Game of Thrones provided unforgettable moments, near-perfect episodes, and stunning seasons
throughout its run, but as it continued, it also changed television in many ways, including
a few more subtle changes that flew slightly under the radar.
As Game of Thrones started its run, it seemed to have a clear main character that viewers
were supposed to rally behind, and that character was Ned Stark.
As the honorable patriarch of the highborn Stark family, Ned, the Warden of the North,
was lured away from his family and life at Winterfell to head to King's Landing, the
capital of Westeros, to become the Hand of the King.
In doing so, he splinters the Stark family across the map of Westeros, leaving his wife
and sons behind as he and his daughters make a new home in King's Landing.
However, things take a turn for the worse when Ned discovers that the heirs to the throne
aren't actually the children of King Robert Baratheon, but are instead the children of
Queen Cersei and her brother.
In the penultimate episode of the first season, he confesses to his "crimes" in front of the
entire populace of King's Landing, ultimately losing his head anyway.
Fans of the books saw this moment coming, but for those who had just started with the
show, it remains one of the best moments on Thrones, perfectly setting up expectations
before yanking the rug out from under the entire audience.
From older films like Ben-Hur to more recent epics like the Lord of the Rings trilogy,
movies have always been afforded the budgets and scope to stage enormous action sequences,
but that opportunity has largely been absent from television.
Even prestige dramas like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, while beautifully shot, remained
relatively modest in scope, but all of that changed with Game of Thrones.
Easily the most technically ambitious show in television history, Thrones' filming spanned
continents, shooting in exotic locales like Iceland and Croatia as it gave fans bigger
and bigger sequences.
"Those are brave men knocking at our door.
Let's go kill them!"
While relatively low budgets during season one prevented the showrunners from shooting
battle scenes, that all changed with season two's "Blackwater" which led to even more
expensive sequences down the line.
"Battle of the Bastards," the climax of Season Six, set new standards, and in the show's
final season, the Battle of Winterfell ended up becoming the longest ever battle shot for
television or film.
For years, television couldn't compete with film on an epic scale.
Thrones proved it was not only possible, but could yield some pretty unforgettable results.
Before Game of Thrones, it probably seemed like a sprawling, dense fantasy series stood
little chance of becoming HBO's biggest hit of all time.
Shortly after the show's premiere in 2011, however, the network clearly realized that
they had a massive success on their hands and got to work making sure that the showrunners
had as much money as they needed.
"And you will be speaking to me with more respect."
Much of the added expense went to battle sequences, with the Battle of Blackwater Bay bumping
the show up to a staggering $8 million for the episode.
Even then, showrunners reportedly had to fight almost as hard as their characters to get
that increase.
However, by the time the show reached its final season in 2019, it was breaking records
once again with a budget increase that brought each episode to a whopping $15 million, and
some episodes, like the one featuring the Battle of Winterfell, may have even surpassed
that.
In recent years, $10 million budgets for prestige TV have been doled out more commonly, but
a budget for the final season that reached $90 million is pretty unprecedented, making
it clear that HBO would spare no expense when the time came to finish off their signature
show.
With massive budgets reportedly already set for the spinoffs, it looks like HBO has few
regrets.
For the first five seasons of the show, Game of Thrones stuck pretty faithfully to its
source material, the novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R.R. Martin, which
is currently comprised of five books.
Named for the first book in the series, Thrones tackled all of its biggest moments, including
Ned Stark's execution, the infamous Red Wedding, the doomed wedding of Joffrey Baratheon, and
Jon Snow's death, before moving past its source material in season six.
Season six came on the heels of a particularly brutal fifth season, which contained some
of the most hard-to-watch scenes in the series.
Many critics and fans believed that once the show could no longer follow Martin's strict
plot map, even though he was a frequent consultant on the show, the quality suffered.
Whether or not it was truly able to hold its own against Martin's books, it still marks
a turning point for adaptations.
Source material is almost always finished by the time adaptations are filmed, so for
the showrunners to even attempt to move beyond Martin's books while still maintaining the
story was a massive feat.
"Shock value" will always be synonymous with Game of Thrones.
Viewers were traumatized by the Red Wedding and horrified by Hardhome, but they could
also cheer as Jon and Sansa defeated Ramsay Bolton at the Battle of the Bastards, as the
Night King met his defeat at the Battle of Winterfell, or as Arya changed faces to get
her revenge on Walder Frey.
"Tell them the North remembers.
Tell them winter came for House Frey."
That being said, this shock value wasn't always the show's most valuable or even enjoyable
quality.
Throughout its run, it pushed new boundaries for what viewers could withstand.
The Red Wedding was bad enough, but watching multiple episodes featuring graphic torture
scenes or the show's many instances of assault as a plot device often felt like too much.
Even so, Thrones set new standards for shock value, and if future ambitious showrunners
can learn something from its triumphs and its failures in equal measure, it can only
improve the television landscape.
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