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| (Photo Credit: HBO) |
Game of Thrones
Season 8, Episode 4
By Garrett Yoshitomi
“The night is dark and full of terrors.” Or, full of fan backlash and critical malaise, if you’re season eight of Game of Thrones. After a strong start to its final season, Game of Thrones finds itself in worse shape than Dany’s dragon, Rhaegal, as the show concludes its worst two episode stretch in series history. ‘The Last of the Starks,’ which many consider to be the worst Game of Thrones episode ever, has unceremoniously seen its Rotten Tomatoes score drop below 60%, giving the show its second ever “Rotten” episode, since ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ in season five. Overall, season eight currently has the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the series, and even with a perfect ending will probably remain the worst-reviewed season of Game of Thrones.
This week’s episode isn’t all terrible, however. There is some very narratively important character development that takes place; however, these storylines do feel rushed, and the episode probably would have been better served had it given these character arcs more room to breathe. As it stands, the slow pace of those table setting episodes from the beginning of the season are starting to look like a misallocation of precious screen time, as the show is very clearly running out of runway for many of its important plot points.
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| (Photo Credit: HBO) |
After the surprisingly abrupt end to the war with the Night King, the remaining three episodes of season eight shift their focus to the battle for the Iron Throne. However, while Dany’s narrowed her sights on Cersei as the only obstacle to her ascendancy, another threat to her rule appears to have manifested from an unexpected place. In the aftermath of the Great War, it’s Jon, not Dany, who delivers a galvanizing speech to honor their fallen comrades. And, when Winterfell is filled with the cheering of victory and clinking of goblets, it’s Jon at the center of it all, while Dany looks on, alone. Now that Daenerys knows Jon’s true parentage, she no longer sees his effortless ability to sway others to his side as just an attractive personality trait, but rather, as a direct threat to her claim to the Iron Throne. Dany feels so threatened in fact that for the first time ever she begs someone for help, imploring Jon to keep his true heritage a secret, so that her rule remains unencumbered in the eyes of the realm. However, by episode’s end, the seeds of doubt have already been sewn, with Varys and even Tyrion, to an extent, acknowledging and accepting Dany’s fatal flaws as a leader.
Since arriving in Westeros at the start of season seven, Daenerys has been losing allies at an alarming pace. The past two episodes, specifically, have been a crushing blow to her forces, leaving her with few supporters and even fewer friends. But, unlike Jon, who turned enemies into allies with the Wildlings, and regained the support of the North after his heroics in the Battle of the Bastards, Dany hasn’t been afforded the same kind of loyalty, even though her army was largely responsible for giving the North a fighting chance against the Night King. While Dany was able to build her forces from essentially nothing, it appears that the same kind of mechanisms that allowed her to rise to power in Essos will not work in Westeros. There are no slave armies, like the Unsullied, to free within the Nine Realms, and after her execution of Randyll and Dickon Tarly, it’s clear that burning her enemies alive will not result in the same undying fealty that she earned from the Dothraki, when she burned the Khalar vezhven to the ground in season six.
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| (Photo Credit: HBO) |
Perhaps more troubling than Dany’s struggle to gain new supporters, is her unwavering thirst for power and ruthless approach to conquest – two traits that are generally ill-fitting for a would-be benevolent ruler. As I mentioned in my review of the season premiere, Daenerys has always had a bit of a cruel streak (something that’s very reminiscent of her late father, the Mad King), and her initial tendency to react with violence has long been a source of concern for her advisors and allies. Varys, specifically, takes issue with Daenerys’ uncompromising desire to ravage King’s Landing, and essentially withdraws his support from the dragon queen in a short, yet pivotal, scene with Tyrion. Varys recognizes the negative similarities between Dany and the merciless rulers he’s served in the past. And, it is true that for all her talk of “breaking the wheel,” Dany is driven by the same lust for power and misguided notion of destiny that’s motivated so many tyrants before her.
Varys is also quick to point out the contrast between Dany’s need for power and Jon’s indifference towards ruling; and that paradoxically, this aversion to the throne actually makes Jon the ideal monarch, rather than Dany. Unlike Daenerys, who sees the Iron Throne as her destiny, and takes any measure necessary to achieve this goal, Jon acts based on what’s best for his people, even if that means sacrificing some of his own gains for the greater good. Back in the season premiere, Sam asked Jon, of Dany, “You gave up your crown to save your people. Would she do the same?” At the time, I called this clever one-line synopsis of the difference between Jon and Dany, the quote of the season. But, with the way the finale of Game of Thrones is shaping up, this could very well end up being the quote of the series. With just two episodes left to go, the answer to Sam’s question will likely shape the outcome of the entire show.
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| (Photo Credit: HBO) |
And therein lies the core cause for so many of the problems fans and critics seem to be having with this final season of Game of Thrones. Pivotal, series-altering plot points should not be established so late into the game. Yes, I understand that the show has been hinting at eventual friction between Jon and Dany, ever since the writers dropped the Aegon Targaryen bomb at the end of season six. But, up until the second episode of this season, Jon’s true parentage never entered into the wider narrative in a very meaningful way, and there’s simply been too much going on to give this central storyline the kind of contrivance-free attention it deserves.
The patient, purposeful storytelling that Game of Thrones introduced to us eight years ago is long gone, only to be replaced by an accelerated narrative with too many chess pieces and not enough spaces to move them across. Between the Battle of Winterfell, and now the upcoming fight between Dany and Cersei, season eight has been chock-full of storylines that should arguably be getting an entire season of build-up to themselves. Instead, these critical plotlines have been lumped together into one shortened season, putting a strain on their individual screen time, as well as what time is left for the only storyline that should really matter at this point, the political and emotional entanglement between Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen, or in other words, a literal song of ice and fire.
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