Emilia Clarke revealed how Jon Snow actor Kit Harrington reacted to discovering Daenerys’ fate in the Season 8 finale of Game of Thrones.
Clarke, who plays Daenerys, spoke to Entertainment Weekly, where she noted Harrington first read the script at the table read. Clarke noted, “He was crying.” As for Harrington he told EW, “I looked at Emilia and there was a moment of me realizing, ‘No, no…'” Clarke had a similar reaction.
Harrington would go on to discuss how he thinks audiences were going to react to the final episode, “I think it’s going to divide.”
He would then elaborate on why Daenerys wasn’t really a saint or hero throughout the previous seasons of Game of Thrones.
“But if you track her story all the way back, she does some terrible things. She crucifies people. She burns people alive. This has been building. So, we have to say to the audience: ‘You’re in denial about this woman as well. You knew something was wrong. You’re culpable, you cheered her on.’”
Harrington would also indicate he fears a number of people will try and accuse the show of sexism because both Cersei and Daenerys are killed off in the final two episodes.
“One of my worries with this is we have Cersei and Dany, two leading women, who fall. The justification is: Just because they’re women, why should they be the goodies? They’re the most interesting characters in the show. And that’s what Thrones has always done. You can’t just say the strong women are going to end up the good people. Dany is not a good person. It’s going to open up discussion but there’s nothing done in this show that isn’t truthful to the characters. And when have you ever seen a woman play a dictator?”
He would then go on to compare Jon Snow’s killing of Daenerys to that of the Wildling Ygritte, “This is the second woman he’s fallen in love with who dies in his arms and he cradles her in the same way.” He continues, “That’s an awful thing. In some ways, Jon did the same thing to [his Wilding lover] Ygritte by training the boy who kills her. This destroys Jon to do this.”
Harrington had previously done an interview with Pop Buzz where he described the Season 8 finale as “disappointing.”
What do you make of Harrington’s reaction? What do you think about his warning that some fans might claim the show is sexist because it kills off Cersei and Daenerys?