Best ‘Game of Thrones’ Episodes Ranked

Our watch has ended, and as far as the majority is concerned, badly. Whether you liked the end run of Game of Thrones and its series finale, one thing is undebatable: the finale isn’t in the pantheon of all-time greats. It was so polarizing that instead for the time being, it’ll go down among the ranks of the most controversial.  Your mileage may vary, but whatever happened now though, doesn’t invalidate the past. Thrones has still given us great individual hours of television, great seasons, and some of the most spectacular scenes and sequences we’ve ever seen on the small screen.

Now that we’re about a month removed from the finale, it’s time to take stock of the series as a whole. Game of Thrones is often thought of in seasons and moments, rarely episodes—with so many narratives going at once, there was always too much happening in any given hour to remember what happened when. And yet, Thrones tried its best and often succeeded more times than not, assembling stories and arcs to give each episode a rough, congruous shape. These are the finest hours of Game of Thrones ranked, eleven because ten, while exclusive, just wasn’t enough to do the series justice. If your fave is missing, remember: the measure of a full episode is more than just the huge moment that occurs within it. (Maybe we’ll do a moments-only list later.)  And no, nothing from Season 8 appears—we did say best.