Are Game of Thrones’ ‘Battle of the Bastards’ and ‘The Winds of Winter’ the two best back-to-back episodes of television ever?

Game of Thrones’ sixth season had gone out with a very literal bang with every second of ‘The Winds of Winter’, its season finale, blowing me away to the point where I’m speechless. This is certainly no mean feat when you consider that a week ago the show gave us ‘Battle of the Bastards’ which has subsequently become the highest rated television episode of all time on IMDB with a whopping 10/10 score.

‘The Battle of the Bastards’ opened with a throw-away, meaningless bit of storyline where Dany finally reunites with all three of her dragons. Conquers the masters in a wonderful ‘negotiation scene’ and the three dragons get to roast ship with dragonfire. Naturally I’m being sarcastic about the ‘throw-away, meaninglessness’ of this scene, I’m merely commenting that this was just the starter, the appetiser if you will, for one of the best, most expansive and realistic battle scenes we will ever see on our televisions.

The epic confrontation between Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton started with the tense yet inevitable death of Rickon Stark and carried on with sublime shot after sublime shot of intense battle chaos. The camerawork in the sequence that follows Jon Snow and displays the carnage around him is nothing short of breath-taking. The sheer reality of it all was captured so accurately on camera as well, the great amounts of mud, the bloody brutal unglorified deaths and that superb scene of Jon fighting for air and emerging in a crush of bodies truly made the entire battle an adrenaline fuelled spectacle.

If that wasn’t enough ‘The Battle of the Bastards’ gave us the poetic justice of Ramsay Bolton’s demise, the villain had been one of Game of Thrones’ more despicable characters as evidenced in this season alone when he feeds his own mother-in-law and step-brother to dogs, murders his father, deliberately kills Rickon Stark to throw Jon Snow off his game and finally ruins any noble death that the last giant Wun-Wun would have had. So to see him get fed to the own dogs he had used as a weapon against others time and time again, and to see the smirk on Sansa’s face as she walks away was just beautiful.

I didn’t think that ‘The Winds of Winter’ would come close to ‘The Battle of the Bastards’ as traditionally Game of Thrones has treated its season finale as the cool-down before the next seasons, its reset button if you will. And whilst that is still the case with season six episode ten I couldn’t have been more wrong about it eclipsing ‘The Battle of the Bastards’ in almost every way. It was the longest episode the show has ever had in its existence to date, and every single minute of it was packed full of astonishment that left me dumbfounded.

We will have to see what the IMDB score for ‘The Winds of Winter’ is but I have absolutely no doubt that we are looking at the new highest rated television episode of all time, snatching the week-old title from its predecessor and previous episode. If that were to happen then the two final episodes of Game of Thrones’ sixth episode would be the best back-to-back episodes of all time, at least ‘on paper’.

However, I have tried desperately to think of two back-to-back episodes of any television series that have left me feeling the way I currently do about this two and I simply cannot. Season Six may have divided people with its earlier episodes but I have no doubt that everyone will be united in saying that television simply doesn’t get better than ‘The Battle of the Bastards’ and ‘The Winds of Winter’