‘Game of Thrones’ Has Been Teasing Daenerys Burning King’s Landing Since Season 2

Game of Thrones Season 8 seems to be headed towards a tragic confrontation between Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) and Jon Snow (Kit Harington) for the Iron Throne. We can’t say we didn’t see this coming, but it definitely feels like the show is pushing Dany into becoming a full-fledged tyrant out of nowhere. After all this is Daenerys, and we like Daenerys. She freed all those slaves and she has those dragons. (Well, she has one dragon now.)

However, according to one Reddit theory going around, we’ve known about Daenerys’s ultimate destiny to burn King’s Landing to the ground for a while now, and she’s known it, too. The woman consumed by her own destiny was merely too proud to correctly parse out her own prophetic visions.

Way back in Game of Thrones Season 2, Episode 10, “Valar Morghulis,” Daenerys goes to the House of the Undying to save her three baby dragons from said Undying, aka the creepy warlocks of Qarth. After being lost in the magical maze-like temple, Dany finds herself transported to the throne room in King’s Landing. The roof has been blown up, no one is around, and everything is covered in a thin layer of snow.

What this latest theory on Reddit posits is what if it isn’t snow? What if it’s ash?

In many ways, this theory makes sense. For one, Daenerys doesn’t seem all that cold when she’s walking through the white flurries, which she does seem when she arrives in the vision’s version of the frozen tundra north of the Wall. Also the destruction in the palace reads more like it’s been burned than frozen. There’s an eerie stillness, as well. Not a single human soul is in sight, suggesting that the ash may actually be the remains of the soldiers and innocents Daenerys and Drogon will burn.

Also, this reading makes more sense than ice covering the capital as Jon and Daenerys have already neutralized the threat of the Night King. If King’s Landing falls, it won’t be thanks to ice, but fire.

Of course, there is one detail that kind of ruins this theory. There are actual icicles clinging to the metal fire rings around the pillars. However, we like the implication that Daenerys may have always known what her ultimate destiny truly was — and it wasn’t to rule Westeros.

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The other visions Daenerys is treated to in the House of the Undying include the aforementioned frozen landscape north of the Wall and then a sweet daydream of what she initially thought her future was going to be. She escaped the brutal northern winds by slipping into a tent, where she finds Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) alive and holding their living infant son. Remember in Season 1, Daenerys thought the plan was to give birth to the Stallion Who Mounted the World, and that with Khal Drogo’s help, she would take Westeros so that she and her son could have the Iron Throne. However, that changed when Drogo dies and she loses the baby in childbirth. She gives herself up to a pyre with her eggs, and it’s unclear what she expects will happen, but no one thought it would be dragons.

In both Dany’s visions of the throne room and the tent, she is tempted to stay, but she leaves. In the throne room, she actually almost touches the Iron Throne, but doesn’t. This alone suggests that she will not make it to the Iron Throne. She herself determined that it was not what she wanted. What’s truly more important to her than the Iron Throne or a happy family? Her dragons. Now she’s lost two, and only has one left, she is more desperate than ever to hold on to Drogon.

Since Season 2, Daenerys has chosen fire and blood over taking the Iron Throne or even being in love. Her dragons are her destiny, and they supersede any other calling in her life.

All this is to say, whether it’s ash or snow in that vision, if I’m in King’s Landing, I’d be bracing for a firestorm.

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