The Unsullied, the Dothraki, and the Problem With Game of Thrones’ Armies

One of the most fascinating aspects of Game of Thrones’ universe is the incredible diversity of military forces. You have the traditional knights and armies of Westeros, but you also have forces that come from completely different cultures with completely different approaches to warfare. The Unsullied are eunuch slave soldiers trained from birth in the ways of war. The Dothraki are nomadic horse warriors who scorn both walls and formal military structures. These forces represent different worldviews, different values, and different ways of organizing society. They should have been endlessly fascinating from a narrative and thematic perspective.

The problem is that Game of Thrones basically squandered its opportunity to really explore these armies in meaningful ways. The show brought these forces into Westeros, but then largely reduced them to spectacle and numbers rather than truly examining what their presence would mean for the societies they were entering. More frustratingly, in later seasons, the show seemed almost careless about how it used these armies, in ways that contradicted everything we’d been told about what they were and how they functioned.

The Unsullied: From Terrifying Force to Cannon Fodder

When we first encounter the Unsullied, they’re presented as something genuinely frightening and unique. These are soldiers who were trained from childhood to be perfectly obedient, emotionless killing machines. They’re disciplined in a way that normal soldiers aren’t. They’re worth their weight in gold because they’re the most reliable, most skilled warriors money can buy. Daenerys liberates them by basically telling them they can be free, and her gaining their allegiance becomes one of her most significant power moves.

For a while, the Unsullied actually function narratively as this incredible force. They’re professional soldiers in a world of nobles playing at war. They don’t have the arrogance of knights or the randomness of common soldiers—they’re trained, disciplined, effective. But here’s the problem: as the show goes on, the Unsullied become less and less distinctive. They’re still called the Unsullied, and they’re still supposed to be this elite, professional force, but they’re increasingly just… an army.

When they show up in the final season, particularly in the Battle of the Bastards and the assault on the final episodes, they’ve become indistinguishable from any other army. They die in the same ways, in the same numbers, taking the same losses as any other force. The thing that made them special—their discipline, their training, their professional approach to warfare—doesn’t really seem to matter anymore. They’re just a number on the board, a force that’s useful because they exist and can be deployed.

More frustratingly, by the final season, the Unsullied go from being Daenerys’s most reliable, most loyal force to being weirdly vulnerable to just about everything. Remember how they’re supposed to be incredibly skilled soldiers? In the final season, they’re getting destroyed by soldiers who have never trained a day in their lives. The show seemed to forget what the Unsullied actually were and just treated them as casualties who could be killed in large numbers to show that battles were serious.

The Dothraki: Noble Savages to Mindless Cavalry Charge

The Dothraki are even more problematic, honestly, because the show had to navigate some serious stereotypes and tropes about “noble savages” and “barbaric horse warriors.” The Dothraki have their own culture, their own values, their own way of organizing society. They scorn walls and buildings and formal military structures. They’re warriors, yes, but they’re warriors in a way that’s fundamentally different from the ways of Westeros.

When Daenerys gains the allegiance of the Dothraki, it’s supposed to be a major deal. These are warriors who answer to no one, who reject the formal structures of Westeros. Daenerys becoming their leader is supposed to represent something significant about her ability to inspire loyalty and respect across cultures. But as the show goes on, the Dothraki become increasingly one-dimensional. They’re shown primarily in scenes where they’re either committing atrocities or dying in large numbers.

The final season’s treatment of the Dothraki is basically unforgivable from a character standpoint. In the penultimate episode, they charge directly into darkness and get absolutely slaughtered by something they can’t even see. The Dothraki, who are supposed to be tactical and observant warriors, charge blindly into an enemy force. It’s supposed to show how overwhelming the Night King’s army is, but instead it shows the Dothraki as stupid and expendable. Everything we knew about them—their skill as warriors, their tactical flexibility, their refusal to be bound by traditional rules of warfare—gets thrown out in favor of a moment of spectacle.

Even more frustratingly, the show never really seems to grapple with what it means to have these non-Westerosi forces in Westeros. The cultures clash occasionally, but usually just for a scene or two before things move on. The Dothraki don’t fundamentally change how warfare in Westeros works because the show doesn’t want to spend time exploring that. It’s easier to just have them be occasional additions to Daenerys’s army rather than revolutionary forces that would upend how Westerosi knights fight.

The Thematic Failure

Here’s what really bothers me about how the show handled these armies: they represented an opportunity to explore how different cultures and different values intersect. The Unsullied are the ultimate product of oppression and control, yet they’re portrayed as heroic once they’re fighting for Daenerys. The Dothraki are valorized as warriors but shown as brutal and unsuitable for civilized society. These are actually interesting tensions to explore, but the show mostly ignored them in favor of just having cool-looking armies appear in battles.

The show repeatedly showed that it understood these forces were supposed to be distinctive. It spent time in earlier seasons establishing what the Unsullied were and what the Dothraki were. But as the show went on and seemed increasingly focused on just getting through the plot, these armies became less like distinct cultures and more like interchangeable military units. They served whatever narrative purpose the show needed in that moment, then went back to being mostly absent.

Think about how much interesting material there could have been: the trauma of the Unsullied, formerly slaves, learning to function as free soldiers. The culture clash between Dothraki raiding culture and Westerosi concepts of honor and nobility. The way these different forces would approach siege warfare, or leadership, or concepts of loyalty. The show barely touched any of this. The Unsullied became loyal because Daenerys freed them, and that was largely it. The Dothraki followed Daenerys because she impressed them, and they mostly just appeared when the show wanted an action scene.

Spectacle Over Substance

The real issue is that the show increasingly used these armies as spectacle rather than as meaningful military and cultural forces. They’re cool to watch! Dragons burning Dothraki? Unsullied soldiers moving in formation? These are visually impressive. But visual impressiveness doesn’t substitute for character work and cultural exploration.

By the final season, the show was deploying its armies like a video game. You have X number of Unsullied, Y number of Dothraki, some dragons, and you’re going to use them to solve military problems. The show calculated how many soldiers would make Daenerys seem powerful, and that number got deployed as needed. But there’s no consideration for what these soldiers actually are, what their presence means, or what their cultural values would actually be in these situations.

The show also increasingly ignored the logistical realities of these armies. The Dothraki are nomadic warriors—what are they doing sitting around castles? The Unsullied are highly trained soldiers—why would they be used in ways that contradict their entire identity? The show wanted to have these cool armies available, but didn’t want to do the work of actually integrating them into the narrative in ways that made sense.

What Could Have Been

The best version of Game of Thrones would have gone deeper with these forces. It would have explored what it means to transplant soldiers from one culture into a completely different context. It would have shown how the Unsullied, literally trained to follow orders, would develop their own sense of agency and identity. It would have shown how the Dothraki would approach Westerosi warfare and culture and what conflicts that would create.

The story of Daenerys bringing these forces to Westeros could have been as much about cultural collision and transformation as it was about her claiming her throne. The Unsullied and Dothraki could have been not just military assets, but representatives of a different way of being in the world. Their victories and defeats could have meant something beyond just numbers on a battlefield.

Instead, the show essentially decided that having established these distinct military cultures, it could just treat them as interchangeable units whenever it needed a battle scene. That’s a failure of imagination and character work. It’s one of the show’s clearest examples of not following through on the promise of its own world-building.

The Broader Problem

The problem with Game of Thrones’ armies in later seasons is really part of a broader problem with how the show handled its world-building. The show spent early seasons establishing rules, cultures, and systems. Then, in later seasons, it increasingly seemed to ignore those rules in favor of whatever would move the plot forward most dramatically. The Unsullied and Dothraki are just the most visible example of this. They’re unique, distinctive forces that the show promised us would be important, and then the show basically decided they didn’t have to think too hard about how to use them.

Both of these armies deserved better. They deserved to be treated as more than just visual spectacle and plot conveniences. They deserved to actually function as distinct military and cultural forces within the world. And the show deserved to take the time to explore what their presence in Westeros would actually mean for a society that had never encountered anything like them before. Instead, we got cool-looking scenes of dragons and cavalry charges, and not much else. That’s not a tragedy on the level of some of the show’s other failures, but it’s a missed opportunity all the same.