Warning: Game of Thrones spoilers for all of Season 8 ahead and in the video above!
The Game of Thrones finale has aired, bringing an end to the series. It brought a resolution to numerous storylines, but none were quite as conclusive as that of Daenerys. Despite his conflicted feelings, Jon killed her before she could wreak further havoc on innocent people across the world. Her decision to go Mad Queen and destroy King's Landing sealed her fate. But how long had the show been hinting at her turn? That's explored in the video above.
The shortened Season 8 of Game of Thrones might have been a little thin on character development, and that's why the latest big twist for Daenerys Targaryen just before the end of the series took a lot of viewers by surprise. It
In Episode 5, "The Bells," Daenerys finally decided to embrace the idea of ruling Westeros through fear rather than love, putting King's Landing to the torch with dragon fire and murdering thousands of innocent people in the process. But the idea that Dany might go all Mad Queen on Westeros isn't new--it's something she's been dealing with her whole life.
Watch the video above as we break down all the ways Game of Thrones has foreshadowed how Dany eventually followed in the footsteps of her father, the Mad King Aerys, and fulfilled his desire to "burn them all." We've gone back through the entire series to date, and we've learned one thing: the foreshadowing of the possibility of Daenerys's eventual fall is not exactly subtle. There's a whole lot of it. What remains to be seen is whether Dany will fully embrace her decision in the finale--or if someone kills her before she really has the chance to do so.
We've also opined on how Game of Thrones didn't turn out to be the show we thought it was, and looked at a big hint about what could have been Daenerys's final fate.