All eight seasons of Game of Thrones, ranked worst to best

Season 4

Ugh, this is so tough. If I’m being completely honest, season 6 is more of a personal favorite for me; it has some rough patches, but when it’s good, it’s the show at the top of its game. But season 4 is more consistent throughout AND has plenty of high points spaced from start to finish, so I give it the edge.

Photo Credit: HBO

High Point: The Mountain vs the Viper

At the beginning of season 4, you might be hard pressed to convince a first-time viewer that something would top the death of the loathsome boy king Joffrey Baratheon, but then along comes Oberyn Martell…

Really, it’s a kind of a miracle that this scene works as well as it does. We’ve only known Oberyn for a handful of episodes, and the Mountain does little more than grunt. Why should their battle to the death stand out? But it does, because of how wonderfully it’s staged, because of how much energy Pedro Pascal and Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson bring to their performances, because of the sky-high stakes (Tyrion’s life), and because the scene suckers us so effectively until thinking our hero had won the day before pulling the rug out from under us.

You HAD him, Oberyn! You HAD HIM AND YOU LOST HIM! It’s still making me throw my hands up all these years later.

Low Point: The Jaime-Cersei rape-not a rape scene

God, what a complete mess this was. A primer if you’re just joining us: in A Storm of Swords, there’s a deeply disturbing scene where Jaime Lannister returns to King’s Landing after losing his hand, finds Cersei mourning the recently dead Joffrey Baratheon, and has rough, passionate sex with her…next to Joffrey’s body. It’s all kinds of wrong and gross, but at least it’s consensual, as made clear by Cersei’s dialogue.

The show changes things. The timeline is different, and Cersei says nothing but “stop it,” “it’s not right,” and “don’t.” Basically, the script takes a consensual (albeit twisted) sex scene and makes it a rape, which did not go over well with viewers. It’s still baffling to hear the director and actors claim that consent was somehow implied when…did you watch the scene, people?

Yeah, this was awful.

MVP: Oberyn Martell

Oberyn Martell stole this season. He swept in out of nowhere and he’d never been mentioned and he stole it, from Tyrion and Tywin and Cersei, from Jon and Daenerys and Arya.

Oberyn is a badass without being obnoxious. When we meet him he passes his hand through an open flame just because and stabs a smarmy Lannister soldier in a brothel. He’s sexually open-minded. He’s a great fighter, and he cares deeply about his family. He likes Tyrion, which is always a plus in our book. He just checks every box, and he’s played to the hilt with swaggering good humor by Pedro Pascal. Take season 4, you thief.

Runner-up: Tyrion Lannister

The Lannister family drama is the best thing about season 4, and Tyrion is at the center of it. The story of how he’s blamed for Joffrey’s murder, and then tries to fight it, and then decides to go down with the ship, and then runs the ship aground and then takes another one east…it’s got a sweep worthy of opera, and a couple of scenes that could be turned into an epic aria without much trouble. I’m thinking mostly of Tyrion’s courtroom speech here, where he tears the citizens of King’s Landing a new one and Peter Dinklage blasts everyone at home off their couches with the power of his performance.

This is hugely significant year for Tyrion. Finally, he breaks up with his family (expect Jaime, mostly). It’s something he probably should have done a while back, but the wait is more than worth it.