Yesterday’s Game of Thrones episode was filled with so much drama and gore you may have missed a crucial scene, where one character unsuccessfully attempt to poison Daenerys. Yep. Before meeting his untimely death at the hands of Dany and Drogon, Varys attempted to murder the Mad Queen by poisoning her food.
That’s what fans are theorising on Twitter, at least. Their main evidence is an exchange Varys had with a girl working in the kitchen named Martha.
Read the exchange carefully:
Varys: Nothing? Martha: She won’t eat.
Varys: We’ll try again at supper.
Martha: I think they’re watching me.
Varys: Who?
Martha: Her soldiers.
Varys: Of course they are. That’s their job. What have I told you, Martha?
Martha: The bigger the risk, the bigger reward.
Varys: Go on. They’ll be missing you in the kitchen.
Varys’s attempt to poison Daenerys makes his execution pretty justifiable—she had promised in Season Seven to burn him to death if he attempted to betray her, after all. It also makes Dany’s too-rapid descent into Mad Queen status and city burning feel a little more natural. On top of losing her dragon and her best friend and finding out that her lover was actually her nephew and potential rival, one of her closest advisors was trying to have her killed. But the fact that she went on to torch King’s Landing also suggests that it probably would have worked out for the greater good if Varys’s poisoning plan had worked.
“I hope I deserve this, truly I do,” Varys said moments before his execution for treason. “I hope I’m wrong.” He wasn’t.
It’s clear that this young girl was stressed about delivering food to the Queen, which she wouldn’t be presumably if it was normal food. dd in Varys’ ominous mantra, “the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward”, and it certainly sounds like he was up to something diabolical.
Bring on the finale.
WATCH: ‘Game of Thrones’ Finale Episode Trailer.
This article originally appeared on marie claire
