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

4. “Dragonstone”

Game of Thrones season 7 came bounding out of the gate with a rock-solid premiere that managed to be very entertaining despite being largely about setup. It helps that the first scene features Arya Stark, wearing Walder Frey’s face, poisoning a roomful of people involved in the Red Wedding. It’s wildly melodramatic, ghoulishly macabre, unabashedly crowd-pleasing and a lot of fun. “Leave one wolf alive and the sheep are never safe.” That’s just a good line, people.

In fact, before the Arya-Sansa drama started up at Winterfell, Arya was a highlight of the season. The scene where she jokes around with Ed Sheeran’s Lannister battalion is fun, too; it shows us an Arya capable of just…relaxing. Now that Arya had returned home, it was important to remind viewers that the girl she used to be — gregarious, precocious, fun — was still in there, despite everything she’d endured.

The other big sequence also happens in the Riverlands. The Hound, traveling north with the Brotherhood Without Banners, stumbles on the bodies of the farmer and the farmer’s daughter he robbed back in season 4. Overcome by guilt, he buries them in the cold earth. It’s such an unexpected turn from the Hound — and yet, when we consider what he’s been through since Arya left him for dead years before, it makes perfect sense. Rory McCann sells it with tender vulnerability masked by a world-weary grimace. The Hound is one of the most quietly fascinating characters on the show, and scenes like this are a big part of the reason why.

And of course there’s the final scene, where Daenerys and her crew arrive on Dragonstone, which becomes their new home base. The show takes its time here, lingering on small moments like Daenerys running her hands through the sand on the beach so we feel how important this homecoming is to her. And the fact that Dragonstone itself looks amazeballs-bonkers-beautiful is a nice bonus.

Beyond that, “Dragonstone” moves a lot of pieces into place. We get an interesting (if disgusting) introduction to Sam’s dreary new life at the Citadel, some backroom back-and-forth between the major players at Winterfell, and the whir of the engines as Cersei’s war machine purrs to life. Of those scenes, the most enjoyable is probably the last, if for no other reason than because Pilou Asbæk, back for his second season as Euron Greyjoy, puts a new spring in his step.