Thread by @DSilvermint

Okay, I know it’s been a while, but I can’t stop thinking about the ending of Game of Thrones. How it broke the thematic promises the early seasons made, and how it abandoned the questions it set out to answer. A lot went wrong. But nothing went as wrong as King Bran. 1/21

From the beginning, we were shown a nihilistic world where politics itself was the enemy. Where power always led to suffering and ruin. Where the only people who prospered were the ones who realized that power could be gained by breaking the rules everyone else followed. 2/21

Ned marched into a throne room armed with a letter from a dead king, and Cersei simply ripped it up. That was a lesson for the audience (and the surviving characters) that rules could never keep the peace. That self-interest would tear down any order you tried to build. 3/21

It was a hopeless view of politics, and one that spoke to real anxieties. Rule of law, moral norms, society itself - they’re fictions that can be exploited. The more we try to constrain the worst impulses of human nature, the faster we hand power to the worst among us. 4/21

GoT raised a question: does human nature doom politics? Is conflict inevitable? And so we debated, and waited for an answer. Some fans imagined a hopeful answer, and some of us expected a pessimistic one. But an answer was promised. Every story makes promises. 5/21

So how did this story end? What was the solution to a puzzle that unflinching and real? The world’s greatest cynic announces that nothing’s more powerful than a story, and no one has a better story than an immortal, omniscient, unfeeling wizard. He should rule us all. 6/21

And... what? That’s the answer? That’s how you find peace in a world where armies leave feasts for crows, and where a thirst for power or a warped sense of destiny or even a desire to do good can bend just about anyone toward murder and destruction? 7/21

The greedy and the grasping and the cruel will set aside their schemes and accept the rule of a mystical bookworm because something something stories? The solution to a ruthless disregard for norms is to awe people with epic backstory? 8/21

“Murder, murder, murder.”

“Here’s my Medieval Twitter bio.”

“Oh well in that case truce.” 9/21

To be fair, it’s not just that Bran has a good (well, fine-ish) story. It’s that his story supposedly gives us an indication of how he’ll rule. So what are the anticipated virtues of King Bran? 10/21

Well, he’s a hollow shell whose *lack* of compassion and human understanding and investment in the fate of the world are considered ideal qualities. He literally doesn’t want anything, so how can he be corrupted? Bran’s total and off-putting indifference - that’s the key. 11/21

And again I say: what? That’s what will prevent the suffering that so plagues the bleak world of Westeros? That’s what we’re supposed to take away from everything we’ve seen? That’s what the story wants to teach us about our own sorry world? 12/21

Human nature is the problem, so give absolute power to a person with no humanity at all? Sure. Will do.

But look, even if you set aside the slight hitch that there aren’t any wizards with conveniently blank stares in the real world, this answer isn’t true to the story. 13/21

Putting an indifferent person on the throne without changing anything else about the world is an absurdly backwards and naive answer to the problem the story spent its considerable length exploring. It’s literally a nonsense ending. 14/21

Forget honor or idealism or compassion or wisdom or a sense of justice. Find someone who honestly doesn’t give a damn about anyone or anything, someone who can watch people die right in front of him with utter passivity, and put him in charge. Nihilism averted! 15/21

Bonus points if he can live for a thousand years, so you don’t have to worry about succession. Better still if he can see the future and spy on anyone and posses their bodies, because then compliance will never be an issue. The thorny aspects of power are all sidestepped. 16/21

The antidote to endless cycles of tyranny is... a vastly more powerful and callous tyrant. If this is the philosophical takeaway of Game of Thrones, then it turns out we’re not doomed by human nature after all - we’re doomed because wizard-kings don’t exist to save us. 17/21

And that’s just not an answer. It doesn’t take human nature seriously. It doesn’t take political virtue or vice seriously. It doesn’t take the instability of political systems seriously. It doesn’t take the corrosive effects of shameless, ruthless power-seeking seriously. 18/21

By giving us a solution that’s neither possible nor desirable in the real world, it didn’t even try to answer the question we were worrying about: does human nature doom politics? All it can say is well, maybe wealthy nobles will behave after they willingly crown a wizard. 19/21

(But even then, nothing will really change for the people of Westeros because Bronn the amoral mercenary is in charge of the entire economy now, so whoops maybe ‘massive indifference’ wasn’t such an ideal trait in a king after all? 20/21.)

Game of Thrones gave up trying to answer its own questions, and gave up wrestling with its greatest demons. It just gave up. Instead of using fantasy to explore realty, it left reality behind and offered us fantasy. That’s more than a letdown. That’s a broken promise. 21/21