Small Council: What did you think of Game of Thrones Season 6?

Now that Game of Thrones Season 6 is over and done with, the writers at Winter is Coming take a look back and discuss what worked and what didn’t. Tell us what you think, and vote in our poll!

DAN: This was a good year. That’s the short of it. Right out of the gate, there was a propulsive quality to this season that was missing from swaths of Game of Thrones Season 5, and the show mostly kept up the excitement without too many lapses of logic.

Every critic knows that it’s more fun to criticize something than to praise it, but before I get to that, let me run down what I thought worked in Game of Thrones Season 6.

• It did the obvious thing without being boring. The biggest criticism of Season 6 was probably that it was predictable, and in some respects, I can sympathize. For example, we all knew that Jon would be resurrected and that Daenerys would somehow end her captivity with the Dothraki. But the show still pulled these things off in a way that was moving, intriguing, and entertaining. It it can do that, predictability doesn’t matter.
• It did the unexpected thing while being thrilling. The above being said, the best parts of the season were the ones I didn’t see coming. I expected, for example, that Cersei would act out against the High Sparrow, but I didn’t think she would swing that wide. And then there were the revelations about Hodor’s past in “The Door”—that was a barnburner of a sequence that no one saw coming, and gave the show a surge of interest in the middle of the season, where it tends to lag.
• The reeducation of Sansa Stark. To me, Sansa was the season’s MVP. All of the characters (the ones still alive, anyway) have changed over the course of the series, but it was particularly satisfying to watch her changes bear fruit, particularly after seeing how hard-won they’d been. Sansa’s arc also contributed to a feminist thread that was weaved throughout the season, and I don’t think it can be boiled down to “girl power rulz.” I think we’re seeing portraits of various women with power, and like the male leaders that preceded them, none are unblemished. You’ve got Daenerys’ well-intentioned militarism, Sansa’s cynical scheming, Arya’s righteous bloodlust, Cersei’s heedless (like, really heedless) ambition, and more. Game of Thrones has long subverted fantasy tropes, and centering a narrative about war around women, who are so often sidelined in these stories, is in keeping with that.
• The show made Bran interesting. I’d given up hope of that happening in Season 3. His trips into the past added something colorful and new to the fabric of the show, and the show was right to hold these flashback-type sequences off until Season 6—they were sweeter for the waiting. I looked forward to Bran’s scenes every week.
• And obviously those last two episodes were amazing. I mean, c’mon.

At the same time, I’m not going to pretend like the season didn’t have problems. The little logistical inconsistencies that have plagued the show of late were still with us (random example: if the Boltons hold Moat Cailin, and Littlefinger was camping his troops at Moat Cailin, how did Ramsay not know they were there?), and the season lagged around Episodes 6-8. Both “Blood of My Blood” and “The Broken Man” were setup episodes, which would be fine if the payoff was worth it. But then came “No One,” which resolved Arya’s two-year-long sojourn in Braavos in a muddled, messy fashion. (Arya’s swiftly healing gut wound is the “20 good men” of Season 6.) Sure, the Riverrun plot was resolved well, but we’d only been following that one for a couple of weeks, not a couple of years. It was a rough patch.

But it pays to end on a good note, and Game of Thrones Season 6 ended on two very good notes. “Battle of the Bastards” and “The Winds of Winter” were both high watermarks for the series, and got me incredibly excited to see what’s coming next. I know fans are upset that we’re not getting as many episodes next year, but if that schedule allows Benioff and Weiss to make every hour as good as it can possibly be, it may be worth it.

KATIE: I didn’t at all mind the predictability of the season, especially when we saw so many of our heroes coming out on top for once. The big takeaway for me this year is that the bad guys can’t and don’t always win, and that the victims become survivors in really triumphant ways. As Dan pointed out, Sansa Stark was the hallmark of that in Season 6—she was finally able to utilize what she’s learned through the years, and how those lessons are tantamount to her survival and success. Not only did we see Sansa really play the hand that was dealt her, but the end of the season also set her up for further development and victory—and maybe even another kill on the way (ahem, Littlefinger; what better way for him to go?). Where is Sophie Turner’s Emmy, by the way? Because it should be in her hands.

I’ve always thought the women really stole the show, and this year focused on that in a more obvious way than in years past. All across the board, the women were showcased in the light that suits them best: Brienne’s loyalty, Sansa’s resilience, Daenerys’ dips between triumph and failure and triumph again, Arya’s self-discovery, Yara’s leadership, Cersei’s descent into madness, Margaery’s cleverness and survival instinct, and even Ellaria’s thirst for vengeance ended up well-played, despite what the Dornish plot lacks. This is what I’m here for, and the show delivered.

For all the technical issues in Season 6, for me those didn’t sully the emotional resonance of the big moments that were Sansa and Jon’s reunion, Bran and Meera’s escape from the wights, Hodor’s death, Arya’s departure from the House of Black and White, the annihilation of the Sept of Baelor, Tommen’s suicide, the entirety of “Battle of the Bastards”… Look, I could go on all day. I hardly remember the dull points within the overarching success.

I loved this season, the way it layered on to the characters left standing, and what it lent to their respective journeys as well as the overall path to the ever-approaching endgame. I’ve never been more excited for the off-season to end; the showrunners can scrimp on quantity all they like if what we have to look forward to bears the same emotional weight as Season 6.

ANI: One of the more striking reviews I read this season was about how Game of Thrones—after five seasons of teaching us to expect them not to conform to fantasy norms—spent the entirety of Season 6 undoing that. It hit upon why this season’s sudden left turn into wish fulfillment—from Jon’s resurrection to the Stark reunion to Ramsay’s death to Arya’s final moments with Walder Frey—sat oddly with fans. After all, for heaven’s sake, after taking everything away from us—from our original hero, Ned Stark, to last season’s darkest timeline—the show is finally giving us what we want. These are no red weddings to break our hearts. Ramsay was eaten by dogs, and Olenna told every last Sand Snake to shut their mouths, as karma and the gods intended. So why are we uncomfortable?

We’re uncomfortable because, once again, the show is pulling the rug out from under our expectations. For five years, the show took every fantasy trope we knew, from “the hero never dies” to “good things come to those who are virtuous and good of heart” and used them against us. When Jon died last season, it seemed to be pulling the same trick it had twice before, once with Ned and again with Robb and Catelyn. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, goddammit Game of Thrones, what even, how did you do that?

But after three times, they can’t keep pulling the same trick—the audience will get tired of it. So this season they did the thing no one would have excepted—they went back to the traditional fantasy tropes they taught us they would never use. No wonder it was the most-watched season ever.

COREY: Before Razor blows up our nicely formatted paragraphs with his bullet points (he’s the Cersei of our Small Council,) I just have to say that this was likely my second favorite season so far, coming in just behind Season 4. Many of the small moments became favorites, especially the interactions between Jon and Sansa. Both their initial reunion and their last conversation on the battlements of Winterfell reminded us why we care so much about this series: family. Jon had every reason to be angry with Sansa after the latter failed to mention she had a secret army in her cloak pocket, and yet he is simply happy to be safe, and happy to have at least one member of his family alive and well.

The final two episodes were easily the best back-to-back hours of the series. Despite all the death that occurred throughout the season, and in “The Winds of Winter” in particular, the season felt like a happy one. Yes, we lost some characters we loved, but the show made up for it by giving us things we’d wanted for a long time. Dany was FINALLY on her way to Westeros, and the Starks were back in Winterfell where they belonged. And if you needed any more reasons as to why Peter Dinklage is one of the best actors on the planet, think about that incredible scene in “Home” when he unchained the dragons. Dinklage was literally acting opposite a ball on a stick in that scene, and still managed to give us chills.

All that said, I was not a fan of how the aftermath of Jon’s resurrection was handled, as we discussed on our podcast Take The Black (Season 6 review forthcoming). I felt as if it was sort of glossed over. I mean, we got more angst and questions out of fellow resurrectee Beric Dondarrion way back in Season 3 than we ever got out of Jon. I felt the producers missed a huge opportunity by not having Sansa and Jon discuss how he felt about being brought back to life, and passed over a chance to create a legitimate reason for tension between the Stark siblings, rather than the asinine crap they came up with involving Littlefinger. Would you not have some sort of doubts about your brother if he was brought back to life by some fire-obsessed priestess?

My other major problem came with the pacing of the season. It did feel at times that we were jumping from one big moment to the next with little time to get adjusted to what just happened. Major characters were knocked off swiftly and with little followup, and I wasn’t too happy with that. The entire Riverrun plot, while good in and of itself, appeared borne out of the need to get Jaime out of the capital while his sister went full-on Mad King. I feel that if Seasons 5 and 6 would have been merged into one well-paced season, we all might be talking about the best season of television in a long, long time.

Ani had a good point that Season 6 felt a lot like fan service, and that we were all caught a little off guard by that. We are conditioned to believe our heroes will all perish, and while some of them did, it did feel as if producers were giving us something to smile about, and it’s hard to complain too much about that.

RAZOR: From Episode 601, “The Red Woman,” to Episode 610, “The Winds of Winter,” Game of Thrones Season 6 takes its place as my second-favorite season. The only season I’d put above it is Season 1, for the simple fact that Thrones was new then, and the story was more focused on the actors rather than big-budget battles or CGI dragons.

Being the House Stark loyalist that I am, I loved seeing the reemergence of this once-great house. I’m glad the show didn’t wait half a season to bring Jon Snow back to life, and I’m glad it hanged his murderers, because I was worried Jon was going to pardon them and allow them to remain in the Night’s Watch.

The Stark reunion was amazing. Jon and Sansa’s hug was six seasons in the making, and it was worth the wait. I’m also extremely pleased that Brienne was able to fulfill her oath to both Lady Catelyn and Jaime Lannister by saving Sansa from the Bolton men in the premiere. IN terms of character growth, Sansa took a rather large step this season. Comparing the spoiled brat who wanted to give King Joffrey golden haired babies in Season 1 to the shrewd and calculating Lady of Winterfell in Season 6 is a jaw-dropping turnaround.

The redemption of Theon was also quite nice; he went from something lower than one of Ramsay’s dogs to being an adviser to Sansa and then having the metaphorical stones (har har) to bow out of the running for King of the Iron Islands just so he could be an adviser to his sister. One of my favorite moments from the season was when Theon, standing firm next to Yara, looked up at the Greyjoy flag as the wind caught it, while the Targaryen Armada sailed west.

Sam visited his home, stole his a-hole of a father’s Valyrian steel sword, and took Gilly and baby Sam to Oldtown, where he quickly abandoned the only girl that would ever have him for a bunch of books. But seriously, it was quite neat to see the Hightower standing in Oldtown, and it was even neater to see the great library of the Citadel, where we caught a brief glimpse of the astrolabe from the Game of Thrones intro.

We lost quite a few familiar characters this season, some beloved, and others not so much:

• Doran Martell
• Areo Hotah
• Trystane Martell
• Myrcella Baratheon (confirmed from Season 5)
• Balon Greyjoy
• Roose Bolton
• Fat Walda
• Baby Bolton (rightful heir to the Dreadfort)
• Shaggydog
• Osha
• Alliser Thorne
• Olly
• Khal Moro
• The Three-Eyed Raven
• Leaf
• Summer
• Hodor
• The Waif
• Brynden “the Blackfish” Tully
• Rickon Stark
• Wun Wun
• Ramsay Bolton
• Black Walder Rivers
• Lame Lothar Frey
• Lord Walder Frey
• Margaery Tyrell
• Loras Tyrell
• Mace Tyrell
• Lancel Lannister
• Kevan Lannister
• Grand Maester Pycelle
• The High Sparrow
• King Tommen Baratheon
• Ser Pounce (not yet confirmed but we do have our little birds scouring King’s Landing looking for him, his sister Lady Whiskers, and his younger brother, Boots…we will keep you posted).

Then we had what in my mind was the absolute best battle in the history of the series: the Battle of the Bastards. If Kit Harington is not given an Emmy nod for his acting here, then there’s something seriously wrong with that award show. I will never forget the image of Jon Snow standing after being thrown from his horse, realizing that all hope was lost, unbuckling his sword-belt, stepping into fighting position, and waiting for Bolton cavalry charge.

Cersei took her final form this season by burying all her children (“Gold their shrouds”) and donning her black leather armor and silver epaulettes. She went to war with everyone who wasn’t her—not even House Lannister, mind your, just her. In the end, I can’t imagine having herself crowned Queen of the Seven Kingdoms will go over too well with Jaime, as he killed the last ruler who even threatened to use wildfire on the city. And thanks to his dear sister, Jaime’s only remaining son is dead and he didn’t get to say goodbye, as she had Tommen cremated and scattered amongst the smoldering remains of the Great Sept of Baelor.

Finally, in Season 6, Dany’s dragons were more impressive than ever. Drogon got huge, and is totally a big ole pussycat where Dany is concerned. And hey, Viserion and Rhaegal are free (thanks to some soothing words and unshackling by Tyrion, and I guess tunneling out the back way?) and they seem to like hanging with their brother and torching their mother’s enemies. Good thing dragons don’t seem to hold grudges, or Dany might have to put that whole immunity to fire theory to the test again…and again. I loved Season 6, and I pray to the old gods that Season 7 is just as exciting. Lord of Light knows, we’ll have to wait long enough for it to get here.