Ever wanted a handy-dandy Game of Thrones episode rating graph? Well, now you have one, submitted by Swolf_of_Wallstreet on Reddit. This chart uses the Game of Thrones episode User Ratings on IMDB as a source, and gives us a boardroom-style visual charting the ups and down of the show over its six-year history. (Click to blow it up.)
What can we learn from this? Fans gave four episodes a series-high rating of 9.9: “The Winds of Winter” (S6/Ep10), “Battle of the Bastards” (S6/Ep9), “The Rains of Castamere” (S3/Ep9) and “Hardhome” (S5/Ep8). All of those landed towards the end of their respective seasons, after the show has built up some story momentum, and all contain game-changing set pieces: the destruction of the Sept of Baelor, the Battle of the Bastards, the Red Wedding and the Massacre at Hardhome, respectively. Those sequences are all burned into our memories.
Episodes in the 8-10 slot seem popular in general, with “The Mountain and the Viper” (S4/Ep8, rating 9.7), “Backwater (S2/Ep9, rating 9.7), “The Children” (S4/Ep10, rating 9.6), “Baelor” (S1/Ep9, rating 9.6), “The Watchers on the Wall” (S4/Ep9, rating 9.5) and “The Dance With Dragons” (S5/Ep9, rating 9.5) among the top 15 episodes.
The most popular early or mid season episodes are the “The Door” (S6/Ep5, rating 9.7), “The Lion and the Rose” (S4/Ep2, rating 9.7) and “The Laws of Gods and Men” (S4/Ep6, rating 9.7). Again, those are big storyline episodes featuring the death of Hodor, the death of Joffrey, and Tyrion’s trial, respectively.
The chart also shows us each seasons’ average overall rating. Generally, the show grew in acclaim as it went along, but stumbled in Season 5, which contains a heavy dose of Dorne and the lowest overall ranked episode: “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” (S5, Ep6, rating 8.0). But is an 8 out of 10 really that bad? The other lowest-rated episodes are “Blood of my Blood” (S6/Ep6, ranking 8.4) and “No One” (S6/Ep8, ranked 8.3).
The chart’s hills and valleys become more pronounced as the seasons progress, though whether that is due to more uneven episode quality or higher and more varied viewer expectations could be debated. What do you think?