The best way I can describe this season is to compare Benioff and Weiss to living with terrible roommates. At first, things are great because they were really happy to have a place to stay; they’re respectful, they do the dishes and help out with the chores. Then things start to get a little rocky, there are some disagreements on the placement of furniture or how to decorate. But the person who invited them in then forgives them and they come to a compromise. This is, though, the beginning of the end….

Man, right off the bat this one slaps you in the face with raw emotional pain. I was wondering what the odd structures were in front of Winterfell, thinking maybe they were some kind of defenses. Nope; they were funeral pyres. There were actually fewer than I expected for the number of lives lost by the Winterfell army. Going by the pyres, I counted eight rows of ten of the three-decker pyres. Each of those held 22 bodies for a total of 1,760 dead. Then there was a row of single-deck pyres with ten bodies each and one at the end of each column of the triple-deckers for a total of eight pyres, giving us 80 bodies.

Sweet zombie Lyanna Mormont, what an episode! Having recently also seen Avengers Endgame, I can say without hyperbole that this was the most emotional Nerd weekend of my entire life. Just for the record, I will not be going in order as to how I recap this episode – I will be jumping around quite a bit for the sake of the narrative.

Another reunion that was great to see was Cersei and Euron. I won’t get into great detail about it, but it was a moment in which I actually felt pity for Cersei Lannister, which is something that I never thought I would do.