Season Seven of Game of Thrones opened with a mass murder. Arya Stark (Maisie Williams), wearing the face of Walder Frey, poisoned every single living Frey heir in one go. For fans who had spent four long years craving justice for the Red Wedding, it was delicious. It was catharsis! It was a vicious moment of true horror — a symbol of the destructive force that Arya Stark had grown into. It also slipped by in under five minutes and was soon swept out of our memories by the barrage of explosive battle scenes, thrilling character unions, all-too-swiftly dropped exposition, and a motherfucking ice dragon tearing a hole in the Wall.

What I’m saying is Season Seven of Game of Thrones kicked off with a narrative roar and it never stopped screaming.

Game of Thrones has always been simultaneously one of the most entertaining dramas on television and one of the most controversial. In the past, its entertainment was often derived by the inventive way in which showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were able to profoundly humanize the fantasy genre. They made a medieval fantasy world full of swashbucklers, dragon queens, zombies, and giant wolves seem relatable. That’s because at its heart, Game of Thrones has always been a soap opera about broken people trying to elbow their way towards power and away from the threat of death. The show’s controversy usually came from critics and fans looking at this feudal society through the lens of contemporary values. This season something flipped in the show. The controversy now seems focused on how “entertaining” the show is or isn’t. It turns out that some fans are more interested in quiet moments and realistically long raven flights than an army of ice zombies blowing a hole through an impenetrable wall of ice. It’s all a matter of taste.

The pace of Game of Thrones has indeed taken on a new velocity. If the first six seasons were the build up, Season Seven has been the show’s big drop. It’s the thrilling rush of a roller coaster car zooming down a track so steep your body is certain the whole train of cars is going to tip over. All there is pure experience. And pure experience can sometimes be ironically disappointing. It may not make much sense, but the thrill of anticipation is occasionally more entertaining, more moving, and strangely more visceral than the actual event.

For a lot of Game of Thrones viewers, the strength of the show has been its careful pacing. The ever-steady, but ever-lurching, chug-chug-chug of the narrative as it put all its myriad pieces into position. There were dazzling monologues and tense tete-a-tetes. The show’s deliberate pace meant that the really shocking twists (Ned Stark’s death, the Red Wedding, etc.) took on extra volume. We haven’t gotten a taste of that this year because it’s been almost non-stop twists and turns. Even the quieter conversations take on a higher pitch since they often happen between characters who share a lot of history.

I have to admit that I’ve been of two minds about this shift in the show. The exuberant fangirl in me has been over the moon about all the incredible battles and momentous meet ups. The critic in me has viewed the pacing and structure of the season with a measure of skepticism. “Beyond the Wall” may be the sloppiest episode of the entire series, but hot damn, if I don’t feel my heart race whenever I think of Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) swooping in to save Jon Snow (Kit Harington) — only to lose Viserion in the process. This past season does feel uneven in comparison to the previous six. That’s not a lie. It feels faster, angrier, sexier, and ironically, softer. When Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) and one of Drogon’s back up dragons are the two biggest deaths in a single season, it can feel like Game of Thrones is pulling its punches a bit. And yet, it can’t be reiterated enough that we got a freaking ice dragon this season.

Game of Thrones is a story about contrasts: ice and fire, the living and the dead, the dicks and the dick-less. It’s also a show that opened with the threat of a White Walker invasion and the constant promise that winter was coming. Season Seven has delivered on both those threats and promises. Game of Thrones changed this season, but it was always going to change. Winter isn’t coming anymore; winter is here. The sprawling story we’ve been following for seven years is pulling back in on itself, contracting and combusting, and crashing into what was always going to be inevitable.

Game of Thrones has finally become the show it always promised it would be: a rousing fantasy adventure series with dragons and zombies. With its high stakes drama, glorious action set pieces, and thumping heart, it’s still better than 99% of the rest of television. It’s just not the show it used to be.

Where to Stream Game of Thrones