George R.R. Martin calls “Blackwater” his favorite of the four Game of Thrones episodes he wrote, crediting a late director swap and extra HBO money.
The author of the books behind the HBO hit has said it more than once. Of the four scripts he turned in during the show’s early seasons, the season 2 battle episode is the one he ranks first.
Mental Floss reported that Martin answered the question on his Not a Blog site on August 29, 2023, after Vanity Fair put “Blackwater” on a list of perfect television episodes. He had already told the same story years earlier to journalist James Hibberd for the 2020 oral history Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon.
On the blog, Martin left little doubt.
"I scripted four. And yes, ‘Blackwater’ is my own favorite of those, although I thought ‘The Lion and the Rose’ turned out very well too, and I have a soft spot for that one."
To Hibberd he put it even more bluntly: it was one of his favorite episodes of the whole series, and certainly his favorite of the four he wrote.
Martin wrote one episode in each of the first four seasons. Season 1 brought “The Pointy End.” Season 2 brought “Blackwater.” Season 3 brought “The Bear and the Maiden Fair.” Season 4 brought “The Lion and the Rose.”
“Blackwater” is the ninth episode of season 2. It first aired on May 27, 2012. On screen it is the Battle of the Blackwater: Stannis Baratheon hits King’s Landing by water while Tyrion Lannister, acting Hand of the King, tries to hold the city.
Viewers still rate it near the top. The episode carries a 9.7 score on IMDb. In 2012 it won Emmys for sound editing and sound mixing. The next year it took the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, beating three Doctor Who episodes and a Fringe episode. Martin was credited as writer; Neil Marshall as director.
The script did not reach the screen at full book scale. Martin has said the production had to shrink “Blackwater” considerably from the page. Show officials told him at the start that the bridge of boats from the novel would be impossible.
So showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss went to HBO for more money. Benioff later remembered the conference call as “awkward.” They asked for an extra $2.5 million and, in Weiss’s words, “got $2 million-something.”
That pushed the episode to roughly $8 million at a time when a typical Game of Thrones hour ran about $6 million. The extra cash bought spectacle the early seasons could not always afford.
Money was only half the rescue. About a week before filming, the original director left over a personal emergency. HBO brought in British filmmaker Neil Marshall, known for the features Dog Soldiers and Centurion. It was his first time directing television.
Marshall did not protect the earlier cuts. He did the opposite. Martin has described the turnaround in plain terms.
"Neil Marshall reversed everything the previous director said. Marshall was like, ‘Put in more.’ He put so much back that I’d previously taken out and even added some stuff I hadn’t thought of. He was the hero of that episode."
Martin has singled out the wildfire blast as the payoff. “When the wildfire explodes,” he said, “it’s glorious.”
That mix, source-author script, last-minute director with an appetite for scale, and a network willing to spend, produced the hour Martin still stands behind more than a decade later. He likes “The Lion and the Rose” too. He does not rank it above the battle for King’s Landing.
Hollywood loves to trim ambition until nothing hard is left. “Blackwater” worked because the people in charge finally spent the money and put the big moments back in.
