Game of Thrones‘ final chapter came to a close last May with a seven-episode final season that saw Arya Stark kill the Night King, Sansa become Queen of the North, and Jon Snow betray Daenerys Targaryen with a dagger to the heart. While the series finale left many people disappointed, fans had nearly 10 months to accept what can’t be undone as the cast moved on to other projects. But in a recent interview, Emilia Clarke had some thoughts about Daenerys’s death and the negative social media outrage the finale spawned.
Clarke admitted that it was hard to ignore how fans felt about the controversial ending. “When the show did end, it was like coming out of a bunker. Everything felt really strange,” she explained to the Sunday Times. “Then obviously for it to have the backlash it did…I knew how I felt when I first read it, and I tried, at every turn, not to consider too much what other people might say, but I did always consider what the fans might think—because we did it for them, and they were the ones who made us successful, so…it’s just polite, isn’t it?”
Daenerys, played by Clarke, was killed by her lover/nephew Jon Snow after she destroyed King’s Landing—an ending Clarke wasn’t entirely satisfied with. She said she “felt for” Daenerys and was especially “annoyed” at how Jon Snow got away scot free and “didn’t have to deal with something? He got away with murder—literally.”
The actress is no stranger to big franchises, having starred in Game of Thrones and Star Wars. But if Clarke has her way, she’ll see herself as queen in another franchise: Marvel. “I want to do something absolutely stupid and silly, like, you know, The Avengers or whatever,” she said. “Something where I got to have a giggle with mates.”