Incest is destiny on Game of Thrones, and every plotline on the show built towards the union of two characters in the Season 7 finale. Which, given that the events of the show all started because a brother and sister were sleeping together, really shouldn’t be that surprising in retrospect.
Spoilers for the Season 7 finale of Game of Thrones follow.
In an interview with IndieWire published Tuesday, the director behind the Game of Thrones Season 7 finale, Jeremy Podeswa, spoke about weaving together different scenes throughout time and space to build to the climax that was Jon and Daenerys’ union.
Sure, it’s incest. But it’s also where the show was always going: a “song of ice and fire.”
Podeswa explained his rationale for the way the scene was shot and edited:
“But the real story within the story, was actually what was going on with their eyes and what’s happening — there’s an understanding between them that even though they know in some part of them that they shouldn’t really be doing this, they cannot not do it. There’s some element of destiny that’s brought them together, and they can’t fight it.”
Even Kit Harrington, the actor behind Jon Snow, calls Jon and Dany “falling into bed together” an “inevitability.” He added, “I think they both know it’s wrong. I think they both know it’s going to cause problems. But it’s that thing: When you suddenly feel that deeply about someone and you go through those events together, it’s like a runaway train. You can’t stop it from happening.” Destiny is the word he’s looking for.
Director Jeremy Podeswa explained that by interweaving Jon and Dany’s romantic scene with Bran’s dive into the idyllic past of Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen, it offers “a kind of prismatic view of the history that brought Jon to this point, and Jon and Dany together in this sweep of destiny, in this sweep of history.”
Podeswa effectively creates “a fluid movement through time as we’re seeing this all unfold.” (Phrasing).
This bit of incest, it would seem, was always destined, and we got to see it unconstrained by time and space. It’s almost as if the viewer themselves had the powers of the Three-eyed Raven in Westeros.
Game of Thrones’ final season is not expected to air for a year and a half, but no dates have been confirmed yet.
