The Five Worst Episodes of Game of Thrones

 Well, I had to get back to this at some point, right?  Rather than go from the pros to the cons, I am going to follow my Reviews Formula and focus on the negative episodes of this ambitious TV Series before I look at the positives.  

When Game of Thrones is bad, it gets REALLY Bad.  It can have gruesome and dark episodes that ruin character development, have gratuitous violence or situations that wouldn't be considered suitable television or in some cases are so bizarrely written that you have to sit there in awe at how badly it was written.  

Fortunately, the majority of episodes of this series are good.  Unfortunately, the bad episodes are probably more memorable than the good ones considering how the series ended.  So, before I go into the praise I will give some of the episodes, let's look at the worst episodes of the series (at least in my humble opinion).  Because while some of these might be obvious, others might make you scratch your head in why I picked it.  These episodes are bad.  Not just bad.  They're some of the worst episodes of any show I've ever seen.  It makes me wonder how this series got as far as it did once they ran out of books to adapt.  

Dishonorable Mentions: 

Sons of the Harpy, Breaker of Chains, The Last of the Starks and The Dragon and the Wolf

#5. Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken (Season 5, Episode 6)

The consensus opinion of Game of Thrones is that the series began to wane around Season 5.  This was when they were beginning their adaptations of the more controversial books in the series "A Feast For Crows" and "A Dance With Dragons".  Some say it was the losses of powerhouse actors like Charles Dance, others say it was George RR Martin departing to work on other things.  I think it's a combination of that, plus the gross ineptitude of the writers and creators of the series that came to the forefront once they realized they were running out of books to adapt.  Because the creators chose to ignore various plotlines that had extreme importance in the future books (vengeful Tyrion, Dorne, Lady Stoneheart and others), Season 5 seems about as uneven of a season for this show as one could make.  The actors manage to pull us through the illusion, but the façade constructed is starting to wane at the midpoint of Season 5.   

Why this episode in particular?  Well, I should think it's obvious.  The creators began to delve into Sansa's character in Season 4, making her less of a frightened little girl and more of a woman who is learning from her experiences to be a shrewd and calculating player in the Game.  But because the creators neglected the Jeyne Poole storyline from the books, they needed someone at Winterfell to either pose as or serve as a Stark meant to marry Ramsay Bolton.  

For those of you unaware, Jeyne Poole is Sansa's childhood friend that was captured by the Lannisters after Ned was arrested for treason against Joffrey.  While Sansa was kept safe by Cersei and Littlefinger, Jeyne was simply kept as a hostage until she was to be handed off to the Boltons, posing as Arya Stark.  Ramsay then goes about his merry way of tormenting his new wife by raping her routinely in front of the broken Theon Greyjoy, who ultimately recognizes her as pretending to be Arya but helps her escape nonetheless.  At the start of the upcoming book, Jeyne is supposed to be headed to Castle Black pretending to be Arya as an act of good faith by Stannis towards Jon Snow.  

But since Jeyne hasn't appeared in an episode of Game of Thrones since the first episode, this leaves the Ramsay's Wife and Theon Escapes plans left without a key female character.  Apparently, this means that Sansa has to be the one who gets molested and tormented by Ramsay no matter what the strife.  Sansa, whom the show has been trying to make us see is finally learning how to play the game of power in the South, is back to being tormented and abused by people who murdered her family, all because DnD (David Benioff and DB Weiss) couldn't be bothered to write out the plotlines for Sansa's future in the Vale of Arryn, which goes completely ignored again until well into Season 6.  I fully expect this kind of brutal characterization of Ramsay, which is why this episode isn't higher on the list.  But Sansa is supposed to be better than this and they just had her revert back to being a scared girl instead of using any of what she was taught by Littlefinger, Cersei or Margaery in the time.  

There's more to hate about this episode than Sansa's scenes.  More wonderfully mediocre scenes reside in Dorne, where we are fully introduced to the daughters of Oberyn Martell, The Sand Snakes.  They have a terrible plan to try and kidnap Myrcella Baratheon from the Water Gardens in Sunspear and use her as leverage in their grudge against the Lannisters.  Jaime and Bronn manage to reach Myrcella and Tristane Martell first, but a fight breaks out when Myrcella is reluctant to leave for King's Landing.  It leads to a poorly choreographed fight scene until Doran Martell's guards arrest everyone, including Ellaria Sand, all of whom seem surprised at this turn of events despite breaking into a highly guarded castle, assaulting the young Prince of Dorne and getting into an elongated fight scene with intent on whisking Myrcella away.  The Dornish scenes in the series are by far the hardest to sit through, chiefly because of how little effort they put into making Dorne in this series.  The characters aren't enjoyable, the plots in Dorne are vapid and uninteresting and it basically serves as time wasters until you get to the most important plot in all of Dorne of Myrcella's murder.  

There are some positives to this episode, chiefly the scenes in King's Landing between the ruling class and the Faith Militant and in Essos between Tyrion and Jorah, but this list has chiefly the five episodes where the cons far outweigh the pros.  And these good and well written scenes are not enough to salvage Season 5 of the series, which is where the whole train derails and can never fully recover.  

#4: Beyond the Wall (Season 7, Episode 6)

This one is routinely picked on as being one of the worst episodes of the entire series.  And to be fair, I can see it.  This one is bad, but not in the same sense as the last episode was.  Whereas "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken" is bad because of what it chooses to do with scenes and characters, this episode is bad because of how little damns they truly give with the world they've built at this point.  The speed with which characters are able to move from place to place, the sheer obvious plot armor bestowed upon certain characters and the logical jumps from basically everyone involved in this show in this episode and basically all of the ones in Season 7 are nothing short of jaw dropping.  And not in the good way.  This is another example of the Post-Season 4 Game of Thrones world, where we have a destination to get to in the show, but we throw logic out the window in order to get to it.  We needed the Night King to get a Dragon, but we didn't want to give an in world reason why it had to happen outside of the dumbest plotline of the entire show: the quest beyond the Wall to catch a Wight.  Jon Snow, Tormund Giantsbane, Jorah Mormont, Gendry and the Brotherhood Without Banners all head out past the Wall to try and capture a Wight they could use to convince Cersei of agreeing to a ceasefire, but the plan goes awry almost immediately when several of the red shirts (Star Trek terminology for characters who exist just to die) bite the big one and Red Priest Thoros of Myr is mortally wounded.  While they succeed in capturing a Wight, they are soon set upon by the White Walkers and their army of the undead, being trapped on a rock in the middle of a frozen lake, waiting for rescue.  

Not only does Gendry manage to Flash his way back to the Wall, but word gets from the Wall to Dragonstone so quickly that Dany is able to fly to the rescue in what seems like a matter of moments thanks to the rushed pacing of Seasons 7 and 8.  While her Dragons torch the undead, the Night King manages to javelin Viserion out of the skies and uses him as the Dragon he would obliterate the wall with.  While Dany manages to escape with many of the survivors and two of her dragons unharmed, Jon remains behind to fight off Wights until he himself is rescued by his Uncle Benjen, barely making it back to Eastwatch alive.  

So to recap, the Side of the Living captured a Wight to show to Cersei and all it cost them was a resurrection expert and granting the Night King a Dragon.  Go team, go.  Add into that the stupid as all hell subplot of Arya and Sansa being turned on one another by Littlefinger and you've got an episode that cracks the stupid machine on all sides.  And Game of Thrones truly never recovered from this nightmare of an episode.  

#3: A Dance of Dragons (Season 5, Episode 9)

Wouldn't you know it?  Season 5's main theme must have been character assassination, because there are plenty of episodes like "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken".  In an earlier episode of Season 5, while they were still holed up at Castle Black planning their invasion of Bolton Lands to reclaim the North, Stannis Baratheon is approached by his daughter Shireen about whether or not he was ashamed of her because of he way she looked thanks to the disease known as the Grayscale.  Stannis informs his daughter that when she had gotten sick as a baby, he had been advised to send her to live with the others afflicted by the disease, but he refused and called in every healer in the world to stop the spread of the disease and save her life, showing that he didn't care if she looked different because he loved her.  It's a scene of emotional vulnerability for an otherwise emotionless Stannis Baratheon and made you really begin to sympathize with his cause of fighting for his right to the Iron Throne thanks to the illegitimacy of Cersei's children and the death of Robert.  

Just a handful of episodes later, Stannis completely 180s on his daughter and decides to send Davos Seaworth (his Hand of the King and a fierce objector to burning people alive) back to Castle Black under false pretenses so he can have Melisandre burn Shireen at the stake, sacrificing her so that her "King's Blood" could be used to thaw the driving snows that were hampering his progress South.  Both Stannis and his wife show no remorse for burning Shireen until it is far too late and it makes Stannis Baratheon look little more than despicable, especially considering we learn that many of Stannis's men deserted him upon seeing him burn his daughter and heir alive to melt some snow and after his wife hanged herself.  So all of this Shireen burning nonsense, it amounted to nothing in the end.  Stannis still isn't strong enough to defeat the Boltons and ultimately follows his daughter and wife to the grave once Brienne finds out he's nearby.  

Oh goodie, more Dornish nonsense.  We get the wrap up to the whole Sand Snakes plot to kidnap Myrcella plot when (surprise, surprise), Ellaria Sand is proven to have been the mastermind behind the plot and even stole Myrcella's necklace to send to Cersei as a threat.  The whole purpose of this was to have Myrcella ultimately get killed by the Dornish, but the fact that we have to sit through multiple episodes of this nonsense only makes things worse.  No amount of badass action from Meereen's fighting pits will ever be enough to salvage this nightmare of an episode, one that is chock full of terrible plot points and the character assassination of the last of the Five Kings (no one counts Balon Greyjoy anymore and even the writers forgot he existed until Season 6).  I nearly dropped the show here, but I kept trucking along like a good soldier, still hoping against hope that the show would ultimately lead to something.  Oh what a fool I was...

#2: The Bells (Season 8, Episode 5)

Ignoring the almost memeable quotes from Tyrion about the Bells of King's Landing that in no way reflect the feelings of characters attitudes towards them prior to Season 8 (including quotes from Varys and Davos about Bells being rung only for horror and never once for surrender), this episode is a walking, talking example of a trashfire episode.  Season 8 was such a rushed and not thought out mess that I thought I went cross-eyed the first time I saw these episodes.  All of the problems in the episodes I mentioned above are on full display in this one.  Character assassinations of Jaime, Cersei, Jon, Dany, Varys and even Arya to some extent, combined with rushed battle scenes, weak dialogue and some of the worst scenes in the series of the show make this penultimate episode to the final season of this landmark show almost unwatchable.  

Dany burns Varys alive after he was revealed to have been scheming to have her killed and install Jon on the Iron Throne as a better candidate.  Dany then hardens her heart after failing to win Jon over and decides to utterly obliterate King's Landing after she and her Dragon singlehandedly wipe out the Lannister defense forces.  There is not a single Lannister or Lannister Ally left standing after this battle (unless you count Tyrion), as Qyburn, the Mountain, the Golden Company, Jaime and Cersei are all dead by the end of the episode, showing Dany off as little more than a more explosive version of Cersei.  Which is a terrifying thing to behold considering where her character would have logically headed if this show wasn't written by monkeys.  I'm sure that if George plans to have Dany burn King's Landing to the ground in the books (which are still unfinished BTW) it will follow a logically coherent act and not just Dany getting mad that no one likes her as much as Jon.  But in the series as it stands, it's just another means to wrap up the plot instead of a dramatic turn in character.  Oddly enough, this whole lack of understanding over a character reminds me of the Prequels, as they rushed Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side of the Force very quickly in Episode 3.  But at least in that film they had the excuse of only having two hours to tell what should have been three or more about the decline of the Galactic Republic.  No one was forcing Dumb and Dumber to cut the season's episode counts down or to rush the final seasons.  If they simply didn't want to continue the story anymore, they could have handed it over to subordinates and left to focus on other things, but they didn't do that.  Instead, we got a rushed and incoherent mess that left all of us wondering how the hell this episode was going to be salvaged in the Series Finale.  Add into that the atrocious war crimes committed by Dany herself as well as her armies and we're left realizing that this show did not care who it screwed over because they wanted to make Dany the Ansem to Cersei's Maleficent, a monster on a totally different level.  And it's sickening to think that they would spend all this time developing Dany and then, like Stannis before her, go and completely 180 her character as well.  

No, not even Clegane Bowl or the death of someone as wicked and evil as Cersei Lannister was going to salvage this mess of an episode.  It's truly terrible.  

#1: The Iron Throne (Series Finale)

I watched this episode during my work shift Sunday Night in May 2019 and I was completely flabbergasted at how terrible an episode it was.  The customers who came in and heard what I was watching just shook their heads in shame.  Game of Thrones was dead, killed not by an aggressive fanbase or a long thought to be deceased carcass of a plot.  It was murdered by it's creators.  I initially thought there was no way an episode of Game of Thrones could be worse than the last one.  I once again was left awestruck that they managed to make an episode worse than "The Bells".  Dany glowers over the ruins of King's Landing as Tyrion mourns the death of his brother and sister and Jon and Davos try their hardest to convince Dany's bloodthirsty army to stop killing Lannister prisoners.  Arya being in King's Landing serves no purpose whatsoever, as it's Tyrion who manages to convince Jon to kill Dany in what might have been the most insulting speech I've ever heard in a show of this magnitude.  Then, because they needed a finish to the story, once Dany is dead, they have no real reason to even keep the Seven Kingdoms together when Sansa declare the North will secede from the Seven Kingdoms.  I actually thought at first their plan would be to dissolve the Seven Kingdoms and instead make a Westeros that was separate from one another again.  But, like an idiot, I was caught off guard by the wonderful decision of making the all-knowing and (at least in the books) power-hungry Three Eyed Raven to serve as King.  Making Bran the King and having the Starks still secede is not only an idiotic decision, but there was just no reason for the Kingdoms of Westeros to remain united if the North was not a part of it.  Just let Robin Arryn, Edmure Tully, Tyrion, Gendry, Yara and the Prince of Dorne (again, whoever that is) take up their positions as Kings and Queens.  No need for them to try and make up a Holy Roman Empire style of government where a Council of Wealthy Landowners picks someone to rule as King.  Just dissolve the Seven Kingdoms.  They all still hate each other already, so what's the point in this ending?  

Add into that the dialogue in these episodes dissolving into little more than nonsensical video essays of Tyrion explaining how Dany overcoming the odds against her was all but assured to make her a tyrant and Jon having less than half of a sentence of new material to say outside of "I don't want it" or "She is my Queen" and you have an episode that's a chore to sit through, and not even a fun one.  It tries to end in a way that leaves everyone satisfied, but in the end, the only people who truly prospered in the end were the Starks and Bronn.  Tyrion was made to serve as Hand for the remainder of his life, Brienne lost the love of her life, Davos and Sam find themselves as strangers in this world of cutthroats and honorable knights and none of the other lords got much out of this.  

And after all of this, we got an episode that pleased no fans.  Not even the bots that were out there praising The Rise of Skywalker could muster anything but apathy for this decayed corpse of what was once a phenomenon the likes of which will never be achieved again.  And it's going to make the Top 5 best episodes list almost impossible to complete now that I'm this angry about the show again...