Time is running down on HBO’s Game of Thrones, bringing eight seasons of fantasy, drama, political intrigue, adventure, violence and death to a close. An adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy novel series A Song of Fire and Ice, this series has attracted a massive audience over the years, including horror fans. This may be a story full of dragons, battles, and characters vying for the throne, but Game of Thrones weaves in a lot of horror elements, primarily in the way it employs suspense, unsettling atmosphere, and violence.
Game of Thrones has become known for the brutal and shocking ways it dispatches main characters, itself a trait common with horror, but the series also likes to keep the viewer guessing with dread and tension. Of course, there’s also witches, cults, and an insane number of zombies.
As this beloved series prepares to take its final bow, we look back at some of the best horror moments the show has offered.
Creepy Intro – “Winter is Coming”
The opening moments of the entire show began with horror. Three rangers of the Night’s Watch were dispatched from the Wall, a massive ice barrier to the north, to track Wildlings (Free Folk who live north of the Wall). One of them discovers a pile of dead Wildlings arranged in ritualistic fashion, with the corpse of a young girl pinned to a tree. When he returns with his two companions, the bodies are gone, and the trio find themselves hunted by something sinister. Including a resurrected dead girl. Talk about an opening hook.
Shadow Baby Assassin – “Garden of Bones”
Introduced in the second season, Melisandre is a priestess of the Lord of Light and a mysterious witch. She believes Stannis Baratheon is the chosen savior of the people, and aids him in his quest to ascend the throne. This means helping him take out his opponents, including his own brother. Melisandre is responsible for some of the series’ most WTF inducing moments, and this one is probably the biggest of them all. Stannis orders Melisandre to be taken to the shore of King’s Landing at night, where she reveals herself to be impossibly pregnant. She then gives birth to a creepy shadow baby, who disappears and then kills its target in the following episode, “The Ghost of Harrenhal”.
Craster’s Last Son – “Oathkeeper”
Craster was considered a tenuous ally to the Night’s Watch despite being a Wildling with a penchant of marrying his daughters when they came of age to father more children. That in itself is horror. But members of the Night’s Watch mutinied against their leader, killed Craster, and took over his home. The lead mutineer orders Craster’s last male heir, an infant, be left out in the woods as a sacrifice to the White Walkers. It’s a chilling concept made even more unnerving as we see the baby being turned into a White Walker.
The Eyes – “The Mountain and the Viper”
In Westeros, trial by duel is a normal way to pass judgment. So, it’s not a surprise that Tyrion’s fate is determined by the outcome of a duel between The Mountain and Tyrion’s volunteer champion Oberyn Martell. It’s an exciting fight between a giant and a cunning charmer that seems to end with Martell winning. That’s when he lets his guard down, and the injured Mountain knocks him down and kills him. Except, we see it in graphic detail- the teeth getting knocked out, the eyes gouged out, and the slow crushing of his skull all while Oberyn’s lover screams in horror. Death isn’t ever quiet or easy in this series, but this gruesome demise brought visceral horror to drive home that there’s no such thing as rock bottom for our protagonists. It can always get worse.
Greyscale – “Kill the Boy”
One of the strangest things in Game of Thrones is the mysterious disease called Greyscale, which causes human skin to become stone-like. It a leprosy-like disease that’s highly contagious, transmitted by only a mere touch. In “Kill the Boy”, a small detour by boat in the foggy ruins of Valyria looks and feels straight out of a horror movie when Jorah and Tyrion are attacked by feral men completely turned to stone from Greyscale. They’re monstrous and not quite human anymore, and just a touch means a certain doom for either of the characters. The way this scene was shot is straight out of a horror movie.
Hold the Door – “The Door”
For Bran and the group of characters north of the Wall, this entire episode is an intense escape from the Night King. It’s an episode that gives us the entire background and origin of the Night King and his White Walkers, which is thrilling in itself, but the information is parceled out over a stressful fight to survive. There are a few upsetting sacrifices, as the numbers of wights consistently threaten to overtake Bran and his group. None as horrific and upsetting as one gentle ally being forced to hold the army back from behind a door, as their undead arms claw and tear at him from the other side.
Little Lord Ned Umber – “Winterfell”
The premiere episode of the final season teased the horror to come in the epic battle between the living and the undead with this small, eerie moment. As the massive army of undead march on toward Winterfell, they’ve decimated any houses, castles, and villages in their path. Something that a handful of protagonists discover when they search castle Last Hearth in the aftermath of a slaughter. They find the castle’s Lord, the child Ned Umber, impaled to a wall, surrounded by severed limbs arranged in a spiral around his corpse. It’s a creepy image rendered creepier when Ned Umber wakes up as a new member of the undead.
A Narrow Escape – “Hardhome”
The entire ending of this episode was pure horror as Jon Snow continued his quest to rally Wildlings together in his fight against the ever-growing White Walker army. But he, and the Wildlings, were interrupted and surprised by an attack from that very undead army, leading to one suspense and horror filled massacre upon the living. The swarms of the undead overtaking the fiercest of Free Folk, including giants, is powerful imagery. Yet, it paled in comparison to the final moments of the Night King standing on the dock, staring down our heroes as he resurrected the recently slaughtered. Or the imagery of the undead children, all in various stages of decay. Death spares no one in this series, and it’s haunting.