As always, major spoilers for the finale of "Game of Thrones."
Well, the show is officially over. "Game of Thrones" came to a close Sunday night in a fashion no fan could have predicted. An HBO record 19.3 million viewers watched the finale across all platforms, the network said in an statement.
Both Emilia Clarke and Kit Harington spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the final episode that closed a show that's lasted the better part of a decade.
(MORE: 'Game of Thrones' finale: 5 burning questions from the shocking end)In the finale, we saw Daenerys Targaryen die pretty early after Jon Snow put a knife in her heart to save the seven kingdoms and beyond from a rein that was shaping up to be pretty unpleasant. Daenerys certainly had shown signs she was becoming the "Mad Queen," and for the sake of innocents around the world, Snow took things into his own hands, though he struggled with the decision.
As for her lover betraying her, Clarke said, "It comes out of f----- nowhere. I’m flabbergasted.”
In fact after first reading the script, the actress told EW, "I cried."
"I went for a walk. I walked out of the house and took my keys and phone and walked back with blisters on my feet. I didn’t come back for five hours. I’m like, ‘How am I going to do this?’” she added.
(MORE: 'Game of Thrones' star Emilia Clarke says goodbye to show that 'shaped me as a woman')But she did, and the scene, for better or worse, is something fans will be talking about for years. Clarke really internalized the journey Daeny has been on over eight seasons, especially this last one.
"She’s killed so many people already. I can’t turn this ship around. It’s too much. One by one, you see all these strings being cut. And there’s just this last thread she’s holding onto: There’s this boy. And she thinks, ‘He loves me, and I think that’s enough.’ But is it enough? Is it? And it’s just that hope and wishing that finally there is someone who accepts her for everything she is and … he f----- doesn’t," she said.
Harington was also shocked and saddened at what his beloved character was going to have to do, but he learned to accept his fate.
"I think it’s going to divide, but if you track her story all the way back, she does some terrible things," he says of the Mother of Dragons. "She crucifies people. She burns people alive. This has been building."
One of the main issues Harington had with the final season was the deaths and dark turns of not only Daeny but Cersei, who after a decade as the queen and sometimes puppet master of Westeros, really went down in unceremonious fashion last week.
"One of my worries with this is we have Cersei and Dany, two leading women, who fall. ... [But] just because they’re women, why should they be the goodies? They’re the most interesting characters in the show. And that’s what 'Thrones' has always done. You can’t just say the strong women are going to end up the good people," he added, admitting that Daeny "is not a good person."
"It’s going to open up discussion but there’s nothing done in this show that isn’t truthful to the characters. And when have you ever seen a woman play a dictator?” he added. But for Jon, this is second woman he's loved and also had a hand in her death. "This destroys Jon."
Sadness and witty quips aside, Clarke is happy with the ending and her character's fate.
"I thought she was going to die. I feel very taken care of as a character in that sense. It’s a very beautiful and touching ending," she said. "Hopefully, what you’ll see in that last moment as she’s dying is: There’s the vulnerability, there’s the little girl you met in season 1. ... And now, she’s not there anymore."
