“Dany, Arya, Sansa, Brienne, Cersei, Melisandre: These women survived to the series’ waning episodes, while would-be male rulers—Robert, Ned, Robb, Joffrey, Tywin, Viserys, Roose, Ramsay, Stannis—have fallen. Doing the Game of Thrones equivalent of dancing backward in heels (stepping over horse shit while sword fighting?) the women of GoT have become the most powerful and storied characters in Westeros—rivaled, at this point, only by the noble but witless Jon Snow. Cocks may, as Varys (RIP) remarked, be as important to ruling as ever, but the show is full of literally and figuratively castrated men—witless Jon, robotic Bran, foolish Tyrion—while women prompt the action: Their wills, their plans, even their deaths are driving the whole series. The show’s universal point of view character, the type of human the cameras cut to again and again to show the audience how terrifying and serious the stakes are for the common man—it’s a little girl.”
- Willa Paskin writing for Slate in “Daenerys Doesn’t Need to Be a Feminist Hero”