#that's right to me Last Jedi is a ''meh'' and will remain so unless you start to harass me for it and then I'll hate it out of spite

[mysterious-prophetess]

Anakin vs Danaerys: Why one Fall isn’t as hated as the other.

Though it has been weeks since that finale aired, I think we can all agree that this is a topic people are not going to just stop talking about anytime soon. Game of Thrones was a cultural phenomenon and then it fizzled out like a firework that plunged into water too soon. In watching others’ reactions, I saw that some people compared Danaerys Targaryen’s rapid fall to Anakin Skywalker’s Fall in Star Wars and even I’d thought “even Anakin had more time to go nuts than her.” That got me to thinking whenever it was brought up that Anakin had a nonsensical Fall too but it made more sense in context as to why that was.

The prequel trilogy was not as bad as some might say it is. At least, I don’t think it’s bad 100%. I was a kid/teen whenever they came out and I enjoyed them. Looking back I like them in this ranking: 3, 1, and 2. It’s funny that I like the third film, the one with the aforementioned Fall more than the others but to me it was the one that finally had its stuff together as far as the prequels were concerned. Yet, the reason Anakin’s fall is more believable in three versus Danerys’s 3-4 episode “fall” is we already knew he was going to become Darth Vader. To those who say “you should show it 1,2,3,4,5,6” this is why you shouldn’t. Otherwise the Fall is more abrupt, but still there. Because it starts with the former black sheep of the franchise Episode 2. So, with all that considered, Danerys and Anakin have the same amount of screen time to fall, but why is his more acceptable even without know he was always doomed? Let’s look at what Anakin did in these two movies.

Anakin Skywalker is both not a complex character and yet very much a complex of a character.  We start Episode 2 with Anakin as a padawn and he was your typical whiny teen who thinks he’s more grown up than he is (nineteen is still a teenager). He also has an almost obsessive love for Padme whom he hasn’t seen in ten years.  He then explores this love despite the fact the religion/group he is a member of strictly prohibits forming major attachments like this. He is granted visions of his mother dying and when he finds her dead after being tortured by the local aliens who hate/torment the human settlers, he slaughters their whole village and not just their able bodied warriors who would be mostly responsible for this act of cruelty. He admits this to Padme. They go rescue Obi-Wan, they end up captured. He nearly derails a pursuit to save Padme when she doesn’t need saving. He acts like a teenager and gets dismembered for it. He then ends the movie getting secretly married. Basically, Anakin is a walking talking cluster of red-flags. It’s an instance where foreshadowing and character development are walking side-by-side for the most part. When Anakin Falls in Episode 3, he’s been through a war for the past three years. War changes people and not for the better. He’s also buddy-buddy with a Sith Lord who may or may not be screwing with his head using the Dark Side as well as encouraging Anakin’s worst aspects of himself: pride, impulsiveness, obsession. Palpatine also used other tactics to make himself seem like a safe stable support when he was a trap. In short, Palpatine master manipulator was setting Anakin’s Fall up. When Anakin goes full Vader and marches on the Jedi Temple, it’s shocking but not because we’ve already seen him go and massacre a Tuscan Raider village a movie prior. We know he’s capable of it already, therefore now that he’s murdering those who look to him for security, is horrifying but it’s actually well within his character. Even his force-choke of the woman he’s ostensibly done all this for isn’t too far beyond what we know he’s capable of now that Anakin is Vader. It doesn’t feel too rushed, and it doesn’t feel like it’s out of nowhere for shock value because everyone knew it was coming. Even without having seen the Original Trilogy first, Anakin murdering those Sand People is still enough of a moment to know he’s not going to stay good.

Now, let’s take a look at Danaerys Targaryen. Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains, yadda-yadda. Since this is the show we’re looking at the books will not be included in this discussion. So, why does her heel turn make no sense but Anakin’s does, you might ask. Let’s go back to the fact Anakin was a pile of red flags whereas Danaerys, until this season, was not. She might have had a flag here or there but she wasn’t on the whole a pile of them. She still pursued an idealists vision of things, but could be selfish. Her descent into madness because “no one wuved her as much as Jon and then Jon wouldn’t act on their love because incest and she felt isolated” is both sexist and stupid. Her lack of foresight to scout ahead because she somehow “forgot” about enemies is illogical and plot convenient that her dragon gets killed to drive her mad. Cersei beheading Missandei is within Cersei’s character but beyond that it was a waste of a character’s death and let’s not even go into the other issues surrounding the only major WoC character being treated as fuel to a “madness” fire. Finally, her decision to burn down the whole city was so poorly defended and so much of a heel turn that no amount of “foreshadowing” can excuse her sudden desire for wanton murder. She burnt enemies last season—in battle. She executed people via dragon—when they wouldn’t submit and she’d given them a chance and it was war. She was distressed when the dragons killed people and locked them up in Mereen. She risked everything to fight the Night King and his undead horde. Yet, all that was so easily undone because a lack of love? No. Doesn’t work. If Danaerys was so unstable then she’d have immediately attacked Kingslanding the moment she got everyone ready to go after resting on Dragonstone. She’d have told Jon to bend the knee or else go away and not helped him if she was Mad Queen material the whole time. Basically, you can’t have an idealist character go in that time from slightly problematic to full blown Mad Queen. Danaerys had the elements to become like that but her actions on the show never fully went far enough to make her out of nowhere decision to burn it all. Which is why it’s not as accepted a heel turn as Anakin’s. Because the work wasn’t done properly for her to turn like that in a show like Game of Thrones where the characters used to be fully fleshed out creations. I actually don’t care if that’s what Martin intends to do with Danaerys in the books, because he takes time to get characters to where they will eventually go and it makes sense every step of the way. This was a rushed chop job of a character angle versus the nice curve of an arc and no amount of “well, actually, it was foreshadowed” will excuse the sloppy execution.

Say what you will about the Prequel trilogy but their whole purpose was to set up the Empire and Darth Vader and they accomplished that. Game of Thrones on the other hand lost sight of anything and everything it was possibly moving towards and became War Bad. Power Mad People Bad. Oligarchy Good Enough. Stories Good.  It all ends up being empty when it’s rushed. Here’s hoping Benioff and Weiss don’t fuck up any character arcs with their new cash cow Star Wars like they did with Game of Thrones but since the most recent Star Wars film-to me- was a meh, the bar for not screwing things up is low.