First, we got the ice. Now, we got the fire.
The penultimate Thrones episode has been thematically crucial, and in many ways tragic, each season – Ned’s beheading, the Battle of Blackwater, the Red Wedding, and so on – and “The Bells” was no different. Only in this case, it was one of our heroes perpetrating the massacre, somebody we followed for a decade: Daenerys Targaryen, who torched King’s Landing aback Drogon, sparing no man, woman, or child.
A facet of the books the show has latched on to is the aftermath of tragedy and the vacuum of grief. The rich dramatic territory offered is why the show chose to place “The Long Night” before “The Bells.” In the context of the show now, the Night King and Jon’s parentage served a narrative function to be her final push into madness.
The Night King was an all-encompassing threat she got little credit for stopping and Jon’s parentage, no matter his own ambivalence, convinced her she could trust no one and cost Varys his life early in the episode. Even after this execution, Jon has a chance to be intimate with Dany but can’t bring himself to, being all weird about “incest” for some strange reason. That’s right, Jon could have saved King’s Landing if he just plowed his aunt. That’s moral ambiguity for you.
You know who isn’t weirded out by incest? Jaime Lannister, who truly is the dumbest Lannister to the point the show incorporated it into the story and made it a plot point and a gag. I gotta commend them for going all the way though and revealing a) Jaime’s hard-earned respect for the knights of the Seven Kingdoms protecting the innocent is a sham, because he doesn’t give a shit about the smallfolk of King’s Landing and b) he wasn’t going to KL to kill Cersei, but to be with her again.
Don’t even get me started on the useless fucking idiocy of Euron Greyjoy, a genuinely frightening , supernatural, Lovecraftian character in the books reduced to a punk frat boy and “foil” for Jaime. They really just had him on the show to make Cersei’s existence look a little less dire for a minute.
Which it turns out was also the Golden Company’s purpose*, being taken out in literally seconds by Dany on Drogon, apparently oblivious to all the destruction she wrought on her way to their location. I’m still pissed we got no elephants for a Pelennor Fields shout. I was surprisingly on board with Cleganebowl, mostly because of the hilarious way Gregor killed Qyburn.
*Though I did appreciate the show kept the legion’s logo of a pile of golden skulls, spotted on Harry Strickland’s horse. It was a nice shout to their book origins as descendants of Targaryen separatists. Speaking of which, them and Varys getting nerfed in the same episode for the same reason – opposing Dany – gets at their allegiance in the books, where they prop up a Targaryen pretender to steal the Iron Throne from Cersei before Dany even leaves Slaver’s Bay.
As fitting with the writers’ interest in snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (a la every battle ending in some sort of third party saving the day, Stannis killing Renly, the Mountain killing Oberyn, etc.), the titular bells tolling signaled the chance for the KL soldiers and civilians to surrender peacefully. Dany chose the opposite path.
Dany, convinced she is unloved and unlovable, no longer cares for incremental change. She decides she cannot be both creator and destroyer. Her ancestors were the latter and now, so is she. Interestingly, this is a perspective she arrives at in the books just as the Dothraki find her, as depicted in the show in the Season 5 finale. What the show made her series-long arc is something she arrived at in the fifth book of GRRM’s planned seven.
That tells me, despite working from the same story, the books and show have diverged not just in order, but in meaning. Dany becoming the queen of ashes is something she will, in the books, pull back from after King’s Landing goes up (with more wildfire in this case, perhaps) and eventually reject, culminating in a sacrifice of some kind to make up for her rampage . . . like fighting the White Walkers to the death after Stannis’ sacrifice of Shireen fails to work and Winterfell falls.
Full marks to director Miguel Sapochnik for directing the hell out of this episode. I wasn’t big on “The Long Night” but his work in “Hardhome” and “The Winds of Winter” are some of my favorite episodes in the series. The effects and POV were much more clear and well-placed. For me, that made the emotion much more consequential. I liked that Arya was once more our eyes on the horror of war, as she was throughout seasons 2-4.
I won’t praise the show too much for its innocent citizen’s eye view of death by dragon. They pick and chose moments to take this perspective, which is much essential in the books, and forget it when convenient. No one did anything when the Westerosi equivalent of the Vatican was nuked by its monarch? Oh, and I’m sure the freedmen of the former Slaver’s Bay are positively psyched to have Sellsword Emperor Daario Naharis in charge.
This gets at the show, which took a bunch of thematic ideas expressed in plot points that GRRM was interested in exploring in exhaustive depth, then picked, chose, and re-arranged them to fit their preordained episode count. “Dany destroys King’s Landing” is officially our third and final “holy shit” moment communicated by the author to the showrunners about his endgame, after Stannis sacrificing Shireen and the truth about Hodor.
Now that we’re seeing the unfinished, unwritten draft of Martin’s ending put to screen before he ever has a chance to in a novel, it’s fascinating to look back on how different a form the story took in the hands of David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, from eliminating the Targaryen pretender to preserve Cersei as a villain, flipfopping the Long Night and King’s Landing battles, getting rid of Stannis waaay early, and more all changed the show from one about higher, mystical struggles and brought it back to the dirt floor of politics and war. The irony is that this idea of “realistic fantasy” or “fantasy in name only” runs counter to the story and its original meaning.
In the books, the birth of the dragons and the coming of the White Walkers herald the return of magic to the world. It is about the magical fight consuming the game of thrones and who steps up at the end of the world and why.
In the show, the birth of dragons, the coming of the White Walkers, and magic in general, are secondary to the game of thrones. It is about how people, and humanity in general, don’t change and won’t ever change, even in the face of apocalypse. Even after defeating Death itself.
Same story, different meaning. For all the show’s intermittent greatness, I’m glad GRRM’s sticking with his version. No matter the cost.
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