Yesterday afternoon, after zero trailers and very little new footage of Game of Thrones Season 6, the show’s Twitter account released the first Behind the Scenes short for the upcoming season. In terms of timing, it was right on cue: the first of these shorts usually comes out a couple of weeks after the big trailer drop. There are usually four or five such shorts, and they appear every couple of weeks between the trailer and the premiere. Of course the “big trailer drop” was more of a sad trombone for most: a Hall of Faces-themed teaser that didn’t feature any new footage.
But the Inside GoT video was interesting for a second reason: unlike in years past, there was no email to subscribers that a new video was uploaded to YouTube. Instead, like everything else this season, the video arrived via Twitter. If one goes to the Game of Thrones YouTube page, the video isn’t there, due to privacy settings. This narrow use of a single mode of social media to announce the release of all promotional material for the coming season is surprising, especially since, by many accounts, Twitter is on the decline. Using Twitter to release everything three seasons ago would have been cutting edge. Now it’s just preferable to those terrible Snapchat-style videos from last year.
Dan pulled some screenshots from the five-minute clip yesterday in his post, but I wanted to dive a little deeper into these images and pull a few more than he didn’t.
SPOILERS AHEAD
I want to start here with this picture. Note the men in the doorway. In the clip, they are clearly working through fight choreography But they are definitely not Sons of the Harpies: the clothes are too leather and brown. That’s because they’re on the same set we see in this image:
Look at the walls, and you’ll see they are a match. During filming, we gathered many spoilers, but we found very little about Daario and Jorah’s attempts to rescue Daenerys. It looks like that’s because at least some of their stuff was filmed on an indoor set.
This is a cute image of Huisman playing around, but it should be noted again that it’s from the same shoot. The question is whether these underground tunnels are located in the same place as this:
A look at the walls suggests that they are. This is important because, as we see in other shots, this is probably part of Vaes Dothrak.
This shot is from filming on site in Almeria, and the color appear to match those used in the previous shots. My bet is that this is from Dany’s arrival at Vaes Dothrak, and that the fight choreography we saw being done in the earlier shot is of Jorah and Daario taking down Dothraki, or taking down slaves who live there.
One more point: due to this next shot, we have a good idea when these scenes will fall in the season.
Note that clapboard: Episode 604.
So from what we know, Dany’s adventure to Vaes Dothrak, and whatever happens that will free her from their captivity, will go down down in the first half of the season.
We’re all betting on dragons for this fire, no?
Another striking aspect: the Jorah/Daario plot is the only storyline from Season 6 that we didn’t have a clue about before this. If we look through the rest of the screen shots, though some of them are technically “unseen before now,” they are from scenes we had glimpses of in the promotional pictures.
These are a perfect example. Although these are our first images of Young Ned and Young Brandon from the Winterfell flashback, we’ve already seen another shot from this scene: in the promotional pictures the other week:
Now we know what Bran is watching.
Dan thought this was from Season 5. Not so. I think it’s the scene that concludes with his arrival back in King’s Landing, as seen in the promotional pictures:
(And since we know from filming spoilers that this was done in Dubrovnik, we know this is from the very beginning of the season.)
And this is clearly of a piece with this:
And our shot of Peter Dinklage waiting for his entrance…
…is of a piece with this:
Now let’s look at the shots from the House of Black and White, probably filmed in Belfast.
Jaqen H’ghar is treating a dead body. When the camera pulls in close, we see something that shouldn’t come as a surprise: his face has been cut out.
I mean, we all knew that’s what they did to the bodies. It’s not a spoiler.
The same goes for this shot of Ellie Kendrick (Meera) This shot doesn’t tell us much, other than “Meera is still around and it’s still snowy north of the Wall.”
Ditto the Sons of the Harpy fighting against a green screen, which we see from a couple of different angles. This is more of what we expected from these characters.
We all really want to know what she’s looking at.
We all really want to know what they are talking about. Especially since this shot looks to be filmed at the Castle Black set.
But what’s interesting to me is how they introduce this shot:
Note down by the feet to the right of the guards: the tops of the Flayed Man cross of House Bolton.
As we pan across this fog covered field, you can see more crosses. Now, those of us who have paid attention to spoilers know exactly what this field is: this is where the Battle of the Bastards happens. It’s the site of the big fight that will serve as the climax of the season in Episode 9. According to rumor, Ramsay will tie a couple of people to those crosses and burn them during the battle. But there’s no hint of what they might be for in this shot. It’s almost a mundane scenery shot.
The Battle of the Bastards took 13 weeks to film from start to finish. (The battle itself took nine.) The production couldn’t leave the images out—clearly, the show is very proud of the sequence. But the fact that what it shows is devoid of detail suggests that the producers know perfectly well they can’t let us know who was filming.