A lot of the people who pardoned the last 2 shitshow episodes hate this.
Meanwhile I quite liked it. The strength of the plot and themes is enough to outweigh some of the odd moments and logic leaps.
My only issue with it is that the payoff relies so heavily on the clumsy, lazy set-up of the last 2 episodes/seasons.
The Mad Queen Danaerys, or more accurately Dany the Tyrant
Dany is (probably) not (yet) mad. She didn't 'go insane'. She is a traumatised child who became a ruler, a teenage queen with WMDs who has had her capacity for mercy repeatedly stripped away at every turn. Having lost everything she loves, she came to believe that only a show of supreme force would be enough to hold her rule.
Dany has always walked a fine line between righteousness and ruthlessness. The question was always there. Did she help the common people for power, or did she gain power to help the common people? She's always believed rule of Westeros was hers by divine right, before she ever set foot there.
Every good act she has done has had 2 sidenotes. 1. It has gained her more power. and 2. it came at great emotional cost.
She was abused by her brother.
Her first followers and dragons were gained as a result of being sold to the Dothraki.
In Qarth, she gained wealth and ships, but learned lies and betrayal. Locked her betrayers in a stone vault, and burned her enemies alive.
In Astapor she 'frees' the Unsullied, gaining them into her service. She double crosses their masters and burns them alive, and sacks the city.
In Mireen she frees the slaves, gains a throne and some powerful advisors, hangs every single nobleman in the city as a warning. She tries to do good but is met with scorn, resistance and murder. She is betrayed by Jorah and Selmy is murdered.
In The North she commits to saving the world, gains half a kingdom and the support of Jon Snow, loses half her army, a dragon, and her best friend.
At Kings Landing, she negotiates in good faith on the word of her advisors, and loses another Dragon and her only remaining friend.
And then her 3 closest advisors, Jon, Tyrion, and Varys all betray her with whispers of Jon's claim to the throne. Jon doesn't truly love her, Tyrion frees Jaime, Varys commits open treason.
Everyone she loved is dead. Everyone loyal to her whispers and undermines her. The high lords don't trust her and the common people don't love her.
She is isolated and broken, holding an army and a weapon of mass destruction.
Only sheer force will hold her rule now, she has given up on love and forgotten what she stood for in Mireen.
Dany sacks King's Landing and becomes just another tyrant. After facing the apocalypse and saving the world, she is still sucked into fighting over a chair, at massive cost to the realm.
The system is broken.
This will be the book's ending. So where did the show go wrong
Going from mildly concerning to full blown tyrant in 2 episodes forces the audience to do yet another giant leap of faith.
There was no final trigger that pushed her over the edge, she just seemed to change her mind after the surrender. It was hard to believe.
Each of the pieces was in place, as detailed above. But the clumsy direction of the writers doesn't do the story justice. Large pieces were forced into place without care for consequences and small pieces were forgotten. Her major emotional losses were through contrived, dumb situations (the wight kidnap plot, Euron shooting down Rhaegal) and the audience never saw until the very end how hard each of them shook her. She seemed to just move on from each without flinching, until the last 2 episodes.
The rest of the world has been written out due to time constraints. Sansa's distrust is meant to represent every lord in the kingdom. We never really see what the commoners think of her.
The story is good but the details aren't given the attention required to truly sell it. The previous 2 episodes, and most of season 7, failed to give the payoff the foundations it needed.
