They literally could have gone with the easiest, laziest, most phoned in, run of the mill 'Jon and Daenerys get together and rule through peace together', and it STILL would have been better than S7 & 8.

My personal biggest problem with the dragons is the fact that Drogon is the only one that matters. He is the bad boy that the writers love and his brothers have zero distinctions between the two.

"The show has a character X do Y, and then nothing happens" is a pretty good summary for the whole show from seasons 5 - 8.

Tyrion's whole "don't use the dragons" thing would've made a bit more sense if he had mentioned the possibilty that Cersei might have the city packed with Wildfire so Dany couldn't really do the sort of precision strikes she had in the past.

Night King: Carefully predicted that trapping dudes in the north would bring him a dragon, so that he could kill a dragon, so he could raise the dragon, so that he could destroy the wall, so that he could finally conquer the world. Also NK: "Oh shit where'd that girl come from? The moon?" *dies*

Funny how GOT Season 8 has become a failure case study in film schools.

Personally, I think drogon was a psychic. He had a vision that the future king was in a wheelchair and he wanted to make the castle handicapped accessible..... so he melted the throne into a ramp.🤷‍♀️😆

Also also, Drogon had more of a reaction to his mother’s death than Daenerys had to the death of her children (Raegal and Viscerion)

I hated how they turned wise Tyrion into an idiot.

"Dragons are intelligent, but feral. Mystical, but like pets." So they're pokemon

Dany before coming to westeros: "I may need to strategically marry to get my home back" after getting there: "I am threatened by Jon! the throne is mine!"

honestly, each dragon’s death felt so unceremonious. it was just, oop, there goes a dragon, yup, it’s gone now haha ain’t that crazy?? we built that up for seven seasons, just gonna have em shot down and move on! isn’t that a ***S U B V E R S I O N ? ? ?***

I can't believe thay cancelled game of thrones after season 6. It had a lot of potential but i guess some things just don't last

Well you know, Dany just sorta forgot she loved the dragons like her own children. You know, like the screen writers sorta forgot that they were screen writers.

“It’s similar to caring about Zuko, because you care about Iroh”. Oh... because Iroh’s also a dragon?

She cried more locking them up in the pyramids than she did when they died.

D&D had major problems with overpowering and underpowering the magical elements as and when it suited them. Arya's face-shifting is another example of this. She's able to infiltrate House Frey and kill the ENTIRE household without issue, yet they don't consider just...sending her to assassinate Cersei, alone and disguised? This is why you need strict and tangible limits on what your magic system can do.

No, no, no, you dont understand. They dont need the dragons because theres nothing more powerful in the world than a good story! And who has a better story than Bran the Broken?!

My favorite meme from the show is probably one where Drogon has a long speech about how "I understand that society is the true enemy, and I see how my mother was actually killed by her need for power" and something like that. Just made me die from laughter when I saw it.

The show failed because they established all these wonderful in universe rules and stakes, and then ignored all of them in order to rush to the ending they wanted

The last two seasons proved that D&D weren't the mastermind writers but it was always George Martin. I'm sure HBO is pissed that literally ruined the rewatchability of this show. It easily could've been as memorable as lotr but now no one recommends watching it anymore

Even worse, we've seen Danny after the death of a child and a husband, and she is definately not the type of person who pretends everything is ok while they're grieving.

I remember when it was controversial to claim the game of thrones writing went downhill.

It's been two years and I still get irrationally angry everytime I think about the show.

There’s an alternate universe out there where GoT ended properly

What's absolutely incredible is that every time I watch one of these video essays about the last few seasons of Game of Thrones, they each have something new to say. How can so many things have gone so wrong?

A year gone and my rage/confusion/disappointment/disbelief/sadness cocktail is still so very very fresh.

"The plotting was phenomenal - *was* -" Perfect.

The dragon sees a knife in it's mother, sees the nearby collection of knives and burns it to destroy the threat - That is now my favorite theory

It drove me nuts listening to the characters trying to explain why attacking kingslanding would be too disastrous with the dragons when the Red Keep is literally sticking out onto the water and easily attacked on its own from the sky.

Clicks on a random channel he's never watched before... "I freaking love Dragons!" I like this guy already :D

I like the idea of Jon and Danny having a heated argument about the use of dragons or some shit and have them both command Rhaegal and have Rhaegal listen to/choose Jon over Danny. I think that would be an amazing way to show a realistic way for Danny to because jealous and uncertain and feel like she's losing her position. That having been said, I think having her kill one of her children would piss off people even more.

"The show turns these complex, nuanced creatures into literal caricatures of themselves." That applies to most of the cast. Points for consistency?

I can't throw shade at Emilia Clarke, her character was done so much injustice in "Those Seasons Which Cannot Be Named", and she'd done such a stand up job in everything prior to those. I can only say that what was filmed was less her reacting to the death of a child, and more them filming her actual reaction to being shown the script and trying to process it.

Not enough people talk about how badly Cersei screwed herself over when she blew up the Sept of Baelor, and I very much appreciate you doing so. Dany could have and should have taken her out in the first episode of Season 7.

As a father, that scene in hereditary "kill me, I just need to die" hits wicked hard

i was hooked in with the direwolves. i feel like we direwolf lovers got it worse.. that last bit of commentry, right in the feels.

It's hard to justify holding back three dragons from conquering Westros when that is exactly what Daenerys's ancestors did to found a dynasty. Half the time it only took the *threat* of incineration to bring surrender. Dany could have parked her dragons outside Kingslanding and driven the city to revolt against Cercei pretty easily, fearing fiery destruction. But, you know, ignoring stuff like that became a bit of a theme later in the show.

Honestly though... Jon yelling at ice Viserion was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen

Miles saying "I wanted to like the ending, it was supposed to be good", is the same thing I kept telling myself as soon as I saw the golden company in episode one, and decided to continue watching despite it.

For the love of god, why didn't they just have Dany die *on* the throne, or Jon place her there afterwards? A grieving Drogon cremating his mother would still be a moment of "huh, that's a weirdly human reaction" while also being believable, but the melting down of the throne itself would become merely a highly symbolic side-effect.

I really wish they had focused as much on the direwolves as they did on the dragons, the whole warg storyline would have been so cool to see !

I read the books up to A Feast for Crows before I watched the show, and I can recall the entire first book having tons of examples of characters ridiculing anything considered "fantasy" like dragons or the white walkers. So much so that I was convinced that either didn't exist (I didn't know much about the story before I began). That made their introduction that much better and it made me understand the shock of the character when they encountered them.

Not gonna lie, I started watching the show because of the dragons and I'm glad someone finally addressed how weird it was that Dany seemed to have no emotional connection to her "children" (despite her saying multiple times that they're the only children she'll ever have) after the writers ran out of source material.

**Beloved dragon is sniped** "There comes a time in all forms of media consumption where you are so utterly bewildered by an event taking place; that there are so many things wrong with it, that you don't have words and you simply laugh."

Remember when the scorpions weren’t supposed to work because it couldn’t penetrate scales? When the only dragon that was killed by the scorpion was because it was shot in its eye? Because I remember.... but D&D kinda forgot

hmmm... Harrenhall was attacked by Balerion himself from the top of the castle because their king was smug that their walls will withstand ANY attacks. IT DID. But they died because the stones became their big brick oven. Reason why they can still see some of the castle's ruins. But in season 8, Drogon can melt stone like its paper. Maybe it is made of paper? They just kinda forgot mentioning it...🥱🤷🏻‍♀️

26:00 to be honest after time has passed and we've thought about the ending, I believe the reason they didn't show us a bigger reaction from Dany is that they wanted to limit the sympathy from the audience towards her, given the ending they were going to give her. That's why they also needed Dany to act so monstrously by end of the show, so Jon and Tyrion stayed sympathetic to the public. I mean, if we remember the reaction she had when she enclosed Rhaegal and Vyscerion in season 5, the reaction to their death in the final seasons doesn't make sense.

I also didn’t like how the color design was so bland in the later seasons -you could hardly tell them apart!

I didn’t realize a tv show could make me so unbelievably mad and annoyed

I believe the connection between the dragons and Jon had only one purpose - so Jon could go through the Red keep that Drogon guarded. That was the only way to kill Dany.

I love that they made Drogon kind of...cuddly in a way. I almost had an emotion when he nudged Daenerys after she died. I was too pissed off at that point to let the show make me cry but it was a near thing.

The "We can't attack King's Landing with dragons" is perhaps the greatest stupidity the show has ever written. It makes Arya killing the Night King look sane by comparison. If they at least had played into the "oh Tyrion just councels something so insane because he subconciously wants to protect his family", which they even had Dany mention but that never goes anywhere. It was just regular insanity by the supposedly smartest boi in the universe. Oh, Mr. Dinklage, your character didn't deserve this.

26:27... That clip of Dany saying "a bit longer" was not even concerning one of her dragons it was concerning Jon, a person she knew for a few days. And when I saw that I was shouting at my laptop in disbelief: "Her DRAGON just died! HER CHILD! And she asks people to delay retreat for JON?! REALLY?"

As for the flame inconsistency, it's a bit odd that their fire was so weak previously, since the books repeatedly point out that dragonfire melts the stone they use to build their castles and their walls.

This show really went from one of the best cases of storytelling in media for all of history to a literal study on what to not do when making a story.

Rhaegal should have died at Kings Landing. Dany and her army attacks King's Landing with Drogon and Rhaegal providing the air support, and during the fighting one of the scorpions hit Rhaegal and brings him down. Dany, distraught over seeing another of her children fall, flies over to him, and sees his last moments and the life go out of his eyes. Then, in a fury of tears and rage, she orders Drogon to burn the whole city down for what they did to her child. Is it still stupid? Maybe. But at least it's SOMETHING. Some reason for Dany to snap and burn down an entire city. Save's Rhaegal from dying a stupid death over the ocean too.

Leave it to Savage Books to do a video over a topic that has been utterly beaten to death, but to do so in a way that feels fresh and that covers aspects of said topic that have not yet been discussed in other videos. Ya’ did it again.

I think the dragons ARE very intelligent, but the link between their "rider"/"mother" is underrated. The dragons might have chosen to starve to death underground because that's what Daenary's wanted them to do. Also, they are an alien intelligence, very different from humans. It's a limited view of existence to think that all intelligent beings must think and act exactly as humans do.

I’m addicted to your videos savage! These are so binge able, love your voice and in such high quality

The worst thing is how they messed up the scaling of the dragons. We literally have a cutout from GRRM, called Fire and Blood, in which it's stated that Balerion, Meraxes and Vhagar were, at their size when aegon began his conquest, immune to any sort of projectile flung at them. The Dragons of old valyria were immune to scorpion bolts, Meraxes was only brought down when one hit her in the eye. Now to be fair, Balerion was really old, over a hundred years when Aegon's conquest started. Well, but Rhaegal is almost equally as large as him. Like, literally only a few metres short. Dragons never stop growing in ASOIAF-Lore, so he should have been at least resistent in a similar way. It's not like the scorpions were special scorpions, these things have existed a while. In Valyria they needed Ice Mages to take Dragons down (or other dragons, for that). Now for their AGE it makes sense that Danys dragons are so vulnerable. They're what, 5? In Fire and Blood its described some Dragons could only be ridden starting at age 4. But in the show they are WAY too huge for their age. But that raises questions: Are they so huge, because they were Wildfangs? They were found near Ashai, where exactly? Buried in the Ground, laid by a mother and forgotten? Are they a special species? The red comet announced the return, are they so huge because theyre the first dragons returning to the world? Sadly we will probably never get answers.

"The writes think that watching dragons burn battlefields and cities would not inspire loyalty" Well, that worked for Aegon, the first Targaryen king. After burning three of the kings of Westeros, the King in the North bend the knee. Dragons do not inspire loyalty but they do inspire survival instincts XD

Savage Books It was a pleasure to listen to you. It's obvious that every minute of this video is carefully planned - both the script and the shots. It was focused, composed and controlled from beginning to end and I really appreciate that... I wish season 7 and 8 of GoT would be at least on that level.

I've always preferred wyverns to dragons, the extra set of limbs on dragons typically looks worse than just 2 legs and 2 wings imo. I am glad they get used pretty much interchangeably though, dragon designs are almost always still amazing and I feel like if people actually cared about the distinction we'd end up with either a lot less wyverns or a lot less dragons and I don't want to tamp down on the variety of dragons we see in media.

So in essence, in post-book seasons, the dragons IQ level varied between whether or not the writers wrote Dany into a corner

I really appreciate that you made this specifically about 8 AND 7. Too many people ignore the stupidity and horribleness that was season 7. Started losing me at the war plans. Lost me after spoils of war. While the loot train attack itself wasnt horrible, the cliffhanger. Jaime should have drowned under all that armor. It was a traditional tv cliffhanger fake out death which is below the show on so many levels. And everything after it was utter trash. But a lot of people say "it was going fine till this season. No you were holding hope it would be fine because while 5 was not well like, 6 was loved. But the signs were there and the problems came to a head in 7, not 8. So thank you for taking that into consideration!

Your passion and talent are inspiring. I am obsessed with dragons too and this show had some beautiful scenes. I'm glad KZfaq fed me this video :)

God, this is a fantastic breakdown, especially because of your chosen focus. The little breakdown at the end was the cherry on top. ;)

Kind of upset you didn’t use Catelyn’s reaction to Robb dying when talking about Daenerys reaction to the death of Rhaegal and Viserys.

Why do I constantly remind myself about season 8? Because these videos are just too darn good to miss.

This is the first video I've seen from your channel, and I loooved it. Subscribed!

This review is everything I needed to hear. Thank you.

Drogon's flame destroyed the walls instantly Also drogon's flame: took a full burst to melt the throne halfway!

I wouldn't want Jon to have a dragon. He spent seven seasons having nothing to do with it. I'd think it would be unearned for Reagal to suddently side with himm someone he only just met, instead of his mother and bothers. Like, in the books, it is shown that eggs were put in the cribs of Targaryen babies in order for the hatchlings to have a connection with the princes and princesses. And when a prince tried to ride his mother's dragon without permission, the dragon just yanked him out of the sky.

Also the alternative to using the dragons in season 7 in combat, is to starve them out in a siege... *Absolute insanity.* Something that would be good for the army doing the siege, but absolutely horrible for the people inside. You know, the thing Davos bumbling sir union knight was given a house and nobility for saving Stannis from harrowing prospect of starvation. Just a little thing. If you see people dead from starvation like ww2 footage, you will get an inkling just how horrible it is. I don't think that bringing the Dragons to Jon was a plan thought of years before. It might have been more to just highlight his Targaryen heritage. But even with that I don't see any evidence of that in the story before season 7. From then on they really laid it on thick. With a big middle finger to the book fans with the line, "You don't look like Eddard Stark" and "I'm not a Stark." I personally still think the several character assassinations was the worst thing in the show, with Varys as number 1. It's hard to pick the worst thing with so many moments to choose from though.

Excelent! The explanation about types of dragons was awesome!

Killing Rhaegal was easy, they just had to read the books. GRRM makes it clear the only vulnerable part of a dragon is the eye- you need either incredible luck, or to fill the air with bolts and play the odds. Euron should have massed every scorpian possible, then filled the air with bolts, hitting that one eyeball. The danger of the scorpians is preserved, but it's also believable Drogon can attack fast and hard and not get hit. The frustration and badass look of Cersei's defenders filling the air with bolts, but Drogon just tilts his head up, and they all ping off like they were twigs.

Canonically, didn't ancient Dorne manage to shoot down one of Aegon the Conqueror's dragons and wives only by managing a hit *directly to the eye* of the dragon with a scorpion?

fantastic video and analysis!

Season 7 could’ve been sooo amazing, D&D had everything to make it great and they still managed to mess it up. Tyrion knew how to get into kings landing, they could’ve started a rebellion from within like they did with Mereen. Only this time Dany learned from her mistakes and knows what she’s doing. That my friends is called character development.

The fact we didn't get dragon(s) vs ice dragon is criminal.

D&D kinda forget about Cersei being openly responsible for the King's Landing 9/11, having established herself as a dictator with a very tenuous claim to the throne, Daenerys actually being a good, well-loved leader, having a giant army, actually having feelings, and the dragons being intelligent.

Never got into Game of Thrones, but this was a well organized video! Good job man!

Lol, love that you referenced Lindsay's vids, bot of which I have seen and loved for a long time as a great explanation as to why the last couple of seasons failed. Looking forward to seeing the rest of this vid and discovering how I was duped (I'm here because the title of this vid clicked a lightbulb in my brain that made me think, Hey, yeah...they did that...)

But if I don't have a big loud dragon for action scenes how will I pay attention to the show?

“This might be the most stupid and insulting moment in the entire program” Y’know, except for a bunch of other moments which are equally bad.

You sir have earned a sub, great video 🥰

I agree with most of the points you make. As for Drogon's magical "melting laserbeam" fire breath - It is not impossible for dragons to do this at all. Balerion the Black Dread *melted* Harrenhall into the molten candlewax structure it is today. Did he gain such a strong breath too fast? Yes, that is for sure, but it is not beyond the abilities of these dragons.

“The king defenestrated himself” NICE word usage.

Imagine if viserion had died during the battle royal with the walkers, destabilizing danny and completely shifting the tension and stakes instead of during a stupid rescue mission.

The whole "Scorpions beat dragons" thing could've really helped with Season 7. Imagine if the Scorpions were invented and deployed around King's Landing by the start of Season 7? Then Dany has a real reason not to attack - She doesn't want her dragons to get hurt and the city would be able to withstand the attack. Suddenly, Dany's trying to find a new way. Her generals suggest attacking Lannister forces *outside* the city, as they don't have to worry about Scorpions there since they're not mobile. Dany attacks, Bronn *kills* one of the dragons, and Dany is infuriated. Suddenly, she starts getting angry. Her generals keep telling her that the people in the city are going to rise up. They'll finally overthrow Cerci and accept Dany. But it never happens (Due to Cerci quelling it). Dany gets even angrier and starts thinking the people don't like her. Then, the information about Jon gets out. The North supports his claim to the throne. Now, the people she thought she could trust have betrayed her to support Jon. Then the stuff North of the Wall happens. Dany loses another dragon. At this point, she's gone mad. SUDDENLY THINGS MAKE A LOT MORE SENSE!

As a major lover of dragons (I write about them, I have statues of them, I'll be giving my children middle names of dragons and I've got an idea for a full-body dragon tattoo I've always wanted) I was with you from the very start of this video! Side tangent - Anyone ever wondered why the dragons got so much screen time but the wolves were dumped as quickly as possible? The problem with the dragons (excellently explained here) is a microcosm of the problems with the show itself - Fantastic when the showrunners were working off someone else's material but massively lacking in inspiration and horribly falling back on tropes and spectacle once the original material was done with. We went from a story with the depth of an ocean to a paddling pool pretending to be bigger than it was.

The problems of season seven and eight can be summed up as, “Remember all the buildup and questions regarding plot element X? Turns out it was completely pointless because the writers never did anything with it.” Your call whether this “Never did anything” was born out of the incompetence born of forgetfulness or apathy. Me, I lean towards apathy. The overwhelming feeling I got from season eight was that the creators were just bored with the project and wanted to move onto something else, but first, they had to wrap up the show. So they gave us an ending that is barely a step above “rocks fall; everyone dies.”

I remember, when Viserion was hit with the Spear, my first thought was "Oh No... which one was that again?"

Thanks for teaching me the word Defenestrated. Now being added to my vernacular

Excellent Breakdown!

The ending of this video literally defines my old roommate who had to leave the room after the series finale and cry alone for over an hour before returning to the room to explain how much the show had meant to him as a person and how much he invested in everything and to be done dirty like he had been was too much to handle. The showrunners should know that their final decisions literally brought grown adults to tears.

I literally hate Season 7 so much. Everytime someone suggests just to use dragons, Tyrion is like “Noo! Don’t be evil like your daddy and burn everyone!” But the thing is... she doesn’t have to. She just has to fly them to the Red Keep. The people of King’s Landing should already hate Cersei, her own armies should already hate Cersei, the main reason why it was so hard to fight against the Faith in the first place (before Maegor-Jaehaerys i) was that the soldiers you wanted to use against them, believed in that religion as well, now why would they want to support, and fight for maybe die for the woman who blew up their most glorious Sept and killed the person whom they accepted as the reflection of gods in their world? Mind you that is also the same Sept, Dany’s ancestor built, named after himself. These people also suffered three wars in the last twenty years (Robert’s Rebellion, Iron Islands Rebellion, War of The Five Kings) since the fall of Targaryens, and because they cut fAegon out of the show Daenerys was the last Targaryen they knew of. They should be glad that she is there, even open the gates for her. If her last name doesn’t convince them to support her, the three fire breathing beasts flying over their heads surely would. It would take mere seconds for the people of King’s Landing to rise against Cersei, Daenerys wouldn’t even need to use her armies or burn anything, save for maybe some towers or walls to demonstrate power. Their mistake was to cut off fAegon and the real Euron from the show, because of that no real power stood against Daenerys during her conquest, so trying to stop her from getting the throne immediately felt stupid.

I've watched 20 min, and I have to take a break, because, it just makes me so mad that the writers ruined this truly awesome show, and thought people were to dumb to see through their shitty writing! I know it's totally silly to get mad about a stupid tv show, and I never usually do, but I just LOVED GOT, and I hate being taken for a goddamn fool and being belittled, like I thought they did to the viewers, especially in the last season.

Amazing job! Man this finale still hurts. And it always will.