Opinion: We're Looking At The Big Game of Thrones Question The Wrong Way

Please vote her off the island

• Tristan Young @talltristan

You know what’s missing from Game of Thrones? A Live studio audience. It sounds ludacris but its actually in keeping with the design of the show. Say what you will about the Losts and Battlestars of our waning golden age of television, no show has ever been designed with so much emphasis on its conclusion being rendered through someone winning. Sure plenty of these shows trade in the currency of good triumphing over evil (or maybe not), but GoT’s inexorable, punishing march towards it’s conclusion has less in common with the other epics of our modern era and more so with live studio game shows. Or maybe The Running Man. Engage in a conversation with someone regarding the show, and the topics inevitably steer not towards how it is going to end, but ‘who will win’. Who wins the game, who claims the iron throne, who gets the brand new, pre owned, Toyota?

This is a lot of fun! It leads to rampant speculation, and fan theories that traverse all sorts of mental gymnastics to justify whomever they believe will win- everyone from Daenerys (likely) to Tormund (less likely, but I can dream). Bookies make money off of this they way they used back when Survivor was the thing over 20 years ago. So it may be deflating to hear the argument that this is not what the show is about, nor is it about debating a who’s pyric victory will land them on a cold and uncomfortable chair.

Bare in mind, this is merely opinion, so if/when I’m wrong in a matter of weeks I’ll gladly eat a storm of crows and also owe you a coke. However, the notion of this show’s conclusion being determined by a literal winner of the Game of Thrones strikes me as a shallow reading of what the show is about. Let’s consider a few things that hold true not just for fantasy but fiction in general; Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are both instructive here. We have our trilogies for both. But as cannon and mass marketing over the years has indicated, plenty happened before the beginning of these tales, and plenty happens after. Fictional stories rarely exist in a vacuum, the exist along a continuum of history. Game of Thrones is on the cusp of myriad spin offs, one perhaps taking place after our main tail concludes (do something in Essos!). The point is, when the credits role after EP6, it’s not the end of history, even if Cersi and The Night King are tossed upon its dust bin.

Now consider what we have seen in the show already. We have had four people sit on the iron throne for its duration; King Robert, Geoffrey, Tomond, and Cersi. George RR Martin could have ended his story at any point considering his nihilistic and sadist predilections. Imagine after the Red Wedding the book/show just ended? Geoffrey’s continental adversaries butchered, and Jon Snow not yet an ascendant threat. The little bastard smirks on the throne and credits roll. That’s it. Of course history in Westeros continued and we have moved far beyond that. Now let’s say fan favorite Tyrion sits on the throne by the end. Great, so what? Given the politics and parochial vendettas that poison Westerosi politics, he’ll just be overthrown in a year or so. Same for Jon Snow, same for Danny. Any one of our characters sitting on that throne isn’t an ending. Because we’ve seen it plenty of times, we know how finite it is, how cyclical and cruel the revolving door of monarchs is. Star Wars and LotR conclude with the end of an era, the beginning of something new (more or less, Star Wars gets a little obtuse outside the films). Someone sitting on that throne is more of the same. It’s dull.

I would offer a more thematically satisfying and dynamic altering conclusion. One that carries a requisite combination of sacrifice, catharsis, and ambiguity. Enough of these characters are running through the markers of Shakespearean tragedy (doomed romance, the revenge tale) or Greek morality plays that ponder one’s agency and self determination, that we can take them off the map. Despite it being obvious, Danny is still poised to survive the twin wars the show is culminating in. And what will she see after those wars conclude? Sheer abject trauma, much of it caused by her campaign for the throne. A nation brutalized by the notion held by only the wealthiest of the population, that names and bloodlines mater. With every city she conquers, enemy she smites, Danny learns more and more about the nature of the world, and how it is one of exploitation to benefit the upper class. A fitting summation to these lessons would be for her determine, after Cersi is dealt with that the likes of her are not the real threat, but merely a symptom of a problem. This show refers to this problem as ‘the wheel’. Danny herself summarizes it season 5: “Lanister, Baratheon, Stark, Tyrell; they’re all just spokes on a wheel. This one’s on top, and then that one’s on top and on and on it spins. Crushing those on the ground”. For her to survive and take the throne, no matter how just her intentions, would merely be the perpetuation of said wheel.

As she her self alluded to, the wheel needs to be broken, or rather the throne. The logical conclusion of Danny’s journey should be for her, despite it being the one thing she’s wanted for the entirety of the series, to accept the the iron throne- the very idea of monarchy- needs to end. What better way to do that, in terms of narration and spectacle, than for her to climb atop one of her dragons, and melt the iron throne down to nothing. For her to declare to a bruised and battered Westeros, that this system is over; whatever comes next they will have to decide for themselves. This would be a true paradigm shift, a change in epochs worthy of the show’s conclusion. It would be a moral win without being the obvious material gain associated with the traditional idea of winning. Full disclosure, I tend to predict how everything will end all the time and have yet to be correct about anything ever so just by offering such a theory I’m likely dooming it to irrelevance. But still I feel that too much work has gone into the show for its ending to be so direct and bare bones. Of course it could all be misdirection and the show could end up with Grey Worm and Missandie retreating to an island somewhere to live out their lives together while the rest of the world succumbs to shivering annihilation which for the record I’m totally on board with. Those two!