It's no surprise that Game of Thrones produced some of the most talked about moments of the
past ten years on television. From baby dragons and sudden beheadings to face-swapping and
the walking dead, here are some of the most paused moments in Game of Thrones history.
From the opening moments of Game of Thrones' first episode, audiences are immediately drawn
to Ned Stark, the tragically noble patriarch of the Stark clan, and his strong sense of
honor and duty. Along with his wife, Catelyn, Ned is the proud parent of five children:
Robb, Sansa, Bran, Arya, and Rickon. He's also the father of Jon Snow, a bastard Ned
produced while he was off fighting a rebellion with King Robert Baratheon, or so he says.
Throughout the first season, viewers follow Ned as he leaves the Stark family home of
Winterfell to serve as Hand of the King, which starts him down the path that leads inevitably
to his death.
Over the course of the season, Ned discovers that Robert's eldest son, Joffrey, isn't Robert's
son at all. He's actually the product of a relationship between Robert's queen, Cersei
Lannister, and her twin brother, Jaime. When Ned reveals the truth after Robert's death,
he finds himself put on trial for high treason. He pleads guilty, but it turns out that Joffrey
has a bit of a sadistic streak, to put it mildly.
"This one's your father. This one here. Look at it and see what happens to traitors."
In one of his first acts as the new king, Joffrey has Ned beheaded in a public execution
in front of his family. With that, the sword stroke heard 'round Westeros simultaneously
closed out the first season of Game of Thrones and taught viewers that nobody, not even Ned
Stark, was safe.
When audiences first meet Daenerys Targaryen, she's a far cry from the queen she will eventually
become. As an exiled political pawn whose vicious, ruthless brother Viserys
marries her off to Khal Drogo to cement an alliance, Daenerys doesn't seem
particularly imposing. However, as she assimilates into Khal Drogo's Dothraki
tribe, she finds herself far more powerful than her fallen family, and it soon seems
like the eastern continent's number one power couple will soon conquer the world.
Unfortunately, Drogo meets an untimely end thanks to an infected wound and a vindictive
witch doctor, leaving Daenerys on her own with a Dothraki horde. Luckily, she also has
three dragon eggs, and after burning her late husband on a funeral pyre, she descends into
the fire herself, along with the eggs. By morning, the fire is gone, and Daenerys is
still alive, rising from the ashes with three newborn dragons clinging to her naked body,
ready to lead her to conquest.
By season three, Daenerys has given herself the appropriate title of "the Mother of Dragons,"
having successfully raised the baby monsters into obedient adolescent weapons of mass destruction.
But as Daenerys makes her way towards Westeros to claim her throne, she discovers an unknown
horror on her side of the Narrow Sea, the slave trade.
"To win his shield, an Unsullied must go to the slave mart with a silver mark, find a
newborn, and kill it."
Upon visiting Astapor, Daenerys realizes she needs to assemble an army if she's ever going
to conquer the armies of King's Landing, so she decides to make a trade with a particularly
cruel and repulsive slaver. Daenerys agrees to trade her largest dragon, Drogon, in exchange
for his powerful Unsullied army and his translator, Missandei, but it turns out that she has a
few other terms and conditions to this agreement.
Once Daenerys confirms that the army is hers, she gives Drogon a command: "dracarys."
Just like that, the winged beast torches both the slave trader and his town, giving us one
of the best moments in Game of Thrones. With an army behind her, a trio of dragons, and
her first victory under her belt, Daenerys truly becomes a conqueror in one infinitely
pausable moment.
Game of Thrones is well known by its fans for being packed full of unbelievably brutal
moments, but most of them pale in comparison to the infamous Red Wedding. In the show's
third season, Robb Stark walks back a deal with his mother's ally: Walder Frey. In addition
to being a gross old man, Walder leads House Frey and controls an important river crossing
that could be the Starks' key to holding the North.
Unfortunately, Robb follows his heart and marries the woman he loves, Talisa, instead
of one of Walder's many daughters, leaving Walder very angry about their would-be alliance.
It seems that the Stark family calms the old man down by offering up Cat's brother for
the marriage instead, and Walder accepts, with Robb, Cat, and a pregnant Talisa attending
the wedding party at the Twins as Walder's guests.
Don't get that warm feeling about a happy ending just yet, though. As the wedding band
strikes up the ominous tune "The Rains of Castamere," Catelyn catches Walder's men locking
the doors, and it's obvious to everyone that this wedding is about to go bad for the good
guys. As Edmure and his wife are whisked to safety, Talisa and Robb are brutally dispatched,
ending the short reign of the King in the North in a matrimonial bloodbath. The final
shot of the episode, where Catelyn mournfully eliminates one of Walder's daughters, only
to have her own life ended seconds later, is one of Thrones' most disturbing and indelible
images.
If you ever get invited to a wedding in Westeros, it might be best to just send a nice card
and have something from the registry delivered, because they don't tend to end well. Shortly
after the Red Wedding, we get another nuptial disaster. To be fair, though, this one was
definitely a happy ending for viewers, if not for the blushing groom.
Ever since Ned's beheading, his eldest daughter, Sansa, remained captive at King's Landing
under the "care" of Joffrey and the Lannisters. After King Robert dies as well, Joffrey takes
the throne, and luckily for Sansa, Joffrey decides on a new bride, the beautiful and
high-born Margaery Tyrell. He marries her in a lavish ceremony, making her the queen.
If you've been paying attention, it will not surprise you to find out that while the wedding
is lovely, the reception goes awry in the most gruesome way possible. After emotionally
torturing everyone at the ceremony, it seems like Joffrey starts to choke on his cake.
But as it turns out, someone poisoned his wine, and he dies in his mother Cersei's arms
while Sansa escapes.
As he takes his last breath, Joffrey points to his befuddled uncle, Tyrion Lannister,
setting up a season's worth of intrigue. With that fatal sip, Joffrey's party becomes known
as the Purple Wedding, and puts an end to one of the show's most brutal and despised
characters.
While the series is focused on the war for the Iron Throne and control over the realm,
there's another threat lurking in the north, slowly inching its way towards the Seven Kingdoms.
Despite a massive wall that separates Westeros from the untamed and mysterious wilds to the
north, the terrifying White Walkers and their undead army spend the entire show heading
towards Westeros on a mission to eradicate all living things.
As the show progresses, the White Walkers show off several frightening powers, but the
scariest White Walker sequence of the entire show takes place in the fifth season. As Jon
Snow joins a group of wildlings to try to convince them to join the Night's Watch and
fight against the seemingly unstoppable Walkers, they're attacked in one of the show's most
memorable combat sequences.
The good guys put up a valiant fight, but it's clear from the start that they're fighting
a losing battle. Eventually, Snow and his companions are overrun and forced to retreat,
leaving hundreds of wildlings to a horrible fate. In complete silence, the leader of the
White Walkers, the Night King, simply raises his arms and revives all the people he just
slaughtered as vicious wights. It's a truly terrifying scene, and it proves just how frightening
the Walkers really are.
Unfortunately for Jon Snow, his alliance with the wildlings doesn't go over well with the
other members of the Night's Watch when he returns to their headquarters at Castle Black.
Despite the fact that he's simply trying to save humanity by assembling as large of an
army as possible, his fellow Night's Watchmen feel powerless and betrayed by Jon's insistence
on an alliance with their long-time enemies. One night, his mutinous men finally devise
a plan. After luring him outside, Jon's men turn on him and take turns stabbing him to
death Julius Caesar style, leaving him for dead as the fifth season draws to a close.
"For the watch."
Obviously, this was one of the biggest cliffhangers in modern television history, especially with
the show's history of killing off the guy you thought was the main character. Shortly
into the show's sixth season, though, Jon made his way back to the realm of the living
with a little help from Westeros's resident Red Priestess, Melisandre. Jon Snow's death
was an incredible moment in its own right, but his return couldn't have been more satisfying.
Game of Thrones had no shortage of incredible battle sequences during its eight season run,
but the best of the best by far is definitely season six's Battle of the Bastards. It's
the epic and long-awaited showdown between Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton, the vicious, cruel,
legitimized bastard of Roose Bolton.
Before the battle even begins, Ramsay racks up a long list of insults and offenses towards
the Starks, including brutalizing Jon's sister, Sansa, taking control of Winterfell, and executing
Rickon Stark right as the battle begins. So yeah, this one isn't about the Iron Throne;
It's personal.
"You're going to die tomorrow, Lord Bolton. Sleep well."
The entire battle is made up of moments that deserve to be paused, from Jon's heroic charge
onto the battlefield to the moment where he's nearly trampled by horses and buried by fallen
soldiers, but the show's final stretch delivers victory after victory. Between the moment
where Jon beats Ramsay to a pulp to the climax where Sansa feeds her tormentor to his own
hungry hounds, "Battle of the Bastards" will keep you pausing and rewinding from start
to finish.
By the final episode of season six, Cersei Lannister, has faced enough humiliation to
last a lifetime. With her last living child, Tommen, and his bride Margaery on the throne,
the Queen Mother has been (accurately) accused of adultery, incest, and other high crimes
by the ultra religious High Sparrow, whose cult has all but overtaken King's Landing.
After forcing Cersei to walk naked through the city and face abuse from her subjects,
the High Sparrow wants her to stand trial at the Sept of Baelor for a little more public
shaming. Cersei, however, has a very different spectacle in mind.
While Margaery, the High Sparrow, and most of King's Landing wait for Cersei in the Sept,
viewers see her coolly watching things from a high tower, biding her time until the entire
Sept explodes, thanks to a blast of wildfire. It's a sequence with several beautifully framed
shots worthy of pausing, and an undeniable victory for Cersei, even though it leads poor
Tommen to leap to his death out of grief. It's the perfect way to close out a season
with a bang.
As Game of Thrones drew to a close, everything seemed to lead to two points: who would take
the Iron Throne and whether or not the Night King could even be defeated at all. Ultimately,
nobody got the Throne, but the Night King met his end thanks to an unexpected attack.
As the White Walkers descend upon Winterfell and our favorite remaining characters, or
what's left of them, all hope seems lost, especially because the Night King can conjure
a new army out of dead bodies any time he wants.
As the humans try to hold off the army of undead and White Walkers, the Night King is
getting closer and closer to his target: Bran Stark. The situation looks dire...until fully
trained assassin Arya Stark leaps from the darkness and kills the Night King herself.
A highlight of the final season, Arya Stark's biggest kill is a stunning twist, providing
Game of Thrones with one of its all-time best moments.
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