 Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen and Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister in HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” (Helen Sloan/HBO) Every week, I answer a question from Monday’s Act Four Live chat in the Wednesday edition of this newsletter. You can read the transcript of the April 17 chat here, and submit questions for the April 24 chat here. This week, a reader has an unusual worry about a much-discussed show (about which plot we will obviously discuss): Remember you wrote about you’d love to see other people write sort of “expanded universe”-type stories on side characters or background events from George R.R Martin’s novels since the world is so vast? I get that TV and books serve different masters, but I feel like “Game of Thrones” has killed off SO MANY characters and lot last season were done in 2 seconds (poor Osha), that it might be too focused? It’s usually a critique “Game of Thrones” never gets and there are the Sand Snakes and Queen of Thrones and Theon’s out-of-nowhere uncle and Edmure Tully and whoever else, but the preview solely focused on Jon Snow, Daeny, and Cersei. How is suppose to feel “epic” (an overused word these days) if the massive armies are just background rather people from different regions and histories? Well, to be fair, it’s not like the “Iliad” or “Paradise Lost” spend a lot of time on the cannon fodder among the Greeks and Trojans, or in Satan’s war on Heaven. And “Game of Thrones” is entering its final seasons with representatives of a lot of different communities in play: Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) is leading a coalition made up of freed slaves, Dothraki hordes who might have taken those slaves, representatives of Dorne, a society that operates wildly differently than Westeros, the remnants of House Tyrell, which is seeking revenge on the Lannisters, an upstart eunuch spymaster and a rogue Lannister. Jon Snow (Kit Harington) has united the wildlings, who are still represented as individuals, the Vale under the marginal command of his sister Sansa (Sophie Turner), and some of the Northern lords. And Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), well, she’s a force unto herself. In general, I think “Game of Thrones” has done a reasonably good job of paring down Martin’s sprawling world in sensible ways, mostly by eliminating plot cul de sacs. And if it feels like characters and even whole societies are getting wiped out at a ruthless rate, maybe that’s part of the point. Not everyone gets to be Odysseus, alive and capable of having adventures after the Trojan War. And sometimes, there’s no Ithaca to come home to. |
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