Game of Thrones season 6 has finally pushed Daenerys’s storyline ahead of the cliffhanger it ended on in A Dance With Dragons, but her story so far has a big problem—and one that isn’t really solvable. Her new captivity in the hands of the Dothraki just isn’t compelling, and that’s for a good reason. There are no stakes. There is no real risk of failure for Daenerys. We know she’s going to succeed—either in escaping, or in bending the Dothraki to her will. And so there’s no suspense.
The Problem With Daenerys In Game Of Thrones Season 6
Daenerys has been captured by the Dothraki and—after narrowly avoiding becoming a sex slave to one of the khals—has been sent off to Vaes Dothrak to live out her days as a widow, if they choose to accept her back. But even in Game of Thrones, which is as unpredictable as fantasy gets, there seems little doubt Daenerys will escape from this situation. Ser Jorah and Daario are already on the way to rescue her, and she’s pretty resourceful on her own. Don’t be surprised if she rejects Jorah’s help as she plays a slightly longer game to bring the Dothraki to heel under her power.
The exact details of Daenerys’s future aren’t clear. But there’s no way she’s going to end up in Vaes Dothrak for the rest of her life. Meereen and Westeros await. There’s no suspense for the viewer; Daenerys doesn’t feel like she’s in any real danger of long-term captivity. And thus the whole plotline feels like a sideshow, or a necessary checkbox to bring the Dothraki back to her side before she gives up on Meereen and moves on to conquer the homeland she’s never seen.
Contrast this with other plotlines. Daenerys’s success in Meereen was very much an open question. She wasn’t really at risk of death, but the city was falling apart around her, and her ability to tame it was far from clear—indeed, still is. Will she leave Meereen in a state of peace, or eventually give up on it, abandoning it to the slavers as she focuses on the real prize? I’ve read all the books, but I don’t know. It’s a genuine conflict. Consider also Sansa’s captivity, invented for the show. It was genuinely suspenseful—unlike Daenerys, she doesn’t have some some prophesied, destined future like Daenerys does, or an obvious next plot arc like “conquering Westeros.”
Daenerys, on the other hand, does. She needs to conquer Westeros and hopefully save it from the White Walkers. Even GRRM wouldn’t be so brazen as to have Dany languish away forever in Vaes Dothrak, and all us viewers know it. Her destiny lies ahead, and the Dothraki sojourn feels like a sideshow. There’s no tension or suspense. Let’s hope Dany does her business with the Dothraki quickly and moves onto more important things.
