The Small Council: What was the best set/location of Game of Throne Season 5?

Just as Game of Thrones has made more use of special effects as its gone on, so has it made more elaborate sets and filmed in more exotic locations. This week, we’ll discuss which of those sets and locations made the most impact on us.

KATIE: From the dead-cold North to tropical Dorne to the deserts of Essos, it’s Valyria that takes it for me in Season 5’s tour of exotic locations. I’m a sucker for gothic horror, and that’s precisely the chord this scenery struck: Our first shot isn’t a grand reveal, but rather a faint outline of a long-gone city, which is shrouded by both distance and fog. We sail sedately along with Jorah and Tyrion past broken buildings and overgrown shrubbery, towards the crumbled ruins of a once great wall.

“I suppose this is it, then,” Tyrion says. “This is what remains.” It’s just him, Jorah, and the creaking of their boat as it passes through all this fallen architecture. Drogon soars overhead, as if to serve as a reminder of the majestic city from whence the Targaryens came.

Valyria is dead, and its remains are as haunting as any ghost with unfinished business. The scenery itself is beautiful, but also suggests to us that no matter how great and noble any family in the Game of Thrones universe is, all of their homes can end up like this. Winterfell is suffering, the Lannisters are unraveling, House Baratheon has been wiped out, and Valyria stands in the background—destroyed, but not forgotten, still standing as a kind of warning as to how quickly a legacy can fall.

ANI: Dorne had a lot of problems this season. One of them was based on the lack of settings—it felt like the Water Gardens and some beachfront properties comprised the entirety of the Seventh Kingdom, one that in the books is huge, with a coastline that runs some 400 miles.

And yet, despite the lack of diversity, Dorne was *beautiful.* The Alcázar of Seville, where the show was allowed to film, is a lush and luxe palace filled with historical Moorish architecture, high ceilings, and rooms that went on for days, and the gardens. Lord, those gardens. I would spend every day gazing out upon them, which means I would have to occasionally watch some bad fight choreography in them. We do what we must.

DAN: Like Katie, I was really taken with the poignant beauty of Valyria, which made all the more impact because I wasn’t expecting it. I was expecting to visit the House of Black and White, but I wasn’t prepared for production designer Deborah Riley’s exquisite work on the interiors. The ominous pool in the middle of the foyer, the towering statues of various gods, the way the blue lighting in the main room contrasted with the orange light from the fireplaces along the walls—it was almost overwhelmingly gorgeous, and gave this new location an immediately identifiable sense of place.

If all we’d seen of the House of Black and White had been the entrance area, it still might have topped my list of the best sets of the season, but then the production doubled down and gave us the Hall of Faces, it was all I could do not to sputter stupidly whenever it came on screen. The Hall shares a lot of visual motifs with the main room—the blue light, the fires, the high ceilings—but in place of statues it has enormous pillars lined with cured human faces, and if the House wasn’t eerie before, that did the trick.

It’s like the entire place, the Hall of Faces especially, emerged fully formed from some gruesome, long-forgotten fairy tale. It’s a great example of wonderful visual imagination realized by an expert production team.

RAZOR: I think I gotta go with the view of Moat Cailin in Episode 3, “High Sparrow.” Moat Cailin has always been a bit of an enigma to me because of the strategic value it holds for the North, despite its decrepit and ruined nature, and because of where it’s located. The only other way to get into the North by land is to traverse the swamps long held by the crannogmen of House Reed, who are loyal bannermen of House Stark.

Seeing Moat Cailin from atop the cliff where Pod and Brienne were shadowing Sansa and Littlefinger made the castle look like a piece of hauntingly beautiful artwork…and by haunting I literally mean ghosts and evil spirits and the whole nine yards. Areas in Northern Ireland have provided backdrops for some amazing scenes throughout Game of Thrones, but Knockdhu, which stands in for Moat Cailin, has been one of my favorites.

CAMERON: So I guess I’m left with the obvious choice. How freaking awesome was that Hardhome locale? Everything for the design of that sequence was top-notch, including the desolate feeling of the location they picked to shoot it. The team did such a good job turning it into a wildling village and then icing it all to the ground in one of the best action sequences on television. (OK, now I’m just gushing.) Season 5 was definitely not my favorite in terms of story, but aesthetically? No other show on television looks this good.

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• Published on 09/11/2015 at 3:00 PM CDT
• Last updated on 09/11/2015 at 3:12 PM CDT