The Small Council: What Was the Best Part of Game of Thrones Season 5?

We’ve finally come to the end of our roundtable discussions of Game of Thrones Season 5. This week: what was the most effective storyline from the previous year?

DAN: For me, the most compelling part of Season 5 was the personal journey of Stannis Baratheon, not something I ever expected to write at the end of Season 4. Stannis had always been an unapproachable character, even when he was an active part of the plot in Season 2. That was by design—Stannis is an unyielding and difficult person, but in Season 5, the show managed to give us a look into his inner life without softening his edges, and he finally emerged as a compelling, fully-formed character.

A lot of this had to do with how terrific Stephen Dillane is in the role. Stannis was faced with the most difficult decisions of his life in Season 5, and Dillane took us through the character’s thought process step by step, even when he didn’t have much dialogue to work with (which was often, as Stannis is not a chatterbox). The scene from “The Dance of Dragons” where Stannis talks with his daughter Shireen remains the acting highlight of the year, as Dillane conveys a world of pain almost entirely through grimaces and pregnant pauses. It was his final year on the show, and Dillane finally stole it.

Most of Stannis’ scenes last year were leading up to that talk with Shireen, and what happened just after it. Stannis burned his own daughter at the stake to further his military ambitions, an unforgivable act. And yet I don’t doubt that he loved Shireen, as evidenced by his fight to save her from greyscale—in the end, that love still wasn’t enough to overcome his sense of duty. Stannis is a monster, but the show allowed him to be a complicated monster, a monster I still sympathized with when he accepted his death at Brienne’s hand with weary resignation.

Before anyone brings it up, yes, I wish the final beats of Stannis’ story had unfolded more smoothly. As powerful as I found his death scene, the show could have slowed down to let the litany of misfortunes he suffered right beforehand (Selyse’s suicide, his sellswords leaving him, Melisandre running off) sink in. That still doesn’t diminish the show’s accomplishments in crafting this character, a man who could be drily funny (“Fewer”), sympathetic, and repellant in the space of a season, thanks to the careful work on the part of the writers and Dillane’s towering performance.

RAZOR: Stannis is a great choice, Dan. However, I am so invested in my boy Jon Snow that his story was my favorite from Season 5. From the end of Season 4, when he buried Ygritte and was forced to treat with both Mance Rayder and Stannis, Jon began to take the next steps on the path to becoming a leader, a path even show-only fans knew he would be walking. Jon’s story took off pretty rapidly is Season 5. There was no long and drawn-out choosing of the Lord Commander, no wandering around Castle Black dealing with the tedious burdens of leadership of the Night’s Watch. No, once Jon was named Lord Commander, he had a block fetched, beheaded one of his father (uncle’s?) betrayers, then beat feet to Hardhome to save the wildlings. But before all that happened, he won the wildlings to his cause by mercy-killing Mance as he burned in agony on Melisandre’s sacrificial pyre. Jon was set up to succeed, and despite all this, he failed.

Episode 8, “Hardhome” was easily the best episode of the season, if not the series, by at least a King’s Road mile. Kit Harington’s natural grace and speed with a sword were on display as he whirled and twirled and cut his way through throngs of wights, and became the first living being to purposefully kill a White Walker/Other in full combat since the Last Hero, Azor Ahai (I fully realize Sam the Slayer killed a Walker with a dragonglass dagger, but he had no idea what he was doing and was completely lucky with his strike).

In the end, it was the Stark honor that did Jon in. Jon had made Olly his squire and Alliser Thorne his First Ranger, so in his mind, he had no reason to believe they would betray him. Maybe it was the poorly written traitor sign that so angered me, or perhaps it was the fact that Olly was involved, but this was the one scene where I wanted the writers and director to follow the books. Wun Wun was there—it could have gone down as closely to the books as possible, and yet Jon was tricked by a fake Benjen story and a sign written by a first grader in crayon.

However, now that we know Jon will be back, in some capacity, for Season 6, I’m now more excited than ever to see how the story of the Bastard of Winterfell continues. Whether he is the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, or he really is Ned Stark’s bastard son, Jon’s story is still unfinished, and that it is so compelling.

KATIE: I have some mixed feelings about my own choice, but all the same I have to stick to it. Sansa’s continued journey was, for me, the most compelling part of Season 5, even if it wasn’t the most well-executed. Up until Littlefinger’s departure from Winterfell, Sansa’s story arc was moving along beautifully—the starry-eyed noble lady becomes disenchanted with the world around her through her suffering, which is caused by those she once revered the most. Her family is picked off one by one, but she continues to sit prim and proper and seemingly unthreatening, and all the while a thirst for vengeance is simmering beneath the surface. Having learned from Margaery and Cersei alike, Sansa begins Season 5 under the tutelage of master manipulator Petyr Baelish, and while we know her plans won’t go off without a hitch, we expect better things than those that have befallen her thus far.

Sansa’s perseverance through her abuse is to be admired and applauded. She has survived not one monster now—more than enough as it is—but two, and she has escaped them both: first through Joffrey’s fickleness and then his convenient death, and now through her own wit and courage. Despite all she’s been through, Sansa remains, at her core, a lover—she is loyal, compassionate, and every bit the lady she was when the series began; the only difference now is that she knows a lady is capable of more than what she thought before.

Could her Season 5 arc have been stronger? Absolutely. For example, it would have been far more interesting for Sansa to manipulate Ramsay the way Margaery did Joffrey—a direction the plot appeared to be going upon Littlefinger’s departure, when he told Sansa down in the crypt, “[Then] you will take this Bolton boy, Ramsay, and make him yours…. He’s already fallen for you.” It still gnaws at my last nerve that the producers didn’t take this line and run with it. That would have been solid character development, a way for Sansa to take what she’s learned and start off her vendetta without becoming violent or sadistic (which seems to be something the writers are, rightfully, avoiding).

Before her wedding night and oftentimes afterward, though, we have the makings of an eventual Sansa triumph, which means victory for the Starks as well. While Game of Thrones is undoubtedly an ensemble of characters and intersecting storylines, I think a lot of us are still rooting for the Starks, despite the family’s death toll. The ones left are still coming into their own, but while they’re at it they’re fighting for justice, too. I know we’re venturing into a world where the good guys fall and the bad guys never seem to, but… all in good time, I say. Revenge is slow and sweet, and I’d say one of Sansa’s most promising virtues is her patience. She now knows where Jon is (his “death” notwithstanding), she knows that Bran and Rickon are still alive, and the North remembers. After this year, Sansa has all the hope and drive she needs to achieve justice for the Starks, and I’m willing to bet that that’s something we’d all like to see.

ANI: “Where the heck is Winter already?” asked all the recappers, reviewers and Game of Thrones critics in the months leading up to Season 5. Where indeed? It’s been the ongoing threat since before the show ever aired a single episode. “Winter is Coming.” Sean Bean is serious about it. And yet, for all the grave repetitions of the Stark family words, and forebodings that those sweet summer children who were not preparing would never survive, it felt like an empty threat. After all, the sun shone down upon King’s Landing. The trees were in bloom. Joffrey lived and died in sunlit courtyards, Olenna sat under shady bowers, eating her cheese. With the sole exception of those poor fools trapped at the Wall (or worse, north of it), there didn’t seem to be a cloud in the sky most days, let alone a flake. Where was this endless threat of winter, and would the show just get to it already?

Oh.

OHHHHHHHH. For me, that moment at Hardhome was the single most amazing moment of the season, when the true stakes of the coming battle were made clear. That’s when the words “Winter Is Coming” suddenly took on a new, much more terrifying meaning, one that even Ned Stark could not have known. For me, Season 5 may have had some great highlights—Cersei’s walk, Stannis’ arc, Arya’s coming of assassination age, Olenna getting her revenge, and of course, Dany getting on her dragon and going for her maiden voyage of Air Targaryen. But none of that matters in the grand scheme of the over-arching battle to come. The game of thrones is a mere distraction, and the Night’s King is coming to upend the board, scatter the pieces and smash that Iron Throne. Someone cast Bill Paxton in a cameo down in King’s Landing real quick. Cause once that army corsses the Wall and the Long Night begins in Westeros, it’s game over man. Game over.

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• Published on 10/03/2015 at 11:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 10/03/2015 at 12:07 PM CDT