On Sunday’s Game of Thrones, songs were sung; knights arose; a couple years in the making was paired off. It was a necessary hour of emotional catharsis before next week’s episode, which fans and characters agree will be a high-body-count affair. (Especially at the hands of Miguel Sapochnik, famed director of Season 6’s bloody “Battle of the Bastards.”)
As various personalities in this crowded castle of misfits got their own brief spotlight moments, the show even made a bit of extra time to showcase Grey Worm (Jacob Anderson) and Missandei (Nathalie Emmanuel)—the eunuch leader of a mass army of freed but still eerily silent and obedient ex-slave soldiers, and the multi-lingual consigliere with a natural talent for exposition, respectively. Both have been Daenerys’s loyal underlings since the dragon queen’s early days in Essos, the more diverse continent that was home to the Targaryen conqueror for the first six seasons of the show. If you can’t place them in this sea of convoluted names: they’re the black ones.
Game of Thrones has been taken to task by online critics and book fans alike for its spotty representation of racial minorities, who have appeared on the show only sporadically—and that’s a generous way to put it—over the past eight years. (Beyond Missandei and Grey Worm, the tally of black characters has included treacherous Xaro Xhoan Daxos, a few slave traders, and pirate Salladhor Saan, who has not been seen since Season 4.) Other fans have pushed back against this criticism by pointing out that George R.R. Martin’s original text is based on Euro-centric medieval history, saying that explains why most of its significant characters are white. (An argument that’s both ahistorical and difficult to swallow in a world where ice dragons and green magic fire juice are accepted without a second glance.)
Fans of color like myself have, at this point, largely made our peace with not seeing characters who look like us on the show, beyond Missandei and Grey Worm. But Season 8 has already differentiated itself by being perhaps the first season of Thrones to meaningfully engage with the matter of race in Westeros in a way that reflects. In both of the season’s episodes so far, Grey Worm and Missandei have found that they, specifically, are not welcome in the North. This is an insular territory filled with people who are naturally wary of military outsiders—which, fair. But even so, these two have been treated with open and recognizable hostility—one that makes it seem as though Northerners are warier of their black skin than they are of their Targaryen allegiance.
Missandei, once Daenerys’s closest confidante, has been left this season to wander Winterfell, attempting sheepish smiles at white children who flee from her—or old white people who scowl in disapproval of her presence. On Sunday, she and Grey Worm openly acknowledged this treatment: “When Daenerys takes her throne, there will be no place for us here,” Grey Worm told his partner.
But rather than reacting despondently, the observation brings joy to Missandei. After years of loyal servitude, it seems, the show has decided that she and Grey Worm will be happier if, after the war against the dead, they take a ship back to where they belong—the beautiful beaches of Naath, far from the rest of the cast. As they speak, you can almost hear other characters sighing in relief. The messiness of these two black characters has more or less addressed itself in one brief, 40-second scene.
The show’s decision to include this scene smacks of self-awareness—but that doesn’t lessen the sting of it. For years, Grey Worm and Missandei have engaged in a courting so pure and overwhelming that it verges on the profoundly boring. They’ve spent seasons longing or loyally standing in the background—yet unlike the nameless Dothraki hoards, they are sentient enough to understand the corner in which the show has placed them.
To be sure, these two are not the only Game of Thrones characters to be short-shrifted by this overstuffed show’s often breakneck pace. Bran Stark and Gendry, two central white characters, bided their time offscreen for years before being brought back into the fold. Prior to her showcase last night, Brienne of Tarth spent a full season waiting for someone to light a candle. With a cast this large, there is a clear economy of scale when it comes to screen time.
Yet Missandei and Grey Worm’s predicament is unusual, in that they have never been shunted offscreen. They’ve been unmistakably present on the sidelines of the show, and both are also prominent in the show’s promos—a familiar status for supporting characters of color. They are occasionally even granted uncomfortable, long sex scenes as if to add weight to their existence (a common trick on Thrones). That tactic hasn’t worked; though both are impossibly attractive, Missandei and Grey Worm are also both unmistakably dull. Their characters can be summed up by their skin color and their loyalty to Daenerys; Grey Worm mostly excels at dramatically putting on his helmet.
Given how many seasons it’s been since the series has drawn directly from Martin’s original book series, it’s especially disheartening that the show has found so little to do with its only two remaining black characters. Despite having backstories as rich as any of their Westerosi brethren, Grey Worm and Missandei have hardly interacted or formed relationships with the dozen of characters that surround them. Instead, their arcs basically amount to the bond they share. Given that context, is it any wonder that they’re both looking forward to a trip to Naath? (Before getting there, of course, one or both of them will probably die.)
Ironically, Game of Thrones currently seems to be more popular than ever with black audiences. The Twitter hashtag #DemThrones, launched by Rod and Karen Morrow—hosts of the podcast The Black Guy Who Tips—blooms every Sunday, bursting with memes and cultural observations from an engaged black audience that’s grown used to seeing ourselves in narratives that feature us, but do not consider us. We can celebrate Valyrian steel being passed around, Mormont cousins wishing each other good fortune, camaraderie, tearful hugs, and song . . . all while Missandei and Grey Worm discover racism and contemplate an offscreen land where they won’t experience any of it, perhaps as reparations for years of service without a seat at the table.
And so the simultaneous heightening and evaporating of the show’s only black duo has left a curious aftertaste, particularly following an episode as otherwise lovely and satisfying as “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.” Their treatment reeks of years of aggregated missed opportunity, coming as the show ends at the peak of its popularity—a cultural moment that seems to dwarf previous entries in TV canon by virtue of its production scope alone. In these final moments, bathed in nostalgia and trepidation, the heart of this show continues to staunchly exclude its two black characters. And that is, at the very least, a shame.
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