Kim Renfro: No!
Ian Phillips: Hold the door!
Chris Snyder: I can't really look.
A. C. Fowler: Ugh...
That's a great way to start it.
Narrator: The first seven seasons of "Game of Thrones"
were filled with lots of death, drama, deception,
and, of course, dragons.
Ahead of the final season, we're going to count down
some of the most memorable moments from the show.
Warning: Spoilers are coming.
Chris: One of Dany's defining moments is when she kills
the slave masters at Astapor.
Meredith Geaghan-Breiner: Basically Daenerys trades
Drogon, her dragon,
to him in return for freeing all of the Unsullied.
Kim: Dany's just constantly underestimated
and especially by men.
Meredith: There's this great reveal when she shows
that she actually has been understanding him the whole time.
Kim: I also like the detail.
She's wearing the same cape that all the slave masters do,
but she has one shoulder overturned,
which is the sign that she's about to flip everything
on its head.
Meredith: And the dragon burns the head slave master guy.
A. C.: She's so regal, so in charge, so powerful.
Kim: This is a quintessential moment
of the way that Dany approaches justice
and the way that she's going to rule moving forward.
Septa Unella: Shame.
Shame.
Ian: Cersei's been a villain throughout the entire show,
and this is the first moment where you really
feel a lot of sympathy for her.
Matt Stuart: So she's being held captive
by the Faith of the Seven for a little while.
Kim: The High Sparrow forces her
to do this "walk of atonement."
So he strips her naked, cuts off all of her hair,
and has her walk from the Sept of Baelor
back to the Red Keep.
Chris: She's been pretty ruthless up until this point,
so you don't feel that bad for her, but you do.
Matt: And they ring this bell,
and everybody was going, "Shame, shame, shame."
A. C.: "Shame, shame, shame."
Meredith: "Shame, shame, shame."
Kim: It's just so gross
and dehumanizing.
Meredith: Inside she's plotting the things
that she's going to do
to avenge this whole thing.
Ian: In an epic cliffhanger, Jon Snow was murdered.
Chris: In "Game of Thrones," anyone can die,
but they can also come back to life.
Kim: Jon Snow's resurrection had so much buildup to it.
Ian: You could say it was shocking,
but I feel like everyone knew this was coming.
Kim: Ghost wakes up and notices
that he's about to come to life.
A. C.: That's like such an iconic moment.
Kim: Seeing Kit Harington open his eyes and gasp
was just like, "Agh! Finally!"
Chris: And everyone could all breathe a sigh of relief
that Jon Snow was alive.
Tyrion Lannister: I wish
I was the monster
you think I am.
A. C.: Tyrion is on trial
for killing Joffrey.
Kim: And we, the audience,
all know that he didn't have anything to do with it.
Meredith: He, like, goes off on his whole family,
which is really satisfying to watch.
Matt: This was amazing. It was just this passionate speech,
and this is when he demands the trial by combat.
Meredith: Bearded Tyrion is my favorite Tyrion.
This is when he starts going through his, like, dark phase.
Ian: It's just Peter Dinklage showing why he's won
multiple Emmys for this show,
and it's also one of the best written moments in the show.
It's an amazing monologue.
Tyrion: I did not kill Joffrey,
but I wish that I had!
A. C.: Peter Dinklage deserves every Emmy he got.
Kim: Nobody's dying. There's no big war. It's just a camera
focused on a masterful actor.
Kim: The Purple Wedding is the antidote to The Red Wedding.
Ian: This is when Joffrey is getting married to
Margaery Tyrell.
Meredith: Joffrey is tormenting Tyrion, as he loves to do.
Matt: And he winds up being poisoned and dying,
and it's supposed to be a mystery
as to who actually poisoned him.
Chris: Weddings never turn out to be happy occasions.
Matt: If you're getting married in Westeros,
maybe reconsider.
A. C.: To watch him choke, literally,
is one of the most satisfying moments in this entire series
because he sucks.
Meredith: For a poison death,
it's like a really gruesome death scene.
Kim: His eyes are bleeding.
Chris: He was such a little brat.
He definitely deserved to die.
A. C.: I love Olenna 'cause she's like,
"Help the poor boy, somebody!"
Ian: Oh,
brutal.
A. C.: I do not care about Cersei's tears. Ugh!
Matt: Loot Train Attack is one of the best scenes
in the entire show.
A. C.: Daenerys
like really
becomes part
of what's happening in Westeros.
Chris: Bronn and Jaime are just sitting there looking on
like, "What is happening?"
Meredith: And you hear the hooves of the Dothraki's horses
as they're approaching.
Then they come over the hill,
and then all h--- breaks loose.
A. C.: They are just not prepared for this dragon at all,
and I love it.
Matt: They just come flying in,
burn the soldiers, burn the wagons.
Kim: And it makes you feel kind of terrible
about the Lannister soldiers
being burned alive and just completely decimated.
Chris: That dragon is huge now.
Kim: The face everybody makes when they see a dragon
for the first time in the show is always so good.
Ian: There were real stunt men on fire in this scene, too.
It's like watching a scene straight out of Hell.
Matt: It just shows how powerful Daenerys
and her army really are.
Ian: So this is Hardhome.
This is one of the most famous battles from the entire show.
Kim: It was this moment when both book readers
and show watchers were able to experience
something fresh together for the first time,
and it was amazing.
Matt: So at Hardhome, Jon Snow is with the Wildlings
and the Night's Watch,
and the Night King and his army show up.
Chris: This was sort of the Night King's coming out party.
Kim: This is also the first time that we prominently see
the Night King in action.
We'd only really gotten a glimpse of him
at the end of an episode before.
Meredith: Basically the Night King and Jon Snow
have this really intense face-off.
A. C.: The way they look at each other is just like...
Ian: The most famous moment from this is we just see
the Night King standing there and lift his arms up.
Meredith: And you just get, like, goosebumps
down your spine.
A. C.: I didn't realize how slow this movement was.
He's taking his sweet time.
Kim: And also, we learned that Valyrian steel
kills White Walkers.
That was so cool.
Kim: Battle of Blackwater was really the first time
that the show was able to flex their budgetary muscles.
A. C.: Stannis' troops are coming up against King's Landing,
but Tyrion, smart as ever,
has a plan.
Matt: It just shows how great Tyrion is
that he thought of this.
Kim: It's like watching a nuclear bomb go off
the way that everybody reacts to it.
Matt: And it's just green flames everywhere.
Meredith: You're not, like,
rooting for a particular side necessarily,
like, you care about people on both sides.
Matt: Yeah, Stannis had no idea what he was up against.
Meredith: Bronn is invincible. He's never gonna die.
Chris: The Battle of the Bastards is one of the best
battle scenes in "Game of Thrones."
Kim: It was just one of the most beautifully shot
and directed sequences that was so visceral.
Ian: Jon Snow leads an entire army to retake Winterfell
from Ramsay Bolton.
A. C.: He is just disgusting and sick and psychotic.
Matt: You also have this amazing moment where Jon Snow
takes off his belt, holds up his sword,
and Ramsay's entire army is charging at him,
and he just like, "Bring it."
Ian: It has an epic and cinematic quality to it.
Meredith: It's probably my favorite scene in the whole show.
Chris: He's about to
take out all the horses with one swoop.
Meredith: Kit Harington was, like, actually there
with all those horses charging right at him.
Ian: This is the moment where you feel like Jon could
truly be king.
Kim: Iconic, absolutely iconic.
A. C.: Oh, my gosh! This is like one of the best things
I've ever seen on television.
Kim: And Ramsay is finally toast.
I mean it's sad because of Rickon and everything,
but he should have zigzagged, so it's really his fault.
Oberyn Martell: Say it!
Ian: Tyrion has been accused of murdering Joffrey,
and he calls for a trial by combat.
Kim: Oberyn Martell versus Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane.
Chris: You saw Oberyn, he was winning,
he was beating The Mountain,
and then all of a sudden things take a turn.
Kim: He punches out his teeth, which is so gnarly,
and then just squeezes his head until it explodes.
Matt: And you honestly thought
Oberyn was going to win that fight until the very end.
Ian: It is a shocking, horrifying moment.
Even for a show that is full of horrifying moments,
this might be the worst.
Matt: Everybody looks away or looks down after it happens
except Cersei.
Chris: Honestly, I can't watch it still to this day.
If I see it, I have to turn away. It's pretty gross.
Kim: Yeah, that. That's everyone's face.
Chris: I can't really look.
A. C.: Oh, my gosh!
Ian: I remember I couldn't sleep for that entire night.
I couldn't stop thinking about it.
Meredith: It was just
the worst
way
I've ever seen someone die on screen.
Matt: Sept of Baelor explosion was how Cersei
killed a lot of her enemies.
Kim: I think from the very beginning you knew
that something different was happening,
and it had to do with the score because Ramin Djawadi,
who does all the music for "Game of Thrones,"
he had intentionally never used piano before
in any of the scenes.
Ian: This is really one of the best scenes
in the entire show,
like the music is chilling.
Cersei blows up the church
using a whole lot of wildfire.
Chris: Poosh!
A. C.: The only thing that made me mad about this is
that Margaery was in the Sept. I love Margaery Tyrell!
Meredith: RIP, Margaery. She was great.
Kim: Margaery was right. Always listen to women.
Ian: We'll never have a better "Game of Thrones" scene
than this.
Kim: The pacing and the buildup of that
was just so masterful.
Matt: The High Sparrow, she got Margaery Tyrell,
she got Loras Tyrell.
Kim: That's so...she just murdered so many people.
That person didn't do anything.
A. C.: Yes, Cersei, look on. She does not give a "F."
Ian: That is the most GIF-able moment of the entire show,
just absolutely iconic.
Meredith: This is Cersei's version of self-care.
Meera: Hold the door!
Chris: Hodor, hold the door. Hodor, hold the door.
Kim: It's so hard to explain.
Meredith: Bran and Meera are trying to escape.
They're leaving Hodor behind,
and he's trying to hold the door
against all of the White Walkers.
A. C.: It was, like, really confusing
'cause it's like we're seeing two Hodors at once,
we're like learning a lot about Hodor, and then he dies.
Matt: Bran kind of goes into Hodor's head.
Kim: Bran accidentally warged him into his child self,
and he witnessed his own death
during which Meera Reed was yelling at him to,
"Hold the doors."
Matt: It's almost like he's having a seizure in the past.
Ian: I remember when I first watched this,
my mouth was agape.
Kim: So messed up.
Ian: Oh. When you hear, "Hold the door,"
this gives me chills.
Kim: He had one job, and he did it so well.
Meredith: To his credit, he does hold that door
for a really long time.
Matt: Hodor.
Hodor!
A. C.: Hold the door!
Meredith: This was a character I really didn't
want to see go.
Ian: He really got a good send-off and a really deserving
send-off, and he got to die with honor.
Matt: You know that a lot of people in this show
are going to die.
You just have to accept that going into it.
Kim: Leading up to the first season, everybody thought
that Ned Stark was the protagonist of this series,
that he was gonna be the person that we were following
across this big epic fantasy tale.
Chris: So George R.R. Martin kills off
the main character in the first season of the show.
A. C.: I could not believe
that they killed him off so early.
Matt: It sets up the war. It sets up everything.
Kim: Ned was really that very first moment
that people realized,
"Oh, this is not the show I thought I was watching.
It's actually way cooler."
Chris: Basically, everyone's on the chopping block,
literally.
A. C.: I think this is like the first time we really see
how ruthless Joffrey is.
Kim: And then, "Sir Ilyn, bring me his head."
Just
upends
everything.
Ian: So we think here that maybe Ned Stark
is about to be spared some mercy from Joffrey,
but instead Joffrey decides to go, "Off with his head."
Matt: That is a giant sword. Wow, Arya looks so young.
A. C.: Ugh!
Ian: They really, like, show his head coming off.
Kim: Poor dead Ned is no more.
A. C.: Also, the crowd, could you just hush a bit. Come on.
Kim: Ugh. The Red Wedding.
Matt: I had read the books, so I knew it was coming.
Chris: The Red Wedding is one of those moments in the show
that everyone knows even if you don't watch the show.
Meredith: The Red Wedding happened as an attempt to repair
the relationship between the Starks and the Freys.
At first it seems like it's going surprisingly well.
Kim: When it started,
it was just like your stomach just drops.
As soon as Catelyn hears
"The Rains of Castamere" start to play,
and the entire tone just shifted.
A. C.: It is like the bloodiest thing ever.
It's really shocking.
It's so gory.
Matt: Killed Catelyn Stark, killed Robb Stark,
killed his direwolf.
Ian: Oh, this is the worst.
Matt: And killing, killing. Oh, my God.
They are just getting massacred.
Meredith: They don't call it The Red Wedding for no reason.
A. C.: They should have seen it coming.
Walder Frey is crazy.
Ian: This was supposed to be a big, happy, joyous event.
Kim: It was brutal. There's no other word for it.
Just brutal.
A. C.: I would just like to say that from season 1,
the people in King's Landing totally suck.
All they do is ask for blood, beg for blood.
I'm like, "Could you all calm down and be civilized?"