Think back to the very first scene of Game of Thrones. It wasn’t about Jon Snow or Daenerys Targaryen or Tyrion Lannister, though we meet all of these characters in the show’s opening hour. It’s about a small group of men from the Night’s Watch, barely named and swiftly dispatched, who encounter something so terrible that they’d rather be executed than face it. It’s the stuff of fairy tales and nightmares, it hates mankind, and it’s coming.

The confrontation between humanity and the eldritch terrors from north of the Wall has been Game of Thrones‘ endgame since that very first scene, but the six years of show since have moved toward that confrontation in fits and starts. At its best, the series draws us in completely, allowing us to root for multiple people on multiple sides of a conflict even when they change sides. Never has a show so effortlessly mastered the heel-face turn. At its worst, Game of Thrones meanders, too absorbed in the 8,000 little stories it’s trying to tell to meaningfully advance that Big Story.