Emilia Clarke finally addressed the backlash to the Game of Thrones series finale
This post contains spoilers for the Game of Thrones series finale.
If you’re like us, you’ve probably blocked the Game of Thrones series finale episode out of your head. In fact, we’ve blocked out all the events that came after the Battle of Winterfell, if we’re being honest. Although most of the cast has stayed mum about their true feelings about the final few episodes, Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys Targaryen (aka the Mad Queen), is finally breaking her silence. Well, kind of.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Clarke was asked how she felt when the negative reactions toward Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss started rolling in after the final episode aired.
"I was too busy focusing on my own reactions to really pay too much attention, if any at all," Clarke said. "The only thing I felt truthfully sad about was that David and Dan are my really good friends, and so it’s for them that I feel heartbreak because it’s theirs."
But what about those who claim “D and D” didn’t do the characters—or the fans—justice with the rushed ending? Surely some of the criticism holds merit, doesn’t it?
“Everyone is going to have their own opinion and they’re fully entitled to them,” Clarke said. “It’s art and it’s to be dissected and taken on in whatever individual way you wish.”
She continued, "And if you’re sad that the show is done and you’re sad because you enjoyed watching it, then that’s sad. It sucks this wasn’t the perfect ending that people were hoping for, but I truly believe we would never have made everyone happy."
We *could* read into this answer and say that Clarke also believes it wasn’t “the perfect ending” the show deserved.
But, we don’t truly know if that’s what she meant. So, instead, we’ll agree that not everyone would have been happy no matter the finale.
As for the way her own character met her demise, Clarke said that she didn’t really investigate the feedback to Daenerys’s murder (at the hands of Jon Snow). Nor does she investigate how she’s perceived by those who watched the show.
"I don’t Google myself; I don’t read reviews," she told The Daily Telegraph. "Which makes it sounds like I’ve got my shit together, but it doesn’t help me to hear someone say, 'You’re great,' and it doesn’t help me to hear someone say, 'Hey, you piece of shit, why are you so fat?' Those are the extremes you deal with when you read about yourself on the internet, so I simply don’t."
Although the Game of Thrones series finale will go down in history as one of the most controversial endings to a major television show, alongside the likes of Lost and The Sopranos, we can’t go back and change what happened. Like Clarke said, we have every right to believe it wasn’t the perfect ending and we have every right to be sad.
And we don’t want to put words in Clarke’s mouth, but we have a feeling she wishes Daenerys wasn’t reduced to just a Mad Queen either. Ahem.
