Game of Thrones villain The Night King could have looked very different if show bosses had gone with the original designs.
The leader of the White Walkers was killed by Arya with a stealth attack during the siege of Winterfell, taking his entire army with him in the final season, which streams on Foxtel.
The silent commander left his opponents chilled to the core in more ways than one with his icy glare and steely ruthlessness.
However, original sketches from The Art of Game of Thrones prove that substantial edits were made to the first draft of the character, reports The Sun.
Production designer Deborah Riley signed off on a series of sketches in which The Night King resembled one of the Ring Wraiths from JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
In them, he was draped in flowing robes, sported a long beard and his crown was substantially taller, with shards of ice extending well above his head.
The regal look is a far cry from the battle-ready chain mail the baddie ended up sporting.
Fans took to social media in their hundreds to react to the terrifying original look, with many describing it as “scarier than what we ended up with.”
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However, others claimed it played up the fantasy cliches and “lacked imagination”.
Prosthetic designer Barry Gower was the one to carve out The Night King’s razor sharp features, furrowed brow and frosty complexion when it came to filming.
His original brief for the character was someone “regal” but with “familiar White Walker traits”, culminating in a more polished, albeit still deathly complexion.
The concept art is taken from story boards of The Night King’s introductory scene in the show, during the final moments of season 4, episode 4, “Oathbreaker”.
It marks the first time viewers see the monstrous leader at a gathering of White Walkers, transforming one of Craster’s baby sons into one of them.
Last week, show runners Dan “DB” Weiss and David Benioff admitted the baby they used in the scene was “traumatised” after being placed naked on a real block of ice.
“The first scene that the Night King appears in was directed by the great Michelle MacLaren and was the most frightened I’ve ever been on set,” Benioff told crowds at the Austin film festival.
“Not because of the Night King but because we had a baby, a real baby. There was like an altar made of ice, and I think it was real ice?”
After pondering for a moment, he confirmed: “It was real ice because fake ice in close-ups just never looks real.
“So the altar was actually a hard block of ice and we put a baby on top of this block of ice. A real baby.
“This baby is lying there like ‘what the f**k?’ Then a monster, deformed, walks up and puts his clawed finger on this poor baby’s face and the baby starts screaming.
“I’m like ‘we’re f***ing traumatising this poor kid’.”
Weiss added: “It was not our proudest moment.”
This article originally appeared on The Sun and was reproduced with permission
