Everything is coming up Greyjoy lately! The Game of Thrones production team is shooting scenes in Northern Ireland’s Ballintoy Harbour, which stands in for parts of the Iron Islands, all this week, and there’s been a flood of information from the area. First, let’s recap what we know. Beware: some of this news constitutes SPOILERS for Season 6.
- First, HBO confirmed that it hired Borgen actor Pilou Asbæk to play Euron Greyjoy, a crazy person and dangerous pirate who seizes control of the Iron Islands in A Feast for Crows. Expect important, horrible things from this guy.
- The production has been shooting in a couple of different locations. In the harbor itself, it’s been filming a scene involving a group of Ironborn, including Yara and Euron. Odds are that this is the Kingsmoot scene from A Feast for Crows, in which the Iron Islanders elect Euron as their new leader, much to Yara’s disappointment.
- But to elect a new leader, the old leader has to die, and it just so happens that the production has also been filming around the Carrick-A-Rede rope bridge. Those who have read A Feast for Crows know that Balon Greyjoy, the leader of the Iron Islands the last time we checked in, should stay away from rope bridges if he knows what’s good for him, but if they’re filming around one, he probably won’t.
- (This next bit is especially spoilery, so now’s your last chance to turn back.) Finally, we learned that Alfie “Theon Greyjoy” Allen is filming around Ballintoy Harbour this week. This can only mean one thing: Theon will return to the Iron Islands at some point in Season 6. Will he be around for the Kingsmoot? It’s unclear. How will he get to the Iron Islands given what he was doing at the end of Season 5? No idea. Who does he think he is leaving Sansa when he still has a lot of amends to make? To be determined.
And now for today’s Iron Islands update. YouTuber Eye in the Sky has taken what looks to be drone footage of the filming going on in Ballintoy Harbour. Incidentally, the Game of Thrones team has tried to ban drones from production airspace in the past, but there’s just no stopping a person with a dream and a tiny flying robot.
You can get good views of the gathered Iron Islanders on the beach around 0:10 and 0:45. Points for the fluttering banner—I’m going to assume it’s a Greyjoy banner—visible toward the left-hand corner around 0:10. Also, are those Iron Islanders paddling in rowboats around 0:30? Perhaps it’s Yara’s crew frantically fleeing the Kingsmoot after Euron seizes power?
In casting news, Watchers on the Wall reports that an unidentified actor has been cast as Aeron Greyjoy, Balon’s religiously devout brother and the guy who calls the Kingsmoot in the books. HBO’s version of the Greyjoy family tree didn’t previously include Aeron on it, so it’s unclear whether that actor is actually playing Aeron, or perhaps a different Drowned Man, the priests of the Ironborn religion. It’s also possible that, with an extra season to work with, the producers figured they had time to include secondary characters like Aeron, where before they thought them extraneous.
More from Greyjoy-palooza as it develops.