Game of Thrones season 7 episode 4: 5 fiercely feminist moments

Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen/HBO

The women of Game of Thrones only seem to get more powerful as the series goes on. In Sunday night’s episode 4, the ladies of the Seven Kingdoms didn’t disappoint.

Lady Olenna Tyrell’s mic-drop of a death scene in episode 3 of Game of Thrones’ seventh season is hard to top, badass lady-wise. Of course, that didn’t stop the women of Westeros and the Seven Kingdoms from trying in episode 4. It wasn’t as storyline-packed an episode as your average Game of Thrones offering, but the showrunners were careful to make the few developments they were unpacking emotionally dense for the characters involved. The female characters in particular flexed their feelings, medievally restrained as they might be, with nuance and subtlety. And as is rarely the case on this show, many of those feeling related to affectionate, not hostile, relationships between women, whether they’re sisters or friends.

Just past the season’s halfway point, it’s starting to feel like we’re honing in on only a handful of characters as opposed to earlier seasons when keeping names and faces straight was, frankly, a problem there were so many people rotating in and out of the story. The heightened focus makes things feel a little less like the Game of Thrones we’ve grown to know, but it also allows us to really learn about the characters that have stuck around all this time. As luck would have it, several of those characters are the show’s women.

In this episode specifically, Cersei, usually one of the show’s most reliably fierce characters, barely makes an appearance. She sits down with the Iron Banker and discusses King’s Landing’s debts, but she’s hardly blowing up the Sept of Baelor. Is she saving that power-hungry cruel streak for next week’s episode? Bran’s longtime guardian Meera, too, only appeared briefly (though there are some hints she may return in the coming weeks).

Here are five times the remaining Game of Thrones ladies made womankind (and everybody else) proud in episode 4: