Game Of Thrones: 8 Reasons 'Battle Of The Bastards' Is The Show's Most Overrated Episode
Better than 'Ozymandias'? Uh...
There's no denying that Game of Thrones' most recent hour, the wonderfully titled 'Battle of the Bastards', delivered what is without question the greatest battle sequence ever committed to television. You'd be silly to pretend that it was anything but thrilling, tense and - despite the amount of blood - oddly beautiful to watch.
As a result, many fans of the show have since declared it as the greatest episode in the show's history, whilst on the IMDb it has surpassed Breaking Bad's unforgettable masterpiece 'Ozymandias' as the site's highest-rated TV episode. 'Battle of the Bastards' is a great episode of television, of course... but it also happens to stand out as one of the most overvalued hour of the show's entire run, too.
In the moment, it might've played out like the most spectacular installment ever aired, but when you take a good, hard look at the episode - away from all the hype - it exposes a lot of issues with Game of Thrones, including inconsistent characters, story structure, and an often scattershot approach to the writing in general...
8. The Meereen Dragon Scene Feels Like It's In The Wrong Episode
Let's kick this off with what I perceive to be something of a structural problem with 'Battle of the Bastards' - the fact that it begins with an awesome, high-budget action sequence in which Dany climbs aboard Drogon, enlists the other dragons and attacks a fleet off ships in a badass show of death and destruction.
As a self-contained sequence, this is mind-blowing stuff; the visual work is crazy good, and, yes, we finally got to see Dany firmly commanding her dragons to wreak flaming havoc upon her foes. People got burned; ships got blown apart. Great.
But why put this sequence here, where it's doomed to be overshadowed by an even bigger sequence thereafter? Why did the writers decide to include both of these epic sequences - two of the show's biggest action sequences - in the same episode?
To my mind, the whole Meereen dragon sequence would have been better placed at the end of the previous episode, 'No One,' leaving audiences to wonder how the hell the writers were ever going to top it (and subsequently doing so with 'Battle of the Bastards'). Structurally, it just seems odd to have this sequence as part of the same episode; as the rest of the episode plays out, it's quickly forgotten.