From epic battle scenes to super secret spoilers, Entertainment Weekly has the scoop on the final season of 'Game of Thrones'
Only days after HBO released 20 new character posters celebrating the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, Entertainment Weekly has released 16 new covers (see below), paired with an exclusive on-set story chronicling the show’s last days.
Written by EW’s longtime Thrones correspondent, James Hibberd, the article outlines the extent to which the series had to go to keep the secrets of its endgame safe from prying eyes.
Case in point: The production secured protected airspace status from the Irish government for its various exterior sets, including the House Stark refuge of Winterfell. But during filming one day, a helicopter soared overhead, setting off a mad scramble as the crew tried to learn whether they’d been visited by an aerial spoiler hound.
In the end, the intruder turned out to be a police helicopter, which means any and all details seen remain under lock and key … for now.
That near disaster took place during an episode that EW describes as “the most difficult-to-produce episode in television history,” one that depicts a pitched battle at Winterfell between the ascendant Night King and an army commanded by Jon Snow and his lover/secret aunt Daenerys Targaryen (Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke).
Backup for this epic clash is provided by sisters Arya and Sansa Stark (Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner), Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) and Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie). We’re assuming that Stark sibling Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright) will be using his Three-Eyed Raven powers to observe the battle as well.
“This final face-off between the Army of the Dead and the army of the living is completely unprecedented and relentless and a mixture of genres even within the battle,” co-executive producer Bryan Cogman teased to EW.
Here’s another way in which this sequence is unprecedented: It’s supposed to be the longest consecutive battle sequence ever captured onscreen, topping the previous record holder, the Battle of Helm’s Deep at the end of the second Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers.
Epic sequences like that explain why every one of the six chapters that constitute Game of Thrones’ final season will boast a runtime closer to a feature film than a standard TV episode.
That may sound awesome to viewers at home, but it wasn’t quite as fun for the grunts on the ground.
“It was the most unpleasant experience I’ve had on Thrones,” confessed Iain Glen, who plays recent Greyscale survivor Ser Jorah Mormont. “A real test, really miserable. You get to sleep at 7 in the morning and when you wake in the midday you’re still so spent you can’t really do anything, and then you’re back. You have no life outside it.”
“We want people to love it,” showrunner Dan Weiss remarked of the last episode. “We also know no matter what we do, even if it’s the optimal version, that a certain number of people will hate the best of all possible versions.
“There is no version where everybody says, ‘I have to admit, I agree with every other person on the planet that this is the perfect way to do this,’” Weiss continued. “That’s an impossible reality that doesn’t exist. I’m hoping for the Breaking Bad [finale] argument where it’s like, ‘Is that an A or an A+?’”
One thing EW didn’t have access to was the set where the series finale was being filmed under the direction of longtime showrunners Weiss and David Benioff, who will be leaving Winterfell behind to travel to George Lucas’s far, far away galaxy for a new Star Wars trilogy.
Just as long as House Greyjoy isn’t left standing at the end of the finale, Game of Thrones fans should be very, very happy.
Check out all 16 of Entertainment Weekly’s Game of Thrones covers:
Season 8 of Game of Thrones premieres Sunday, April 14, at 9 p.m. on HBO.
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