Welcome to the Small Council. For the next several weeks, we’ll be walking back through Game of Thrones Season 6 and discussing what we think were the best, worst, and most memorable things from the year. First up: what was the most dramatic moment of Season 6? What made us cry, gasp, pump our fists in the air, and otherwise act the fool in our living rooms? This is a wide category, so let’s dive in. Tell us what you think in the comments and vote in our poll!
DAN: When making the poll for this roundtable, I got to reflect on just how many wonderfully dramatic moments the producers crammed into Game of Thrones Season 6. It was a jam-packed year. Picking a favorite is tough, but if I had to name one moment the “most dramatic,” it would be the revelations about Hodor’s origins in “The Door.”
This sequence worked on a ton of levels. Obviously, it was gorgeously shot and edited, but you could say that of any number of sequences from Season 6. It felt grand and sweeping, in part because it deals so directly with the White Walkers. We’re six seasons in to this story now, and I think that showrunners with less patience would have dipped into the White Walker well more often by this point. By limiting their appearances, the producers have ensured that whenever the White Walkers show up, they real like a genuine threat. That happened here. I was truly scared for Bran, Hodor, Meera, and Summer when the Night King came down on the Three-Eyed Raven’s cave.
And my fears were justified. The show raised the stakes by killing Summer, then the Three-Eyed Raven, then Leaf, and finally Hodor, a character we didn’t know how much we loved until we lost him. I’ve heard it said that Season 6 chickened out this year when it came to killing major characters, but that underestimates the value of someone like Hodor. He was a steady, dependable presence we always took for granted would be there. And then he wasn’t, and we were devastated.
I also loved the sci-fi twist the show put on the character’s final moments. In Season 1, I never would have guessed the Game of Thrones would bring in time travel—the narrative is complicated enough without wading into those murky waters. But this moment landed. It made sense given what we’d learned, and upended everything we thought we knew about Hodor. In his final moments, we come to understand Hodor for the first time, and then the show took him away. It was potent, powerful TV.
Even though I gave Hodor’s final scene top honors, how could I argue against someone who was most affected by Jon’s resurrection, or his reunion with Sansa, or Cersei pyromaniacal killing spree? Season 6 was some good watching.
RICHARD: Wow. That’s a tough one due to the excess of perfectly executed, highly dramatic moments delivered by Game of Thrones Season 6. Jon’s sponge-bath resurrection, Hodor’s death as a heroic doorstop, Sapochnik-constructed battles, and the dog chow death of Ramsay Bolton all come to mind. I’m trying to weigh how emotionally gripped I was by various scenes and sequences this season and I have to go with the one lingering in the deepest corners of my heart: the first 20 minutes of “The Winds of Winter.” Granted, this sequence is fresh in my mind, but I think the fabulously edited and scored moments leading up to the destruction of the Sept of Baelor offered the most intense drama I felt during the season.
Funny—I’m an action guy and I would have assumed that my first choice might be a fist-pumping adrenaline rush like the insane war sequence from “Battle of the Bastards,” or the swordfight under the Tower of Joy in “Oathbreaker.” But it was the soft, quiet build-up of tension hurtling towards Cersei’s final confrontation with the High Sparrow (and perhaps the entire world) that hooked me the hardest. It was perfect cinema, beautifully shot and paced, and pure Game of Thrones in its swirling mix of gray, flawed characters maneuvering for survival, of clashing motivations and desperations and the show’s always brutal, hypnotic dance with death. The annihilation of the Sept itself was almost anticlimactic after a sequence like this. Magnificent.
KATIE: There was so much at stake this year that I’m often confounded by the number of people I encounter who claim Season 6 was “uneventful.” Where, exactly, this lack of action and intrigue is, I can’t say, because I was on the edge of my seat throughout. There has been so much to pick through and analyze that I’ve been neck-deep in dissection and speculation, but nothing has so caught my interest like Sansa’s confrontation with Littlefinger in “The Door.” It’s not the most dramatic of the dramatic scenes, but it’s certainly one of my favorites, and one that stands out among a sea of options. While it lacks the haunting allure of the Sept of Baelor’s final moments, the thrill of battle, or the shocking deaths of beloved characters, it has a quiet intensity about it that makes for a powerful few minutes.
Sophie Turner conveys pain, heartache, and righteous anger all at once; it’s a breaking point for Sansa, and yet she doesn’t break. It’s a real game-changer for her to be so honest in the face of someone who could benefit her—she’s through with lies and betrayal, done with being a pawn in someone else’s quest for power, and she frees herself from Littlefinger’s hold. There’re a lot of rumors flying regarding Sansa’s continued dependence on the man, but personally I don’t see it; Littlefinger may be in some corner of her mind, but Sansa is in control of herself now, and she’s not afraid to show it.
While much of this season’s drama came from the downfalls and deaths of characters like Hodor, Tommen, and the Tyrells, Sansa’s confrontation with Littlefinger is evidence of perseverance and survival, which is something fans need to see more of to keep the faith that our heroes will make it through to the end. There may not have been any white raven from the Citadel at this point, but Sansa’s self-assurance in this scene shows us that winter has come, and the Starks with it. Of course, we see later that Sansa requests Littlefinger’s aid, but it’s with the pragmatism necessary for the situation rather than any affection or trust for the man himself. This is the first time we see Sansa using Littlefinger to meet her own ends, and something tells me it won’t be the last.
It’s a crime that Sophie Turner didn’t grab an Emmy nomination for this scene, so instead all I can offer is a “Queen Babe Sansa Stark” trophy, as it’s the absolute least I can do.
ANI: Good god, the choices here are endless, aren’t they? From Episode 1’s Melisandre reveal to Jon’s resurrection to Ramsay’s murder of his father and step mother to Dany’s leaving the khals to the fire to everything Bran experienced in episode 5, those first five episodes were were five face punches in quick succession. And although Hodor wins in my book for biggest heartbreak you didn’t see coming, and Cersei’s burning down of the Sept for most effective use of wildfire in cutting the cast budget for Season 7, I have to say that Bran’s visions for me were the most dramatic.
And not just the visions in “The Door,” as Bran looked back and saw that Hodor was how he was because Bran made him that way years before he was a glint in his father’s eye. I’m talking everything, everything from Episode 2’s visit to Winterfell of old to the fight at the Tower of Joy to the creation of the Night King back before the first long night, proving that weapons of mass destruction are deadly to all sides in war. I loved the way the show echoed the vision when Bran returned to the same spot and the Night King marked him, perhaps to the detriment of all of humanity as he prepares to cross the Wall. But most of all, I loved those stunning flashes of the past, the present, and the future in “Blood of My Blood,” as the images of the Mad King of old mixed in with the Mad Queen to come, all of them downloading into Bran’s brain all at once after the Three-Eyed Raven was no more.
For years, show watchers complained how dull Bran was, and how they were glad when the show cut him out last season. Guess Bran isn’t dull anymore.
RAZOR: For me, it has to be a moment that was 20 years in the making: the reveal that Lyanna Stark was in fact Jon Snow’s mother, and that the long-held fan theory (R+L=J) was Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire canon. The reveal was made possible through Bran’s weirwood dreams and his training under the Three-Eyed Raven, which was an excellent way for the show to handle it. In this regard, I felt the show handled the Tower of Joy scenes better than the books.
In the books, we get glimpses of what happened on that fateful day in the Dornish mountains, through Ned’s milk-of-the-poppy-fueled fever dreams. However, in the show, we were given a front row seat via Bran. The legendary kingsguard knight Ser Arthur Dayne did not disappoint, as he dispatched young Lord Eddard’s bannermen with relative ease. However, the battle was decided by arguably the least-talented fighter in the group, the little Crannogman, Howland Reed.
To finally learn how Ned Stark was able to defeat a master swordsman like Dayne—by finishing him off after Howland Reed stabbed him in the back, a move that many would consider highly dishonorable and something that Ned Stark would never do—was eye-opening to say the least. The man who was known throughout the Seven Kingdoms for his unimpeachable honor (except in the question of Jon’s birth mother) was willing to accept a dishonorable end to a battle in order to get to his sister. This is emblematic of the love and dedication between the siblings of House Stark, from Ned and Lyanna to Jon and Sansa.
And the moment that Ned ran to his sister’s side and leaned Dawn, Arthur Dayne’s sword, against the bedpost was a superb way for Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Wiess to pay off a prophecy from the books: that the Prince that was Promised would be born “beneath a bleeding star.” Dawn is forged from a fallen star, bears a rising sun on its pommel (bestowing the title Sword of the Morning on anyone who wields it), and its blade was freshly covered in Ser Arthur Dayne’s blood. This has major significance in Jon’s story.
Finally, as young Ned leans over his sister, frantically trying to calm her, she leans up and whispers, with her dying breath, Jon’s true name, and that Ned could never tell Robert, or the soon-to-be-king would kill the boy. Then she made him promise: “Promise me, Ned.” Just then, a swaddled baby is put in his arms, and Ramin Djawadi’s amazing score dramatically transitions us from the Tower of Joy to the great hall of Winterfell, where we see that the baby grew up to be Jon Snow. If that isn’t some of the best written drama in any medium, then I clearly don’t understand what drama is.