The 7 worst 'Game of Thrones' storylines ranked

Season six of "Game of Thrones" is the best the show's been in years, bringing together long-diverging storylines in exciting, unexpected ways and finally answering questions about the histories of the Starks, the White Walkers and, of course, poor Hodor.

The show's certainly come a long way in its six-year run, but there have been some very memorable misses in its past.

Here are the biggest missteps in the show's history:

7. Gendry's escape from Dragonstone in season three hasn't been addressed in years and is one of the longest-running (-rowing?) memes on the show.

Gendry grew up in Flea Bottom, the poorest slum of King's Landing. He always thought of himself as a luckless nobody until Melisandre appeared and revealed that he's the only living heir to King Robert Baratheon.

That was the good news. The bad news was that she needed his royal blood for a magic ritual to kill her enemies. Tough break, kid. Davos, also born and raised in Flea Bottom, offered Gendry a row boat so he could escape the Isle of Dragonstone and return to King's Landing's port.

That was three years ago. Gendry's whereabouts have been referenced once and actor Joe Dempsie regularly tweets jokes about the completely unaddressed storyline. Following the deaths of Stannis and Shireen, ending the Baratheon line, will Gendry — the only living Baratheon we know of — return?

The show has also referenced the Brotherhood Without Banners recently. Will Gendry connect with them, as he did in the novels?

6. A prostitute from Winterfell, Ros was the embodiment of season one and two's tendency for "sexposition." Even the writers admit that she wasn't a fully fledged character.

The term "sexposition" was coined by writer Myles McNutt when discussing Ros' sex scene with another prostitute in season one. Essentially, she acted as tantalizing eye candy while Littlefinger provided the audience with background knowledge about Westeros.

For the next two seasons, Ros was either naked, having something explained to her, or both. Writer and producer Bryan Cogman specifically said that the character was created as an "exposition tool" for the audience. Once her purpose as a sexposition tool was served, she was killed off. She's revealed as a spy for Varys in season three, and Littlefinger gives her to Joffrey, who murders her with a crossbow.

It's unnecessary — we already knew that Joffrey was a monster and that Varys and Littlefinger are at opposite ends of a chessboard — so the graphic final shot of her corpse functioned as only shock value.

5. Before freeing the slaves in Meereen, Dany kept us all chained to a very long, very dull storyline in season two where her dragons were kidnapped by a warlock.

After the birth of her dragons in the season-one finale, Dany wanders the deserts known as the Red Waste, eventually coming to Qarth. As she petitions the city's nobles for ships to take the Dothraki army to Westeros, she meets a warlock from the House of the Undying.

While Dany eventually becomes a feared conqueror throughout Essos, in season two she did nothing but quarrel with the warlocks and get wrapped up in their coup against the Qartheen elite. They kidnap her dragons and then her before she escapes.

While Dany's season-one arc with the Dothraki and her liberation efforts from seasons three onward all have a major effect on what's happening now, there's little to no reference to her time in Qarth. It lasted one season, but didn't really seem to matter.

In the books, you can feel the echoes of Dany's time in Qarth through the visions she had at the House of the Undying. Season two, by contrast, is almost entirely self-contained. The enemies and allies she makes in Qarth are never referenced again.

One interesting exception is the masked sorceress, Quaithe of the Shadow. She was able to create some sort of protection for a soldier going to Valyria. It's not clear whether that was for greyscale, but maybe she could be a source of help for Jorah in seeking a cure to the disease.