Game of Thrones season 8 was easily the most divisive season of the show…possibly of any show. Even now, people are still debating it, and that includes stars like Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), who talked to The New Yorker about whether he followed the fan response to the finale. “No,” he answered simply. But clearly, he must have picked up a few things:
Well, everybody’s always going to have an opinion, and that means an ownership. It’s like breaking up with somebody. They get upset. I can’t speak for everybody, but my feeling is they didn’t want it to end, so a lot of people got angry. I feel like what [the showrunners] Dave [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] did was extraordinary. This happens. Monsters are created. And you don’t see it coming. We vote them into office. You look the other way. So for everybody to get upset because they loved a character so much and they had so much faith in that person—there were signposts all along the way for that character.
Dinklage is most definitely referring here to Daenerys Targaryen, who in the penultimate episode of the show flash-fried half the population of King’s Landing, becoming a despot where before many fans considered her the hero of the show. “[T]hat’s because of what was happening all along,” Dinklage said. :It added up to something. There are people who’ve named their children Khaleesi. You’ve just got to maybe wait till the series finale before you get that tattoo or name your golden retriever Daenerys! I can’t help you! I’m sorry. She went mad. She was driven to that, and she’s a victim as well in terms of how she was treated. She went through it, and she came out angry, as a lot of us do.”
That’s probably one of the best descriptions of Daenerys Targaryen’s journey I’ve read since right after the series finale. It takes it back to what happened to Daenerys before her dragons hatched, which puts some things into context.
Dinklage was one of the few actors to actually make it through all eight seasons, something he did not expect to happen. “None of us did,” he recalled. “We were all nervous when we got the scripts.”
“It’s pretty extreme things he went through,” Dinklage continued. “He killed his father and his girlfriend. I didn’t really progress along the same path as he did. But I did enjoy playing him.”
For his work in the final season, Dinklage was just nominated for a Critic’s Choice Award. He’s currently starring as the title character in a production of the musical Cyrano in New York.
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