Oh, I didn't see
that one coming.
This is the last time we're ever
going to be doing this.
It's completely unexpected.
-I-- I mean, I audibly gasped.
-(GASPS)
Like, "No!"
♪ (EPIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAVE HILL:
 First episodes of every season
 are always a challenge.
But for the final season,
it was a lot of pressure
 because we had
 all these characters
convening at Winterfell.
D.B. WEISS: We thought that
the arrival was a way to capture
what was at stake for Dany
and for Jon.
 For Arya on the ground,
 and for Tyrion and Varys,
 and Grey Worm
 and Missandei on horseback.
Everybody has
a slightly different take
on what's happening here.
Background! Action!
David Nutter directed
half the season for us,
and there's no more beloved
director in the business.
BERNADETTE CAULFIELD:
 Usually a director
 on  Game of Thrones
will shoot for three days,
then he has two days prep,
and then he maybe shoots
for a full week,
 but Nutter just had to go
 all out
 for eight or nine weeks
 of shooting.
KIT HARINGTON:
I was so happy that he was back
 for the final season.
David Nutter really felt
like part of the family.
DAVID NUTTER: We shot, uh,
 a lot of the parade stuff
 at the end of the year
 where we had kind of
 the two shortest days
 of the year.
Then we came back and kinda
brought some scope to it.
Winter's Town is a settlement
just outside of Winterfell.
 And so that road was snowed.
 We built the little buildings
 that led up the road.
 It was completely redressed
 to be the Winterfell
 little town.
It's basically a huge parade.
 The ADs sought out
background villagers' reactions,
 so you're actually working
 with the extras in a way
so you're getting a performance
out of everybody.
 We worked with
 the military advisers
 so a lot of these guys looked
 professional marching step.
(GRUNTING)
JAMIE MILES: When we tell them
 to do something, they do it.
 We teach them some very basic
 drill movements
so they know how to stand,
everything's under a command,
 a whistle blast,
 so they get to learn
to react in a military style,
in a disciplined style.
CHRIS NEWMAN: Anything that's
 on the page, we tend to...
show rather than just imply.
 If you're gonna say you want
 to see thousands of Unsullied,
then we have to show it.
STEFEN FANGMEIER:
 It's a significant
 big scope moment.
 So the challenge
 was definitely to find ways
to really make it seem like
thousands are arriving.
You have to have a vantage point
 from higher up.
NUTTER: When I read
 the opening sequence
and I saw this little boy
running to try to see the parade
and see the show
and see what he's missing,
 I felt like that little boy,
 'cause I'd been gone
 for two seasons.
 So, in some respects,
 I kinda was that little boy.
(DRAGON ROARS)
SOPHIE TURNER: Daenerys arrives
 and immediately,
 Sansa wants to make it
 very clear that
she runs this shit.
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
This is a tough crowd.
KIT: I think Jon knows Sansa
 well enough now that,
when it comes to Dany,
 he knows he's going to have
 some difficulty.
SOPHIE: Jon is in love with her,
 has bent the knee,
he's got googly eyes on,
he's got like, beer goggles on.
NUTTER: I basically sat down
 with Sophie and told her,
you have to remember one thing:
This is your house.
JON SNOW: Queen Daenerys
of House Targaryen.
Thank you for inviting us
into your home, Lady Stark.
The North is as beautiful
as your brother claimed.
As are you.
You're meeting the family!
You want to do well!
You want them to like you,
goddamn it!
 And, um, you're met
with this stony, stoic silence.
KIT: It's not a comfortable
 homecoming, no.
There are a lot of people on set
kind of like a giant game
 of "Where's Waldo?"
In the first episode,
a couple of our friends
from the comedy world
were in a scene.
They gouged my eye out!
-(LAUGHS)
-They gouged my fucking eye out!
They can put it back in, right?
-Right?
-Yeah.
(LAUGHS)
Benioff told me they would.
DAVID BENIOFF:
 When we found out
 that George Lucas
 wanted to visit,
 we thought maybe
 it was a practical joke,
and then we were really excited
and also nervous
 because it's George Lucas.
DAENERYS:
Your sister doesn't like me.
JON:
If it makes you feel any better,
she didn't like me either
when we were growing up.
Now print.
NUTTER: George would be sitting
 at my director's chair,
 that was so cool for me.
I had George go out
and speak to Kit and Emilia.
Okay, okay, that was great.
Great. Great.
No direction for you...
-I don't really care about you.
-(LAUGHS)
I don't care
what happens to you.
-What?!
-What's going on?
I mean, like the first time
like I could remember
telling stories was me
as a little kid
mashing together these,
like Stormtrooper dolls.
 For so many of us,
 he's the one who started
our obsession with this kind
of big, epic storytelling.
NUTTER: And of course,
 the input that he put through
with the writer Dave Hill's
head.
MAN: Three, two, one, go!
(GRUNTS)
HILL: I very much learned
 the lesson that sometimes
when you write two words,
 that you then create
 so much work
(CHUCKLES)
 for everyone involved.
Oh, I get an axe in the head.
Simple enough.
Next thing I know,
I'm flying to London,
to go out to have my face
sculpted,
 be wrapped in plaster
 and molded.
The day of, I'm in a chair
for four-and-a-half hours.
(GRUNTS)
It was great to see
that we were basically gonna get
to take Dave Hill out,
one of our writers.
It's quite nice to be able to,
um, kill fellow crew members off
(LAUGHS) in the nicest
kind of way.
HILL: Having to go and be
the one who give the performance
is so much more trouble
(CHUCKLES) than I imagined.
 And I was just trying
desperately not to screw it up.
 And I did, the first time.
And the second time,
better at it.
DIRECTOR: And board.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
♪ (DISTORTED MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
DEBORAH RILEY:
 The Godswood Tree is such
 an iconic piece of the show.
To create that Godswood tree
is a huge amount of effort.
Every year, it would have to be
 painted white.
 It would be coated in latex,
 a sculpted face would be
 applied to it.
 The greens team would go about
 adding branches to it
 with flocked red leaves
 that Kevin Fraser
 would paint up for us.
It's a process where you take
a flock, which is a fiber,
and actually adhere it
to the leaf on one surface.
 So, obviously, you've got some
 quite interesting dynamics
 when things were lit and shot.
ARYA STARK:
You used to be taller.
MAISIE WILLIAMS:
 When I first got the scripts,
it was like a bunch
of lords and ladies talking,
and I was thinking,
"Are we ever gonna get
a scene together again?
And then, finally
got to that scene
 and I was just beaming.
KIT:  The really spooky thing
 was turning around
 and seeing her
 for the first time,
and what I wanted to try and get
was this kind of punch
to the gut...
of literally turning around
and seeing time having past.
JON: You still have the sword.
-ARYA: Needle.
-JON: Needle.
The most amazing thing happened.
 I just didn't have to do
 anything.
 We had two actors
 who hadn't worked together
 since season one...
to get a chance
to show pure true love.
(GASPING)
NUTTER:  The one thing I told
 the actors in season eight,
the audience just wants
to see you breathe.
MAISIE:
 To watch Kit grow as an actor
on the show has been incredible,
and I think the fans are gonna
love it 'cause I loved it.
I hit you right in the face.
-KIT: It's all right.
-MAISIE: I'm so sorry!
WOMAN: Cut, go again.
Part of the fun of the episode
was bringing back together
all these characters. It's also
the challenge of the episode
because you don't want it
to feel like it's, you know,
just the reunion episode.
DIRECTOR: Ready and action!
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
ARYA: Leave him be.
WEISS: The Hound and Gendry,
 we thought it would make sense
for kind of the one-two punch
of these two people
who served very, very
different roles in her life.
GENDRY:
Is that a command, Lady Stark?
Don't call me that.
He still thinks that she's
the same girl
 that he left beforehand.
You've gotten better.
Yeah, thanks. So have you.
I think for Arya, it's
remembering who she was before.
-I mean, you look good.
-Thanks.
Like I used to be that girl,
 and that's who I was
 in love with
and thought I would follow
to the end of the world.
WEISS: The Hound-Arya reunion,
that's a thing we were
most excited about writing.
You left me to die.
I still robbed you.
Everyone would hope the reunion
between Arya and The Hound
would be laughs and giggles,
but actually, it starts off
as like cold 'cause it's kind of
a defense mechanism
for both characters.
THE HOUND: You're a cold
little bitch, aren't you?
Guess that's why
you're still alive.
There's also Tyrion and Sansa.
PETER DINKLAGE:
 There's something
 between Tyrion and Sansa
you can't quite put your finger
on 'cause they're...
"You left me, and then you know
what happened to me,
and I know what happened
to you."
Apologies for leaving like that.
Yes, it was a bit hard
to explain why my wife fled
moments after the king's murder.
It's tricky with them.
They have to watch their words
around each other,
 but at the end of the day,
 she does trust him.
And at the very end,
we have the silent reunion
 with Jamie and Bran.
If he tells the rest
of the clan the truth...
I'm-- I'm done. I'm dead.
NUTTER: To me,
 I wanted to make sure that,
 with respect to people
 getting back together again,
 those all had their credence
 and importance,
 but also, I didn't want
the audience to forget the fact
that the impending doom
was coming.
MAN: A Camera mark.
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
They're coming.
There's no way around it.
(CHUCKLES)
This is a great
horror movie sequence
that Dave Nutter, um,
directed the hell out of.
Somehow, Beric and Tormund
survived
 falling down that wall of ice.
We find that it's strangely--
there's blood everywhere,
but there's no bodies.
Stay back, he's got blue eyes!
I've always had blue eyes!
Did you find anyone?
BARRIE GOWER:
 The scene in The Last Hearth,
we have this mandala
of limbs and body parts
the Night King has left behind,
which form this kind of pattern,
and in the middle of it,
we have Ned Umber,
who's basically pinned
to the wall on a huge stake.
Obviously, we know what happens
to people who are killed
by the Night King
or white walkers.
(SHRIEKING)
GOWER: The young boy
 was suspended in a harness,
and then to basically kill
the wight,
Beric uses his flaming sword
and takes out the wight.
We had to shoot that
on a stunt guy called Paul Lowe,
 who was of a similar sort
 of stature
 to the actor playing Ned.
PAUL LOWE: Game of Thrones is
the first time I got a full burn
so that's a nice tick.
 What I guess a lot
 of stuntmen wanna have.
And for that, because he was
gonna be engulfed in flames,
 we had to make
 a lookalike fire mask.
ROWLEY IRLAM: Are we good?
You can hear me okay, yeah?
I love-- I love what you've done
with your hair.
BERIC DONDARRION:
It's a message.
From the Night King.
Being Beric Dondarrion, I'm
always setting people on fire.
You have the mask off,
you talk through it,
what the process is gonna be.
Then we'll roll the cameras,
okay?
The first three-two-one will be
to light the sword,
then it'll be three-two-one,
action, for Nick to stab you.
You lift your arm up to stab
on three, okay?
On action, he's gonna stab you.
Hold this position like this.
When you hear me start to count,
that's when you start to react.
You then have to go and do it.
They'll gel you, they'll spritz
you and they'll light you.
ROWLEY: One! Action!
One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight,
out, out, out!
LOWE: Well, you have an idea
 of what it's gonna be like
 but when I was set on fire,
 you've only got these little
 small eye holes.
All I could see
were little flicks
in my eyes
of like a little bit of red.
And the first time we'd done it,
 and like it went all,
and they put me out, I said,
"Was I on fire?"
And they said,
"Yeah, it was massive."
(CHEERS, APPLAUSE)
JON: You've completely
ruined horses for me.
It almost seemed like you knew
where it wanted to go.
-Not quite--
-Aw, fuck!
-(CONTAINED LAUGHTER)
-KIT: Fuck's sake.
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
We're shooting in Iceland!
Isn't it beautiful?
 We only have about six hours
 of light,
 so we all come out about
 3 hours before the sun rises.
 Grip and electric get to lay
 about a 40-foot track,
our department was laying down
all the bones
 for our nest for our dragons.
BENIOFF:  Some of those locales
 in Iceland are so breathtaking
that real environments
just help the actors so much,
so if it's Kit and Emilia
walking past a frozen river
 in Iceland
 and they're shivering--
 that's real.
Yeah, this fire lady,
dragon mama
is not used to the cold!
No problem, I can stand
in the snow all day.
I just loved that I could
go there with Emilia.
 I got to show this thing
 that's been such a...
large part of the Thrones'  worl
 for me.
I got to show her Iceland.
EMILIA CLARKE:
 Magic dragon ride!
I like it, it just felt like,
a magic carpet ride!
We just sort of...
playing tag on the dragons.
(CHUCKLING) It's beautiful.
FANGMEIER:
We were lucky to get a great day
of aerial photography in Iceland
with a helicopter shooting these
most beautiful river canyons
 with beautiful snow coverage.
 And then where they land
was meant to be a very pristine
 and gorgeous location as well.
Dan and David said,
"You know, maybe--
Can we have a waterfall here?"
 So, we went all the way
 to Iceland,
 to this beautiful canyon,
and then we end up adding
a massive waterfall
 later on in post because it
still wasn't quite spectacular.
-Ooh! Ugh!
-(EMILIA YELPS)
DIRECTOR: And... let's roll,
please, rolling rolling.
KIT: I think the actual
 dragon ride was like...
yeah, it's one bit
where you gotta convey
your love for each other
and you're in a green box on a--
 on a buck.
So much of what we're doing now
requires robotics.
 So we'll start with previews
 and in order to then shoot it,
 we'll go into a green screen
 stage with a motion base,
which is kind of like
a mechanical bull,
only in this case, it's got
a dragon's butt on top of it.
 And then the cameras
 are swinging around
 on a 3D-controlled wire rig,
programmed to match
the previews.
Don't know how to ride a dragon!
Butt work is not easy.
 I think what sums up the buck
 for me was...
there was a bit where Jon
almost falls off the dragon,
 swings around really violently
 like this,
and my right ball got trapped,
 and I didn't have time
 to say stop,
 and I was being swung around.
 In my head, I thought,
 "This is how it ends.
On this buck, swinging me around
by my testicles. Literally."
(CONTAINED LAUGHTER OFF-SCREEN)
(CHUCKLES) Sorry.
Probably too much information.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
KIT:  It's just...
 way too much to take.
 I was joking with John like,
 "How do you, as an--
 How do you receive
 all those bits of information?
 How would you possibly
 try and act that?
 When they've got death
 raining down at them?"
And suddenly he finds out
the truth about his life,
that he's not a bastard,
 that everything he's lived by
 is not the case.
And on top of that,
the-- his new lo-- (SIGHS)
his new love of his life
is his aunt.
Like, I mean, I was like,
"Oh, come on.
This is an impossible task."
I wasn't a king.
But you were.
You've always been.
He wouldn't want to hurt Jon
with it.
He would only tell Jon that
if it were the truth.
 If there's one thing
 he knows about Sam,
 it's that Sam is a stickler
 for facts,
and Sam is very literal.
SAMWELL TARLY:
You've never been a bastard.
You're Aegon Targaryen,
true heir to the Iron Throne.
KIT: A way to get around it
 was disbelief,
 like, "Sam's gone mad.
 What're you talking about?"
Quickly followed by it
making sense and anger.
You're the true king.
Aegon Targaryen.
Sixth of his name,
Protector of the Realm.
All of it.
KIT: I don't care if you're
 my best friend in the world,
 I will... I will...
 knock you out.
How dare you tell this to me.
My father was the most
honorable man I ever met.
Your father... Ned Stark,
he promised your mother
he'd always protect you.
And he did! Robert would've
murdered you if he knew.
And the truth that Samwell
tells Jon,
is probably the most
incendiary fact
in the entire world
of the show.
 Ned Stark understood
 how dangerous
the truth about Jon was,
and that's why he protected Jon
from it.
SAMWELL: You gave up your crown
to save your people.
Would she do the same?
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
