HBO's Game of Thrones came to an end in the spring of 2019. Even its biggest fans have
to admit that many story arcs simply don't add up. These are some of the most puzzling
questions Game of Thrones left in its wake. Spoilers for the entire series to follow!
As Game of Thrones begins, King Robert Baratheon is on the throne of Westeros . Right away,
viewers learn about his famous conquest of the Seven Kingdoms with Ned Stark by his side.
After overthrowing the raving King Aerys Targaryen , Robert became fiercely protective of his throne,
seeking to kill any young Targaryen threats. "I’ll kill every Targaryen I get my hands on!"
In the aftermath of Robert's death, his illegitimate successor,
Joffrey Baratheon takes that mission several steps forward,
ordering the systematic killing of Robert's many bastard children to ensure his own status as king.
Unfortunately for Joffrey, he misses one important bastard: Gendry , a gifted young blacksmith.
Gendry goes on to survive the entire series, but his Baratheon blood never proves to be climactic.
Just before the end of the show, Daenerys Targaryen legitimizes him, making him
Lord Gendry, despite the fact that doing so could challenge her own claim to the Iron Throne.
One of the most famously infuriating moments in Thrones' final season is
Daenerys' lightning-fast decision to slaughter thousands of innocents in King's Landing.
As Daenerys and her team prepare to attack King's Landing and Queen Cersei Lannister , Cersei's
brother and Daenerys' right-hand man Tyrion tells the Targaryen heir that when she hears the bells
ring in Westeros' capital city, she must back off. As he explains, the bells mean surrender.
"If the city surrenders, they will ring the bells and raise the gates.
Please, if you hear them ringing the bells, call off the attack."
This would be all well and good, except that during another crucial battle set at King's
Landing, Varys tells Tyrion that the bells ring for "horror," typically related to war.
Daenerys begins the show as the khaleesi of a wild Dothraki horde.
After losing and gaining control of these proud horse lords many times over,
she eventually makes her way to Westeros with a massive Dothraki army at her back.
After losing one of her dragons to the Night King, Daenerys finds herself at a disadvantage
as the White Walkers head towards Westeros. As the battle begins, seemingly most, if not all of her Dothraki warriors charge,
and are immediately snuffed out by the army of the dead. However, just a few episodes later, after Daenerys overtakes King's Landing,
the camera pans across what looks like thousands of Dothraki warriors,
enthralled by her speech about conquering the world.
David Benioff himself said that the Battle of Winterfell was quote, "essentially the end of
the Dothraki," so how does Daenerys have so many horse lords left after that frigid battle?
In the series finale, Tyrion is given free reign to choose
the next monarch. He decides that Bran Stark, who has quote,
"the best story," should be crowned Bran the Broken, and rule the Seven Kingdoms.
Whether or not Bran actually does have "the best story," this choice
makes little sense. Bran has become the inhuman and omniscient Three-Eyed Raven:
As he has made clear, he cares about little, including the throne.
After Game of Thrones spent years signaling that a great leader would
be honorable as well as cunning, why does his sister Sansa , who is both,
get a junior queenship while her brother gets the real prize?
Game of Thrones' biggest mystery always concerned the White Walkers,
an undead race of beings who live in the far north beyond the Wall.
The White Walkers and their leader, the Night King, pose an enormous threat to all of Westeros,
as the army of the dead will eventually make its way to the Seven Kingdoms and wage war.
Throughout the series, viewers get small pieces of information about the Walkers,
including that they are given babies as offerings from humans
who live north of the Wall, who they turn into tiny Walkers.
However, in the season eight episode "The Long Night," when the Walkers finally make their
way to Winterfell, Arya Stark dispatches the Night King without too much trouble,
and the mysteries surrounding the White Walkers die with him and his entire army.
In the seventh season, several of Daenerys' allies go on an ill-advised mission north
of the Wall to try and prove to Cersei that the White Walkers are real. Southerners like Cersei
consider them to be a myth. Thus, Tyrion proposes capturing a wight and bringing it to show Cersei.
However, this plan is foolish right from the start. Wights rarely travel alone,
so trying to capture a single wight and return it in one piece is essentially a suicide mission.
Also, Cersei is certainly shocked by the wight when she sees it,
but she wages war against them anyway, and all that Daenerys' suicide squad
has to show for their trouble is a stray wight and a felled dragon.
After Daenerys swoops in to rescue the gang, she suffers a major loss
when the Night King shoots one of her dragons, Viserion, out of the sky.
The image of Viserion's eye reopening with its new blue hue is
definitely one of Thrones' coolest visuals, but the mechanics of how
the Night King and his army retrieve the dragon from underneath the ice raises some questions.
Earlier in that same episode, the wight-capturers keep Walkers at bay by isolating themselves on a
rock surrounded by water, as wights can't swim. If that's so, how did they retrieve Viserion?
Beyond that, the army of the dead uses enormous chains to drag Viserion to the surface:
Where did they get those, and how did they attach them to the dragon underwater?
On 'Game of Thrones', one of the most difficult obstacles is travel. For that reason,
early seasons of Game of Thrones are more or less devoted to long journeys,
making it clear that people like Daenerys, who is trying to get to Westeros, have a long way to go.
However, as the show continued, writers focused less on Westeros' sprawling landscape,
to the point where the rules of time and space seemed to stop mattering entirely.
Journeys that would have once taken a season and a half
eventually only take a couple of minutes. Gendry can run from a mountaintop north of
the Wall to send a raven to Daenerys, who arrives on a dragon shortly thereafter.
Suspension of disbelief is fine for a show that involves dragons and magic,
but Game of Thrones' space-time continuum develops not just a tear, but some pretty enormous holes.
Melisandre is a cryptic priestess of R'hllor , the Lord of Light. Initially, Melisandre, who serves
Stannis Baratheon until his death, is the only red priest viewers meet, but others eventually appear.
Beyond their fire-related powers, they deliver prophecies, especially Melisandre, who makes
sweeping proclamations about chosen ones and rightful kings.
"Stannis Baratheon, warrior of light, your sword awaits you."
These prophecies are all exciting in the beginning, but by the time Game of Thrones draws
to a close, none of them have been fulfilled. When all is said and done, Melisandre's predictions
have little to no bearing on anything in the show's outcome and are never explained at all.
Bronn is a fan-favorite as the beloved, wise-cracking mercenary
who spends time with both Jaime and Tyrion Lannister throughout the series.
But a bizarre plotline takes place during the eighth season,
in which Bronn agrees to kill Jaime and Tyrion simply because Cersei offered him money.
He threatens the brothers with a crossbow, then isn't seen again until the finale. By then,
Tyrion has made him Lord of Highgarden, which he promised Bronn in exchange for
his and Jaime's lives, as well as Master of Coin to King Bran.
Earlier in the series, Bronn says he's never borrowed money and doesn't know how it works,
so making a man who can't figure out the concept of a loan the Master of Coin seems unwise.
Game of Thrones is home to plenty of moments that require viewers to put
aside some of their logic and reason, especially when it comes to injuries.
After characters like Khal Drogo die of afflictions like blood poisoning,
you’d think that a serious injury might take a character down once in a while.
Both Jaime and Arya endure brutal stab wounds to the stomach during fights: Arya loses a tussle
with the Waif in season six, while Jaime struggles against Euron Greyjoy in the final season.
And yet, neither person seems much troubled by these grievous injuries.
Jaime makes it into the Red Keep to find Cersei, while Arya somehow leaps into a canal,
swims across Braavos, and is eventually cured by a cup of soup and a good night's sleep.
Armor can be effective against knives, but apparently,
being a series regular can save you from multiple stomach wounds as well.
Beyond her unhelpful prophecies, Melisandre does a fair amount of magic on Game of Thrones,
much of which concerns blood sacrifices. To help Stannis gain the throne,
she sacrifices his followers and countrymen to the flame.
She steals "king's blood" from Gendry for a ritual that will destroy any usurpers to the Iron
Throne. She even convinces Stannis to burn his own daughter, Shireen alive, to win the War
of the Five Kings. Shireen dies screaming, her mother hangs herself, and Stannis loses anyway.
With all that in mind, many viewers were terrified of who or what Melisandre
would sacrifice after she revived a murdered Jon Snow. This time, however,
Melisandre doesn't have to sacrifice anyone — she just brings Jon back from the dead.
If she's capable of resurrection with nothing but her own power,
why did she have to kill all those other people?
After Daenerys’ husband Drogo sustains an infected wound, the dragon queen
can't keep her husband from a grisly death. Bereaved but newly self-confident,
Daenerys sets her sight on Westeros, putting her romantic life on the backburner.
Though Daenerys takes a few lovers, she never truly falls in love again.
Until Jon Snow arrives, and the two fall head over heels for each other.
Putting their lackluster chemistry aside — as well as the fact that they're actually
aunt and nephew — Daenerys risking her quest for the Iron Throne over a lover
is wildly inconsistent with her character.
It doesn't make sense, until you consider that, as a plot device, it forces Jon to
face some internal conflict about killing the woman who's not just his queen, but his lover.
Samwell Tarly might be one of Game of Thrones' most lovable characters, but he's definitely not
the toughest fighter. While out in the far North with a few other men from the Night's Watch,
Sam and his black-clad brothers hear a horn sound three times,
indicating that White Walkers have been spotted. While Sam's compatriots make a run for it,
he can't catch up, and so he hides behind a rock. This leads to a thrilling scene in which Sam
watches an entire army of Walkers make their way towards the Wall, but it also raises questions.
Not only would he not be able to get ahead of the army, but a Walker atop an undead horse
makes prolonged eye contact with him. The White Walkers will kill anything in
their path. Besides the fact that he's a main character, why is Sam any different?
When audiences first meet Jon Snow and Ned Stark,
they're told that Jon is Ned's shameful bastard, the product of an affair with a tavern wench.
But Ned prizes his honor above all else, making the situation seem a little shady.
Ultimately, the truth is revealed; Jon isn't a bastard at all, but is the legitimate product of
Ned's sister Lyanna Stark and Daenerys' brother Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, who married in secret.
As Lyanna lay dying with Robert Baratheon's forces approaching,
she begged her brother to keep Jon's real identity a secret, to save him from Robert's
sword. This is true enough — but the lengths to which Ned goes to keep this secret are extreme.
For years, Ned's loving wife Catelyn resents Jon as shameful proof of her
husband's infidelity. Couldn't Ned have told his wife the real story?
Jon Snow has one of the toughest journeys on Game of Thrones, yet somehow,
he ends up with a reasonably happy ending. After helping Daenerys conquer King's Landing,
he realizes that his queen and lover has turned evil in her quest for power.
In the aftermath of her massacre of King's Landing's civilians, he stabs her for the
good of the realm. Though Daenerys' loyal soldiers are furious, a deal is reached,
and Jon is banished back to the Night's Watch, landing him right back where he began.
Jon is always happiest when he's north of the Wall, so at face value, this seems like
a perfect ending. However, there's a catch: The Night's Watch no longer has any reason to exist.
The Night's Watchmen protected the Wall and the realm from White Walkers, but
without them, there's nothing for the Night's Watch to do.
It's a neat ending to send Jon back to his brothers in black,
but it also makes absolutely no sense.
Pretty much everything that Euron Greyjoy does in the final two seasons
of Game of Thrones makes no sense. As Thrones' final conflict draws near,
Euron's niece and nephew, Yara and Theon , steal his best ships.
Euron manages to build 1,000 ships in pretty quick order and from there,
he gains perfect aim overnight, taking down one of Daenerys' typically impervious dragons with a
perfect shot — from a moving ship, no less.
He's at multiple major disadvantages, yet none of them seem to actually matter. In a show that
prides itself on taking fantasy tropes seriously, Euron Greyjoy stands out like a lucky sore thumb.
Out of all the characters on Game of Thrones, Tywin Lannister is probably the smartest man in
all of Westeros. Tywin is a political master who stops at nothing in his quest to elevate the
Lannisters. This makes one of his personal relationships extraordinarily confusing.
During the show's second season, while Arya is on the run from King's Landing in the
wake of her father's execution, she ends up being Tywin's cupbearer at Harrenhal.
The two strike up a solid rapport, especially when Tywin realizes that she's well-educated.
However, that fact alone should have revealed Arya's identity. Tywin knows that one of the
two Stark girls has escaped, and Arya's knowledge betrays her highborn status almost immediately.
Tywin may be the cleverest man in Westeros, but apparently,
even his considerable brain has its limits.
It takes Daenerys until the start of Thrones' seventh season to arrive in
Westeros. She makes a triumphant return to Dragonstone, her ancestral home.
In a near-silent scene that closes the seventh season's premiere,
Daenerys strides across a shore she barely remembers. At last, she's finally ready to
take on her Westerosi foes. However, there's one thing about this scene that doesn't add up.
After Stannis' death, why didn't anyone acquainted with the Lannister forces even
bother trying to take Dragonstone? As a coastal stronghold, it would have been wise for Daenerys'
enemies to send even just a few soldiers to protect the place where she was born,
especially because they likely knew she would return.
Cersei might be a vicious power player throughout Thrones, but she does
truly love her children. Watching her lose her two younger children
in incredibly tragic ways almost makes you pity the villainess.
"She was good. From her first breath, she was so sweet. I don’t know where she came from."
However, we know long before her last child dies that losing children was her destiny.
In the fifth season's premiere, a young Cersei meets a witch who tells her that she will have
three children, and that their crowns and shrouds will both be golden.
Yet in the show's second episode, Cersei tells Catelyn Stark that she once had a brown-haired
baby, presumably the baby she had with Robert Baratheon. That would mean she
had four children, making this otherwise correct prophecy suddenly null and void.
In the series' final episode, Bran is chosen as the next King of the Seven Kingdoms, but
before anyone can celebrate, Sansa asks that the North, which has always belonged to the Starks,
maintain its independence. Bran agrees, and Sansa is crowned Queen in the North.
It's pretty strange that neither Yara Greyjoy, who has been angling for the Iron Islands'
independence, nor the unnamed prince of Dorne, a region with a long history of independence
from the other kingdoms, asks for the same thing. Sansa gets what she wants — so why don't they ask
too, instead of accepting the fact that their precious kingdoms remain under Bran's rule?
During Thrones' fifth and sixth seasons, Arya undergoes a massive transformation
when she trains at the House of the Undying in Braavos . It is here where she learns to be a
faceless assassin, and the mysterious girl known as the Waif plays a huge role in it.
As the apparent right-hand woman to Jaqen H'ghar, the Waif despises Arya,
beating her without mercy after Arya loses her sight, and eventually trying to assassinate her.
Aside from setting up conflict for Arya, however, there's not really much reason
for the Waif to exist, and her presence and animosity towards Arya, go completely unexplained.
Once Arya leaves Braavos, we never see either Jaqen or the Waif again, and it's even more
unclear as to why the Waif ever existed. After learning to assume other people's faces
and kill her enemies in Braavos, Arya proves herself to be a formidable assassin, taking down
her enemies as soon as she arrives in Westeros. For years, however, one enemy looms above all
the rest: Cersei Lannister. It seems like a foregone conclusion for much of the series
that Arya will be the one to kill Cersei. However, Arya does not kill Cersei. Instead,
the Hound warns her that killing Cersei will end up killing her as well, as the
Red Keep is on the verge of collapse. Somehow, that one sentence works,
and Arya turns back, and Cersei's death fails to bring Arya's story to a close.
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