How great was the final scene of last night’s Game of Thrones episode?! Emilia Clarke and the showrunners discuss Daenerys’ big development in a new interview.
In “And Now His Watch is Ended,” we learned that not only had Daenerys been able to speak High Valyrian all along, but she never really intended to give up one of her dragons.
She closed out the episode by first commanding the Unsullied army to kill all their slave drivers, and then freeing them, asking that they follow her as free men.
In an interview with EW (carried out before the episode aired), both Emilia Clarke and the showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff discuss this powerful moment, and what it will mean for the character going forward.
Benioff talks about how he felt first reading the moment in the book (A Storm of Swords), saying, “I remember reading [Dany planning to give up Drogon] and thinking, ‘Oh, this is kind of disappointing.’ [But] the culmination of that scene was one of those moments when we were like, ‘We got to make this f–king show.’”
Anticipating seeing the moment on screen, Benioff says, “I think it will be one of the most staggering things ever put on television.” And we definitely think it was!
Clarke talks about the way this moment changes Dany, saying, “It’s the moment she becomes who she was always destined to be.”
She explains that, “Up until that moment, she’s relied on everybody else’s opinion to form her own because she didn’t know any better.” But here, “she just has her own gut. It’s the biggest risk she’s ever taken in her entire life.”
And not only does the risk pay off and she become the commander of a massive army, but, “she is out there for the greater good,” Clarke explains. “There’s this gorgeous line in the book where Dany says, ‘Do you think I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be sold?’ because she was too.”
Now, it seems like the Unsullied will indeed follow her into battle – but which battle? We can’t wait to see where Daenerys goes from here!
Game of Thrones returns next Sunday at 9/8c on HBO with 3×05 “Kissed by Fire.”