(*Spoilers ahead)
As with all TV fare that we watch, my wife and I came late to Game of Thrones. The series was well into its sixth season before we watched the first episode of season one. During that episode, I remember, my wife fell asleep, and I almost turned it off, before Jaime Lannister pushed Bran Stark out of that turret, and I had to start the second episode just to see if he survived or Jaime got caught.
This should establish my doubtful authority as a true fan. I also only discovered Seinfeld during its last season. The same with Cheers, and now VEEP. Part of my lukewarm approach to GOT includes the fact that I agree with the critics of fantasy who question why modern fantasy writers work their plots around the return of a monarch and not the emergence of democracy.
This is all to say that because I’m not a fan of TV or fantasy, I shouldn’t be considered the last word here. Many are the details that have escaped me in my binge watching of the first seven seasons in three years. I can speak only as a casual fan about a real controversy that has emerged over the final episode of this large franchise. Especially where the female cast has been concerned, many critics have been noting that the story finally proved to be just another frame written by men.
The final take on this series may really be as Los Angeles Times writer Meredith Blake has put it in her lead to her review. She writes, “Game of Thrones will always be remembered for the strength and complexity of its female characters, flawed and fascinating women like Cersei Lannister and Daenerys Targaryen, who were beautifully portrayed even when the writing by showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff failed them.” And the writing did fail them in the final season. What happened to these women didn’t really come from any clear sense of character. Instead, male logic about who deserves to be king pretty much dominated the final episode, starting with Tyrion’s prison logic to Jon Snow, and then ending again with Tyrion’s logic of who should be king.
My daughter has offered one reasonable explanation for this disappointing finish: She noted that D.B. Weiss and David Benioff were hired to work on the last Star Wars movie. So they had to get going.
TV is like that. It depends on the conditions of its production.
So instead of a focus on the full development of character or plot, we have what we have in episode 8, a final discussion over who is most qualified to be king. Tyrion’s logic seems platonic: the most qualified is he or she who does not want rule or power. The trouble is, however, that this idea is not really one that I remember ever detecting as a theme in previous seasons. From the start, it has seemed that Game of Thrones depicts the middle ages as they would have been without Christianity and polytheism had continued as a kind of cultural background. Where the code of knighthood comes from in this story is unclear. And it would have seemed that neo-platonic ideas would not have had much soil to take root in, though it is clear that both Tyrion and Jon Snow are hoping for a fair regent.
By the end, of course, there is no Iron Throne. It has been torched by the last dragon, making Daenerys the last human to touch it.
Melting the throne into a molten puddle reminded me of another story, and it led to other questions I still can’t answer. Why this fiery scene happened in this series, other than the fact that it gave the dragon another chance to spout off, was unclear to me at first. Afterward, I have become suspicious of the possibility that this scene gave the writers a chance to seek comparisons with that other great fantasy series, or trilogy, of our time. (This exhausts my casual-fan base of fantasy references.) In that other one, of course, hobbits cast the coveted one ring into the fire of Mordor.
The difference between these two scenarios, however, is too vast for me to cross. Almost from the very opening page of The Fellowship of the Ring, in the poem of the one ring, the object of power and desire in Tolkien’s work is seen as seductive and all conquering. It must be destroyed. This is not ever said of the Iron Throne. Ugly and harshly symbolic as it is, it is not seen as a magical object that enacts a corrupting influence on all who seek it. It is not an all consuming object that renders men who would rule well into tyrants.
In fact, that idea is not ever taken up in this story. Somehow, Daenerys is corrupted because of the friends and dragons she loses. Or she had it in her all along, being a descendant of “the Mad King.” I’m still not convinced that those are reasons for why she snaps, or why she is ready to execute Tyrion. Following her death, the destruction of the Iron Throne has little meaning, then, in terms of the narrative and its larger theme of freeing the land of tyrants. We aren’t prepared enough for it.
But it seems to exist as symbolism for the final episode (not for the whole series) that an age in which men (yes, men) who do not want to rule are forced to rule for the good of the many.
And once again, as women have argued for decades, they are allowed into the game–here a game of thrones. They are allowed to engage in full person-hood and to explore new roles, but in the end, the men have changed all the rules without telling them, and so they experience the usual results.
This is the extent of my understanding of this program. Given the conditions, it’s about as good as TV is allowed to get.
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Work Cited
Blake, Meredith. “‘Game’ Final Cheats its Real Stars: Women.” LA Times. 21 May, ’19. E1, 3.