Every Game Of Thrones Franchise Season, Ranked

Much like Amazon has done with The Boys, and Paramount has done with Yellowstone, HBO has turned Game of Thrones into a sprawling, shared universe of sequels, prequels, and spinoffs. These days, it’s not enough to just have one hit show and milk it for all it’s worth; you have to milk it for all its spinoff potential, too.

HBO has spun off Game of Thrones into House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and between them, they comprise 12 seasons of television. This franchise has brought us some of the greatest seasons of television ever produced, but, unfortunately, it’s also given us some of the absolute worst.

12 Game Of Thrones Season 8

The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones ended the flagship show with a whimper, not a bang. With just six episodes, this last season felt very rushed and haphazard. The writers had run out of fully fledged books to adapt, so they were working from George R.R. Martin’s bullet-point outlines, and they didn’t bother to flesh out the bullet points. Daenerys decides to become a mass murderer at the drop of a dime.

The climactic battle that the entire series had been building to was so dim and gloomy that we couldn’t even see what was going on. Putting Bran Stark of all people on the Iron Throne was just the final insult.

11 House Of The Dragon Season 2

After racing through a ton of fascinating story material in season 1, House of the Dragon came grinding to a halt in season 2. It was as if the show was bigger than HBO expected, so they asked the writers to spread out the rest of the story across more seasons than they originally planned.

I’m impressed by House of the Dragon’s ability to do and say a lot while doing and saying absolutely nothing. After the season 1 finale promised all-out war, season 2 just spun the wheels and went through the motions until the season 2 finale, once again, promised all-out war, and we were back in the same place we started.

10 Game Of Thrones Season 7

The writers of Game of Thrones are some of the best adapters in the business. Give them a novel and they will turn it into TV gold. The series started to go downhill when they ran out of books to adapt, and Martin gave them a rough beat sheet to work from.

GoT’s writers were great at paring back Martin’s massive published tomes and stripping them down to the bare essentials, but they weren’t so great at fleshing out his story outlines and filling in the gaps between point A and point B. It was the complete opposite of their approach to the first six seasons, and the magic instantly left the room.

9 House Of The Dragon Season 3

The most recent entry in the neverending Game of Thrones saga is the third season of House of the Dragon. This season started off with an incredible battle sequence that seemed to plunge us right into the war we’d been promised since 2022. But after that thrilling opening spectacle, season 3 settled back into a lot of the same problems as season 2.

There was a lot of wheel-spinning, a lot of time-wasting, and a lot of characters having the same conversation over and over again. Season 3 was still an improvement over season 2 — at least it didn’t waste Daemon, who was bafflingly marooned on an island for most of season 2.

8 Game Of Thrones Season 1

Game of Thrones’ debut season was a strong start, but it was outshined by most of the seasons that came after it. There’s so much setup to get through, showing us around Westeros and introducing us to everyone in the show’s sprawling ensemble, and the writers spend the majority of the first season building to the shocking fakeout.

Season 1 introduces Ned Stark as our central protagonist, then chops off his head right at the end. It was a mind-blowing twist that told us no one was safe, but it makes season 1 feel like a bit of a false start in retrospect.

7 Game Of Thrones Season 5

Season 5 was the beginning of the end for Game of Thrones. The highlight of the season is its eighth episode, “Hardhome,” in which Jon Snow and his forces take on the Night King and the army of the dead.

It was an exhilarating episode, full of dazzling visuals and edge-of-your-seat action, but it marked a shift in Game of Thrones’ focus. After “Hardhome,” the show started focusing more on dazzling blockbuster spectacle than the human drama on the battlefield, and that was what made the show work in the first place.

6 Game Of Thrones Season 2

After season 1 had ended with our beloved protagonist’s decapitation, Game of Thrones’ second season had a lot to live up to, and it managed to avoid the sophomore slump. Season 2 introduced the show’s signature blockbuster spectacle with its penultimate episode, “Blackwater.”

This was long before the days of “Hardhome,” when action spectacle was a rare treat and not the main focus of the series. Even in “Blackwater,” amidst all the fun and the chaos, the focus is still on the human beings.

5 Game Of Thrones Season 3

The third season of Game of Thrones brought one of the most shocking twists in television history: the dreaded Red Wedding. “The Rains of Castamere” is a classic, but this season as a whole is Game of Thrones at its absolute finest.

The writers, directors, and actors were all firing on all cylinders. They were all on the same page, they’d settled into a groove, and Game of Thrones was at the height of its powers. Season 3 marked the proverbial salad days.

4 House Of The Dragon Season 1

With all its time jumps and recastings, House of the Dragon season 1 felt a bit messy and disjointed at times. But that approach to the storytelling kept the show moving at a refreshingly brisk pace, especially compared to the seasons that came after it.

All the actors in House of the Dragon are great, but Paddy Considine carried season 1 on his shoulders as Viserys. Once Viserys was gone, you could really feel his absence, and the show was never as good without him. Viserys is the Michael Scott of House of the Dragon.

3 Game Of Thrones Season 6

The sixth season of Game of Thrones was the last gasp of greatness before the show went downhill. It was starting to display some of the issues that would get worse and worse over the next two seasons, but it was still prime GoT.

As with all the best Game of Thrones seasons, season 6 peaks in its finale. Honestly, if the series had somehow been cancelled before season 7, the season 6 finale would make a more satisfying ending than the actual series finale.