All 73 episodes of Game of Thrones, ranked worst to best
16. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” Season 8, Episode 2
The best episode of season 8 is also the quietest and slowest. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” simply lets characters talk to each while they wait for the hammer to fall on Winterfell, and scene after scene is a winner. The opening trial of Jaime Lannister is wonderfully textured. Daenerys is angry with Jaime, who refuses to apologize for killing her tyrannical father, and who finds support in Brienne of Tarth, whose honor cannot questioned. That gets Sansa on Jaime’s side, which gets Daenerys to look for support from Jon, who’s flustered because he just found out the woman he’s sleeping with is his aunt. There are so many currents flowing back and forth in this scene, all of them developed carefully over years of TV, and it’s a pleasure to watch them run.
And the hits keep coming. I love the scene in the godswood where Jaime confronts Bran about the vicious act of attempted child murder that kicked off the series, and finds that Bran has evolved beyond caring, which is a new kind of confusing and frightening. Jaime and Tyrion also have a long-overdue talk about what Cersei means to them, and the reunion between Sansa and Theon Greyjoy hits unexpectedly hard.
Sansa and Daenerys try and fail to make a connection, Missandei and Grey Worm contemplate their future, and Arya visits with the Hound and then with Gendry, taking a tour of her seven-season journey and making a decision to celebrate what life she has left before it’s ended by the White Walkers or someone else along her bloody path of vengeance. Easily the high point of the episode is the scene around the hearth, where Tyrion, Jaime, Davos, Tormund, Gendry and Brienne gather to chat before the end. Jaime shows how much he’s grown when he makes a knight of quite possibly the only person in Westeros to actually deserve it: Brienne.. And as the final hour draws nearer, Podrick sings a mournful song that reminds everyone of how far they’ve come, and how it could all end tonight. It’s impossible not to watch it and get chills.
The only drawback to this scene is that none of the people involved actually perish in the coming battle, which robs it of a little of its poetic value, but “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” is still a warm sad hug of an episode. We love these characters and it was nice to spend quality time with them.
15. “The Door,” Season 6, Episode 5
“The Door” was one of those great episodes that just snuck up on us, taking fans by surprise with the amount of twists and turns packed into it. From heartbreaking character deaths to giant reveals that went to the core questions of the series, “The Door” had it all.
And before we get to any of that, Sophie Turner kicks off the episode with perhaps her strongest work to date in the role of Sansa Stark, as she verbally berates Littlefinger for selling her to the Boltons last season. It was a powerful scene, and had many audience members squirming as Sansa recollected of her time with Ramsay. What Turner doesn’t say is far more powerful than what she does. Even with all the quality work around it, this scene stood out.
But the fireworks of the episode occurred north of the Wall, as Bran continued his training under the Three-Eyed Raven. Bran witnesses to the creation of the White Walkers by the Children of the Forrest, a jaw-dropping moment for fans, and for book-readers in particular. The White Walkers’ origins had always been shrouded in mystery, so this came as a shock. But we didn’t stop there…
After jumping back in time unsupervised, Bran is branded by the Night’s King, allowing the White Walkers entry into the formerly protected cave. Characters start dying left and right, including Summer, Leaf, and the Three-Eyed Raven. But none of their deaths had the impact of Hodor’s, the simple Stark family man servant. Not only do we come to learn about Bran’s hand in Hodor’s mental impairment, but we have to watch as Hodor, serving House Stark one last time, holds the door shut from an army of wights as he’s slowly torn apart. Just like our hearts.
14. “Mother’s Mercy,” Season 5, Episode 10
Valar Morghulis.
All men must die, and a lot of them die in this episode. Women too. Seriously, this episode must have set a record for most characters killed in a single hour.
Up north, Stannis the Mannis continues his disastrous campaign against the Boltons, and thanks to his ritual sacrifice of his daughter, has much better weather. A good tradeoff, no? Apparently Stannis’ wife Selyse didn’t think so, and hung herself from a tree. No matter, on to Winterfell, except that many of Stannis’ troops deserted in the night, unwilling to serve a man who burns his own children. No matter, on to Winterfell.
Once at the Bolton stronghold, Stannis plans a siege, but the Boltons appear to want to crush him quickly. With only a remnant of his army remaining to him, he doesn’t last long. Amid the carnage, Brienne of Tarth finds the last Baratheon and promptly takes off his head in revenge for Renly’s murder. Now that we think about it, Stannis sure did kill a lot of his family.
Stannis is hardly the last to die this episode, as we get Myrcella dying in Jamie’s arms shortly after acknowledging him as her father. And then across the Narrow Sea in Braavos, we get Arya doing her best Saw tribute and stabbing Meryn Trant approximately 357 times. The Faceless Men do not take kindly to this unauthorized killing, and turn Arya blind as punishment.
Cersei takes an incredibly demeaning naked walk through the streets of King’s Landing as punishment for some of her crimes, and even the biggest Cersei hater feels a tiny bit of sympathy for the Queen Mother here. Or is it Dowager Queen?
Finally, we jump to the Wall, where Jon snow is lured into an ambush and murdered by his own men. Jon is stabbed only a few times less than Meryn Trant, and bleeds out in the snow as the camera fades to black. Viewers who hadn’t read the books may have assumed Jon and Dany were untouchable, so this moment came as a big shock. Even if they had foreshadowed it with moody little Olly, it was a surprise to see the little kid stab Jon Snow last.
Paging Melisandre. Melisandre to the courtyard please.
13. “The Dance of Dragons,” Season 5, Episode 9
This episode evokes two very strong emotions: sadness in the first half, and complete elation in the second half.
The first half of the episode concerns Stannis Baratheon’s doomed march to Winterfell, and the constant string of disasters that lead him to make a terrible choice. Though show producers had been teasing it since Season 3, it does not make Stannis’ decision to burn his daughter at the stake any easier for fans to watch. Melisandre had been hinting at it for a while, and flat out asked and was denied the episode before, so we held out hope that sweet Shireen would somehow survive. But when Stannis sends Davos back to Castle Black, nominally for supplies, we saw the writing on the wall.
Davos shares a tender moment with Shireen before he departs, a brutal scene considering what we know is about to happen. No sooner does Davos leave than Stannis shows up and shares a final moment with his daughter before having her dragged outside and tied to a pyre. Stannis’ wife Selyse initially thinks burning her daughter alive is a grand idea, but breaks down when it actually happens. Stannis, we were all kind of rooting for you up until this point, but now it’s pretty impossible to support someone who burns their children alive. Lots of luck with that siege at Winterfell.
Shireen is still smoldering on the stake, and the show wisely cuts to the great fighting pit in Meereen, where Daenerys is going to preside over the grand reopening of the gladiator games, much to her own disgust. Things escalate quickly when the Sons of the Harpy stage a surprise attack, killing Dany’ soon to be/already husband, (the show was a little unclear on that account). Anyway, Daenerys is forced into the pit herself, and as her bodyguards are slowly picked off, things start to look pretty grim for our silver-haired queen.
What happens next is easily one of the most thrilling scenes of Season 5, if not the whole series. Drogon comes bursting into the arena—whether he was drawn by the noise or responded to some kind of psychic distress call from Dany is unclear—flames and wings flying everywhere. Drogon and his mama haven’t seen each other for a while, but he is still not happy that people are messing with his mother. Drogon is pure fury in this scene, eating, stomping, and burning anyone in his path, including a few unlucky Unsullied.
The Sons of the Harpy quickly bombard the dragon with spears, many of which land. Dany surmises that it’s time to exit stage left, and hops on Drogon’s back. Riding dragonback for the first time in the whole series, Dany shows us the first glimpse of what dragons are capable of.
As Dany flies off, I have to give a special shout out to Peter Dinklage for his stunned look of wonder. It might seem impossible to make people forget that the show just burned a young girl at the stake, but Game of Thrones is no ordinary show.