Emilia Clarke is Still Not Over the Fact Jon Snow Got Away With Murder
The finale of Game of Thrones was divisive, to put it mildly.
Probably the most divisive thing about it was the fate of Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke ). Some viewers were caught off-guard by her suddenly turning into a genocidal despot and a menace to the Seven Kingdoms who had to be put down by Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and believed that her actions were out-of-character. Others said that Daenerys was acting more or less as she had since Season 2, only this time the people who bore the brunt of her usual"kill 'em all" approach to dealing with her enemies were not painted as obviously evil, puppy-kicking villains.
Emilia Clarke herself, notably, is in the former camp at the moment, even though initially she defended the story direction. As she said in an interview:
"Yeah, I felt for her. I really felt for her. And yeah, was I annoyed that Jon Snow didn't have to deal with something? He got away with murder — literally."
This is quite a notable departure from her comments near the time of the finale's release, in which she pointed out that Daenerys' actions were consistent with her habit of exacting harsh vengeance on her enemies. Emilia explained the divergence this way:
"I knew how I felt [about the ending] when I first read it, and I tried, at every turn, not to consider too much what other people might say," she continued, "But I did always consider what the fans might think — because we did it for them, and they were the ones who made us successful, so it's just polite, isn't it?"
She even admitted to being upset that the show didn't give Daenerys a "happy ending" (she probably wasn't paying attention to the kind of story she was helping to create if she expected a happy ending for anybody - even among the survivors, virtually all the major characters ended up lonely and variously miserable).
Clarke also agrees with another complaint about the final season - its rushed, six-episode nature, which caused the show to skip over vital parts of character development:
"It was all about the set pieces. I think the sensational nature of the show was, possibly, given a huge amount of airtime because that's what makes sense." As she adds, "We could have spun it out for a little longer."