Game Of Thrones Season Six Awards

It’s the end of another season on Game of Thrones, which means winners and losers need to be named or shamed. In sports leagues like the NFL, the NBA or the English Premier League, individual awards are handed out for different achievements. It’s time someone did this for the cast of Game of Thrones.

Without further ado, then, here are our end of season awards for the players of the game of thrones. You either win or you die:

Most Valuable Player – Cersei Lannister

Let’s be honest, Cersei wasn’t even a contender for this until the season finale. She’d had a rough season, with the High Sparrow slowly and methodically stripping her of all her bargaining chips. When Cersei is cornered, though, she is at her most dangerous. With one devastating Hail Mary she took out all her enemies in King’s Landing and paved the way for her own coronation as Queen.

Just think about this for a moment; of Robert Baratheon’s royal court back in the show’s first ever episode, who is left? Cersei has survived next to the Iron Throne for six whole seasons and now she has won it. If that is not worthy of an MVP award, nothing is.

Most Improved Player – Sansa Stark

We’ve been waiting for Sansa to step up for years. Many fans have long disliked her lack of backbone, but this season she delivered in a big way. While Sansa hasn’t evolved into a leader, she has become something much more important out of sheer necessity: a schemer. In Westeros leaders have a short shelf life. Schemers though? They survive.

It was not Jon Snow’s battle savvy that defeated Ramsay and the Boltons, it was Sansa. She’s become a ruthless pragmatist, calling on Littlefinger and the Knights of the Vale to crush the bastard of Bolton. Oh, and lest we forget – she fed Ramsay to his own man-eating dogs. That’s the kind of vengeance we normally only see from Cersei.

Best Rookie – Lyanna Mormont

No, there was no other character even considered for this award. Lyanna Mormont, ruler of Bear Island at a mere ten years old, may have only appeared in a handful of episodes but when she was on screen she stole the show. From her first scene, where Jon, Sansa and Davos showed up begging for men to fight Ramsay, she crushed it. Busting their balls at first, she then pledged all the men she could spare (62, if you’d forgotten) and cemented herself as a key ally to House Stark.

Her epic speech in the season finale? It managed to emasculate not just grown men, but the leaders of nearly every major house in the North. Like Cam Newton in the NFL, she’s made an immediately massive impact.

Least Valuable Player – Tommen Baratheon

As a player of the game of thrones, Tommen never quite grasped the rules. We wonder if he even realised he was in the great game at all. Certainly he was kind, and had integrity where his older brother only had cruelty. Ned Stark had integrity though, and look where that got him.

Tommen was naïve and easily twisted to the machinations of more skillful players. Whether it be Margaery or the High Sparrow pulling his strings, Tommen proved himself a liability to Team Lannister at every turn. The good die young, but in Westeros the good do not win.

Best Fight – Battle of the Bastards

It’s quite amazing to see how far Game of Thrones has come from its first few episodes. An obscure show based on a gritty fantasy series with an original pilot script that was reportedly a disaster. Five years later it is a cultural phenomenon. If you haven’t seen it, you’ve heard of it. The Battle of the Bastards underlines just what this show has become. The entire episode could easily be mistaken for a Lord of the Rings remake helmed by Christopher Nolan.

Jon Snow versus Ramsay Bolton had a sense of scale never seen before in a Game of Thrones battle. The continuous shot of Jon in the thick of battle – horses galloping past, arrows falling, enemies clashing – was transfixing. This episode might be the best fight scene in the show’s entire history.

Best Survivor – Arya Stark

For a long time, this award was going to someone like the Hound or Bronn – a secondary character that had inexplicably survived countless battles and escaped every tricky situation they got caught in. Thing is, Arya’s been through all that too and she’s still a child. In season six she even survived the House of Black and White, and the hate that radiated off the Waif in her direction.

Arya survived as a blind beggar without even a name to her, well, name. She survived the Waif’s assassination attempts and even managed to beat her with multiple open stab wounds in her stomach. Most importantly of all, she has survived long enough after the Red Wedding to finally get revenge on Walder Frey – and boy, was it sweet.

Best Villain – Ramsay Bolton

The last unambiguously evil man in Westeros is dead. In many ways Ramsay was the terrifying successor to the weasel that was Joffrey. Unlike Joffrey though, the Bastard of Bolton owned his villainy. He didn’t hide behind claims of royal legitimacy. The guy was just a monster who relished tormenting his enemies. Roose, Walda and Rickon all fell to his hand before he was finally stopped.

Ramsay Bolton might be dead, but it’s going to be a long time before we forget that smile of his. It still has us waking up in the small hours of the night with cold sweats.

Most Shocking Death – Hold the Door

This one hurts. You know what we’re talking about, don’t make us say it. He held the door, okay? She asked him to hold the door and he held it, damn it!

Leave us alone. We need to sit here and cry for a while.