You’ve managed to sum up exactly how I feel about her arc in a way I couldn’t. I am fine with Danys descent into madness but there is a huge gap between impulsive, flying a dragon into a won battle to mop up some enemies, and ‘mad’, completely exterminating a city of a million people.
For me it failed to bridge that gap.
I’d be pretty happy if the show ends with this main theme of birthrights being meaningless, power corrupts, monarchies will just be cyclically overthrown, etc. It’s a grim ending, but to me is more effective than the Good Guys beat the Bad Guys, and then the Good Authoritarian starts her rule. It’s even cool that most characters can’t even fall into reductive categories like “good” or “evil”.
But then again, they do still have 80 minutes to goof everything up and make a real boneheaded move, like having Jon sit on the metal chair or something.
It’s not just Missandei, Westeros has taken everything from her, refused her claim to rule and has begun to conspire against her. In her mind Westeros is rejecting her. That’s been the arc for 2 seasons.
I hope no one ends up on that chair tbh.
Shoutouts to the weirdly extra extra this episode.
This is probably the episode I’ve liked the most thus far in season 8 besides coming back to my main problems with this whole last arc, Daenerys and Jon. While the shift from “hey, the bells are ringing, everyone laid down their arms, we won” to “burn this entire city and its citizens on a whim” was a bit jarring; and while I agree with the criticisms, it didn’t necessarily feel out of place in Daenerys’s wrathful nature to me, that’s always been demonstrated routinely in the course of the show.
Also Jon proving his solid leadership as his people just can’t help but take to the streets to slaughter countless unarmed soldiers and citizens.
Arya (or ashen one) update: Still good and great and I want her to escape north and live free now that all her targets lay buried in ashes.
I’m kind convinced the darkness that descends on the world that Azor Ahai is meant to come back to defeat is Dany. I think Arya is Azor Ahai and maybe how this ends all seven kingdoms become independent or maybe some form of democracy?
I think Daenarys has always wanted to do these things and the only thing keeping her from doing so were her advisers. It’s been clear that she wants to murder anyone in her way. If anything, the development has been listening less and less to those around her and doing things her way.
No one cheered?
And it’s not like the people of King’s Landing can do anything about the Tyrant who blew up the Sept two seasons ago.
That was Dany’s whole point, ‘Breaker of Chains.’
So, I’m with the crowd that feels this is one of the better episodes in a long while. Rushed as hell, but at least this time the payoffs feel right to me.
I think it’s poorly paced, and ffwd’s the arc. But I don’t think Dany, despite all appearances, is just going mad. She has decided that she cannot rule Westeros as a beloved ruler (something she’s actually known since before coming to Westeros), so she’s making an example of King’s Landing. Burning it to the ground in a defeat so horrifying that no-one will dare think of challenging her. Is she feeling alone, abandoned, furious, and vengeful as she does it? Yep, but I will not be surprised to see her defend the atrocity as necessary and justified next week.
It’s absolutely the tactics of a tyrant who has decided that a better world is the one where she is in charge. The choice to rule through fear was super rushed, and does, IMO, lean into BS stereotypes of “emotional” women, but it’s also consistent with GoT’s fundamental thesis that any romantic notions we have about Feudal systems and centralized power are toxic.
OTOH, if this stupid show ends with some sort of benevolent monarch, I will cry.
I think they are going the mad queen route because of the very visible darkness around her eyes.
I am convinced that D&D are hacks, so they sat around in the writer’s room and went, “Hm, how can we make Dany seem mad?”
“I know! Let’s make her eyes darker. That means crazy, right?”
Lazy filmmakers like to telegraph mental illness with very visible language, and it’s the same language used on the Mad King, who grew his nails long, his hair long, who stopped bathing…
It’s lazy.
The show did a bad job of explaining why she was alone in her room, she believed someone was going to try to kill her. Varys was trying to get a little girl to poison her food in the kitchen, she was right.
My mistake - it was rather quiet (rewatched the scene). My point is that in an autocracy, even a vaguely benevolent autocracy - the people live at the mercy of the ruler. Basically - GoT is turning into Animal Farm 
Yeah same, it’s wild to me that most GoT fans are constantly speculating who will end up on the throne instead of questioning why the throne even exists. I think it’d be the most effective way to wrap it all up at this point
Exactly! It’s like cheering for one semi-fascist over the other semi-fascist. It’s time for some representative democracy
Yeah, no throne would be my preferred ending. But im almost convinced Bran is going to worm his way into the seat with Tyrion and Onion as his aides (Not that he needs any)
I got real excited with that scene from season 7 where Tyrion and Dany talk about electing a ruler.
It sounded like the show was poised for that direction. Maybe it still can, but jeez… What an awful way to do it.
I’m partial to direct democracy. Because the reps would just end up being people like the main cast of this show anyway lol
It was so lazy that the opening recap added “booOOOoooOOOoo crazy hallucination voices booOOOoooOOOoooo” to her which weren’t in the last episode.
Also literally every Dany said in the beginning of this episode about Jon and Tyrion fucking up, Sansa manipulating events, and Varys needing to die made perfect sense. But she killed a character we’re supposed to like, so her face is now a heel. Sorry.
I wish they’d shown us what people actually think of her. She acts like everyone hates her and turned their backs on her, but all the major houses and Kingdoms backed her claim initially.
Also, considering how precise dragon fire was they probably should have just attacked KL at the start!
The whole ‘hearing voices’ added into the recap was exceptionally lazy. It was like they realized after the fact that they had not developed and showed this shift in the character to make it somewhat believable, that they had to retcon it into the damn recap to show, “See, she’s on the edge! She’s lost everyone! She’s losing it!”
