Game of Thrones Theorycrafting: Which directors will direct which episodes of Season 7?

Yesterday, I took the afternoon off. You can always tell when I take a break from the internet because while I’m away, *everything happens.*

In this case, it was the announcement that Game of Thrones Season 7 will not only be held by HBO until Summer of 2017. This gave fresh hope to book fans everywhere that maybe now George R.R. Martin can finish The Winds of Winter before the next season, while making everyone else to wail and gnash their teeth. But not only did the production reveal that there most likely would not be episodes until *after* the Emmy period for the 2016-2017 season was over (sorry HBO; it looks like everyone else will get a turn next year), but also that we would only have seven episodes…and four directors.

This is an interesting puzzle, as, since Season 4 , the production has been in a nice and comfortable groove of hiring half the amount of directors as episodes and then assigning each two back to back. With four directors and seven episodes, that means three directors will be most likely doing two each, and one director will be concentrating all his efforts on a single hour of TV. To recap, those four gentlemen are:

• Mark Mylod
• Jeremy Podeswa
• Matt Shakman
• Alan Taylor

Mylod is a serviceable director who last year was saddled with episodes 7 and 8, “The Broken Man” and “No One.” “The Broken Man” came off pretty well, with the mini-episode “A Hounds’s Life” tucked in between our regularly scheduled Game of Thrones programming. But these were also the episodes with the most problems, mostly due to the cutting through of Arya’s storyline (and her belly) by the Waif, in order to get her back over to Westeros in a timely manner. Podeswa was villainized in Season 5 for overseeing “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” which many fans of the show hated. (Although it got lots of Emmy love.) This past season, he oversaw the opening two episodes: “The Red Woman” and “Home,” meaning he was the guy who oversaw Jon’s resurrection. Those were received better.

These directors are now coming into their third year running on the production, and will probably once again find themselves doing the meat and potatoes-type episodes. One can assume that Episode 1, after such a long break, will reset the scene, as fans will have not visited Westeros for a year. We can guess that Mylod or Podeswa will probably be tapped to cover that. We’re are facing several “on the road” type episodes, with Dany crossing the Narrow Sean and then marching northward, although we can always hope that Littlefinger lends her his teleporter.

Meanwhile whatever disaster that Cersei’s reign will cause will most likely take several episodes to build, making fans groan and slap their foreheads, and might even cause a few “Stupid Cersei Lannister” memes along the way. And that’s not taking into account the reports that the show is filming in Iceland, which has stood in for “Beyond the Wall” before. Road trips galore! Again, that sort of “middle” episodes are these guy’s bread and butter. When the episodes assignments leak (or are released via Entertainment Weekly), I would not be surprised to find these guys assigned to Episodes 1, 2, 3, and 4.

The question really is where the one-off episode will fall. Episode 3 is one logical place, if one takes into account the pacing structure we’ve seen in the last couple of seasons. The finale would be the other, especially if we’re looking at a season where the finale includes a major battle. With no “Episode 9” this season, it stands to reason that the major happenings would move the finale (as they have slowly been doing since Season 4.)

Giving a director just one episode around Episode 3 would leave the final two episodes as a set, the way that Episodes 9 and 10 were in Season 6. If we have several different dramatic events to close out our shortened season—and logic dictates we would—having the last two hours function as a unit would make a lot of sense. The question is, do they go to Alan Taylor, who is a veteran of such early shock episodes like Season 1’s “Baelor,” aka “The One Where Ned Dies?” Or is he in for the single episode where something major yet occurs? (For example, a confrontation between Euron and Daenerys, or the Wall falling?)

The wild card is Matt Shankman, who comes to the show via It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Unlike, say, bringing in Jack Bender from Lost last season (which should have been a giveaway that wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey plot points were afoot), Shankman is known more for the type of show that mixes drama with dark comedy, like House or Six Feet Under. With this being his first time working on Game of Thrones, was he brought in to do a one-off episode, perhaps one that needs a serious comedic vein running through it? Or is he getting the full Thrones experience of two episodes back to back that swallow six months of your life?

The one thing everyone noted is the lack of directors that the show normally brings in to do big battles. Neither Neil Marshall, who directed “Blackwater” in Season 2 and “The Watchers on The Wall” in Season 4, nor Miguel Sapochnik, who directed the more recent “Hardhome” and “Battle of the Bastards” are on the list. It seems strange to think there might not be any major battle set pieces so close to the end of the series. Could that be why Taylor, or Shankman, are here? Or are we going to have a season like one of the earlier ones—say Season 1 or 3, where major events happen (Ned’s death, the Red Wedding), but no giant fights. Perhaps we’re holding the big fire power for Season 8 and the Last Battle?