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Game of Thrones: The Best Scenes by Season

For your inspection and discussion: the best scenes from each of the 7 seasons.
Game Of Thrones Moments
By  · Published on March 27th, 2019

Season Four

Rabbit Stew

Arya And Hound

“Plenty worse than me. I just understand the way things are. How many Starks they got to behead before you figure it out?”

Taken in by a farmer and his daughter, the Hound discusses the ancient and sacred rule of Guest Right just long enough to discern where the silver is kept, then he beats the farmer and robs him. It’s a bump in the road for our happy go lucky odd couple, and a serious lesson for Arya, who thinks she still lives in a world of gentle teasing and kindly strangers. It’s a wake-up call for her, and for us, who’ve developed real affection for Sandor Clegane. It’s also, though we won’t know it for several years, a trail marker in the Sandor redemption arc, as he’ll come to find the farmer and his daughter again in Season seven, having died together just as he predicted. Do they die because of Sandor, or in spite of him? We’ll never know, but the fact that Sandor believes the former is what really counts.


Ygritte’s Death

Ygritte Death

“You know nothing, Jon Snow.”

The end of an era. Would Ygritte actually have shot Jon? We’ll never know, because he’s saved by Olly, with the dinky little bow Sam gives him the courage to pick up. This scene is just a confluence of people who love Jon coming together … someone is bound to get hurt. And it winds up being Ygritte, who goes down fighting and gets to die on her signature line. All said, it’s not a bad way to go. Jon, on the other hand, is going to be left with some serious baggage…. Baggage that’s only going to get worse during the rest of his tenure at Castle Black.


The Purple Wedding

Purple Wedding

“Serve me my wine.”

Remember the good old days when Game of Thrones was simple and there was one little twerp it was impossible not to relish hating? Joffrey’s death was a long time coming — he was so insufferable it was more a question of who was going to do him in first. And the way he finally goes is the perfect fall from imagined grace. Riding high on his kinghood and his marriage to Margaery, Joffrey is in top form as the only person enjoying an event he’s making miserable. As he orders Tyrion around, works himself up over imagined slights, and petulantly explains his own insults when he thinks they haven’t hit home, the air is thick with awkward terror and the realization that this could very well be the status quo for the next several decades. When Joffrey finally goes down it’s a genuine relief. Just like its Dothraki counterpart, this wedding was never going to end without a death or two — thank goodness it was the one person we’d been gunning for for four years.


Arya Leaves Sandor

Arya And The Hound

“Do I have to beg you?”

It’s the end of another era and Game of Thrones’ least likely and best pairing. It’s also the moment if there is one, when Arya and Sandor pass each other on their respective journeys up and down the moral ladder. Sandor, in pain and trying to goad Arya into killing him, recounts all the evil things he’s done and could have done, a tallying of his past sins. When that fails he softens, and he begs, reduced to a frightened man resigned to death and hoping it comes just a little easier. And Arya doesn’t give it to him. She denies him mercy, and she never loses her impassive stare. It might feel a little cheap to find out later that Sandor survives, but it’s worth it to see their continued trajectories toward and away from redemption.


The Mountain and the Viper

Mountain And Viper

“You raped my sister. You murdered her. You killed her children.”

A seemingly triumphant event that turns, without warning, into a bloodbath that unceremoniously does away with a beloved character? Why yes, it’s Season 4’s Red Wedding. The Mountain and the Viper is a hell of a scene, an outrageously tense spectacle with so much riding on it… it’s hard to watch even before everything goes south. The fight is the main draw, of course, but it’s the reactions that make it — the day after I watched I found myself haunted not by Oberyn’s face, but by Ellaria’s. And it’s Cersei who’s the most fascinating — her smug pleasure the moment Oberyn dies is something to behold. If it occurs to her that Oberyn was looking for his own justice for a woman and her murdered children, the irony is completely lost. There are a lot of times you could say Cersei loses her soul, and this isn’t even one of the big ones, but as the pleased orchestrator of this whole abysmal scene, she’s the one to watch.


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Liz Baessler is a frequent contributor and infrequent columnist at Film School Rejects. She has an MA in English and a lot of time on her hands. (She/Her)