Game Of Thrones: Ranking Every Season From Worst To Best
6. Season 8
The final season of Game of Thrones was always going to be divisive. The stakes were too high, and too many people were invested, all wanting and expecting something different, for them to possibly wrap-up this in a way that satisfied everyone. What wasn't quite as expected was just how divisive it would become, and how much The Discourse would be soured.
That will be, for its immediate future, the memory of Season 8 to many people, and not without reason. As was the case with Season 7, the reduced amount of episodes - even with most of them being longer than usual - had a big impact on the pacing of the season, as character beats and plot points that would normally take a few episodes had to be resolved in one. The Long Night wasn't all that long, and big character swings could've done with at least another couple of scenes. Logic, too, had to take a few leaps, especially in fourth episode The Last of the Starks, where Dany "kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet.
At the same time, however, there was some of the series' best stuff here. In terms of the acting and production, it was as good as it's ever been: all of the principal cast brought it, including a career-best turn from Emilia Clarke; the music, VFX, costumes, cinematography and so on were all on a level that few TV shows (or even movies, for that matter) can come close to matching. The scale of the biggest battle in TV history, and the sheer horror of Daenerys' burning of King's Landing, were sights to behold.
There was also a lot of great character and story work here too though. Sure, things didn't necessarily play out as we wanted, but there was some strong, layered, and emotional beats with the relationship of Jaime and Brienne, the dark turn of Daenerys, Sansa's leadership of Winterfell, and Arya moving away from the path of vengeance. Again, it happened a little too quickly, but as the show came to a close with each of the Starks getting a fitting send-off, they somehow managed to steer this behemoth of a ship home. One of the strangest parts of seeing such much criticism of Season 8 is that Season 7 didn't get quite so much hate. This year was essentially an idealised version of what the show became then: fast-moving, yes, but it hit some much better character beats, gave us an all-time great in its second instalment, and got to a very satisfying conclusion.
Best Episode: A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms
Worst Episode: Winterfell