Let’s be real: Game of Thrones had an absolutely wild ride, and not all of it was good. For eight seasons, HBO’s fantasy behemoth captivated millions of viewers around the world, but the quality wasn’t consistent. Some seasons were absolutely masterful television that redefined what fantasy could be on screen. Other seasons… well, let’s just say that the show didn’t always stick the landing. Whether you’re a die-hard fan trying to defend the later seasons or someone who tapped out after Season 5, I think we can all acknowledge that the show had some phenomenal highs and some genuinely frustrating lows. So let’s go through this season by season, grade each one, and talk about what actually worked and what absolutely didn’t.
Season 1: The Beginning (A+)
Season 1 is untouchable. This is where everything started, and honestly, you could make an argument that this single season might be the best first season of any television series ever made. The show introduced us to a sprawling cast of characters across an enormous world, and remarkably, we actually cared about all of them. The writing was tight, the acting was phenomenal, and the adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s source material was respectful without being slavish. We met the Stark family and actually felt invested in their journey. We watched Daenerys transform from a frightened girl into someone with actual agency. We saw Tyrion become our favorite character. The political intrigue was dense but not incomprehensible, the world-building was clear, and every episode built toward something.
The decision to kill Ned Stark in the final episode was absolutely revolutionary. Nobody did that. Main characters didn’t die in the middle of the season and stay dead. The show established itself as genuinely unpredictable, which made everyone pay attention. The acting was excellent across the board, from Sean Bean’s noble Ned to Peter Dinklage’s charming Tyrion, from Lena Headey’s calculating Cersei to Emilia Clarke’s awakening Daenerys. The dialogue felt natural even when characters were discussing complex political situations. This season was a masterclass in adaptation and television writing.
Season 2: Deeper into the Game (A)
Season 2 took everything that worked in Season 1 and expanded it. The War of the Five Kings was a complex, multi-faceted conflict, and the show handled it beautifully, jumping between different perspectives and showing how the war looked from different regions of Westeros. We were introduced to Stannis and Davos, who became incredibly compelling characters. The political maneuvering in King’s Landing became even more intricate. We watched Tyrion actually govern as Hand of the King, and his scenes were some of the best the show ever produced.
The direction, cinematography, and production values continued to be excellent. Cersei and Tyrion’s dynamic was absolutely electric. The Stark storyline was heartbreaking and compelling. The show was still making smart decisions about character and narrative, trusting its audience to follow complex webs of politics and motivation. We were two seasons in and the show felt like it could sustain itself at this quality level indefinitely. That was obviously not the case, but at the time, Season 2 seemed to promise everything.
Season 3: The Rains of Castamere (A)
Season 3 gave us the Red Wedding, one of the most shocking moments in television history. The show had earned enough goodwill and trust that when it did something that dark—killing off the protagonist’s entire army in a shocking betrayal—audiences felt it in their bones. The political landscape shifted dramatically. Every alliance mattered. Every betrayal had consequences that you could actually see play out on screen.
The problem with Season 3 is that it was still doing one thing primarily: setting up dominoes so it could knock them down in later seasons. It’s a good season, genuinely excellent in many ways, but it’s also the first season where you could start to see the show beginning to prioritize shock value over narrative coherence. The Red Wedding didn’t just happen because it made perfect narrative sense; it happened because Martin wrote it that way in the books, and the show wanted to replicate that moment. This is when the show started to show the first cracks in its narrative foundation, though the cracks were small enough that most viewers didn’t notice yet.
Season 4: The Mountain and the Viper (A)
Season 4 is legitimately one of the best seasons of television ever made. It had the trial of Tyrion, which featured exceptional acting and writing. It had the Mountain versus the Viper, one of the most emotionally devastating episodes of television. It had Littlefinger explaining his motivations in one of the show’s most monologues-heavy moments, and it was riveting. The show was still making confident choices about character and narrative. Joffrey’s death in the second episode meant that the show was willing to remove major obstacles early and force characters to adapt to new circumstances. The writing was intricate, the character work was exceptional, and the show felt like it was hurtling toward something significant.
This is probably where the show was at its creative peak in terms of balancing complex narrative with character development. Every storyline felt like it mattered. Every character death felt tragic or earned. The show was expanding its cast in meaningful ways while keeping established characters engaging and surprising.
Season 5: The Problem Begins (B+)
Season 5 is where things start to slip, though it’s not immediately obvious. The show is still very good here, but this is where you can start to see some fundamental problems with the narrative structure beginning to emerge. The problem is that the show had largely caught up to where the books were, and the source material wasn’t there to guide the showrunners anymore. Some characters, particularly Tyrion and Sansa, start to feel like they’re moving through plots rather than living through consequences.
Sansa’s storyline in Season 5 was particularly rough—her arc at the Vale with Littlefinger didn’t feel earned or natural, and it felt like the show was putting her through trauma for its own sake rather than because it made narrative sense. The show was also starting to get a bit too clever for its own good, with Varys’s exit and some of the Daenerys storylines in Essos feeling like they were just spinning wheels before the real plot happened elsewhere.
The season had great moments—Harrenhal had some exceptional scenes, and the show was still producing excellent acting performances. But for the first time, you could feel the show starting to strain under the weight of its own narrative complexity. The bones of great television were still there, but you could start to see the seams showing.
Season 6: Things Fall Apart (B)
Season 6 is wildly uneven. It has some of the best television the show ever produced—the Battle of the Bastards is a technical marvel, the Winds of Winter episode is phenomenal, and Jon Snow’s resurrection was handled brilliantly. But it also has some of the worst dialogue the show ever produced, some character decisions that feel unmotivated, and a general sense that the show was losing sight of what made it great in the first place.
The problem with Season 6 is that it often felt like the show was hitting plot points because those were plot points that needed to be hit, rather than because they grew organically from character and circumstance. Daenerys’s liberation of the Unsullied, her acquisition of the Dothraki, her getting a dragon—these happened because they needed to happen for her to be powerful enough to eventually come to Westeros. But they sometimes felt less like character choices and more like items on a checklist.
The show was also starting to simplify its character dynamics. Cersei became more villainous and less complex. Daenerys became more obviously destined for power. The moral ambiguity that had defined the show’s early seasons was being stripped away in favor of a clearer good-versus-evil narrative. This wasn’t inherently bad, but it was a significant shift in the show’s identity.
Season 7: The Endgame Approaches (C+)
Season 7 is where things really started to fall apart for many viewers, though it still had passionate defenders. The show had been shortened to just seven episodes for this season, and the pacing became absolutely breakneck. Characters teleported across the map. Strategies that would have taken seasons to unfold were compressed into single episodes. The show stopped caring about the logic of its own world and started caring almost exclusively about spectacle and shock.
That said, Season 7 had some genuinely incredible moments. The Battle of Blackwater was phenomenal. The introduction of the dragon glass as a weapon against White Walkers was clever. And there was a sense that the show was finally, actually heading toward a conclusion after dancing around the endgame for so long. But the shortcuts the show took to get there were increasingly visible. Dragons could suddenly move at supersonic speed. Armies could traverse thousands of miles between episodes. Character arcs that had been building for years were resolved in a single scene or two.
Season 7 is fun in a roller coaster kind of way, but it’s not emotionally resonant the way the best seasons of the show were. You’re watching a machine powering toward its conclusion rather than watching characters live through a story. For some viewers, that was enough. For others, it was when they realized the show had lost something essential.
Season 8: The Final Disappointment (C-)
Season 8 is the season everyone wants to talk about, and unfortunately, it’s also the season that broke a significant portion of the fandom’s trust in the show. Six episodes to wrap up eight seasons of narrative, and those six episodes frequently felt rushed, illogical, and frustrating. Characters made decisions that seemed unmotivated by anything except the need to get them to the next plot point. The show had spent years suggesting one ending and then seemingly abandoned it in favor of something completely different.
The destruction of King’s Landing happened in a way that felt shocking rather than inevitable. Daenerys’s descent into madness happened in an episode rather than over a season. Bran becoming king was presented as a surprise when it could have been foreshadowed and built toward if the show had the time. The Cleganebowl happened because fans wanted it, not because it made sense narratively. The show had become focused on satisfying fan theories and providing spectacle rather than telling a coherent story.
This is not to say Season 8 was without merit. There were genuinely good moments. Jaime’s arc should have landed better than it did, but the intention was there. The dialogue in the final episode between characters had some really nice character beats. But the season as a whole felt like the show had lost the thread of what it was doing and was just hitting story beats because they needed to be hit.
The Bigger Picture
When you look at Game of Thrones as a whole, what you’re seeing is a show that was at its absolute peak around Season 3 or 4, started showing problems around Season 5, and then increasingly compromised its own narrative integrity in service of getting to an ending. The show remained technically excellent throughout—the cinematography, the acting, the production design never faltered. But the writing, the pacing, and the character motivations increasingly felt like they were working against each other rather than in concert.
The core problem was structural: the show was adapting books that weren’t finished, and at a certain point, it ran out of book material to adapt. From that point on, the showrunners were working from George R.R. Martin’s general outline of where the story was going, but without the intermediate steps that would make that ending feel inevitable. They compressed seasons of character development into episodes. They made choices that prioritized spectacle over sense. They lost the moral ambiguity that had defined the show’s identity.
Would a different showrunning team have done better? Probably. Would finishing the books have helped? Definitely. But Game of Thrones is what it is: a genuinely brilliant first four to five seasons that slowly lost its way before crashing and burning in its final stretch. It’s still worth watching, but know that you’re signing up for a journey that doesn’t quite stick the landing.
Discover more from Anglotees
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.