When we kicked off this bracket and asked readers to vote for the best seasons of new millennial TV drama, we were pretty sure how this competition would eventually play out. When the first three rounds of voting eventually narrowed the field down to two, we thought we'd be looking at a championship match between an intense HBO series peppered with sex, violence, and intrafamilial crises versus an unforgettable look at how drug dealing can cripple communities and people's sense of ethics.

We were right. We just had our shows all wrong.

Instead of a final competition that pits The Sopranos season three against The Wire season four, what we have instead is: Game of Thrones season three against Breaking Bad season five.

Wow. Okay. So: All four of these seasons are indisputably great, including the two that won. That's undeniable. But seriously, guys: You know that if it weren't for Tony Soprano and Omar Little, there would be no Tyrion Lannister or Walter White. You do know that, right? Okay. Just checking.

It's entirely possible that voting was skewed in part by the recency effect, which puts these seasons of Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad — both of which concluded just last year — on the mental front-burner for more people. However it happened, this is our championship game, and it's now up to you to decide the ultimate winner. So do it: Cast your votes by 5 p.m. EST on Thursday, April 3, then visit Esquire.com on Friday to see which season has officially been determined, via highly conclusive online voting, the Greatest Golden Age TV Drama Season. (Download a larger bracket here.)

Which is better...

Question: What were the two most talked-about, shocking moments on television in 2013? Answer: the Game of Thrones Red Wedding and pretty much everything that happened in the Breaking Bad episode "Ozymandias." In a sense, then, it's not surprising that this multi-round series of duke-outs between great TV seasons ultimately came down to a pair of seasons that still have many viewers struggling to regain proper breath control.

For Game of Thrones, season three marked a ratings high and an important narrative shift from where the show first began; where once the Starks had some influence in matters related to the Iron Throne, by the end of the third season, all hope of power — and for that matter, nearly all Starks — was lost. For Breaking Bad, season five marked the end of an addictive story about a Walter Mitty for the new millennium: Walter White, a man who believed life promised him better things and turned his quest for better into massive delusions of destructive, criminal grandeur. Breaking Bad went out with multiple machine gun bangs and the sound of Badfinger's "Baby Blue" ringing in our ears. Was that swan song better than the chapter of Song of Ice and Fire we got from Game of Thrones? You could ask George R.R. Martin, the Song of Ice and Fire author who, following the broadcast of "Ozymandias," called Walter White "a bigger monster than anyone in Westeros," and also wrote of the crystal-meth creation's 2014 Emmy Award chances: "There's no way in hell that anyone is going to defeat Breaking Bad."

Game of Thrones fans, it's up to you to decide, right now, in a slightly different context, whether that's actually true.

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