All the Ways Game of Thrones Failed Women in Its Final Season

The GOT finale didn't just kill Daenerys — it destroyed the legacy of her character. She starts the series as a pawn, an object for her brother to sell. In her words, she'd been sold, chained, betrayed, raped, and defiled to overcome every obstacle to become a strong and just leader. Until season eight, anyway.

The time for Dany to have been enraged by the cards dealt to her was during those traumatic instances, not over the fact that her lover is rejecting her and her best friend is beheaded. She was too strong for those things to get to her. Sure, the threat of Jon's claim to the throne is the thing that shakes her core after the Battle of Winterfell, but that wouldn't propel her to murder an entire city. The smart Daenerys who wanted to "break the wheel" would have recognized that it actually wasn't about claims to the throne, it was about who was a better ruler. And again, she had proven herself such — again, until season eight. The vengeful flashes we'd seen in previous seasons were there, but the better side of Dany always came out to protect people. Flaming innocent citizens just wasn't her, and it still doesn't make sense.

Her death, then, is just cheap. We got used to George R R. Martin killing his darlings, but it's not about that. The Game of Thrones writers killed her soul.

The same way you could almost hear Tom Haverford saying, "Turns out, she was crazy," about Daenerys, the same reductive sentiment seemed to guide the writers in Cersei's final motivations. The only motivation we're given for anything Cersei does in the final season is her unborn child, but not exactly why. Her hubris maybe drives her to push Daenerys to the edge, but wouldn't treading that close to danger be more indicative of someone who has nothing to lose, not someone desperately trying to survive?

Cersei's legacy is that she became the best and most insidious villain this show had ever given us. And this show had always given its awful villains the most deserving deaths: Joffrey is poisoned until he's purple, Walder Frey unknowingly eats his sons, Ramsay is frickin' eaten by dogs.

But Cersei? She dies in the arms of the one she loves most. Her being crushed is almost peaceful compared to the revenge other characters have inflicted. I know it sounds counter-intuitive to champion a female character's death while being enraged at their treatment, but what I'm saying is that Lena Headey, the performer, deserved a more poignant death scene.

All hail Bran the Broken! Really? The quiet kid who has a strange new power no one understands makes the most sense as a ruler? How is Sansa sitting right there and no one throws her name into the ring? Her getting the North feels like a consolation prize; we know Jon doesn't want the power of ruling the Seven Kingdoms, but we never get to hear Sansa's thoughts on it. I think she would have been the perfect choice to sit on the throne, but it doesn't even seem like an option. (Fantasy GOT League time: Sansa is Queen, Arya is the Hand, Brienne is the Lord Commander of the Queensguard, and Yara is Master of War.)

Sansa's denial of the throne isn't the worst thing that happens to her, though; that would be her season five rape at the hands of Ramsay Bolton. That act — which is not in the books — inspired scores of watchers to boycott the show, and it was made even worse when the writers reference it in season eight — only to have Sansa explain away her strength, courage, and intelligence by giving credit to Littlefinger and Ramsay.

Let's not forget Sansa's juicy storyline for the season: she hates Daenerys! You can almost hear the catfight sound effect the first time Sansa delivers some expert side-eye to Jon's new girlfriend. As fun as it was to get to use those GIFs on Slack the next day, this woman vs. woman plotline is tiresome. I understand that Sansa had learned to mistrust people, but this conflict isn't necessary to move the story forward.

One of Brienne's final scenes is in service to Jaime's character, instead of being about her. Writing in the White Book, she could have turned a page and added herself to that book, a new knight and first female Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. Even after the paragraphs and paragraphs of Jaime's successes, she could have added that he had knighted the first female knight. Sigh.