I’m still convinced if the last few seasons hadn’t pushed such a breakneck pace of getting through the rest of the story that this ending realistically could have worked. However, in the rush of time passing between episodes, we lost all the important character development needed to show Jon’s slow acceptance that she indeed has gone mad. We lost all the important character development to give her character time to go mad in a believable way. Everything was just too rushed and all the character development beats for Jon and Daenerys leading up to the end didn’t have enough time to show us how deeply these characters had changed. We didn’t have time to see Daenerys slowly change and become mad, and due to that, it feels like the ending is “wrong” because in our minds her character is still more of a savior, and her actions near the end of the series don’t make sense because we didn’t get like two seasons of her losing her mind slowly to build up to this.
We lost all the important character development to give her character time to go mad in a believable way.
When I argued this when it first came out all the die hard defenders told me I just wasn’t paying attention and it was sooooo obvious for such a long time that she was evil… Like… No man. That was absolutely rushed.
I mean, I didn’t think it was obvious she was evil as much as it was obvious that she would end up going mad because the show makes a huge deal of reminding us that Targaryens eventually go mad due to inbreeding. I think it was like Chekov’s Gun, they wouldn’t keep showing off this information if it wasn’t going to become important.
I think they planted the seeds for this ending early on, but absolutely fucked up and didn’t do anything to nurture the seeds after planting.
I don’t even think she is going to “go mad” like the Mad King or do something particularly wild like her ancestors, I just think she’ll lose her temper and everyone will blame madness.
For example a small change would be moving Rhaegal’s death from outside Dragonstone to King’s Landing. You can have him almost get hit or only mildly injured. Now when Dany and others attack King’s Landing you can have her be extra protective and try and keep Rhaegal under control. Dany can try and stay safe, almost getting hit, then Rhaegal gets hit and dies. Now, in that moment, she can lose her temper and burn King’s Landing.
When we see the people of King’s Landing talking in the aftermath we can hear hushed whispers of “Targaryen Madness”.
That’s a pretty solid take, where she doesn’t go mad, but the rumors are that she did, and it centers more than just the main cast, giving us insight into how the locals feel about her after all that. Maybe you should have written the ending ha.
Someday George will give us our ending. But more realistically after he passes a group of nerds will write a fanfic of all the best theories and that will be how we finally get our ending.
(And if no other nerds pick up the quill, I’ll lead the charge!)
The ground work was definitely there. She left her city undefended and basically crippled then sacrificed her horsemen. They didn’t really show the travel between the north and the south, it would have been a good place to slip in some crazy.
Oh absolutely, I thought it was pretty clear that she was always going to go mad, that seemed to be like Chekov’s Gun situation… why bring up how crazy they all went from inbreeding if it’s not going to play into the plot beyond a long-dead king who was never a direct part of the story since we start into the story when Baratheon is already king. Especially when her brother was clearly pretty mad already. Everyone in her family seems to lose their minds and become awful, it seemed pretty clear that’s where it was headed and that’s why it was actually important to have her character be played as a “white savior” because she actually isn’t.
They did a lot of good setup, but they didn’t do enough of actually giving that setup time to properly cook.
I suspect that could also be what’s apparently halted all progress on the novels - this may have been the general plan for the book endings, and GRRM saw how much people hated it and scrambled to change it. But yeah if he just did that ending and gave it space to unfold properly it’d probably be fine.
I’m still convinced if the last few seasons hadn’t pushed such a breakneck pace of getting through the rest of the story that this ending realistically could have worked. However, in the rush of time passing between episodes, we lost all the important character development needed to show Jon’s slow acceptance that she indeed has gone mad. We lost all the important character development to give her character time to go mad in a believable way. Everything was just too rushed and all the character development beats for Jon and Daenerys leading up to the end didn’t have enough time to show us how deeply these characters had changed. We didn’t have time to see Daenerys slowly change and become mad, and due to that, it feels like the ending is “wrong” because in our minds her character is still more of a savior, and her actions near the end of the series don’t make sense because we didn’t get like two seasons of her losing her mind slowly to build up to this.
When I argued this when it first came out all the die hard defenders told me I just wasn’t paying attention and it was sooooo obvious for such a long time that she was evil… Like… No man. That was absolutely rushed.
I mean, I didn’t think it was obvious she was evil as much as it was obvious that she would end up going mad because the show makes a huge deal of reminding us that Targaryens eventually go mad due to inbreeding. I think it was like Chekov’s Gun, they wouldn’t keep showing off this information if it wasn’t going to become important.
I think they planted the seeds for this ending early on, but absolutely fucked up and didn’t do anything to nurture the seeds after planting.
I don’t even think she is going to “go mad” like the Mad King or do something particularly wild like her ancestors, I just think she’ll lose her temper and everyone will blame madness.
For example a small change would be moving Rhaegal’s death from outside Dragonstone to King’s Landing. You can have him almost get hit or only mildly injured. Now when Dany and others attack King’s Landing you can have her be extra protective and try and keep Rhaegal under control. Dany can try and stay safe, almost getting hit, then Rhaegal gets hit and dies. Now, in that moment, she can lose her temper and burn King’s Landing.
When we see the people of King’s Landing talking in the aftermath we can hear hushed whispers of “Targaryen Madness”.
That’s a pretty solid take, where she doesn’t go mad, but the rumors are that she did, and it centers more than just the main cast, giving us insight into how the locals feel about her after all that. Maybe you should have written the ending ha.
Someday George will give us our ending. But more realistically after he passes a group of nerds will write a fanfic of all the best theories and that will be how we finally get our ending.
(And if no other nerds pick up the quill, I’ll lead the charge!)
The ground work was definitely there. She left her city undefended and basically crippled then sacrificed her horsemen. They didn’t really show the travel between the north and the south, it would have been a good place to slip in some crazy.
Oh absolutely, I thought it was pretty clear that she was always going to go mad, that seemed to be like Chekov’s Gun situation… why bring up how crazy they all went from inbreeding if it’s not going to play into the plot beyond a long-dead king who was never a direct part of the story since we start into the story when Baratheon is already king. Especially when her brother was clearly pretty mad already. Everyone in her family seems to lose their minds and become awful, it seemed pretty clear that’s where it was headed and that’s why it was actually important to have her character be played as a “white savior” because she actually isn’t.
They did a lot of good setup, but they didn’t do enough of actually giving that setup time to properly cook.
I suspect that could also be what’s apparently halted all progress on the novels - this may have been the general plan for the book endings, and GRRM saw how much people hated it and scrambled to change it. But yeah if he just did that ending and gave it space to unfold properly it’d probably be fine.
That’s my guess, too. I also agree that considering how long his books are, his would have given enough character development for the ending to work.