What was the best moment from Game of Thrones season 7? Join the Small Council as we look back on the Game of Thrones season that was.
DAN: This is a pretty easy question for me. Without a doubt, I think the best moment from the season came at the end of “The Spoils of War,” when Jaime Lannister charged headlong at Daenerys Targaryen, intending to kill her.
To me, this moment represented almost everything good about the show in a nutshell. We have two characters we like and know extremely well — Jaime and Daenerys — on opposite sides of a conflict. We get why each of them is doing what they’re doing. Daenerys, incensed by the death and capture of her Westerosi allies, has taken the fight to the Lannisters, and at this moment is pulling a bolt out of the side of her beloved Drogon, another character we’ve watched grow over the years. Meanwhile, Jaime, the leader of the morally compromised Lannister army, sees an opportunity to prevent more bloodshed by killing the woman at the head of this invasion. In his mind, Daenerys is her father’s daughter, and his father was a psycho. Neither character is right. Neither is wrong. They’re two people acting according to what they think is best, and they’re on a collision course.
It’s the kind of moment the show could only pull now, seven years in when we’ve invested enough time in the characters to see both of their perspectives. And it goes to the heart of what I’ve always loved best about Game of Thrones: that the idea of good vs evil is pretty boring. When it comes to human conflict, they’re pretty much always two sides to every story.
That point is underscored by Tyrion, who’s watching the situation unfold with as much trepidation as the audience. Add in a pulsing score, lots of money, and a cast and crew well-practiced at action filmmaking, and you’ve got a moment that’s both nail-bitingly thrilling AND thematically resonant. It was so good, you guys. It was so good.
Did the show cop out a little by having Bronn save Jaime at the last second? Maybe, but Bronn had good reason to do what he did; I wish they’d taken a moment to address how he managed to drag a heavily armored Jaime so far away from the battlefield, but that’s ultimately a nitpick. The moment itself…to me, this moment is Game of Thrones.
Macall B. Polay – HBO
RICHARD: Dan picked a great moment from season 7! It’s tough for me to pick my personal favorite scene versus what I think is the overall best scene of the season because they are not the same thing. I’ll go with my personal favorite: the Hound burying the farmer and his daughter in “Dragonstone.” This scene struck me hard the first time I saw it and it has haunted me ever since. Why? Because this scene, perhaps more than any other, might just sum up everything that Game of Thrones is all about.
In George R.R. Martin’s world, everyone is victimized in one way or another. Sandor Clegane is perhaps one of the most abused, and as a result became one of the most brutal. But there was always a shred of saving grace in Sandor, a trace of chivalry that belied his murderous methods; he hated the powerful hypocrites and their symbols, and he wouldn’t hurt innocent women. After his near-death experience in season 4, he enjoys a brief period of peace and introspection with Brother Ray, but the violent world rips that away from him. He picks up his axe and embarks on a journey of revenge — it seemed as if the better elements of his nature would never have a chance to develop.
Sandor joins the company of the Brotherhood Without Banners as they travel northward towards an unknown calling. Then comes the time when, as the fates might have it, Sandor returns to the scene of one of his transgressions: the cottage where he robbed the old farmer and his daughter Sally after they offered food and shelter to him and Arya. Sandor took their money because his victims wouldn’t survive the winter anyway. Now that he finds their withered corpses — they committed suicide rather than starve to death — something inside of him changes.
Sandor is not the kind of man who can verbalize how he feels: there is too much brutality in him for that. He is Westeros personified, in a way, and Westeros is a grimdark world where evil is powerful and constantly threatens to swallow and minimize the good. But there is a cord of humanity inside him that refuses to die. In fact, it is growing. By burying the old man and his daughter in the frozen earth, under dark storm clouds and winter’s blizzard, Sandor Clegane seeks redemption in his own unspoken way. The environment rages as if this one soul, reclaiming his humanity bit by painful bit, is altering the very composition of the universe itself.
The good die in Westeros if they do not fully grasp the nature of the monsters around them. The Hound will always be a kind of monster, a warrior with a violent veneer. He knows the darkness, the bloody exhilaration of killing, the call of evil. But by facing the unintended and tragic consequences of his own actions, he has clarified his understanding of the world he lives in and how he might be empowered to change it. And the source of that power is goodness and light. This theme surges from the volcanic heart of the Game of Thrones narrative: even when the good is despoiled, battered and ruined, it can still gather the strength to keep on fighting. This is why Sandor is allowed to see visions so clearly in the flames. The Lord of Light, returning now to the child he once kissed so horribly with fire, unlocks his/her secrets for the broken man who is opening his heart.
The Hound’s journey may well prove to be the most transformative of any character on Game of Thrones.
COREY: Damn you, Richard! The Hound is one of my favorite characters, and his journey has been one of the best to watch. I would have chosen the Hound’s moment with Brienne, in which both recognize their love of Arya Stark, as well as the realization that Arya no longer needs either of them. But setting aside the Hound, my favorite moment of season 7 was Jon and Theon’s conversation in the Dragonstone throne room.
Jon and Theon have a lot in common. They both grew up at Winterfell alongside the Starks but were never truly one of them. Their paths then diverged, with Theon choosing to focus on his own glory and Jon sacrificing for higher ideals. Theon paid the price for his choices and has carried the weight of his sins on his shoulders ever since. On the flip side, Jon has always chosen the “right” path and yet paid no less steep a price. After all, he’s the one who died.
The moment where Theon seeks out Jon for advice, and perhaps secretly for forgiveness, was a very strong one. Alfie Allen plays the wounded animal to perfection, and is clearly uncomfortable in Jon’s presence, seeing him as the paragon of virtue he could never be. But Jon is equally uncomfortable with the adulation, or at least with Theon’s belief that doing the “right” thing has always been easy for him.
And although we’d seen Sansa forgive Theon, largely thanks to his helping her escape the clutches of Ramsay Bolton, Jon’s forgiveness had not been earned, so to speak. That makes Jon’s choice to forgive Theon all the more powerful. Lifting that weight off his shoulders gives Theon the confidence needed to mount his rescue of Yara.
I might be beating a dead horse, but moments like these are the reason I love the show. The battles are heart-stopping but mean nothing without characters we love. I can only hope we have more scenes like this before Game of Thrones ends.
SARAH: First off, I’d just like to say that it feels good to be back after such a lengthy and unexpected absence!
I mean – ergh – blergh – I wasn’t in love with this season. I had major issues with Sansa and Arya’s big, pointless CW teen drama beef, and because those characters are the most important facet of the show for me, my in-retrospect feelings for the season are a lot colder than I’d expected after that slam-dunk of a season opener. BUT WAIT.
That said, guys, the payoff for that ridiculous argument was the death of Petyr Baelish, who went out like the simpering, slithering weasel he truly is. I wanted to take that scene to my local registrar and marry it. I watch it on a constant YouTube loop. As I’ve mentioned six or seven times before, Arya and Sansa mean everything to me, and never more than when they’re together, so the fact that Petyr’s attempt to take Sansa’s only sister away from her was the final nail in his well-deserved coffin was a dream come true.
However, Littlefinger’s death was not my moment of the season, nor was it Arya’s reunion with Sansa, Arya’s reunion with Bran, Arya’s reunion with Hot Pie, Arya’s reunion with Nymeria, or the entire Frey family’s reunion with their dead patriarch, courtesy of Arya. Though they were all fabulous, and repeat viewings can also be found on my YouTube history.
I award the title of ‘Best Moment’ to Cersei of the House Lannister, First of her Name, Queen of the Andals and Purveyor of Fittingly Poetic Deaths.
I’ve already mentioned this on the podcast, but I find it pertinent to state here that Tyene Sand’s death is the cruelest we’ve ever seen from Game of Thrones — and yes, I include Oberyn’s head smashing and the Red Wedding in that estimation. Most mothers will agree — there’s no greater punishment than the loss of a child, and Cersei has suffered that punishment three times in quick succession. Being Cersei, she ups the ante in spectacular fashion when she finally gets her hands on the woman who killed Myrcella, her sweetest child, and only daughter. Ellaria will not only lose her most beloved child, she’ll be forced to watch, tethered and helpless, as her baby girl decays and disintegrates before her eyes — and even though we know that Ellaria deserves to suffer for killing an innocent girl, it still seems like an unreservedly evil thing to do to a person. Maybe it’s because I’m a parent, but I doubt I was alone in thinking that I’d rather endure Tyene’s death than be in Ellaria’s position. Brutal, you guys. Brutal.
The dialogue, framework, and lighting in this scene are spectacular — spot-on aesthetics and excellent acting to top it all off. Lena Headey, Indira Varma, and Rosabell Laurenti Sellers gave exquisite, punch-packing performances and the result was a scene that was harrowing, distasteful and satisfying all at once. If you’re still not convinced, all that’s left to point out is that this scene managed to be immensely enjoyable whilst featuring a Sand Snake. That’s an achievement all in itself.
Helen Sloan – HBO
BROOKE: I agree that all the foregoing scenes defined Season 7 more than epic battles or dragon attacks. My favorite scene of the season was also a small one but represented the coming together of the series’ disparate worlds. The greeting between Tyrion and Jon Snow at Dragonstone signaled both an end to the old world order and the beginning of a new status quo. The North had been Jon Snow’s exclusive domain up to that point, while Tyrion inhabited the rest of Westeros and Essos. With the reunion of these two characters, the divergent stories and settings were united.
Tyrion was always the key to Westeros because he was the only Southerner who had a history with Jon Snow and could, therefore, act as a bridge between the North and the rest of the world. The strength of their relationship, forged in Season 1, was apparent in their first words to each other. Tyrion: “The Bastard of Winterfell.” Jon: “The Dwarf of Casterly Rock.” Only Tyrion could poke fun at Jon’s Achilles heel and elicit a witty response from the historically earnest and humorless King in the North.
Tyrion and Jon’s long-ago interactions were brief but profound. Tyrion was honest with Jon from their first meeting, gave him sage counsel on the way to Wall and protection once they arrived there. He confronted Jon about his bastard status in the courtyard at Winterfell in “Winter is Coming,” but tempered his frankness with kindness, establishing common ground with the surly youth by admitting that in Tywin’s eyes, Tyrion, too, was a bastard. On the journey to the Wall, Tyrion disabused Jon of the notion that the Night’s Watch was a noble assemblage of would-be protectors of the realm by revealing it was really a collection of outcasts and criminals. Jon was initially offended by Tyrion’s characterization of his soon-to-be brothers but realized the truth of it when he was attacked by his pledge class at the Wall. After Tyrion used his verbal facility to extricate Jon from that situation, their bond was secured. They parted, not quite as friends, but as fellow travelers who had gained respect for one another and recognized each other’s core character.
Both of them had heroic journeys ahead of them, and both of them gained dignity along the way. The cynical, drunken, “Imp,” found his wisdom and his place in the world, while Ned Stark’s sullen bastard became a stalwart and compassionate leader. Their outward miens changed considerably, but their quintessential values remained intact—were even strengthened—by their respective experiences. When it came time for Tyrion to summon Jon Snow to Dragonstone, he wisely omitted Dany’s demand that he bend the knee, knowing such a power play would alienate the prickly King in the North. Instead, he referenced their first conversation– “all dwarves are bastards in their fathers’ eyes”—to prove his identity and the legitimacy of the summons.
Tyrion understood how to ensure Jon’s presence at Dragonstone, and Jon understood that Tyrion’s invitation was sincere. These two characters, separated by time and space, still trusted and respected one another enough to join forces against Westeros’ greatest threat. Game of Thrones’ worlds could not have come together had it not been for the rapport Jon and Tyrion established with each other so many years ago, and their meeting at Dragonstone beautifully communicated that relationship.
RAZOR: I would — and could easily — pick any scene from the Loot Train Battle, but I think I’ll go with Jon “Aegon Targaryen” Snow touching Drogon’s snout. For such a monumentally tender moment to be shown between the fiercest and largest of Dany’s dragons, and, as Richard Preston so intuitively put it on this week’s episode of Take the Black Podcast, we were able to experience the scene from Jon and Drogon’s perspective, with Dany unable to see what was transpiring.
That’s what really makes this scene so special: Jon and Drogon were able to interact without the interference of Daenerys. As the scene unfolds, we’re able to see that Jon has absolutely no fear of approaching the massive fire-breathing dragon, and, by removing his glove, he allowed Drogon to smell the Targaryen blood coursing through Jon’s veins.
Another great moment was Drogon’s complete trust of Jon. If you haven’t yet noticed, the dragons on Game of Thrones are presented with many tendencies a common house cat displays. Drogon smells Jon’s hand, he closes his eyes in a sign of trust, and he begins to pure…a full-grown dragon purred at the smell of Jon Snow.
It was a surprisingly tender moment, especially since Dany had recently commanded Drogon to burn the Tarlys to a crisp.
Next: George R.R. Martin is “co-creating” Bryan Cogman’s Game of Thrones prequel
What was your favorite moment from Game of Thrones season 7? Let’s discuss in the comments below.
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