Ahh, the Battle of Winterfell: a dark, frightening, grueling fight that will not soon be forgotten. Say what you want about the final season of Game of Thrones, but we’ve got to give it up for the professionals who labored to make this spectacle happen.
If you enjoyed that battle, SYFY Wire gives us some insight into how it was made. This video is from a featurette called When Winter Falls, off a ridiculously large box-set containing all eight seasons of Game of Thrones. It’s Game of Thrones: The Complete Series, and it’s available now!
Also on the set are deleted scenes, commentaries and much more! The documentary about “The Long Night” is a must-watch for me. I mean, they spent 55 days working on the episode! How crazy is that?
In this clip, we’ve got Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), and Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm) talking all about their experiences. “Oh my goodness, it was overwhelming,” recalls Christie. “You’re on this huge set, it’s filled with smoke. It feels like maybe a 1,000 people on the set with extras, crew, and cast.”
Coster-Waldau is right there with her. “Death and horror are coming from places you never imagined,” he says. “Every time you think oh, now there’s a little break and you realize no there’s no break, it’s crazy onslaught.” It’s still hard to imagine how the team pulled off the non-step action
As Anderson points out, there are emotional elements to the fight, too, particularly for characters like Grey Worm, who never thought they’d be part of a battle like this. “It all just starts to fall apart. And decisions have to start being made on the fly, and that’s all mixed in with the stuff of like who am I doing this for, who am I sacrificing my family for.”
In one key moment, Grey Worm makes the decision to stop the wights but sacrifice his men, as showrunner Dan Weiss explains. “It was important to see how difficult that decision was for Grey Worm to make, as soon as he pulls the rope on that trench, he knows that every one of his men, he’s never going to see again.”
If you want more content like this, consider ordering Game of Thrones: The Complete Series here.
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