Black Sails’ Tom Hopper joins Game of Thrones Season 7 in a recast role

After some eventful filming at Trujillo Castle, filming on Game of Thrones Season 7 has moved on to Las Breñas, a private estate near the town of Malpartida. Filming there will continue through Friday, and Los Siete Reinos has some photos of the action, such as it is. Behold: wagons and horses.

The show shipped in seven buses full of extras into the area, plus 60 horses. Big things are happening there.

After that, the show moves on to el Barrueco de Arriba, where it will film for 22 days. That’s a very long time, and it’s expected that the production will spend it filming a large scale battle featuring several important characters. LSR has some information about one of them. Beware minor SPOILERS.

The fight to be filmed at el Barrueco de Arriba has been teased for a while: after the Lannisters sack Highgarden (that’s what they were filming at Trujillo Castle), they head home, but are ambushed by Daenerys and her Dothraki army on the way. As this all happens in the Reach, Tyrell bannerman Randyll Tarly (James Faulkner), father to Sam, is involved. So is his son, Dickon, whom we met in Season 6 during a memorably awkward Tarly family dinner. However, LSR reports that Dickon will no longer be played by Harry Potter alum Freddie Stroma, who played him in “Blood of My Blood.” Instead, he’ll be played by Tom Hopper, an English actor noted for his roles in Merlin, Doctor Who, and Black Sails.

Hopper has reportedly been seen working out at a gym with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime) and Jerome Flynn (Bronn). Here he is on Monday sitting next to Faulkner, whom he recently followed on Twitter.

This photo was taken by María José Torrejón of Hoy.

Game of Thrones has been known to recast actors before—the Mountain, Tommen Baratheon, Mrycella Baratheon, Daario Naharis, and the Three-Eyed Raven have all been played by multiple people—so this is nothing new. Stroma is currently playing H.G. Wells in an ABC series called Time After Time, so there may have been a scheduling conflict.

In any cast, Hopper looks like he’ll be a good fit for the athletic, affable Dickon. We’ll likely see more of him as filming continues.