Game of Thrones season 8: What’s shocked Emilia Clarke so much?

At some point, you’d think the woman who plays the Mother of Dragons would not be surprised by Game of Thrones season 8, but apparently that’s not so.

Emilia Clarke has had, at this point in time, seven seasons of completely bonkers stuff to act her way through. From eating a stallion’s heart in season 1 all the way to riding a dragon into battle with two other dragons flanking her to fight an undead ice zombie in season 7, Daenerys Targaryen has seen and done some things in Game of Thrones.

Apparently, season 8 has some real stuff, though, because her reaction to reading the scripts left her wandering outside for three hours in “some kind of a daze.” That’s per our sister site Winter is Coming, quoting Access Hollywood from an interview Clarke gave at the Golden Globes. She’s not super specific about whether or not she was driving, but we almost hope she wasn’t, just because distracted driving is, you know, not safe.

Naturally, the question is: What on earth blew Emilia Clarke’s mind for three-plus hours?

We have no clue, and we don’t pretend to have much more than the biggest spoilers of season 8, the ones we’ve already discussed about King’s Landing. Is it possible that the show kills off some major, been-there-since-the-beginning characters in a dramatic way? Is Daenerys herself safe? Will everyone just die and leave the Night King ruling over all and looking towards Essos or even Sothoryos? (Now that would be the kind of ending that would leave the Internet completely on fire, and yes, that metaphor is absolutely intentional.)

Ultimately, though, it’s possible that it just settled in for her that the show was really, truly ending. Sophie Turner has called the read-through “emotional” at the bare minimum. But Clarke seems to be hinting at more than just that feeling of saying good-bye.

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Whatever it is, it’s time to keep a close eye on Clarke. As WiC points out, she didn’t give anything huge away — but we’d like to argue that her reaction to season 8 alone is a piece of evidence that suggests whatever we’re going to see in 2019 will possibly leave us in a similar state, just stretched out over six weeks or so.