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

Season 1

The first season of Game of Thrones is the simplest. It’s the only one where we can definitively name a main character — poor doomed Ned Stark — and while his story is merely a prelude to the epic sprawl to come, is does give this year a focus the other seasons can’t really have. And even when it’s not focused on Ned, season 1 rarely hits a bum note.

Game of Thrones is a lot more than the sum of its parts, but as long as we’re breaking it into parts anyway, this is the one that’s best formed and the most complete.

High point: The execution of Ned Stark

This is the show’s first big twist, and it hits hard. The show is going to kill the hero? WHAT? That is not supposed to happen. George R.R. Martin knew that readers had become accustomed to the main character in these stories getting out of whatever dire situation he gets into, whether by skill or luck or divine intervention. How to shake up the formula? Just follow through and don’t let the hero out of a disaster of his own making. In this case, that meant Ned’s death. Benioff and Weiss were gutsy enough to translate that moment to the screen unchanged, and a new peak TV show was born.

Low point: Arya kills the stable boy

Look, I don’t want to rag on child actors — Game of Thrones usually does a great job with them — but whoever played the stable boy Arya kills in “The Pointy End” probably needed a couple more takes to rein in his performance.

It’s not all his fault. This is Arya’s first kill, and a key moment from the books, but here it’s forgettable at best and off-putting at worst; something’s up with the herky-jerky editing when Arya actually stabs the kid. Maybe they couldn’t get actual footage of a kid being stabbed because there are both actors involved are minors? I dunno.

Anyway, overall this isn’t a huge deal, but it a rough moment. That I’m having to bring it up tells you how smooth the first season is.

MVP: Ned Stark

This spot could belong to no one else. The first season is Ned’s story, the story of an honorable man called to do a dishonorable job and who finds to his peril that he doesn’t have a talent for it.

Casting Sean Bean was a brilliant. We already talked about how the main character in these sorts of stories isn’t supposed to die. That’s doubly true if the main character is played by a famous actor. (Admittedly, Bean did have a habit of dying on film, but TV is different.) Everything involving Ned was designed to lure us into a false sense of security so we would be shocked when his head finally rolled, and it worked.

Runner-up: Daenerys Targaryen

In some ways, season 1 remains Daenerys’ most fully realized season. She has a full arc here, starting off a frightened waif and ending a confident Mother of Dragons. Because Daenerys has only tenuous ties to Ned Stark and is having adventures thousands of miles away from the rest of the characters, it’s almost like she’s in her own show, and it’s a damned good one. Newcomer Emilia Clarke has to carry the full weight of this story and does it every bit as well as an old pro like Bean.

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