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If you think that Daenerys has far too many people in her Dothraki and Unsullied army, you aren’t alone. Many people are wondering the same thing, since the Dothraki seemed to be wiped out mostly in the Battle of Winterfell (during “The Long Night” episode.)
After “The Long Night,” during the Inside the Episode video, the showrunners said that we had basically seen the end of the Dothraki. We saw them running with weapons ablaze into the darkness to fight the White Walkers and only a few returned. Yes, it appeared that they were wiped out and the showrunners seemed to confirm it in their behind-the-scenes comments.
Here’s proof:
“The end of the Dothraki essentially”
Like this was said two episodes ago
The Unsullied also experienced a huge depletion of manpower, with many killed in the battle too.
@KalebaRoberts @JonxDanyy Apparently…but the writer himself said that was the end of them… “What they see is just the end of the Dothraki essentially,” co-creator David Benioff said in a behind-the-scenes video for the episode.
Hmmm…
So what happened?
It’s not really clear. At first glance, it seems that maybe D&D kind of forgot that most of them were killed. Her numbers should be depleted. It just seems like they spawned. I don’t know, maybe Dany brought them back to life like the Night King resurrects the dead.
If you’re confused, you’re not alone.
“What they see is the end of the Dothraki essentially.” D&D.
I’m sorry, but that’s a shit ton of Dothraki my friends. lol
David B in BTS for EP.3. :“Jon and Dany are basically witnessing the end of the Dothraki”. 2 episodes later : half of the Dothraki are miraculously resurrected and join the fight for KL. They “kind of forgot” that they filmed EP.3 after EP.5! WTF? #gameofthrones @GameOfThrones
A viewer on Reddit commented, “At this point I’m convinced we’re in Hot Pie’s hallucination.”
However, some fans think it’s not as big of a deal as we might believe. On a spoiler-heavy subreddit, u/seyer530 wrote: “I count about 34 rows of unsullied with about 40 soldiers each row. Just in this picture. That’s 1,360. Significantly less than the 8K fully trained and 2K not fully trained unsullied she started with.” (Some disagreed and said there were more than 40 soldiers per row and at least 4,000 in the photo.)
So it seems that yes, her forces are depleted from after the Battle of Winterfell. But another viewer pointed out that we only saw Grey Worm and a small squad behind the gates after they were swarmed by White Walkers, so it’s still confusing. Maybe some of the Dothraki weren’t able to return until after the battle with the wights was over. That seems plausible. But would the forces really be this big after we saw what was essentially the end of the Dothraki?
Some have surmised that Daenerys is getting reinforcements, maybe from Daario. Others said we may be underestimating the number of Unsullied that she started with. Some said that she had nearly 5,000 in training and theoretically could have had 13,000 total, so the number we see here would still account for losing the majority of her Unsullied army. Redditor thosearecoolbeans wrote: “Dany had nearly 13,000 Unsullied troops at the start of her campaign. That looks like barely one or two thousand in the promo photo. People need to stop complaining about this … there are way worse problems with the show.”
So in conclusion, whether you think this is a continuity error or not is really up to you, the viewer. There are arguments for and against her armies legitimately being the size we’re seeing at this point, and still accounting for her losing the majority of her armies.