Game Of Thrones: Ranking Every Season From Worst To Best

2. Season 3

After a couple of years that were building the world and its characters, Season 3 was where the show really clicked into top gear. This was a season where the show was very comfortable and confident in what it was and the stories it was telling, and it moved as one cohesive whole even when its characters were disparate.

Out beyond the Wall, we had one of Jon's best arcs to date, as he integrated himself further into the wildling's camp and began a doomed love affair with Ygritte. You could really feel his split loyalties, and it made for some intense, moving, and romantic drama. At the other end of the world, Daenerys was taking on the slavers, having one of her strongest arcs too as she developed more agency and didn't just trek through the desert, leading to that memorable first utterance of the word 'dracarys'.

The core of the season, though, comes in between those two lands, and the political machinations that were the real driving force of the show. This is when those wheels were really spinning and, after a couple of seasons of buildup, things started coming to a head. It all perfectly meshed together to gradually ramp up the tension between the Starks and Lannisters, which then came to a crushing crescendo with the show's greatest, most shocking event to date, the Red Wedding.

Add in the pairing of Jaime and Brienne, which is one of the show's richest relationships and begins the most unlikely (and engrossing) redemption story of the whole series, and the world's religion and magic expanding, and you have something really special. The prolonged torture of Theon at the hands of Ramsay Snow is a downer, but it's the only real blight on an otherwise magnificent season.

Best Episode: The Rains Of Castamere

Worst Episode: Dark Wings, Dark Words