The expansive story of HBO’s Game of Thrones is about to come to a close with Season 8 which means conflicts will escalate further as the series continues to top itself. With every season, the climactic battles have only gotten larger and more expensive to shoot. There was the Battle of Blackwater, the massacre at Hardhome, the Battle of the Bastards and most recently, the Battle of the Goldroad in which Lannister and Tarly’s forces were obliterated by a horde of Dothraki warriors and the Winged Shadow, Drogon.
The next season promises yet another grand scale battle. We cannot say with certainty who exactly will be involved or when within the series the battle will take place, but we can tell you that the battle will take place in Winterfell. This and more was revealed on Watchers on the Wall, which shared a deleted post from assistant director, Jonathan Quinlan’s Instagram account where he posted a photo of a thank you card that was presumably given to the cast who spent 55 consecutive nights filming in the unforgiving climate.
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Filming for his battle has taken vastly longer than previous sequences, more than double the length of time it took to film the battle sequence for Season 6’s “Battle of the Bastards.”
For those who are unfamiliar, Toome is the location of the Moneyglass set, often dressed as Winterfell and Magheramorne, where filming for scenes set in Castle Black and the Wall often take place. There is mention of a third location, the name of which has not been revealed.
By now, fans should expect plenty of battle scenes and plenty of moments in which their favorite characters reach an abrupt end to their respective journeys. Season 8 will feature the deaths of many familiar characters, as implied by Francesca Orsi, HBO SVP of Drama when she described the final script reading: “None of the cast had received the scripts prior, and one by one they started falling down to their deaths.” The large, recently completed battle sequence could be where many of these characters meet their demise. However, much of this is mere speculation.
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As of yet, few details have been revealed about the rest of Game of Thrones’ final season aside from the fact that it will be shorter that previous seasons. Season 8 will contain six episodes, each one running two hours and directed by one of four directors lined up: David Nutter, Miguel Sapochnik and D.B Weiss and David Benioff. We do know that this is an emotional season, at least from the perspective of the cast who reportedly cried after a table read, according to an interview by Entertainment Weekly with Sophie Turner.
Game of Thrones Season 8 will air in 2019. No official release date has been given.