The Game of Thrones prequel struggles to apply new makeup to the old face of palace intrigue.
As David Benioff and D.B. Weiss show with this masterful rebuttal of an episode, it’s never too late to choose a different narrative.
There’s no shortage of empty gestures throughout the latest episode of the series.
The episode gives the audience exactly what it expects, and absolutely nothing else.
The episode is, above all else, a resolute detailing of the final calm before a spectacular storm and what it means to be human.
The episode has the good sense to respect our familiarity with these characters, and as such it doesn’t beat around the bush.
Violence is teased, but tantalizingly withheld, throughout the season-seven finale of Game of Thrones.
The episode offers up a battle between CGI dragons and CGI zombies, to pulpy effect but no moral consequence.
The episode that dials back from the epic confrontations that have filled out the majority of this season.
In war and through violence, Game of Thrones is as clear and compelling as it gets.
Three episodes into this truncated seventh season and Game of Thrones is spiraling toward a preordained place.
The episode manages to set up future conflicts without interrupting its rapid pace.
Even after six seasons, Game of Thrones still doesn’t know what’s most important to its own story.
Death is momentarily thrilling, but the struggles of those who live on are what sustain the series.
The power of the latest episode of Game of Thrones is that it leaves nothing to abstraction.
The depressing truth to the episode’s title may be that no one can get what they want without violence.
When Game of Thrones leans on its history, it takes on a resonance rarely found in fantasy.
The latest episode of Game of Thrones takes a more subdued step back to reset the table for the next big event.
The show is no longer holding anything back in story or tone, and it’s making this fantasy world feel all too real.
The latest episode of Game of Thrones finally starts uniting the season’s threads, often through blood.