Game Of Thrones Finale Casually Made An Entire Culture Go Extinct, Didn't It?

Summary:

• The Dothraki has been by Daenerys Targaryen’s side throughout all eight Game of Thrones seasons.
• After their army’s extermination in the finale, the remaining Dothraki couldn’t return to Essoss to their families.
• With their women and children in Essos and their men killed or stranded, the Dothraki culture would inevitably go extinct.

We have watched the greatest lords and ladies of the Seven Kingdoms die; the Great Houses of Westeros fall to never rise again (but not really); and behind all that, we somehow missed an entire ancient culture being destroyed, its people slaughtered or stranded. The Game of Thrones finale killed much more than dozens of civilians in the King’s Landing attack; it also ended the story of the Dothraki.

The Dothraki Have Been There Since Season 1

Daenerys Targaryen’s entire storyline begins with a powerful Dothraki warlord, Khal Drogo, accepting her in a trade offer from her brother. Soon, she became their Khaleesi, and ever since then, you’ve always seen those brutal barbarians in her character arc — throughout the entirety of the eight seasons of Game of Thrones.

However, it was a matter of one stupid frontal charge into the darkness that immediately brought the end of Daenerys’s Dothraki army; and those who survived it were slaughtered in the final battle. Their demise wasn’t just that of the Mad Queen’s warriors, and it effectively ended the entire history of the Dothraki.

Daenerys Took The Dothraki Men To Westeros

After Khal Drogo’s death, Daenerys Targaryen united the Dothraki khalasars under her rule, and the absolute majority of them have served her since then. When the decision to go to Westeros was made, Daenerys took the Dothraki men with her, leaving only women and children behind to await their husbands and fathers’ return.

But Daenerys’s Dothraki army was exterminated; the Mad Queen herself was killed; and the Unsullied wouldn’t tolerate the barbarians any longer than needed.

The vast majority of the Dothraki were killed, and the few ones who survived were stranded in a foreign land of steel-plated warriors with no leader or plan.

They couldn’t cross the Narrow Sea on their own, and no ship would take to Essos. The Dothraki who followed Queen Daenerys likely died off in Westeros, unable to return.

The Dothraki women and children in Essos never saw their men again, and the few small Dothraki families who didn’t serve Daenerys to begin with were not enough to repopulate the tremendous losses their ranks had suffered. Instead of bringing her Great Khalasar the glory she’d promised, Daenerys brought them only death — and the imminent destruction of their entire culture and people.