There were other benefits to the plan as well. If the Night King captured a dragon, it would boost his formidability and make the seemingly unstoppable Daenerys more vulnerable going into the final season.
So when Jon Snow’s group got trapped by the Army of the Dead on the frozen lake, Gendry ran to get help from Daenerys back at Eastwatch, who then flew her dragons to the rescue. While the Mother of Dragons saved Jon Snow along with most of his men, Viserion was killed by the Night King, who transformed the beast into a creature who would serve the forces of death.
The action was rivetingly shot yet nonetheless drew complaints over the practicalities of the rescue and how fast Daenerys arrived on the scene.
DAVE HILL (co-producer): You obviously don’t want any criticism of any kind. But with all the things we were balancing to set things up for season eight, sometimes we had to speed things up within episodes. We had a lot of time cuts that the vast majority watching didn’t catch. Sometimes when moving pieces around, you’re going to cheat a little bit.
ALAN TAYLOR (director): I thought we were covered by the fact that in the North it’s this eternal twilight up there. It was never clear on how much time was passing up there. So I thought we had wiggle room for saying what the timeline was. That turned out to not be the case for most of the audience, who had a very clear idea of what they thought the timeline was and that we weren’t sticking to it.
So my first response was to be glib and say, “Um, you know, we have a show where giant lizards the size of 747s are flying around and you’re concerned about the airspeed velocity of a raven.” I thought I was pointing out the absurdity. On the other hand, it’s absolutely true that people love the show because they think they can depend on us to be accurate about the airspeed of a raven. It’s the underlying realism that is critical to the suspension of disbelief in the big thing. I learned a lesson about that. That was chastening.
KIT HARINGTON: There were natural problems. I could see them going north of the Wall to get proof, because having that proof was important and there’s only one way to get it. And a fantasy is a fantasy at the end of the day, and there are things that have to happen which are not in a real world. But we drew people into the fact that it’s a very real fantasy in earlier seasons. You do trick an audience a bit if you say, “The dragon flew this far back. . . .” Some of the timings of things, some of the speed at which people met, it was difficult. But it was also necessary to get us to the end point.
The surviving heroes sailed back to the Seven Kingdoms. During the voyage, Jon Snow knocked on Daenerys Targaryen’s cabin door and they wordlessly acknowledged their undeniable mutual attraction. In the passageway, Tyrion could hear what was going on in the cabin and looked rather grave. The scene was intercut with Samwell at the Citadel discovering evidence that revealed Jon’s parents were Ned Stark’s sister, Lyanna Stark, and Daenerys’s older brother Rhaegar Targaryen. The show’s biggest mystery, the one Martin had quizzed Benioff and Weiss about over lunch all those years ago, was finally solved. Jon Snow was Daenerys’s nephew and the true heir to the Iron Throne.
PETER DINKLAGE (Tyrion Lannister): “Keep it down over there, I’m trying to get some sleep!” No, ah, it was complicated. Like a lot of things with Tyrion, it was professional and personal. Obviously he had feelings for Daenerys. He loved her, or thought he did. She was awe-inspiring. He was questioning that because he didn’t have a good track record falling in love. There was jealousy wrapped up in there. And he loved Jon Snow too; they’re the two he had the most in common with, in a way—outsiders in their own families who refused to follow the path their family had taken. He was wondering how smart of a move [their coupling was], because passion and politics don’t mix well, and he knew the two getting together could be very dangerous.
JEREMY PODESWA: That was an interesting scene because Kit and Emilia are really good friends and they’re having to do something friends don’t normally do. But they’re also actors and know they had to do it. For them it was goofy fun. But at the same time they were very aware of not wanting to cross a boundary with each other or make the other uncomfortable. So they asked me to be really specific about how we were going to shoot it. “How are we going to do this, exactly? What’s going to be shown, exactly?”
Also, from a storytelling point of view, that Dany and Jon are making love is a huge thing. So I felt very strongly they need to stop in the middle of it and have a moment where they’re just looking at each other. It’s a moment of, “Should we be doing this? Is this a terrible idea? Is this a good idea?” And then decide, “This force is greater than us and we can’t not do it.” And that gave the scene an extra loaded quality. That there was something going on that had a sense of epic fatality or inevitability about it. We didn’t know yet what it was, but we knew there was a force bigger than both of them, and they couldn’t stop it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A Sort of Homecoming
Game of Thrones began with the Starks at Winterfell, and a reunion was always destined for the show’s final arc. But when making an intense fantasy drama where the stakes are typically life and death, what do you do with a family of heroes after you bring them together to hang out in a castle for an entire season? How do you maintain the show’s usual level of intrigue? The solution was to focus on all the ways each Stark had evolved since season one, and then throw in a scheming Littlefinger.
“When people move apart, they grow apart, and this is a fantasy exaggeration of that,” showrunner Dan Weiss said. “Bran’s entire personality has been altered to the point where it’s hard for any human to relate to him, even his sisters, but is there anything left of him in there? How much is Arya Stark of Winterfell, and how much is the Faceless Men? Sansa has undergone her training, for good or for ill, under Littlefinger’s supervision. How much of his Machiavellian quality has rubbed off on her?
“You would think a family reunion among three siblings who all thought the others were dead should be unalloyed joy—and it was, to an extent. But there was a lot of tension and anxiety under the surface because we didn’t know how they were going to relate to each other now that they were under the same roof.”
SOPHIE TURNER (Sansa Stark): I was so overwhelmed by the Starks meeting again. I was sitting in the corner on the set of something else scrolling on my phone [reading the scripts] going, “Aahhhhh!” Then I rang Maisie up. “Can you believe it? We have so many episodes together!”
BRYAN COGMAN (co–executive producer): Sansa and Arya were never close and never particularly liked each other and have been through so much. Now they had more in common than either was probably willing to recognize.
SOPHIE TURNER: Our first scene together was our reunion scene. We fucked up so many times.
MAISIE WILLIAMS (Arya Stark): It was the weirdest thing. We were both embarrassed to do our thing in front of each other. It took a few hours for us to get serious.
SOPHIE TURNER: We couldn’t keep a straight face. Our relationship is so close, but it’s only that fun side, never the business side. But apparently it works? I was nervous. It’s like performing for your mom; when somebody is watching, you don’t do it quite as well. But in the long run it benefited us because we could be free with each other in our acting. We were not afraid to “go there” because we feel so comfortable with each other.
When family members reunite in the real world, it’s difficult to not fall back into habitual patterns and assumptions, and so it was on Game of Thrones. Sansa still thought Arya was reckless and unskilled, and Arya still believed her older sister was ambitious and naive, each underestimating the other.
SOPHIE TURNER: Arya still saw Sansa as the snooty, prissy child that she was before she left for King’s Landing. They didn’t really talk about what they’ve gone through, they never really had that communication before, and then when it was vital to do it, they don’t have that [ability to communicate] and they can’t understand each other.
MAISI
E WILLIAMS: If Arya had gone through what Sansa’s gone through, she’d be dead. And if Sansa had gone through what Arya’s gone through, she’d be dead. They’re both very good at handling what they’ve been put under. If either had switched roles, they wouldn’t last.
Littlefinger tried to play Arya and Sansa against each other, revealing a letter Sansa was forced by Cersei to write in season two urging Robb Stark to swear fealty to King Joffrey during the War of the Five Kings. The letter made it seem like Sansa had betrayed Robb, and it caused Arya to question her sister’s loyalty.
AIDAN GILLEN (Littlefinger): It was pretty obvious what my game was there. At the same time my character was becoming quite aware that Sansa was becoming as bright as me and as wary of my manipulations. They used each other, they enjoyed each other and kept a lot from each other. With carefully laid plans there’s always a bit of risk involved. I think he liked that. He put himself on the line like a good gambler.
Petyr Baelish had previously spotted Arya in season two when she was working incognito as Tywin Lannister’s cupbearer at Harrenhal. So Littlefinger had some sense that she was not to be underestimated.
AIDAN GILLEN: Arya’s a character I was wary of. I wasn’t fully aware of her capabilities, of her drive, but I had an idea. It was unclear if he recognized Arya or not [at Harrenhal], but I have my own thoughts on that: Yes, I did recognize her, I just didn’t say anything or do anything about it.
Turner later noted that she struggled with the idea that Littlefinger could have manipulated Sansa and Arya to be at each other’s throats to such a life-threatening degree.
SOPHIE TURNER: It was basically all fighting and suspicion and scheming. It didn’t feel very natural.
BRYAN COGMAN: It was very tricky to work out, and the tone was difficult to strike that season. But the girls did fantastic.
Alan Taylor worked with Williams and Turner in the first two seasons, then came back and saw how they had evolved as actors by season seven.
ALAN TAYLOR (director): In the first season they were basically kids. Then I came back, and I did a scene with the two of them where it’s pages of dialogue, there’s a power struggle between them and they’re circling each other. They were still cracking up and singing songs and goofing around. But when we would do take after take, their eyes would start to glisten at exactly the same beat in the scene. It wasn’t crying, it was the emotion pressing up. And it wasn’t a onetime thing. It was literally every time we got to that moment with both of them. I thought it was beautiful how much they’d grown as actors
As for Bran Stark, his transformation into the Three-Eyed Raven meant reinventing the character, and it required actor Isaac Hempstead Wright to become more conscious of his performance.
ISAAC HEMPSTEAD WRIGHT (Bran Stark): The first few years I’d be lying if I said I had any great understanding of the craft of creating a character. I was just reading the lines they gave me and listening to the director. And that worked for Bran because he was just a kid. I was mostly around adding bits to the story here and there. It wasn’t until season seven that I really had to transform myself and I realized, “Okay, I have to really do something with this,” and I got into it. Before then I was just happily going along, enjoying the experience.
BRYAN COGMAN: It’s what [Meera Reed] says to Bran: “You died in that cave.” The bighearted innocent boy died with Hodor. Now there was something else. He’s still Bran and wanted to do good, but he became something larger. Our nickname for him was “Dr. Bran-hattan.”
Wright developed an intense, all-knowing stare for the Three-Eyed Raven. When on camera, the nearsighted actor would forgo wearing glasses or contacts, leaving him “completely blind,” as Wright explained on Jimmy Kimmel Live! So while it seemed like Bran was staring straight into a character’s soul, in fact, the Three-Eyed Raven couldn’t see at all.
ISAAC HEMPSTEAD WRIGHT: Getting to creep everybody out was cool. Now he was the focus of any scene he was in because he was so weird.
SOPHIE TURNER: He’s very stare-y. It made Sansa quite uncomfortable. Sansa’s motive was to stay alive and survive. She wants everything to be exactly as it was before, and when everybody came back she was so excited and then Bran was completely different, and same with Arya. She was losing her childhood bit by bit, and it gave her a bit of an identity crisis. “Why the fuck am I here, then?”
The writers wanted to be careful, however, with Bran’s abilities. Having a character who knew the past and the future could add all sorts of plot holes and get fans asking “But then why couldn’t he . . . ?” questions about the story.
BRYAN COGMAN: You don’t want to lean heavily on the time travel or it becomes a crutch. The way we worked around that—and it’s built into the storyline—is because his cave was breached by the Night King, it’s the classic Empire Strikes Back trope—“incomplete is your training.” Bran had all the information but lacked the tools to sift through it. So it came in fits and starts.
DAN WEISS (showrunner): One of the things we loved about Game of Thrones from the very beginning was, it’s not a world where magic was the primary driver of the story. It’s a world where human psychology and behavior and desire are drivers of the story, and we tried very hard to make sure it stayed that way because those are a lot more relatable to the vast majority of the audience than magic powers—as much fun as those are.
One chunk of data the Three-Eyed Raven successfully downloaded was insight into Littlefinger’s betrayal of Ned Stark, as well as Baelish’s chat with Varys where he proclaimed: “Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, but they refuse; they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.”
Weiss wrote the “chaos is a ladder” speech back in season one and tried to get it into two previous Littlefinger scenes before the lines finally found an appropriate home in season three.
DAVID BENIOFF (showrunner): That was cut twice. We kept trying to get it in.
DAN WEISS: We filmed it once in another scene and it wasn’t working, so we had to cut bait on it. By the third time it came around, David must have thought, “Dude, c’mon, it’s just four words, just let them die.”
AIDAN GILLEN: I remember shooting the [original “chaos is a ladder”] scene quite well; working with Conleth Hill is always interesting and dangerous and fun. But it was really in a post-production ADR session that the scene ratcheted up a notch. I’ve always liked dubbing sessions because at the very least you replicate what you’ve done already but there’s also an opportunity to finesse the tone of the scene. When I saw the cut—especially that it cut back to Sansa as she watched the ships sail—I knew it needed more intensity and pointedness. Producer Frank Doelger was supervising that session, and he indulged me with time to play around. The line became the Petyr Baelish mantra. That and “Pimpin’ ain’t easy.”
ISAAC HEMPSTEAD WRIGHT: Getting to say Littlefinger’s line back to him was one of my favorite moments. It’s such an iconic line, and watching him get freaked out was so cool.
AIDAN GILLEN: When Bran told him “chaos is a ladder,” that’s when the ground started to shift beneath my feet. At that point I knew the things I’d done in private are not necessarily private.
Littlefinger’s scheme backfired, with the Starks uniting to uncover his plot. They summoned Baelish to the great hall, where they served as his judge (Sansa), jury (Bran), and executioner (Arya). The twist also meant the departure of Gillen, who generously bought the Thrones crew seventy bottles of whiskey each year.
DAVID BENIOFF: Littlefinger became a much different character than we initially imagined. Aidan’s one of these guys who’s able to change things in ways that are strange and beguiling, to the betterment of the character. Relatively speaking, he’s a minor character if you look at his screen time. But the fact that Littlefinger looms so large when people ta
lk about the show and when we think about the show, it’s really a credit to him. Every scene he’s in, he manages to make you think about Littlefinger. And scenes where he’s at the center, like in his final scene, he’s completely mesmerizing.
CONLETH HILL (Varys): It would have been great to have had one more meeting with Varys and Littlefinger. I think they tried to make that work and couldn’t. And I was bummed not to have any reaction to him dying, if he was my nemesis. After [season six], I felt like I dropped off the edge a bit.
DAVID BENIOFF: Diana Rigg was so true to her character in the end, and Littlefinger was true to his character in the end—in his own cowardly, horrible way. It was one of the harder death calls we had to make, but he fucked with the wrong girls.
SOPHIE TURNER: That’s my favorite scene, because it showed the power of these two sisters and how together they’re more powerful than apart. It’s a liberating moment for Sansa when she realizes she doesn’t need him anymore. It felt amazing for the character. She’s finally free of this manipulating, overbearing presence. It’s never been an easy relationship. She’s always had qualms about him. It’s like a graduation. In order for her family to be a strong unit, she had to get rid of him. At the same time, it was bittersweet because he’d been a friend to her; he’d put her into shitty situations, but he’d pulled her out of situations too. And Aidan killed it. It was the first time you saw him get emotional.
JEREMY PODESWA (director): The twists in the scene are very strong. There’s a great amount of satisfaction seeing the Stark kids come together, and it’s a vindication for Sansa, who Littlefinger basically sold to Ramsay. It’s also moving and surprisingly powerful to see Littlefinger have the tables turned on him. He’s the one who’s always been able to manipulate every situation. He’s a character you love to hate that you now have some empathy for because he’s a guy fighting for his life. It was one of my favorite scenes I’ve done on the show and was for Aidan too—even though he had a hard time leaving. He probably had one of the most satisfying endings of any character.
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