Real Headline: "Game of Thrones Keeps Killing Off Immigrant Populations, and It's a Problem"

W Magazine is so proud of its work here.

Blogging about TV. This is the media now -- blogging about TV, always, 24/7, 365, 3600 seconds of every hour.

The insipid rant here is provoked by fictitious Mongol-analogue cavalry -- "Dothraki" -- getting wiped out in the first moments of a fictitious fight against zombies. Who are, by the way, fictitious.

Narratively however, it also also literally represents the end of what was left of Daenerys' 100,000+ Dorthraki horde. Assumedly, sure, there's the woman and children and possibly a few rogue hoards of Dothraki still left in Essos, but lest the show pulls a trick of "Oh, we actually have some more Dothraki over here, you just couldn't see them! It was dark!" this may have been their sendoff on the show.

Actually, most Dothraki hate Dany and remained in Essos (the other continent). It was a distinct minority of Dothraki that followed her and became her "bloodriders."

So yes, this is a small fraction of the total Dothraki tribe.

This idiot doesn't even pay attention to the TV shows he blogs about.

It was an abrupt end to an entire group who we were introduced to in the very first episode, and a people we've spent more time with and understand better than many of the populations of the actual seven kingdoms (What, exactly, is even happening in, say, The Reach, lately?) And it points to a worrying problem.

Where once it seemed like Game of Thrones had something to say about the topic of immigration and the introduction of new populations to the staid old continent of Westeros, I'm no longer sure it's interested in such heady ideas anymore. It continues to burn up entire ethnicities like kindling in the fire of expensive battle scenes, revealing that it only introduced them in the first place to populate its numerous bloodbaths. Entire peoples with proud, interesting histories have been given the send off of a random red shirt cadet in Star Trek.

...

The show could still find some way to address these themes and questions that once seemed central to the themes of the show. Unfortunately, it's killed off so many immigrants and foreigners that it's left itself very little to work with.

posted by Ace of Spades at 07:58 PM

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