Game of Thrones might be over and done with in a broadcast sense, but people are going to be talking about its myriad details for some time to come. One question left dangling though – exactly where Drogon was heading with Daenerys’ body – has been answered by the commentary of the final season’s home release.
To recap: after seeing Missandei murdered in an act of pointless spite, Daenerys decided that surrender wasn’t good enough for King’s Landing and proceeded to unleash hell upon the city with her pet weapon of mass destruction, succumbing to the hereditary insanity of the Targaryens brought about by generations of inbreeding.
Upon declaring herself queen she was promptly killed by her consort/nephew Jon Snow since he decided nobody as unstable as her should ever be a ruler, regardless of how much he loved her. Drogon responded by reducing the Iron Throne to a pile of molten slag, because apparently dragons are intelligent enough to understand overwrought symbolism but lack the basic desire for vengeance, and gently grasped his mistress/mother’s body in his giant claws and flew off for parts unknown, the only clue to their destination being Bran declaring they were traveling east.
The commentary between Daenerys actor Emilia Clarke and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss discussed the mystery, first by Benioff assuring Clarke that Daenerys was not going to end up dragon food, as she had heard of such a fate befalling dragon masters. It turns out that Drogon was actually heading for Volantis, the oldest of the Free Cities of Essos, a city seen in season 5 as where Tyion and Varys travel to when the former escapes his execution after being wrongly condemned for killing Joffrey.
More to the point, the settlement was also part of the original Valyrian Empire before its destruction, from where dragons were originally born, the mighty alloy Valyrian Steel was forged and the Targaryen dynasty originated. Essentially, Drogon was taking Daenerys home.
This is exactly the kind of detail that knowing about would have made the narrative seem less slapdash and should have been imparted in the show itself, perhaps by Sam, as over thinking details and relating them to anyone who’ll listen is his dominant character trait. Instead, once again, expediency was chosen over storytelling, making this final point another facet of what made Game of Thrones’ last season such a frustrating and divisive experience.
