Esoteria: Fans, producers, and cast members hype the “unbelievable” Battle of the Bastards

This Sunday, we’ll see Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton face off in “Battle of the Bastards,” something the show has been setting up for all year. The ninth episode of each Game of Thrones season is usually a big one, and the producers have been hyping this particular hour for a long time. “It’s definitely the biggest action sequence yet,” producer and writer Bryan Cogman told Entertainment Weekly back in March. “We’ve always wanted to get to a place – story-wise and budget-wise and time-wise and resource-wise – where we would be able to do a proper battle, with one army on one side, one army on another side.”

Also note that, at nearly a full minute, the official trailer for “Battle of the Bastards” is a fair bit longer than the trailers for most episodes. Also, the producers submitted the episode for Emmy consideration more than any other from Season 6, and it’s the only episode they submitted in the “Outstanding Writing” category.

Fans are also getting in on the hype. YouTuber ControvT put together this nifty extended trailer for “Battle of the Bastards” that traces its roots all the way back to the first episode of the series.

Now that is a proper Hollywood-style trailer. Get hype. And maybe some snacks.

Cast members are also catching the wave. Sophie Turner (Sansa) couldn’t help but weigh in on Twitter.

“Unbelievable.” I’ll take it.

What exactly will happen in the episode? We’ll have to wait until Sunday to find out, although Krojačica Sudbine has an idea.

In other Game of Thrones esoteria, Scott Ian, the guitarist for the metal band Anthranx, gets made over into a White Walker by Game of Thrones makeup artist Barrie Gower. Enjoy:

It’s charming how big of a fan Ian seems to be. Game of Thrones has given cameos to musicians before, so maybe they’ll toss one his way.

Speaking of cameos, did anyone recognize the Brotherhood Without Banners members who got his head chopped clean off by the Hound, the one who nearly got a finger shoved into a private place?

It was Steve Love, an Ottawa resident who’s appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on account of his rather accurate impressions of Game of Thrones characters. Apparently, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss reached out to him after seeing him on Kimmel and offered him a small part. He readily accepted.

Finally, HBO released the storyboards behind the Arya-Waif chase scene from “No One” on its Making Game of Thrones blog. Behold:

In this case, it looks like the actual scene stayed pretty close to the storyboards.

h/t Tech Insider