It’s hard to end stories. Premises are easy, even a developing a great climax can be straightforward, but rewarding conclusions can be evasive. The television medium adds an extra layer of difficulty, since the audience has put years of energy into consuming a story. Sometimes showrunners have a set ending […]
Like all of you, I’ve spent over 70 hours of time watching Game of Thrones. I’ve also written about over 25 episodes, covering the back half of the series. It’s always intense as the end of a show approaches, but with Game of Thrones, a global phenomenon, the stakes feel […]
I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if we had an entire season in between the battle between the living and the dead in “The Long Night” and siege on King’s Landing that was the main feature of “The Bells.” For what it’s worth, “The Bells” […]
Game of Thrones has always tried to find a balance between surprise and suspense. In season one, it perfected both a suspenseful multi-episode arc involving Ned Stark being captured for treason and the surprise plot twist of him actually being executed. From then on, the series has often relied on […]
After spending the first half of the season mostly setting up and wrapping up the great war with the White Walkers, “The Last of the Starks” needed to pivot hard to move the narrative back to the fight for the Iron Throne. Game of Thrones is strongest when it leans […]
After last week’s surprising victory at Winterfell (like, how many wights were swarming Sam? But he’s fine? We think surprising is the only appropriate description), we’re back to mortal squabbles in this week’s Game of Thrones episode. The trailer for episode four of this final season showed our characters dealing with the […]
This final season of Game of Thrones has the difficult task of making everything up to this point feel worth it. Somewhere around seventy episodes, spanning somewhere around a decade of time, with one of the biggest ensemble casts in memory, and it all needs to click together here at […]
After two set-up episodes, the big battle at Winterfell is upon us. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” served as a farewell episode for many of our characters, and tonight we’ll see just who makes it out alive. The trailers for tonight’s episode of Game of Thrones don’t shed a […]
When’s the last time in the history of Game of Thrones that we had two episodes in a row that were, I don’t want to say uneventful, but maybe the word is quiet? Relaxed? Sort of, chill? Just as in the season premiere “Winterfell,” “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” […]
It seems like Game of Thrones is coming full circle, and thank (the one true, drowned, old, new, and many-faced) god(s) for it. The season eight premiere, “Winterfell” opened with a young boy climbing up a tree, straining to catch a glimpse of a great army filling into the castle […]
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