It was always going to be hard to adapt a story that ends with the gendered killing of a woman by her relative, a rival male claimant, after the end of GOT—notably Jon stabbing Dany before the Iron Throne because she “went mad”—was so poorly received. But it seems that the way out of this HOTD is trying to use is, “showing us that Rhaenyra being killed is justified”. The lesson they took was that Dany’s madness and cruelty weren’t believable, and so her stabbing was not seen as deserved, so people didn’t like it; in response they have written, or tried to write, Rhaenyra descending into a more believable cruelty and darkness. They have followed the “if they’d foreshadowed mad!Dany properly it would have worked!” criticisms*
You can think what you like but I don’t think it works. Where this falls apart is that what happened to Rhaenyra—beginning with being targeted in her own home by Alicent, and being usurped, which leads to the war and her death—was unjustified and driven by misogyny. I’m not interested in a story about how THIS woman, this time, DID deserve her fate, and we did legwork to show you why so you’ll agree. I would find it far more progressive (and more satisfying) to see a story about a woman being mistreated and then killed and the narrative framing it as horrifying, and gendered, rather than her being put down like a bad dog by someone who—in Ryan Condal’s own words!—is now “more suited to the throne”, since Rhaenyra has been “contorted” by power
*I don’t really think they even managed to do this properly. The characterisation this season has been terrible
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