Her petty jealousy then spirals from Jon Snow to an entire continent, and how pissed she is that Westeros is not kissing her ass to her satisfaction. "Far more people in Westeros love you than love me," she says. "I don't have love here." In other words, she didn't get elected prom queen and her boyfriend doesn't want to make out so it's time to die, King's Landing!

Deciding to burn the world because you feel lonely and can't get laid is a real incel move, but here it also gestures at so many pernicious stereotypes about women as overemotional and petty, prone to inventing slights and overreacting to them, full of unpredictable anger without origin. The corollary, of course, is that they can't be trusted with power lest their unstable behavior lead the world to ruin. Dany dousing the streets of King's Landing in the pseudo-nuclear fire is the narrative embodiment of every joke made by an insecure dude about how we can't elect a female president, because who wants someone on the rag holding the launch codes, amirite?

It rings false because this isn't just Dany abandoning her moral principles; it's Dany abandoning her goals and the entire point of her journey. Her family built the Red Keep, and ruled King's Landing and its people only a generation ago. Even if her goal is naked political power, why would she destroy the precise things she came to reclaim? When her ancestors burned Harrenhal, they did it to make a point, to get the rest of King's Landing to bend the knee. Here, the knee is already bent; destroying King's Landing at this point is basically destroying her own economy, infrastructure, and political capital.

Sure, she can rule over the ashes as Queen of Bones, but as much as the show wants us to think that she's gone Lawful Evil, this is some Chaotic Evil shit for sure. She's not a good guy gone bad, doing terrible things because the ends justify the means; she's the Joker, robbing a bank and then setting all the money on fire just to watch it burn.

Daenerys is not a good guy gone bad, doing terrible things because the ends justify the means; she's the Joker, robbing a bank and then setting all the money on fire just to watch it burn.

If that feels like a nonsensical and unsatisfying conclusion to the narrative arc of a beloved character, wait till you get a load of Arya! When she and the Hound rode out together once again from Winterfell last episode, they were walking parallel paths in their respective quests for vengeance, and they were pretty clear on what that meant: They had no intention of coming back. Where she had once traveled with him as a hostage, they now traveled as equals.

When Arya arrives at the Red Keep just as Cersei decides to flee, it feels like we've finally come full circle: The little girl who once played here with wooden swords is back with steel; the little girl who was once naive and powerless returns as a seasoned warrior, tutored in the world's cruelties and hard realities but ready to embrace the destiny she claimed for herself, no matter what the cost.

And yet when they finally reach the Keep and are both feet away from their respective targets, the Hound stops in his tracks to give Arya a Very Special Episode lecture about the dangers of revenge, as though she were still a little girl chasing cats, playing at violence and death with wooden swords. A few platitudes about not becoming your enemy later, he dismisses Arya and the epic personal quest she has relentlessly pursued for eight seasons with a "go home, girl."

In any world where Arya is still Arya, the person who days ago shivved the Night King, this sort of insulting bullshit would earn either a snarky but affectionate kiss-off or a firm reminder that she's not a child anymore—and that just like him, she has places to be and people to kill. Instead, she looks up at him with wide eyes as though she had never before considered that vengeance might be bad, and actually goes home.