The Game of Game of Thrones: who will win the world?

The penultimate Game of Thrones episode, “The Bells,” was the exact opposite of The Lego Movie: everything is not awesome, and everyone is not okay.

It wasn’t a war that descended on King’s Landing. It was pure devastation. This was a massacre, just wholesale violence for the sake of violence. If viewers thought that things could end peacefully between the Red Keep, the Mother of Dragons, and anyone unlucky enough to be caught between them, this episode proved that’s never going to happen.

Well, shit.

How are we feeling, people? If you’re, like me, over-caffeinated and still bouncing around after last night’s episode, who can blame you? Alternatively, if you’re still playing around with the brightness and contrast settings on your TV or laptop in an attempt to make out anything from that poorly lit episode, know that you’re not alone. “The Long Night” was a wild ride, and although there are sure to be many takes on what it all means for the final few episodes, plus a few how-to guides on increasing the contrast settings for your $1,000 television set, we’re here to talk fantasy draft.

We’re baaaaaaaaack! The final session of our fantasy sports league Game of Game of Thrones, which is run by Fantasizr, is upon us. It’s time to batten down the hatches, obsess over whether you got a worthy lineup, and pray to the Westerosi gods that your drafted characters don’t happen to cross paths with a couple of angry, hungry dragons. (Or if they do, that you’re given the bonus points for memorable deaths.) Before we jump into the episode, here’s a reminder of how the score breakdown works and the changes we’ve made for the final season. The season 8 premiere was fairly easy to score. It was the equivalent a hot tub you ease yourself into until your body adjusts to the temperature. There shouldn’t be any wild surprises that leave us debating whether points should have been awarded. We can save that for next week.

The season 8 premiere was a little lackluster when it came to the violent devastation we’re used to in Game of Thrones, but that’s okay. It’s better to treat this final season like a marathon, not a sprint. The premiere opens up with Daenerys, Jon Snow, her inner circle, and the impressive army she’s collected over the last few seasons riding into Winterfell. It’s not exactly a warm welcome by any stretch of the imagination, but at least Tyrion and Varys have each other’s company — though perhaps that’s not as delightful as it seems. Tyrion opens the episode by poking fun at Varys for being a eunuch. When asked why it’s acceptable for Tyrion to badger Varys but not the other way around, Tyrion responds, “Because I have balls and you don’t.” (+5) Look, I’m a sucker for a good balls joke. Is it because I’m perpetually 10 years old at heart? Probably.

In fewer than 120 hours, we’ll gather around our TVs, computer monitors, and laptop screens to watch the premiere of Game of Thrones’ final season. It’s exciting, isn’t it? It’s kind of like going back to school when you still have a full pencil case, and you feel ready for anything life throws your way. It’s how you should be feeling heading into this year’s Game of Game of Thrones if you drafted correctly.

Hell, even if you managed to draft a somewhat decent team over at our fantasy league partner Fantasizr, you’re doing better than most of The Verge.

Winter has arrived: the final season of the fantasy sports league A Game of Game of Thrones is back for one more round. This is it — the big one. Once again, we’re teaming up with Fantasizr to let people draft fantasy teams based on HBO’s series Game of Thrones, and rake in points based on individual character milestones. Season 8 will premiere on April 14th, officially kicking off the season, but first, players will need to assemble their teams, based on who’s still alive and in the game. So in order to know who’s still eligible for the draft, let’s take a second to remember what happened during last’s year Game of Game of Thrones. We’re largely still using the rules established by former Verge culture editor and original GOGOT-master Emily Yoshida, but there are some tweaks this year, so let’s go over those as well.

And I should probably introduce myself. I’m Julia, The Verge’s resident YouTube-obsessed reporter. I used to help run Game of Thrones coverage at Polygon, The Verge’s sister site, and home to many Game of Thrones devotees. I stan Jaime Lannister (sorry, Jon Snow), but I also stan his sister, Cersei. (Please note that I don’t stan their relationship.) There’s also a soft spot in my heart for Tyrion, so basically all you need to know about me is that I love the Lannisters and I loved the Malfoys before them, so evil attractive blonde people are kind of my jam.

Here we are on the other side of Game of Thrones’ penultimate season. How does it feel? Are you listening to your break-up playlists in honor of Jaime and Cersei, or your twinkly sex-song playlists in honor of that other pair of close relatives? Are you drinking red wine with your breakfast in celebration of some first-rate drunken diplomacy, or are you munching on bugs, training yourself to subsist on lean proteins in preparation for a hard winter? Are you crying because it’s over, or smiling because it happened?

We open the 81-minute finale with a 45-minute scene in King’s Landing that is, I’m sorry to tell you, mostly bickering. First, Jaime and Bronn watch the Unsullied and the Dothraki show off their numbers in front of the city, and have a conversation about cocks that made me regret investing so many years of my life in a TV show that’s so irrationally obsessed with this piece of anatomy. The folks at Fantasizr say Jaime should get +5 for the line “Maybe it really is all cocks in the end.” If I had not already been asleep when they made that decision, I would have fought it with every ounce of strength in my body. Whatever, Jaime — enjoy!

Before we get into what happened last night in the space of 71 minutes of prestige cable, some housekeeping: if you consult the rules of Game of Game of Thrones, you’ll see that killing a White Walker nets you 15 points, but there is no point allocation for killing a wight. The folks at Fantasizr have decided that wights will count as ordinary redshirt kills. Further — and I can’t believe I’m saying this — zombie polar bears will be scored as wights. Also, as this is the first episode where this question is relevant, here’s a reminder that point caps on violence apply to scenes, not the full episode. And yes, Beric Dondarrion’s flaming sword counts as magic use. Thank you to the 500 people who asked us about the sword issue on Twitter last week because they just had a feeling he was going to do that. I totally [eyes roll to stare fully into the eclipse] believe you.

Now, Game of Thrones is a pleasant shared pastime and a huge cultural phenomenon that has delighted many of us for years, and especially for that one year, 2012, when there were zero sexual assaults and Robb Stark was still alive. Game of Thrones has also thoroughly and irreversibly gone off the deep end. Did you see earlier when I had to type the phrase “zombie polar bear”? I’m not saying you need to be put off by this fact, or that we need to do anything differently. I’m just asking that we enter the next 3,000 words with a modicum of self-awareness. We’ve stuck with the zombie-and-dragon show long enough to see ourselves stick with what is now a zombie dragon show.

This week in Game of Game of Thrones, your Thronesmaster had to Google “knuckle massages” and “carpal-tunnel risk factors.” What I’m saying is, too much is happening too quickly on this show, and I can barely write it all down without injuring myself. So let’s get right to it, and yes, I would love it if you would tweet any and all home remedies for joint swelling to @verge.

Season 7, episode 5, “Eastwatch,” has a sad, soggy opening scene: Jaime’s closest personal friend berates him while he doggie-paddles around a river in 80 pounds of armor. Bronn not-so-subtly suggests that Jaime is too stupid to live, but he also owes Bronn too much real estate to die right now. (+5 to Bronn for “You saw the dragon between you and her… and?”) The 2017 equivalent of this, I guess, would be dragging a drunk, topless friend off a waterslide and shouting that you’re only saving them from themselves so they can complete your Venmo requests.

A lot of people have contacted me this week to say things like, “Did you see the new Game of Thrones leaked?” and “You can get an early start on Game of Game of Thrones!” and “You have 31 days to pay this traffic violation before incurring fines.” That last one is none of your business, but as for the first two, I have only this to say: are you guys kidding? I am, I hope, far from a corporate shill, and I don’t really care about whatever activities you want to do to hurt HBO’s feelings in general. But Game of Thrones is a Sunday night spectacle for a reason, and watching a leaked episode is not cool.

If you spoiled “The Spoils of War” for yourself earlier this week, I’m not angry with you, I’m just disappointed. We’re supposed to watch this completely bizarre and outrageously expensive thing together, every week, at the same time, so we can all ride the emotional roller coaster of “Is this show getting… bad?” to “This show is awesome!” to “Well, the writing has gotten markedly worse, but realistically, I’m not going to stand up for myself and stop watching” to “I don’t know if it’s useful to have such a complicated relationship with a television program, but at least it’s something to do so I don’t have to think about the fact that tomorrow is Monday.”

You can say this about any episode in Game of Thrones’ six-year history, but boy oh boy, things are really spiraling out of control in Westeros.

We’ve been conditioned to expect first-rate political strategy from Tyrion, but it’s clear now that he’s not even a passable military strategist. The siege of King’s Landing failed spectacularly, and the Targaryen coalition left the Tyrells utterly defenseless in the Reach. Cersei, on the other hand, can move political chess pieces and command an army. We’re not even halfway through season 7, so it would be silly to think she’ll still be on the Iron Throne when this is all over, but I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t know she would have quite such a meticulous and well-executed fight in her. She and Jaime are our top scorers this week, and for better or worse, it looks like the incest faction of House Lannister is on the rise. Daenerys has three dragons and way better hair, but right now, that sort of looks like all she’s got.

I’m going to address something right now, and then we’re not going to talk about it again for the rest of our lives: it is strange to watch the men tasked with writing Game of Thrones attempt to write intimacy that is not twisted in some way. And so this week’s sex scene between Grey Worm and Missandei was both touching and embarrassing. Grey Worm comparing the feeling of being in love with Missandei with a child’s fear of snakes or the ocean was a clumsy rhetorical choice on his part, and Missandei’s “I want to see you, please” made me want to throw myself off a building. But I’m happy these two kids finally got it together long enough to take it all off. This is the first consensual, romantic sex depicted on Game of Thrones since April 2013, which is remarkable for a show known in some circles as tacky high-fantasy erotica.

That’s pretty tragic in its own way, and particularly in the context of this episode. Even more particularly, it’s tragic given that “Stormborn” is the 11th episode written by Bryan Cogman, whose most famous work on this show so far was the season 5 episode “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” depicting Sansa Stark’s wedding night with Ramsay Bolton. I hope we’re not witnessing this long-delayed gratification for G+M solely as a prelude to one of their deaths being imbued with some extra pathos. In the excitement of yelling “fire and blood!” at my MacBook every Sunday night, I often forget how deeply, serially sad this show is.

Here we are. The gang’s all back in town, and it’s time for another season of fights, hook-ups, and eviscerating burns. No, it’s not Vanderpump Rules. It’s the other one!

Forgive me for starting off this year’s Game of Game of Thrones with an admission like this, but I spent the first several minutes of season 7 thinking we were seeing a flashback to a conversation happening in the Twins just after the Red Wedding, and in spite of myself, I hoped something unspeakable: “Are they about to do Lady Stoneheart?”

The Game of Game of Thrones is back, and you can play along! Once again, we’re partnering with fantasy sports site Fantasizr, and using the rules written back in season 5 by the original Thronesmaster Emily Yoshida. Please catch up! We’ve already drafted teams here at The Verge and we’re ready to serve as council while you draw up your own plans for destroying your friends in an internet game.

When we left Westeros, the Starks were winning for the first time in several years, as Jon and Sansa (but mostly Sansa) had taken back Winterfell from the Boltons, Arya made it back to Westeros and did some forced cannibalism stuff to the Freys, and Bran Stark finally became relevant to the plot, thanks to some salacious visions of the past.

Here’s the good news: Game of Game of Thrones is back.

Season 7 is still a little over two weeks away, but we want to give you plenty of time to think through your selections. It’s going to be a tough year for anyone who doesn’t have Daenerys’ dragons on their side. Once again, we’re partnering with fantasy game site Fantasizr, and you can register and get your own league set up as early as right now. We’ll be drafting for our staff league and spitting out our season 7 predictions as trash talk sometime next week.

In the Game of Game of Thrones, patience is a virtue, faith is a virtue, and Faith gets burned in the green flames of wildfire. I've been only passingly aware of the trades that have gone down in The Verge's GOGOT league this year, but I do know that Cersei Lannister has not exactly been the hottest commodity. Placed in what has more or less been house arrest for the past nine weeks, with a bad haircut and nobody to snipe at, this year had not seen our queen mother at her best. Some had started to predict her death. And then she went and made 380 points in a single episode.

Some perspective: in last year's Game of Game of Thrones, season winner Bryan Bishop scored 448 points. This year, our champion Loren (Team Maester of None) has 696 points. Does that mean that Season 6 was objectively better than Season 5? I'd like to think so! Season 5 dragged in a way I don't feel like this year did; its general unpleasantness vastly outpaced its substance. There was plenty of death in Season 6, but they were largely ancillary characters, offed less for the shock value than to clear the board. There was a sense of build toward some major event running through even the quieter episodes. Whether that major event was just another dragon shot or a world-changing power shift would remain to be seen.

In the Game of Game of Thrones, battles are our Christmas. Having a character in a battle is a minimum of 50 points; having multiple characters in a battle can double your score for the season. But can you put a price on sucking? Say there was a character in Game of Thrones — a character who got lots of kills, a character who even made that rare "coming back from the dead" score, a character who has taken up plenty of screen time this year. If he mega sucks, does he still win the Game? How sweet can that victory be?

We start in Meereen, I suppose because we have to get Meereen over with sooner or later. Actually, I take that back — the Meereen segments this week were perhaps the most purely enjoyable, especially for those of us who subscribe to the Mad Queen theory and want to see Daenerys Targaryen become a ruthless tyrant. (Why would I want such a thing on my fun TV show when there are so many bad rulers IRL? I guess it would make the show more interesting to watch again someday when I have the flu or something.) Benioff and Weiss are starting to telegraph this development pretty hard, as well giving us our weekly reminder of the continued existence of a bunch of wildfire underneath King's Landing. HMM!

In the Game of Game of Thrones, it takes a lot of time to become no one. I've seen some grumbling that tonight's episode negated everything that Arya Stark's been up to for the past two seasons, and I don't think that's exactly true — she's become a formidable fighter; and has grown sufficiently jaded about the once-impossibly-mysterious House of Black and White (as have we, I think). She's taken the useful bits of their teachings and kept them, while discarding that which doesn't apply to her. Jaqen H'ghar tells her this week that she has successfully become No One (+25), but even without that distinction (and the implied face-related powers that come with it) she'd be a significantly different person. I just don't know if we needed this particular training montage to go on as long as it did.

It was always clear from the beginning that Arya would end up staying Arya; if only because popular Western entertainment is fueled by ego-driven narratives. But I'm getting ahead of myself: let's start with Lady Crane. Our master thespian is going through that thing where you realize that all of your co-workers hate you and the only way to get back at them is to be hypercompetent even when you know the work is bullshit. I totally did this at the deli I worked at in high school. It's clear that the talent imbalance is kind of throwing off the whole show at this point. But before she can give any serious thought to switching productions, Arya Stark stumbles back into her life with those fierce eyebrows and a hole in her gut. Crane stitches her back up and offers to give her a job with the company, presumably in the role of Sansa Stark, seeing as the last Sansa apparently slipped and got her face cut. A future of moldy wigs and genital warts and career-mandated Botox and two-dimensional female roles flashes before Arya's eyes and she's like "nah." Lady Crane gives her some milk of the poppy and this creepy music cue comes in and my first thought was, "Wait, is Arya about to become a junkie?" I still kind of like this as a Z-grade crackpot prediction. This One Wacky Game Of Thrones Online Fan Theory Will Change The Way You See Needles Forever.

Update: Edited to reflect that Ian McShane's character was undrafted character Septon Ray, not Septon Meribald. The Thronesmaster apologizes deeply for her ignorance. Also, it is the official opinion of The Verge that "Septon Ray" is a really dumb name.

In the Game of Game of Thrones — a game of ice, zombies, and psychotic child rulers — nothing's colder than a cold open. When has this show ever done a cold open? Why was the return of The Hound (who, like Benjen last week, is feeling much better now) the first Big Plot Shocker deserving of one? Is this our first indication that Game of Thrones might be turning into a normal TV show? What if Game of Thrones just turns into a procedural drama, except instead of each week opening with a grisly murder scenario to be solved in the ensuing 45 minutes, we open with another "dead" character coming back to life? What if Game of Thrones was the first show to pivot from Deathwatch hype to Lifewatch hype?

In the Game of Game of Thrones, millennials are proud to be total sellouts. While the previous generation would gladly fall on their own swords to stand up for what they believe in (mainly the honor of noble houses), the young people of the realm, having grown up amid political and economic turmoil, have realized that self-preservation is the only thing of any substance worth fighting for. You can get involved with a terrifying religion, or walk away from your internship with no notice, but as long as you keep getting those likes, you're solid. Defending the family honor is a great career path to fall back on, but wouldn't it be better to be your own boss / dad?

Samwell Tarly and Gilly finally arrive in Horn Hill, home of House Tarly and, apparently, the odd willow. Sam is stressed because he hasn't told his family that his girlfriend is a wildling, mostly owing to the character limit on ravens ("It wasn't a very large piece of parchment," +5). They are welcomed with unnervingly open arms by Sam's mother and sister, who are either the nicest people in the realm or extraterrestrial spies who have come to conquer the seven kingdoms and harvest human organs for fuel for their ships. (After last week, nothing's off the table.) There's nothing like kindness in Westeros to set me on edge — seriously, Gilly arrives in a wet burlap sack and a thin layer of algae, and Lady Melessa is like, "Vintage! So adorable."

In the Game of Game of Thrones, everyone is what they are, and where they are, for a reason. The reveal of Hodor's big secret traverses time and space, and instantly threw Game of Thrones into the realm of the metaphysical. So much could be possible! What if the Known World is a parallel universe to our own? What if it's in our far future? What if it's 150,000 years in the past? What if they actually find Kobol? What if it ends with a robot montage?

I'll get to Hodor and the titular Door later. First, I want to acknowledge how nice it was to see Sansa Stark just excoriate Petyr Baelish, who hadn't seen her since selling her off as a goth bride for Ramsay Bolton (thankfully absent this week). "Did you know about Ramsay?" she asked. "If you didn't know, you're an idiot; if you did know, you're my enemy." (+10) She did just about everything she could to make Littlefinger verbally acknowledge that she had been raped, to make him at least intellectually confront what happened to her. The formal brothel owner suddenly got very delicate with words — "Did he beat you? Did he cut you?" he guessed, knowing full well what she was getting at. "Did he leave the toilet seat up? Did he forget to DVR the Billboard Music Awards?" Why Sansa didn't have Brienne kill Littlefinger in return for his negligence is a mystery to me; those knights of the Eyrie would probably show up either way. Instead she lets him know, in no uncertain terms, that their alliance is over: "I don't need you anymore. You can't protect me." (+10)

The Game of Game of Thrones is a fantasy game based on a fantasy show, but we're not the only Double Fantasy in town. It's come to our attention that a thinly-written fan-made character, built on the most indulgent impulses of the worst corner of internet fandom, seems to have made it into the cut of season six of Game of Thrones that HBO decided to air. How this error has gotten through unchecked is mystifying to all of us here at GOGOT; even more mystifying is how this character ended up on our draft, of all things. But since it would be too complicated to remove him from the game at this point, the best we can do is apologize and tell you the truth:

Ramsay Bolton is a Mary Sue.

The Game of Game of Thrones is a fickle mistress. No literally, the Game of Game of Thrones is run by an actual fickle mistress, aka yours truly, the Thronesmaster. By now it should be clear that's a feature, not a bug, but over the last two weeks I've gotten increasingly angry feedback from folks who are upset that I am not taking this seriously enough. "It's fantasy, not opinion," said one livid tweeter. It's neither, actually — it's a fake game revolving around a made-up TV show. If you are confused and angry, I'd encourage you to read last season's recaps or any of the introductory posts for this year's game in which I stated multiple times how susceptible the rules are to tweaks and adjustments based purely on my gut reading of a situation. There is a scoring item for "best line of the week," an inherently subjective idea.

Why? Well for one — and I feel like this should be self-explanatory, but here goes — it's impossible to "100% accurately" score the proceedings of a television show that does not work from a fixed list of possible events. Secondly, the characters who "win" Game of Thrones are often not the ones with the most kills or power moves, and I often have to find ways to help out characters (i.e., Davos) who aren't doing anything from a scoring standard, but we can all agree are the best and we enjoy watching them on screen.

It's rare, sure, but people have been coming back from the dead since the first season of Game of Thrones. Whether or not this kind of thing can happen has never been the question. Rather, since Jon Snow finally laid down on the blood-spattered snow at the end of season five to pose for countless season promo shots, the issue has been how it would happen. Resurrections are rare; resurrections without a hitch are even rarer. Would he come back as an ice zombie? A drooling black-magic shell of his former self? A Frankenstein-esque killing machine? Or just a seemingly-okay R'hllor-worshipping renegade knight?

Until this week, it was still up for debate, but in the Game of Game of Thrones, you always put your money on the bastard. We'll get back to Snow in a bit, but let's just take a moment to appreciate a pattern: last week, we saw the Sand people down in Dorne take out House Martell. This week, it's the legitimized (but truly bastardly at heart) Ramsay Bolton coming in rather hot with some fratricide on dad Roose Bolton (+40), his sweet wife Walda, and his newborn half-brother (a combined +40.) I'm gonna give Roose a parting +20 for dying in a way that made me genuinely shriek, but I really do loathe giving points out to Ramsay when he pulls these kinds of shenanigans. I take no joy in being the one recapper on the internet who, rather than rant and rail against the decision to even aurally depict an attack dog tearing a part a new mother and her baby, must award imaginary points to the young man doing the siccing. But alas, this is Game of Game of Thrones, not Game of Game of RuPaul's Best Friend Race.

Is it just me, or are things awfully chipper in the realm? After a season filled to the brim with child murder, Shame, and numerous other unpleasantries; and with winter pretty much here, you'd think things would feel a little more hopeless as we caught up with our far-flung players. Some of it feels like a very obvious course correction — "The Red Woman" was packed with Yas Queen moments; and yes, I consider that last scene a Yas Queen moment, for reasons I'll get to. But some of it just felt like a more energized continuation to the table-setting that usually goes on in a GoT finale.

But in the Game of Game of Thrones, a lousy rookie season is no reason to write off an entire freshman class of characters. For reasons unknown to anyone, Benioff and Weiss decided to wait until the first episode of the season after their much-hyped debut to have Ellaria Sand and the Sand Snakes (playing this Thursday at Beachcomber's Bar and Grill in Hermosa Beach, no cover for ladies, half off all house wines) finally do something of interest. Their coup of Dorne started with the poisoning of Myrcella Lannister, but saw a far more dramatic conclusion this week with the murders of Doran and Trystane Martell. Kind of a shame; I really could have used more Dr. Bashir on this show, and Trystane's pet rock was coming along so nicely. Ellaria picks up +35 for killing Doran, plus a brutal one-liner +10 for letting us know that "weak men will never rule Dorne again." Tyene Sand wins a total of +30 for killing a redshirt and Doran's guard who was totally a character with lines and a personality last season. Obara Sand gets +30 for killing Trystane (quite well, I might add!) and Nymeria Sand gets a pity +5 for "You're a greedy bitch, you know that?" which at least gave us a laugh line to go out on. Nymeria Sand is most definitely the Stephanie of the bunch. (Obara is DJ, Tyene is Michelle, Ellaria is Becky, and why did this spinoff get renewed?)