Foreshadowing Isn’t Character Development (And Here’s Why)
WARNING: There are major spoilers for Game of Thrones, Seasons 1 through 8 including the series finale, below. Read at your own risk. Seriously, stop reading now if you aren’t up to date on the show.
Let me start by saying that Game of Thrones has been a show that I have fiercely loved since the very beginning. Though I must admit that the first five or six episodes were overwhelming for a newcomer, it was precisely the moment that Eddard Stark got his head chopped off (RIP Ned) that I was in complete awe. How could a show possibly move forward from the death of its main character? And yet, time and time again, season after season, my expectations were exceeded by far: Game of Thrones was a show that never failed to captivate, shock, and amaze me. Every plot point felt carefully calculated, every character arc and storyline coming together like pieces of a puzzle. Even relatively slow seasons like Season 5 were still chockfull of surprises, and ultimately came together in a way that justified its odd pacing. Everything was going so well, so well in fact that I thought nothing could possibly mess up the foundation that was so vigilantly laid. And then . . . well, then the last two seasons came around.
Many, if not the majority of GoT fans, felt severely underwhelmed by Season 7 and 8 of the show, and even more so by the series finale (quickly becoming known as one of the most hated and lowest rated finales ever). It’s important to bear in mind that most of these fans, including myself, wanted so badly to love the show even when its quality began to decline: when its dialogue became more and more uninspiring, and its overarching structure began to make less and less sense. As the series began to draw closer to its end, major plot lines felt so rushed that it almost felt like another show entirely. While Season 7 definitely had its highlights, it mostly made me nervous for its final season: particularly because writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (colloquially known as “D&D”) had decided to cut Season 8 to a mere six episodes.
One of the major criticisms that D&D have been getting is that the pacing should have been more consistent, and the common fix would have been to keep the ten-episode structure. Game of Thrones, from seasons 1 – 6, have done brilliantly within this structure. In this span the writers were able to, sometimes painstakingly, draw out story-lines that kept the viewers at the edge of their seats while simultaneously being able to spend enough time fleshing out important plots. Because of this, we were aptly satisfied when an arc came to fruition or an end, no matter how shocking or unforeseen (see: the Red Wedding). So when the shortened number of episodes came about in season 7 (apparently, D&D insisted that they could finish the series in this span), viewers could simply not ignore the negative impact of this decision. All of a sudden, characters were traveling from region to region in seemingly no time at all. Ravens were sent and received in a matter of hours; Daenerys was able to fly her dragons from Dragonstone to north of the Wall in less than a day’s time. The writers began to write for convenience’s sake, timelines and inconsistencies be damned. What used to be the most layered show I’d ever seen was quickly unravelling into a surface-level, illogical one.
And while some argue, “calm down, it’s just a show, and fiction nonetheless! Things don’t have to make sense!”, I somewhat agree, but if this were the case, I would be much less upset about this if the structure of GoT had been like this from the start. Where Season 7 became a cause for concern in viewers, it wasn’t until Season 8 that we truly saw how badly the rushed nature of things would impact the show. It’s not secret that D&D have plans to go on to do other TV projects, and damn, was it apparent that they were in a rush to do so. It very much felt like the writers were done with GoT before it even ended.
The series finale, which aired on May 18, 2019, was one of the most widespread disappointments of all time. For a show as wildly popular as Game of Thrones (to the point where it has become canonized as a cultural zeitgeist), seeing it come to such a deflated and dissatisfactory end has caused audiences worldwide to exhale an embittered sigh. And I firmly believe that, aside from the pacing issue, this has everything to do with the way the writers dealt with its main characters, and their respective character developments, in the final two seasons.
I could go on forever about all the characters that were wronged in this final season. Plain and simple, D&D do not know how to deal with GoT’s strong female characters. Somehow, within the span of six episodes, they managed to erase all the nuances of each main female figure and turn them into an oversimplification of themselves. Perhaps that’s for another post. But for now, my main grievances were how the writers dealt with Jaime Lannister and, of course, Daenerys Targaryen. Though the concept of the Mad Queen narrative in regards to Dany have been long theorized by fans, it was the execution that not only failed in a storytelling regard, but failed the character in the deepest of ways. (My fellow collaborator on this topic, Lammii Baker, will delve into this more deeply later on).
I’ll say only this: I urge viewers to ignore D&D’s interpretation of Dany succumbing to the Targaryen Madness merely because it “runs in her family”, and rather, see a woman who was born and bred into a cycle of abuse. A woman who worked relentlessly hard to break this cycle for anyone and everyone around her that endured the same. A woman who, leading up to her breaking point, had lost all her advisors, her best friends, two of her children, and the affection of the man she loved. Maester Aemon once said, “A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing“. She was not given the luxury to show her grief and loneliness onscreen, simply as a tool for the writers to turn her into the ultimate villain. Let us not forget how much had been taken from Daenerys up to the very moment that she decided to burn all of King’s Landing.
Moving on to Jaime: Jaime Lannister has perhaps been one of the most prominent characters to go through a life-altering transformation throughout the series. He started off as, let’s face it, a complete asshole (to sum it up: he pushed a child from a window for seeing him having sex with his sister). Against all odds, though, he was slowly able to turn into one of the most honourable, self-reflective and likeable characters of the entire show. Jaime was eventually able to break free from his toxic ties with Cersei, and epically left her to join Daenerys’ army at the end of Season 7. This was a huge moment. Jaime leaving Cersei meant that he was finally able to become his own man, finally able to recognize Cersei’s cruelty in its entirety and make a choice that felt right for himself, and not let his feelings get in the way as it always had before. So, to see Jaime’s character arc finally come to head when we see him fight valiantly against evil alongside Brienne for the majority of Season 8 and finally act on his feelings for her, only to decide in the spur of a moment to go back to Cersei? It was ridiculous. However, I still held out hope. I convinced myself, as many others did, that Jaime would be the one to kill Cersei. It had to be. He was the Kingslayer, it was only apt that he would become the Queenslayer, too. Cersei has mirrored more of the Mad King’s tendencies than Daenerys ever did. It would have been the most poetic of poetic justices to have Jaime kill her, and it would adhere to the Maggy the Frog prophecy from the books citing the “valonqar”. It would have been the ultimate completion of Jaime’s transformation.
And then. . . it doesn’t happen. Instead, Tyrion urges Jaime to save Cersei and flee to outside of Westeros. And Jaime actually attempts it (amidst a rather bizarre and too-close-for-comfort kill attempt at the hands of Euron Greyjoy, of all people). And then he finds Cersei, and he tells her “nothing else matters, only us”, and they die under the crumbling ruins. I can’t express in words how anticlimactic this was, how upset it made me to the point of pure indifference. It wasn’t creative or innovative or shocking; it was lame. All this build up, only for Jaime and Cersei to die via falling rocks. I was expecting my heart to hurt the moment Jaime died (because I knew he would); instead, I felt nothing. Because it undid every single factor, every single accomplishment Jaime had made as a character. And why? Because he once told Bronn that the way he wanted to die was in the arms of the woman he loved? No. It was lazy, disappointing, and the biggest disservice to one of the most compelling characters on the show. And this trend followed suit for Daenerys as well.
D&D seemed to have made a lot of their decisions based on shock value over what they believed was “predictability”. The joke is on them, though, because if fans could predict what was going to happen, especially in a show as complex as Game of Thrones, that’s usually an indicator of good writing. Unfortunately for them, D&D’s way of doing things resulted in a clichéd, glorified fan-service of a finale, a cut-and-paste of major events that were simply edited together between oddly placed fade-in-fade-outs. Sadly, the show’s final moments were a pastiche of its former, more glorious self. A piece of advice – if choosing shock value comes at the expense of your characters’ long and arduous paths of development, then don’t do it. Period. These choices unraveled years worth of character development and nullified predictions that would have actually made sense.
The next part of this post is written by Lammii Baker, a screenwriter from Toronto, Ontario, who has beautifully summed up the way Daenerys’ character was ruined in this final season.
Let me be the first to announce that while I was (and currently am) a Daenerys supporter, I wouldn’t have been opposed to see her end. As a trained screenwriter and pragmatic viewer of Game of Thrones, a show notorious for killing off beloved characters, I was prepared to see the Mother of Dragons perish at some point within the six episodes. And if you had told me that Daenerys would be the undoing of her own self-fulfilling prophecy, I probably would have thought that poetic. Hell, if you even proposed to me that Daenerys would somehow morph into the ‘Mad Queen’, I’d have entertained the idea. I’m saying all of this to put forward that the reason why I was so deeply unsatisfied and angered by the finale was not because of the Mad Queen narrative, or because Daenerys was killed. I’m angered because of the way it was done: hastily, without coordination and most importantly, at expense of the character we had gotten to know over the past seven seasons.
For as long as we have known Daenerys, she has been a character subject to cruelty, violence and degradation. Yet, in spite of the abundance of such, Daenerys was never cruel for cruel’s sake. Her acts of violence were solely devoted to those who had wronged her, betrayed her and otherwise fought to see her dead and overthrown. (In fact, she spared the life of Jorah Mormont, even after he revealed he was spying on her – if that’s not benevolent, I don’t know what is.) Was she vengeful and demanding of justice for those who were at the mercy of monsters? Absolutely. And that’s why we loved her. That’s why we cheered her on. Because in a series where the bad guys win and our beloved favourites die gruesomely, we took rightful vengeance where we could get it, and Daenerys gave us those victorious moments.
And then season 8 happened.
I struggle to find where these moments of foreshadowing of Daenerys’ spiral into madness ala the Mad Queen in previous seasons. Daenerys has always been pushed into impossible situations that tested her physically, mentally and morally and each time, when others were ready to count her out, she proved herself and dominated against all odds. Without killing innocents. If you look back on the history of this show, that’s an incredible feat to obtain and it’s what had kept her as one of the ‘good guys’. We witness Daenerys take hit after hit the moment she agrees to help Jon on his quest; she loses her dragon, most of her Dothraki army and Unsullied, and she remains resilient. Then, on her conquest for the throne, she loses another dragon and her best friend. Here lies her turning point from D&D’s point of view. She’s lost everything, no one supports her claim, Jon is most likely going to betray her, therefore, she snaps. While she has what she wants within her grasp, this is the moment where Daenerys dives off the deep end and here is why:
“Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.”
George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords
This is the common explanation from supporters of this season and D&D themselves as to why Daenerys turned out the way she did on the show. It’s a line that’s been quoted less than one can count on their one hand (in the show, it is Cersei who says it), and yet it is meant to hold enough weight for us to buy this character shift. The sentiment is meant to allude to the fact that the Targaryens are highly subject to madness (perhaps due to the inbreeding, see Joffrey as an example). We’ve seen that with her father and brother Viserys. However, from the very tip of the show, we are constantly reminded of how Daenerys is the foil of Viserys. While he is every vile and hateful thing, she is gracious and kind. In fact, I’d rather look to this quote from Ser Barristan Selmy, who served under the Targaryen family for years to better understand Daenery’s character:
““As you command.” The knight gave her a curious look. “You are your brother’s sister, in truth.” “Viserys?” She did not understand. “No,” he answered. “Rhaegar.”
George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
This is a man who served under her father and knew what the Mad King was. This is the man who watched Daenerys from afar to glean if she had a flicker of the madness he experienced with his former king. And he didn’t. He saw only Rhaegar, who was later revealed to be a gentle but strong leader.
(A side note from Z: D&D claim that the first marker of the Mad Queen narrative was when Dany watched Viserys die and didn’t cry for him. This is one of the weakest examples they could have used: her brother was her abuser, he threatened her with rape, murder, and the list goes on. Could anyone legitimately blame her for being relieved by his death? For the record, I think those Inside the Episode segments that followed each episode should be burned, because having the writers further explain their decisions made it even worse from a narrative perspective. As well, for those who chime in with “well, she killed the Tarlys in cold blood when they didn’t bend the knee!” as a way of justifying her as the Mad Queen – remember that Robb Stark killed his own bannermen, and nobody called him “mad” for doing that. In fact, his heroism was not diminished one bit by this action. Just some food for thought.)
As a trained screenwriter, let me drop a pearl for contemplation; foreshadowing is not character development. Character development is one of the most difficult things to build as a story creator. It takes a character through hell and back; typically a torturous journey where they shed who they used to be and come out the other side a different person. Game of Thrones was good at that. On the flip side, foreshadowing’s goal is a narrative tool that allows the audience to witness blips and flickers of moments that all tie into one overarching theme, which will come to fruition at some point. It’s not meant to be entirely clear at the time, but for it to be effective, it needs to be mentioned enough of the time for the audience to recognize that something is going to happen. When we apply this to Daenerys, the evidence is lacking. Where have we seen Daenerys murder innocents? Where have we seen her show moments of uncontrollable rage onto someone who wasn’t deserving of it? Where have we witnessed Daenerys show negligence to people in the crossfire of her dragons that weren’t soldiers?
Yeah.
My point is, there weren’t any signs. On the contrary, there were several moments where the writers specifically called back to the Mad King, and showed in contrast that she is not her father and despite many forces pushing her into corners for her to lash out with fire and blood, Daenerys stepped down from that temptation. It literally took us seven seasons for Daenerys to use Drogon in battle and even then, the viewer response to her retaliation was mainly in favour of the Lannister army. Maybe watching soldiers burn alive is more difficult to watch then beheadings…or mass murder at a wedding…or when Cersei blew up the Sept of Baelor with wildfire. But, I digress.
If at the end of the day all Targaryens are destined to go insane, then what even is the point? It’s announcing that no matter what you do or how much good you can accomplish, you can’t escape your family legacy. And to me, that’s boring, cyclical writing. On and on, we heard about Dany wanting to ‘break the wheel’ but I would argue that by merely existing, Daenerys already broke the wheel and legacy of her House. If all Targaryens are destined to fall into madness, character development is a useless tool. The fact that Daenerys was good and so was Rhaegar proved that the family wasn’t strictly tied to the old saying and more importantly, gave Daenerys hope.
Which brings me to the huge issue: what the hell was with the bells?
Daenerys is one of the least impulsive characters on this show and the most level headed in dire situations. Even within her rage and heartache, every decision she’s ever made on the series has been meticulous and executed with fine precision. So, to watch her snap and make the most reckless, nonsensical and detrimental decision of her whole campaign all because she heard the bells just didn’t sit well with me. It’s been a week and it still hasn’t sat well with me but more than that, it’s the sense of fear and loss that weighs on me when I think about what they did to her.
I fear that with this being written into canon, viewers will forget the true Daenerys. A character who inspired many other young women to be ambitious, strong, determined and confident. To never bow down to any man or any opposing force. To believe in yourself, when no one else will. And for the show to render her character into that of a villain and twist her power and ambition into a gateway for madness was a slap in the face to female characters who strive to move freely in a world alongside male characters who are rewarded for such ambition and strength.
Let’s not forget Queen Daenerys. Mother of Dragons.
Mhysa.
Written by Lammii Baker
~ Z ~
Feature photo by Mauricio Santos on Unsplash
