Daenerys Targaryen is the Rory Gilmore of ‘Game of Thrones’

As Game of Thrones comes to its tragic conclusion, it’s worth taking a look at how viewers are  reacting to the seismic storytelling shifts that have recently gone down. Some critics are heralding the final episodes of Game of Thrones as transcendent art, while others complain the showrunners have shit the bed. Most of the complaints about the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones seem to be focused on the show’s would-be heroine, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). While many fans admit that she’s always had a maniacal streak, they also believe that her actions have become unhinged to the extreme and well out of character. The reactions over these last episodes have ranged from furious to heartbroken, and I’m at a loss to think of a recent television event that so enraged its core audience in a similar way.

Oh, wait, there was Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Yeah, that show’s ending really pissed off its fans.

Gilmore Girls was a critically-acclaimed dramedy that ran for seven seasons on the WB, later the CW. In its last season, creators and showrunners Daniel Palladino and Amy Sherman-Palladino left over creative differences with the network, so the show’s ending was never the endgame the Palladinos had in mind. Years later, Netflix made a deal with the Palladinos to tell their version in a miniseries event. There were four episodes, each super-sized in length. (Sound similar to the structure of another show’s “final” season?) Fans were over the moon with excitement as they had waited years for the correct, faithful, Palladino ending.

While the Palladinos were able to coax their main cast back, along with some celebrity guests, fans wound up bristling at the narrative choices and the characterizations on display. In particular, viewers seemed to turn on the once beloved heroine Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel). Jennifer Wright even argued here at Decider that Rory was behaving not like the booksmart overachiever we had come to love, but an immature sociopath.

Remembering the Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life wars now, it seems clear to me that Daenerys Targaryen is getting something of the Rory Gilmore treatment. What this means is that in the final installment of a story, these once-likable and even aspirational figures have leaned hard into their worst, most self-destructive instincts. In the case of Rory Gilmore, that’s drinking too much, hooking up with her engaged ex-boyfriend, failing to secure a good job, unprofessionally sleeping with a source, stealing her mother’s life story for a novel without permission, caring only about her ever-dwindling self, and finally, getting knocked up by the aforementioned ex.

In Dany’s case, it’s burning King’s Landing to the ground.

Being an entitled and shitty person is not the same thing as committing war crimes (though you perhaps can’t do the latter without being the former), but Dany and Rory have more in common than just each getting unsatisfying ends.

Like Dany, Rory (which is a pet name for family moniker Lorelai) was essentially raised in exile. Instead of growing up far from the Iron Throne, though, Rory was raised in a chipper, quirky town as opposed to the upper crust lifestyle of her blue blood family. Even so, Gilmore Girls positions Rory as a special “chosen one” character, albeit in suburban Connecticut. Rory possesses precociousness and beauty which allow her to social climb. She earns her way into Chilton, an elite private school, and later Yale. Often, neighbors and friends speak about Rory as though she has some grand destiny to fulfill. Except, instead of claiming the Iron Throne, she’s supposed to graduate Harvard and become the second coming of Christiane Amanpour.

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Rory biffs on all of this, and even ends Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life seemingly repeating her mother’s path to single parenthood stuck in Stars Hollow. Rory doesn’t break the wheel as planned, but ramps up its horsepower. Oddly, her character’s downfall shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. Throughout Gilmore Girls‘s original run, Rory is prone to make rash choices to satisfy her own whims. She loses her virginity to a married ex-boyfriend, gets kicked out of Yale for stealing a yacht, and generally loathes to take responsibility for her actions.

Like Dany, though, we liked Rory. We wanted to believe in her hype, so we were shocked to see her make such an aggressive heel turn in the show’s final chapter. Similarly, Gilmore Girls fans wanted to believe that the Palladino ending would be more satisfying than the network’s run and when it was worse, the limited series left fans angry, or as you saw in the Twitter clip above, absurdly despondent.

The same thing appears to be happening now with Game of Thrones fans who were all in for their Khaleesi. Her better attributes — her beauty, charisma, kindness, doggedness, and occasional mercy — left us sure that she was a heroine and not a horror. This week’s episode, “The Bells,” disavows us of that fantasy. Daenerys Targaryen is a mad queen with a bitter heart, just as Rory Gilmore is a pampered princess who puts herself above all else. Fingers crossed the Game of Thrones finale leaves us in a better place than Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life left its fans.

Where to stream Game of Thrones

Watch Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life on Netflix