I’ve been too busy to keep up with the thread this week, so I haven’t been participating much. But I’d like to say that the quality of the discussion has been unusually high.
The pro-flip side, I think, made a pretty convincing case and I feel better that this big (apparent) twist is pretty justified.
I normally hate handholding in TV shows. Where the writers put in some sort of explanation of what the viewers should’ve picked up upon anyway just in case they’re not very observant. But I do think that in this case, it’s such a long, slow buildup to such an important change that it would’ve actually benefited from some handholding at the moment of the flip. A series of flashbacks showing Danerys at her worst, ending with the moment Missandei said “Dracarys” would’ve perhaps been a bit cheesy, but it could’ve been effective. Or having her hear voices - not to indicate insanity, but to give voice to her inner monologue at the moment. Or having an in-world reminder of a significant component as to why she’s making that flip - for example, if she landed near Jon, and heard the Northman chanting to install Jon as king. Something along those lines to justify her flip in the moment would’ve made the narrative smoother and more satisfying.
But I don’t think at all that this was an unjustified turn at all. In fact, of all the bad shit the writers have done over the past 2 seasons, slowly removing Danerys’ support system and the moderating influence of her advisors, and making her feeling increasingly more isolated and threatened, is one thing they did really well.
I think some people have a hard time with it because they like Danerys and root for her and are uncomfortable with the idea that they supported someone with tyrannical tendencies all along, so they decided the writers are terrible and just made her a villain at the end randomly for shock value. I’m not saying every one who was upset with this is like that - some people in this thread justified their feelings very well - but in terms of a lot of average viewers crying bullshit on twitter, this would describe them.
In retrospect, it’s actually a clever way to tell a story. Essentially, Danerys is always pursuing a tyranical agenda. The growth of her own power is the most important thing for her. But conveniently, she came to power in a bad place full of bad people, so most of the people she was harming with her tyranny were bad guys, and so we saw her as a liberator and generally good guy. But that was essentially a happy coincidence - all the people in her way in her rise to power were worse than she was. But if they weren’t, she would’ve still pursued power at any cost, because she felt like she was rising to her destiny. We see hints of this all along, but never have to really confront it, because she’s dunking on slavers and other assholes and her advisors are good people who are moderating the worst of her impulses. But it’s pretty clear that she was essentially lucky that her path to coming to power had her beating worse people than her. Her primary goal was always her own power, with freeing slaves and all that stuff being a nice bow to wrap it with.