5 Best Moments on Game of Thrones
The anticipation for tonight’s Game of Thrones finale is so high, we can taste it. It tastes like Dornish wine and lamprey pie!
Looking back on all three seasons, we decided to compile some of our best (and not-so-great) Game of Thrones moments. (Do not read further if you’re not caught up.*) First, the top five moments in GoT history. The five moments that let you know you were watching something special. The five moments that made you look at everyone you knew who wasn’t watching with pity and disdain. Here they are:
Wait. Isn’t He The Star of the Show?
The penultimate episode of season 1 started the Game of Thrones tradition of saving the best for next to last. Sure, each final moment in the first two finales were exciting, but viewers who hadn’t read the books were not ready for the jelly served up in S1E9, ‘Baelor.’ The honorable Ned Stark, the hero of the show, the man who carried all of our hopes and dreams of seeing justice served to those incestuous Lannisters, lost his head after being just a bit too honorable. Armed with the knowledge that his best friend, the late King Robert Baratheon, had not fathered the queen’s children, Ned put his faith in the wrong people: Lord Petyr Baelish and… well, just people in general. Ned Stark was too good for this world - definitely too good for the political shenanigans in Kings Landing. We had a brief moment of hope when Lord Varys convinced Ned to plead guilty to treason in exchange for being sent to serve out his days on The Wall. Yay, right? That’s not too bad. He can be with his bastard son Jon Snow, and his brother Benjen, right? Wrong. That little asshole Joffrey Baratheon went back on his word - as people in Kings Landing are wont to do - and called for Ned’s head… in front of his daughters. Anyone who hadn’t read the books didn’t see that coming at all. Ned Stark was played by Sean Bean. He’s a star! They can’t kill the hero, played by a famous actor, in season one!
Oh, yes they can. And they did.
The Slap Heard Across Seven Kingdoms
This show has proven that no one is safe. It’s best not to get attached to any one character. We don’t know the fate of Joffrey Baratheon, but here’s to hoping he’s assbanged to death by a direwolf. Back in season one, however, just two episodes into the season, we were treated to the closest thing to justice we’re likely to get any time soon. Everyone in Winterfell is shocked and concerned over Bran’s “accident,” falling from a tower. No one is sure if he’s going to make it. When Tyrion Lannister inquires as to whether or not his nephew Joffrey has paid his respects to Bran’s parents, he’s met with the usual filth and bile we’ve come to expect from the young boy king. Thankfully, Tyrion is probably one of two people in the kingdom who doesn’t give a shit about Joffrey’s feelings and met his nephew’s sass with not just one, not two, but three slaps across the face.
We’d only known this kid an episode and a third, but we knew he was a douche and deserved it. The world collectively fist pumped.
A Golden Crown
Viserys Targaryen may have had a legitimate claim to The Iron Throne, but let’s face it, no one wanted that to happen. He was an awful, pervy brother who sold his sister as a child bride to gain an army. Unfortunately for Viserys, he just didn’t know when to quit and had apparently never heard the advice, “You get more flies with honey.” Completely missing the signs that Khal Drogo had come to love Viserys’ sister, Daenerys Targaryen, and wouldn’t tolerate any foolishness, The Ass Who Would Be King made the mistake of not just badmouthing Daenerys in front of Khal Drogo (and his translator), but threatening the life of Khal’s unborn child to boot. Drogo promised Viserys a golden crown, and that’s exactly what he got. And it was lovely.
Like a Khaleesi Boss
For two episodes we watched Daenerys get straight up disrespected by the slave trader Kraznys in Astapor. She was trying to broker a deal to buy his super slave army, The Unsullied, and he was busy making sexist remarks in Valyrian, a language he assumed she didn’t speak. She waited until he’d traded 8,000 Unsullied for one dragon to bust out her mother tongue… VALYRIAN, bitch! Not only did she order the army to kill all the slave masters, she issued the one-word command to her dragon (“dracarys”) to light his ass on fire. Later, she freed her army and they agreed to serve her of their own free will. She rides off into the sunset with her Dothraki crew, her Unsullied, her Westerosi knights, AND her three dragons, dropping the slave whip like a mic.
Pictures won’t do this one justice. Just watch the video:
The Red Wedding
Not only was this scene the moment book readers have waited 13 years to see, but it’s also the point in the story that the show’s producers really wanted to get to, and what made them want to turn the books into a show to begin with.
King in the North Robb Stark had made many poor decisions: First, he sent Theon Greyjoy to Pyke to negotiate a partnership with Theon’s father, Balon. Theon turned on him, sacked Winterfell, and supposedly murdered Robb’s younger brothers. Then he showed weakness among his men when he gave his mother, Catelyn Stark, a baby slap on the wrist for freeing their valuable prisoner of war Jaime Lannister. THEN he married Talisa when he had promised to marry Lord Walder Frey’s daughter in exchange for his help in the war with the Lannisters. THEN he beheaded Lord Karstark against some pretty good advice to hold him as a hostage for his treason, ensuring that the Karstark banner men wouldn’t abandon him on the battlefield. He lost a major part of his army and was forced to go crawling back to Walder Frey, offering up his uncle Edmure Tully as a replacement to marry one of Frey’s daughters.
It seems all is going well. The wedding was nice. The bride was surprisingly pretty. Everything is coming up Starks! We may have been wrong about Ned, but surely Robb Stark IS the one carrying our hopes and dreams of revenge against those incestuous Lannisters, right? Not so fast.
During the wedding reception, it’s revealed that Walder Frey and Robb’s banner man Roose Bolton are in cahoots with the Lannisters. Talisa is stabbed in the stomach six times (Did we mention she’s pregnant with a baby she hopes to name Eddard Stark?), Robb is shot with numerous arrows and then stabbed in the heart by Bolton, and Catelyn Stark has her throat slit. They even killed the damn direwolf, Grey Wind!
Last week’s episode, ‘The Rains of Castamere’, will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the best hours of television, just for that heart wrenching scene alone. Have a look:
*You’re not caught up? Get your life together!
[First Photo Credit: BuddyTV.com]
