Clarke reevaluated every previous Daenerys scene and realized that she had helped set up her character’s twist without even knowing it—such as Daenerys’s chilling reaction to watching her brother die back in season one.
DAN WEISS: We didn’t know the details until after the third season, but Dany’s trajectory was implicit in the first season. You’re so rooting for her because she’s in this horrible position. But there are a million different ways Emilia could have played watching her brother die, and she played it with a stone-cold-killer-like lack of affect. She has dark currents running through her. Which makes sense when Viserys, the only person she knew growing up, was a sociopath.
In the first-season finale, Daenerys pledged to the Dothraki, “I am the dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you that those who would harm you will die screaming.”
In season two, Daenerys warned the leaders of Qarth: “When my dragons are grown, we will take back what was stolen from me and destroy those who have wronged me. We will lay waste to armies and burn cities to the ground.”
A couple of seasons later, Daenerys crucified 163 slave masters in retaliation for their doing the same to children. One of the masters later claimed his father was a good man who fought against slavery and didn’t deserve his fate. Similarly, after Ser Barristan was killed by the terror group Sons of the Harpy, Daenerys burned a master alive to send a message. She didn’t know if the man was guilty or innocent, and she didn’t much care.
In season six, Daenerys promised her Dothraki followers, echoing Khal Drogo, that they would “kill [her] enemies in their iron suits and tear down their stone houses.”
And in the penultimate season, she ignored Tyrion’s pleas and had Drogon torch Samwell Tarly’s father, Randyll, and brother, Dickon, after they fought for the Lannister armies and refused to bend the knee. That scene, in particular, was supposed to be a fairly clear hint to viewers that Daenerys was not okay. But fans had spent so many years on Team Dragon Queen that they had grown accustomed to Daenerys executing her perceived enemies.
BRYAN COGMAN: In our minds, we thought the Randyll Tarly scene was disturbing. Then I watched it with a crowd of people at a friend’s house and they were cheering. Weirdly, the audience just didn’t care. They loved Dany.
PETER DINKLAGE (Tyrion Lannister): Tyrion is like, “Wait a minute, okay, kill the father, but do we need to kill the son? Do we have to kill both? It’s senseless to kill the son… .”
GWENDOLINE CHRISTIE (Brienne of Tarth): The signs have always been there. And they’ve been there in ways we felt were mistakes or controversial. This show has always been about power, and it was an interesting illustration that [power-hungry] people can come in many different ways and we need to question everything.
KIT HARINGTON (Jon Snow): She did some terrible things. She crucified people. She burned people alive. This had been building. So we had to say to the audience, “You’re in denial about this woman as well. You’re culpable, you cheered her on. You knew there was something wrong.”
BRYAN COGMAN: There’s a dangerous tendency right now to make art and popular culture feel safe for everybody. I don’t believe in that. This is the kind of story that’s meant to unsettle you and challenge you and make you think and question. I think that’s what George’s intent was with A Song of Ice and Fire, and David and Dan wanted to do that with the series—make the audience never rest easy.
Over the years, producers sometimes gave Clarke notes about how to play a moment, nudging the character toward her tyrannical destiny.
EMILIA CLARKE: There was a number of times I was like, “Why are you giving me that note?” While I am quite consistently a “How can I help?” kind of person, there were a few moments where I was like, “Don’t tell me what to do with my girl. I know what to do!” It’s like Daenerys’s calling card became cold expressionlessness. I always wanted to infuse that with some humanity because no one’s consistently that. I would sometimes fight back a little: “I get that she has to be steely and unforgiving and a powerful force. But in this moment she’s also a goddamn human being. So I’m going to give you that and I really pray that you take that in the edit.”
—Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series by James Hibberd
So Daenerys defenders (and Emilia aka Daenerys number one fan) got played by Emilia herself and her lack of character understanding? As opposed to D&D’s “misogynistic last minute character assassination”? Surprise!
So basically she played her like a psychopath without realizing that’s what she was doing because the atrocities and disturbing behavior all seemed like “empowerment” to her…wow. Her tone-deaf choice to play Dany smiling and serene after murdering children in an effort to evoke sympathy for her makes sense now.
I am still shocked that anyone past season 2 couldn’t have predicted where she’ll end up. It wasn’t even subtext, it was there, in text, where her character is going. But, because she was a pretty girl with white hair and violet eyes, and a dragon, she got the pass. People really, really need to read more.
