rhaella) and had a bunch of kids, she being the last born. So yeah, her going nuts does make sense from a certain genealogical perspective.
But because of the timing, it does seem like she goes nuts because she kind of had a bad week. She gets a cold welcome at Winterfell. The Night King taunts her on the battlefield. Arya gets all of the credit for the icing that guy. She finds out Jon is actually her nephew (which doesn’t creep her out in any kind of sexual way, she’s a Targaryen after all) and has a better claim to the throne. Her right-hand man and right-hand lady get cut down a couple of days apart from each other. Tyrion goes behind her back. Varys makes a play for Jon. You couple all of that with a screw or two loose PLUS all the stuff that’s happened to her throughout her whole life and now all of a sudden her actions don’t appear out of character at all. Upsetting? Sure. Off script? Not really.
I suppose people aren’t going to like it. I imagine a criticism will be that the writers built up a good, strong character female character only to have her break bad in the end. But on a show essentially dominated by its strong, intelligent, independent female characters What happened in Kings Landing after the bells tolled surrender, in my opinion, is mostly in line with what’s happened throughout the show and in line with what we know about her family line. My real beef is in how the writers have handled some of these larger pieces this season. They did it with the Night King, boiling his motivations down into an almost throwaway sentence by Bran before the Battle of Winterfell. In some ways, though not nearly as egregious, they did it with Daenerys here. Varys’s final whisper, when he reminds Tyrion about the Targaryen volatility, is the writers reminding us more than anything. I wish this season there had been a few fewer minutes spent on frantic and big-budget battle scenes a little more about these story pieces that end up as the major pivot points of the show. It seems like something of a missed opportunity.
Let’s touch on a few other characters in this episode.
Jon “Don’t Call Me Aegon” Snow
If Daenerys got the crazy Targaryen gene, then Jon was left with all of the idiotic scraps. In keeping with his character’s numbskull-y insistence on always doing the Exact. Wrong. Thing (on this the writers have been amazingly consistent) he kept the streak alive in this episode. Basically, all he had to do was shut his eyes, shag his aunt and there’s a decent chance everyone in Kings Landing remains un-barbecued. But he can’t even get that part right. He puts Danny in the you’re-my-queen friend zone and that’s basically her last straw.
Arya and the Hound
The Hound’s fight to the death with his dead brother had a number of solid payoffs. There was the stunning realization that Sandor simply couldn’t kill that which was already dead. His stabs through the gut and then through the head acting as mere bug bites to Gregor who’d long since stopped living. But he got the revenge he sought, taking his brother into the fires that had marred The Hound’s face as a child (caused by big bro).
Meanwhile, Arya gets to see the carnage up close and personal getting her set up with a possible final confrontation with Daenerys. That she skipped a person on her list (Cersei) at Sandor’s insistence was a touching moment between two “friends”. He essentially saved her life and she recognized it on the way out. Again, Arya is easily the best character on the show and not just because she’s taken the hero’s turn somewhat late. The writers have kept her consistent throughout. Building her up to a virtuosic killer who still is something of a kid when it’s all said and done.
And finally, Jamie and Cersei
Man, does this one ever seem mishandled. Jamie and Cersei having the weight of the city literally be more than they can handle in the end makes the former’s trysts with Brienne make even less sense to me. I’m happy to have someone explain this, because I’ll fully admit that maybe I’m missing something here. But now I have the sneaking suspicion that he shacked up with Brienne simply so he had something to do in Winterfell. What else was the point? It doesn’t end up being redemptive.
After an emotional scene with Tyrion in the army outpost (and I thought that scene was excellent) Jamie and Cersei get a rather anticlimactic death in which the writers almost seemed like they wanted you to feel for Cersei as she breaks down in the tunnels of Kings Landing.
It does seem apropos that Cersei would ultimately “bring Jamie down with her” considering the power she’s had over him since, well, forever. Them dying together does make sense. And maybe my confusion/ disappointment is because I wanted something out of these two story arcs that I can’t necessarily describe. Considering how many folks wanted Cersei's head, it made since for Jamie to be last standing with her. I don't love how there was a play on the emotional side, Cersei begging not to die but maybe that's just me feeling guilty for feeling guilty.
All in all, I enjoyed “The Bells” and it sets us up for a final episode which appears to be able to go only a few different ways.
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