Game of Thrones S6 — Season 6

Reply to Season 4's review;

This season was probably the best EVER on GOT. I absolutely loved this season.

1- 10*
2 - 10*
3 - 8*
4 - 10*
5 - 10*
6 - 8*
7 - 9*
8 - 8*
9 - 10*
10 - 10*

I've heard the show goes downhill from the next season. Hopefully not for me

The last two episodes are masterpieces.

Best season so far, good story developments and slowly but surely bringing everything together for what will surely be a climactic....... 😉

As a reader of the books, season 5 did feel a little disappointing. But I have to say that whilst season 6 maybe not be 100% true to the book, it does seem to have returned back to the spirit of the book. I for one am looking forward to season 7 and see how the remaining kings & queens battle it out.

This is a show where spoilers are a pretty big explosion of disappointment. So if you don't want that, don't read this. I was pretty up and down this season. There would be a great episode, followed by a blah episode, followed by an amazing episode. I'm going to start with the bad and end with the good, just like the season.

Probably my biggest problem with this season is Arya's storyline. Don't get me wrong, the direction that her story goes is great, but the execution was pretty bad. It felt really slow and drawn out early on, and then suddenly speeds through the exciting parts. The pacing was just poorly done. Next was Bran's storyline. Basically he had the same set of issues. We front loaded him with stuff, but suddenly the tree guy we just met who is supposed to teach dies quickly. Again, pacing just felt really off.

There were a handful of other issues here and there, but let's move on to the good. The Door was an amazing episode. Flat out amazing. It ends so rough and so emotional. It wasn't a "shock" ending that just gets you surprised, it is just perfectly executed emotional climax. I'm so glad we got that halfway through, because it got me back into excitement for the rest of the season. Then we get The Hound back in action in a great scenario. Ian McShane is so great in that damn episode. He made me really sad to see him go after getting such little time, but a great way to move The Hound into action again.

Finally we got to the end of the season. Episode 9 is always an epic episode, and this season delivered very well. It wasn't a fight I was surprised by at all (I guess a little because I expected more main characters to die), but it was done with some great direction. One of the best shot episodes of the series.

And then last night happened. Honestly, yesterday I was thinking that I'd be at a 3.5 or a 4 for this season. But then this episode aired. I did not see a lot of this happening, and the sequence was done so well. You the viewer start to figure it out at the same rate that the characters do. Wonderful. But oh, that massive explosion was not the whole episode. The fall of the king (I didn't make that joke, but have to say it now), Arya slits a throat after baking some pies, the election of Jon to King of the North, ships get sailing, and the south show up again after 9 episodes; all good stuff. Particularly in love with Diana Rigg. She owns every scene she's in. EVERY. SCENE. She does what I think every viewer thought in that first episode when those Dorne sisters are annoying. So yea, the finale was so amazing that I will probably think of this season as a beautiful burst of green flames.

Seriously though, I think Diana Rigg is my favorite actress of all time. She married James Bond guys. She is the best.

It wasn't as good as season 1-4, but overall better than season 5. I feel like, in terms of character development and dialogue, nothing really changed between this season and last season, they were still both a downgrade from the first four, but what really stands out this season is that all the set-up from season five and before in the high sparrow plot, the sons of the harpy plot, and the three-eyed raven plot, all came together. One thing that really stood out was the cinematography. I just found every shot breath-taking and the lighting and colour grading was consistently beautiful. The best episodes were of course the last two. The Battle of the Bastards was incredible, if at times illogical, and the the finale was even better in my opinion. One really big problem I had with this season was the Riverrun plot. It was possibly the most unnecessary subplot in anything I've ever seen. It literally added nothing to the plot. We just learned the extent to which Jaime would go for Cersei, which we already knew, and we got to see the Blackfish for 5 minutes before he died offscreen. OFFSCREEN. Overall, still really good television.

Finally, things are starting to move at a nice pace. Even though the showrunners are now left on their own, everything still feels coherent with the source material. I doubt I would have noticed that it’s not based on the books anymore if no one told me. Some cheesy plot points (mostly related to Daenerys and Arya) didn’t convince me, but the fifth, ninth, and tenth episodes rank amongst the best so far. Not to mention that they managed to turn one of the minor characters’ deaths into one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the whole series. It looks like they saved up all their budget for these three episodes, and treated the rest as fillers meant to build up to the grand finale.

The following two seasons are notorious for their poor writing, and I can’t wait to find out how they managed to ruin everything. This season does have a couple of cheesy plot points, but I doubt I would have noticed that it’s not based on the books anymore if no one told me.

Season 6 is apparently the first season to not be adapting anything due to them covering all material of the original books available at the time. But for now, at least, I think they did well with it. A good chunk of the earlier episodes are a little boring, and I'm not entirely sure that I'm on board with Bran's arc personally, but there are enough stand-out scenes and episodes to make up for that.

8 is for the work grrm obviously did to help d&d this season (battle of the bastards 100% had to be grrm telling them what to do/his vision)