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Crowds of angry viewers are going to revolt against the fact that this single woman isn’t keeping their feminist fantasies alive, that the showrunners would dare do something so complex as have a woman with rather questionable DNA, a devout belief in her divine rights, a propensity for crucifixion, a long storied history of being talked out of vicious acts by her advisers, and a savior complex the size of Wun Wun actually do the logical thing and go HAM. How can they drag a good woman down? the Twitterverse will wail. In the days to come the battle among viewers will revolve around one big idea: Daenerys the Mad Queen giving in to her worst impulses and torching an entire city and its people to the ground. (See Euron appearing out of the water onto the exact same slot of beach Jaime is on just so the two can duel over a woman only one of them loves.) It dragged down not one but two queens, with my personal GOT lord and savior Cersei dying under the weight of what she thought might protect her, and Daenerys using the weight of what protects her to send other people to their deaths. With that said, “The Bells” stands out as massively uneven, brilliant in moments (Lena Headey takes all the cake), but often abysmally fan service-y. Because Game of Thrones threw some of our ideas about narrative out the highest window of the Red Keep, we hoped it would somehow be able to bypass the laws of storytelling physics, to resolve all the loose ends without it feeling spick and span, to blow up our idea of what television means without taking too much with it, to let our favorites die but Wait, no, not that one!
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GAME OF THRONES SEASON 8 EPISODE 5 RECAP SERIES
A series like this one - and its universe - can only expand for so long, can only broaden its scope and dig new tunnels under its characters’ psyches until it inevitably needs to contract, especially if the ending the show is hurtling toward is to declare one new monarch, one ruler over an entire continent. The very nature of narrative doesn’t allow it. We were never going to be happy with the way this show ended. You can’t say Daenerys didn’t warn us that she was going to break the wheel.