Game Of Thrones Season 8: 8 Ups And 1 Down From 'A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms'

2. This Feels Like The Show Of Old

Game of Thrones, especially in terms of its writing, has received a fair bit more criticism than it used to get ever since it surpassed the books, with Season 7 running into a lot of trouble in this regard too. A lot of it was justified, and bits of it not, but A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms feels like something from when the show was operating at its best.

You could take this episode and put it into Season 3 or 4, and it wouldn't feel out of place. What made Game of Thrones wasn't the scale and spectacle (although it helped), but the interwoven character work that served to push the story along. That's what it's lost a sense of, and what it regains here through Nutter and Cogman.

This is an episode that feels like Game of Thrones AND A Song of Ice and Fire: it's about the people at the heart of this story, and their relationships. It's about the dialogue and those conversations in dark rooms. The character work here is richer than the Iron Bank, and given the just concerns regarding the show's direction, it's a reassurance that they are still capable of this kind of work. This is the best episode since The Winds of Winter (in a different way), and it feels so good to have this kind of Game of Thrones episode once again.