WARNING: Spoilers for Game of Thrones season 8, episode 4.
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dragon Jon rode for the first time just episodes earlier. As the final season of the hit HBO series, it was always expected that more major characters would die before the end, but there's something especially sad about losing another of these incredible creatures.
With the Cersei already has an advantage, and she only increases that advantage but successfully killing one of Daenerys two remaining dragons.
As Game of Thrones season 8 shows the Targaryen fleet traveling back to Dragonstone, the dragons are flying above the ships. Daenerys is riding Drogon and observing how Qyburn's deadly scorpion ballistas. With the element of surprise and Rhaegal's injuries making him slower and weaker, he sadly proves to be an easy target.
There is precedence already for these scorpions and their dragon-piercing bolts being able to down a dragon. In season 6, when Daenerys attacks the Lannister army, Bronn manages to hit Drogon, and while it isn't a kill shot, it does force him to land. Rhaegal also isn't the first dragon to be killed by a scorpion's bolt. Back during the time of Aegon the Conqueror, his sister, Rhaenys' dragon, Meraxes is killed by a bolt to the eye, crashing and killing Rhaenys in the process. The only part of Rhaegal's death that's a little hard to believe is how easily Euron gets the drop on Daenerys and her dragons. Given her vantage point up in the sky, Daenerys should have seen the Greyjoy fleet approaching, but then, perhaps she's too focused on Rhaegal to notice.
Besides Rhaegal proving to be a slow moving, easy to hit target, the decision that another dragon dies clearly has important plot implications. The playing field between Cersei's armies and Daenerys' has been leveled, if not tipped in Cersei's favor. That helps to create doubt over whether or not Game of Thrones' "heroes" will be able to defeat her. Then again, the one-two punch of losing another of her children followed by her best friend, no other option.
Additionally, the death of Rhaegal signals the end for the dragons. With only one dragon left alive there is almost no chance of continuing the species. And while, yes, both Rhaegal and Drogon are male, deaths of Melisandre and Beric Dondarrion are all signs that magic will not be returning to Westeros and that the age of such myths and legends is truly ending.
And yet, while it makes both narrative and thematic sense for Rhaegal to die, leaving Drogon as the last living dragon, it doesn't make it any easier to accept. The Viserion's death and subsequent evil resurrection very hard, so it's almost certain Rhaegal's will be met with a similar outpouring of grief. Needless to say, Drogon better watch his back.
Game of Thrones season 8 continues next Sunday, May 12 at 9:00pm on HBO.