When King of the North Jon (played by Kit Harington) and Mother of Dragons Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) finally acted on their growing connection in the season seven finale of Game of Thrones, fans were taken-aback.
But while it was clear the two leads had a budding romance and the most electrifying chemistry on the HBO series, the reveal the duo were actually related stopped everyone in their tracks.
Viewers watched on as Daenerys writhed underneath her new lover, and Jon even paused to take in the white-haired Khaleesi’s features for a moment.
In fact, Bran Stark, also now the Three Eyed Raven, (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) had only just discovered after going back in time Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) sister Lyanna got married to Daenerys’ older brother Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, meaning Jon is her nephew.
Now, journalist James Hibberd has revealed while the show’s final season will undoubtedly be an explosive one, there will be plenty of “intimacy” and drama to come.
Could this lead to the show focusing on exploring the relationship between Jon and Daenerys even further? Or will their tryst come to a halt early on in the final episodes?
Speaking via Entertainment Weekly, James revealed: “There’s been so much focus on the spectacular-ness of the battles, but they’re not skimping on the one-on-one scenes and the character scenes.
“I think people are going to be surprised about how intimate the final season is, in addition to the spectacular stuff that you’re expecting.”
The writer further teased the remaining episodes, insisting David Benioff and Dan Weiss have planned every detail to the letter to save any confusion after the finale.
He explained: “What you want in any final season is things to be unexpected but also make sense.
“So you don’t want anything to surprise you for surprise’s sake.”
The insider then added: “You want everything to feel earned and to look back and go, ‘OK, yeah, I could see how they were building to that.
“And from what I know from the final season, it does that.”
According to James, the “one-on-one” scenes have taken more time than anything else to perfect, despite multiple reports claiming the show’s final battle will be one of the biggest and longest in cinematic history.
Some have said it will even clock in at a whopping 40 minutes, longer than any Lord of the Rings film, which previously held the last titles.
“[What’s taken the most time is] the regular scenes of two people talking in a hallway,” the journalist commented. “If it’s a scene that would normally take a day to shoot, they’d spend several days shooting.
“They’re trying to so hard to get every little thing right.
“So they’d do take after take, from all sorts of different angles, so that in editing they have different ways to piece it together.”
Game of Thrones season 8 will return to HBO and Sky Atlantic in 2019. Seasons 1-7 are currently streaming on NOW TV.
