'Game of Thrones' Doesn't Tease with Dramatic Twist

Warning: There are spoilers ahead for last week's episode of Game of Thrones, so if you haven't seen it yet, beware.

When Game of Thrones' writers teased viewers at the beginning of this season by killing off Jon Snow and then bringing him back to life a couple of episodes later, the show was flirting dangerously with the kind of manipulative writing that has brought so much heat down upon The Walking Dead. But the twist in season six's episode 5, "The Door," was nothing at all like the kind of lazy writing that makes fans angry. Instead, it was the kind of writing that sets GoT apart.

"The Door" delivered on two very dramatic levels. First, it provided the long-awaited backstory for the character of Hodor, and second, it served up that same beloved character's death in the most shocking, poignant way imaginable. The episode achieved both of these things not through any kind of weak sleight of hand, but with a dramatic sledgehammer that most viewers never saw coming. Fan reaction to the episode has been overwhelmingly positive.

Now producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss are saying that "The Door" is one of three key moments that are of critical importance to the entire GoT story. The first of those three moments was the death of Shireen Baratheon, and the last is the climax of the entire series. Given that the first two of these events have been handled so adeptly by the series' producers, we have reason to hope that GoT will remain dramatically strong until the end.