And the best death scene of Game of Thrones Season 5 is…

…the death of Jon Snow.

Unlike with our Best Action Scene poll, the results of this poll were a little more closely matched. In the end, Jon Snow’s death by mutiny was probably too big to fail, but Arya’s brutal killing of Meryn Trant and Shireen’s ritual sacrifice both put up good fights.

[polldaddy poll=8979851]

Interestingly, although it came out on top, Jon’s death scene took a bit of a beating in the comments, with a couple of people describing it as “mediocre” or calling out the writing and directing for being subpar. In the end, though, it proved too huge to ignore. As WiC’s Ani Bundel put it when discussing the massive Twitter freakout following the final moments of “Mother’s Mercy”:

"Really? Three times? The show really fooled you all three times? Well damn done, show. There’s no death this season that can beat that."

The death of Jon Snow, if that’s indeed what it is, represents another one of the elaborate bait-and-switches Game of Thrones has become famous for. In Season 1, those viewers who had never read the books figured that Ned Stark, the stoic hero-type, would be the protagonist of the series, only to be blindsided by his death in “Baelor.” They quickly shifted their allegiance to Robb Stark, Ned’s morally upright son, only to be shocked a second time when he was killed off in “The Rains of Castemere.” For the show to surprise them all again by killing Jon Snow is definitely an impressive feat of storytelling.

Next up: Best Line, for which there are quite a few contenders. People sure do talk a lot on this show.

Next: Jack Gleeson turned down roles in Hollywood movies to open his own theater company