We rank the episodes of Game of Thrones season 7 from worst to best

7. “Beyond the Wall”

At this point, it’s pretty much a cliche to poke holes in the plot of “Beyond the Wall.” But if the shoe fits…

The thrust of this episode involves Jon and company heading north of the Wall to capture a wight so they can bring it to King’s Landing. Unfortunately, their adventure is plagued by one contrivance after another. An example: Jon takes down a White Walker, which results in all the wights that White Walker raised being deactivated. Okay, neat. But it just so happens that all but one of the wights in the area are stricken useless, conveniently playing in to the reason Jon is here in the first place. C’mon, now.

Another one: while Jon and the gang wait on an island in the middle of a frozen lake, surrounded by wights, Gendry Waters runs from wherever they are to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, sends a letter to Daenerys on Dragonstone, and waits while Dany changes into a stunning white ensemble and wings it all the way north of the Wall, where she arrives just in the nick of time to save the still-stranded group from death by zombies. Another: rather than getting on Dany’s dragon, Jon slashes at wights and gets knocked into the freezing water. Later, he pulls himself out despite wearing heavy gear and having to clamor over treacherous, slippery ice. Naturally, Benjen Stark is on hand to lend him a horse, but can’t come with because there’s “no time”…and then we have a few long lingering shots of Jon riding away while Benjen stares down the approaching horde. Again: c’mon, now.

In isolation, these and other eye-rolling moments could be waved away as nitpicks, but it’s how they come together that sinks the episode. Worst of all is that the whole thing is built on one huge, baffling leap of logic: that Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, and Tyrion Lannister would all agree, knowing what they know, that heading north of the Wall on the slim hope of fetching back a wight on the even slimmer hope of convincing Cersei Lannister to help them is a good idea. No amount of spectacular special effects (and they are spectacular) or charmingly written conversations (and they are charming) can make up for the fact that, as a story, “Beyond the Wall” is extremely shaky.

Suspension of disbelief is required in a show about dragons, but fantasy elements are no excuse for sloppy plotting and a disregard for the rules, both those the show has set up for itself and those that apply to any story about people, places and things. Looking back, it seems clear that the showrunners had some endpoints in mind — namely killing Viserion and resurrecting him as a Zombie Dragon, which is still chilling despite everything — and were willing to twist the story out of shape to make it happen.

The same goes for the plot at Winterfell, which sees the feud between Arya and Sansa ratchet up several notches. The problem here isn’t that there’s no reason for the sisters to be at odds — true, they never had a great relationship as children; and true, Arya is known to be vengeful against people she thinks have betrayed her family. The problem is that their conflict goes from 0 to 60 with only the barest tap of the gas pedal. Arya may be intense, but she isn’t stupid, and it’s very hard to believe she would go after Sansa this hard on the strength of a years-old letter when she’s more than capable of understanding the circumstances under which it was written, to say nothing of advancing slowly on her sister with a dagger. It’s a show’s job to sell a plot twist or a character arc. No one was buying here.

More than any other episode this year, “Beyond the Wall” was a victim of the season’s accelerated pace, something we heard a lot about before the premiere. Pretty much everything needed more setup, more support, more buttressing. It’s a mess.