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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47120
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47120
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

As Pat Rothfuss said on Writing Excuses, there are things that can happen to characters that are "_worse_ than death". The "existential threats", especially because they are such a cliché, are also just one "_type_" of threat. A character losing a loved one, or their honour or dignity, or their sanity--these are not lesser stakes to character death.

So, a really interesting way to think about this is not about raising _or_ lowering the stakes, it is about shifting them. The "middle" of the story might have a lot of adventure or combat, and the stakes are about survival, but the ending _shifts_ the emphasis so the stakes are more _meaningful_: will justice be done? will the hero come to understand herself? will the romance last forever?

GoT, that you use in your example, I think illustrates this explanation well. I never felt the Night King was a one-dimensional character, because I didn't really experience the Night King as a character at all: that part of the story was more of a "man-vs-nature" struggle to my reading of it. The existential threat made the relationships between the characters all the more poignant--as they're failing to demonstrate the most basic human decency, they not only harm eachother here and now, but also risk the fate of the world. But the real drama was always between the characters, and the Night King was the backdrop. So, it was not a question of lower stakes once the Night King was out of the way: it was all about resolving the human relationships. We save the world from total destruction, but then we get one more act in which to see what this world will be like--will the nastiest humans rule it? And, in this context, what happened with Daenerys also makes sense to me: the "stakes" are about whether the worst characters get all the power in the end, and, oh, look, the story convinced us to root for Daenerys, but, actually, she could end up being the worst ruler of all (at least, in the unhinged state she reached by the end--even if her descent into that state was not handled as well as we might wish).

Finally, talking about series of stories, again I think this way to look at stakes offers interesting potential. If you're doing adventure, action, etc, there will always be physical danger, so every episode is likely to have stakes involving survival. But in one episode, it may be the romance that is at stake as far as character development is concerned, whereas in another it could be justice, and in a third it could be the character knowing herself.

Original score: 5