We review all the commentaries on the Game of Thrones Season 6 home boxset

The Game of Thrones Season 6 DVD and Blu-ray box sets feature 13 audio commentaries, more than any Game of Thrones home video release yet. We bring you the highlights of each.

Episode 601, “The Red Woman.” Commentary by director Jeremy Podeswa, director of photography Greg Middleton, and Daniel Portman (Podrick Payne).

• The opening shot, where the camera comes off the Wall and slowly moves closer to Jon Snow’s dead body, was scripted by writers David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who’re also the showrunners and creators.
• At least two of the other Night’s Watchmen who defend Jon Snow’s body along with Davos and Dolorous Edd appeared in prior episodes, although they were never featured prominently. Podeswa deems these people “the French resistance.”
• The French resistance takes Jon Snow’s body into the Lord Commander’s chamber. Because of the large number of people this chamber now had to accommodate (plus Ghost), the production rebuilt it much bigger, and even moved the door. Podeswa was afraid people would notice, but no one did.
• For the shots when everyone is standing around Jon Snow’s body, Podeswa took inspiration from a painting by Rembrandt: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp.
• Podeswa read “on the internet” that Olly was the most hated person on television. So someone on the production reads the online commentary!
• We knew this, but it bears repeating: it is really, really hard to shoot Ghost. The production shoots a wolf separately in another part of the damn world, then sizes him up and inserts him into the scene with digital wizardry.
• The first thing shot for the season was Sansa and Theon running through a snowy forest during their escape from Winterfell. It was summer in Northern Ireland at the time, and when they shot the scene, it was around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The special effects team is rather amazing.
• There’s a funny moment where the trio wonders exactly how much of Theon’s genitalia Ramsay cut off, before quickly moving on…
• Movie magic: In the scene where Cersei sees Jaime sailing into Blackwater Bay with Myrcella’s body in tow, Lena Headey is reacting to nothing. She filmed her part of that scene in Dubrovnik, while Nikolaj Coster-Waldau filmed his in a quarry in Northern Ireland.
• We know that Game of Thrones didn’t return to the Alcázar of Seville, which stood in for the Water Gardens of Dorne in Season 5, to shoot scenes in Dorne for Season 6. Why didn’t it go back? According to Podeswa, “for logistical reasons.” Glad to have that cleared up.
• If you were wondering why Doran Martell was walking for his final scene, it ends up that the production did built him a wheelchair, but it wasn’t working on the rocky path they were using, so they had him hobble along with Ellaria’s help instead.
• Incidentally, no one comments much on the (ridiculous) events that transpire in the Dornish scenes, except to say that they “propel the Sand Snakes’ story forward.” Also, they laugh when Obara stabs Trystane through the face, because what else are you gonna do?
• Podeswa compares the chemistry between Tyrion and Varys to that between Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains in Casablanca. “Cool, yeah,” Portman chimes in.
• Maisie Williams, badass that she is, does “all [her] own stunts.” That might not be true of the entire season, but it’s apparently true of the fight between Blind Arya and the Waif in this episode.
• Podeswa on the final Melisandre scene: “It really is all about character. It’s not really about just doing something for shock value, but seeing who Melisandre really is. This revelation is so important to her character and understanding her retrospectively, what she’s done in the past and what she’s about to do in the future.” He’s clearly proud of this sequence.

Episode 602, “Home.” Commentary by writer Dave Hill, Michael McElhatton (Roose Bolton), Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton), Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth), and Ben Crompton (Dolorous Edd).

This commentary is fun, but pretty lightweight. Commentaries with actors tend to be like that. The group pokes a lot of fun at each other, and they all bitch about having to lie about Jon Snow’s resurrection during the off-season, but there’s not a ton of juice here.

With that said, here’re the highlights…

• This isn’t important at all, but when I heard it, I laughed. At the very top of the commentary, all the actors say who they are and who they play. And then, “And I’m Dave Hill, and I play a writer.” Then there’s a long pause, and an incredibly insincere laugh from one of the actors. They’re humoring the unfunny writer!
• Everyone agrees that Max von Sydow was wonderful to work with, and Hill helpfully adds that he has “the biggest hands you’ve ever seen on anyone.” Kay.
• By the sound of it, the group recorded this commentary on the day that “The Door” leaked prematurely. Cunningham comment about “the idiot spoilers” and Hill remarks that “people seem to like the new season.” It’s a moment in time.
• During filming on Season 6, we heard that a rockslide delayed shooting in Magheramorne Quarry. According to the people on this commentary, the sequence that got delayed was the one where the wildlings invade Castle Black.
• So far as Rheon is concerned, the Mountain is like “Shredder from the Turtles.”
• Dave Hill notes that the idea behind the High Sparrow was to present a character who is “very much about what he says he’s about…He says, ‘I’m here to tear everything down.’ And that’s what he’s here for.” In a world where everyone has an ulterior motive, that makes the High Sparrow unique.
• Hill says that Tyrion’s speech to the dragons, about how he asked for a dragon when he was young and cried himself to sleep when he found out they were extinct, was taken from the first book.
• How smart are dragons? According to Dave Hill, they’re “dolphin-clever.” “They’re like big, winged, fire-breathing dolphins.”
• By the sound of it, the official line from director Jeremy Podeswa is that Ramsay’s decision to kill Roose was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Dave Hill: “It was always an option, but…he didn’t know this was the moment he was gonna kill his father.”
• Iwan Rheon, who plays Ramsay Bolton, to Walda Bolton, who’s being escorted to her death by Ramsay Bolton: “Run away. Run away!” It’s a weird irony loop.
• Hill during the scene when Sansa and Theon say goodbye: “We wanted Sansa to acknowledge that he’s changed, that he’s not the same Theon that she hated for so long.”
• Cunningham points out that he and Carice van Houten (Melisandre) once shot a movie called Black Butterflies together. They played lovers. It’s weird.

• Per Dave Hill, during the resurrection scene, Melisandre intones “a Valyrian chant that I just made up…Very traditional.”

Next: Hangings, reunions, and burning khals

Episode 603, “Oathbreaker.” Commentary by director Daniel Sackheim, production designer Deborah Riley, and Dean-Charles Chapman (Tommen Baratheon).

• Per Daniel Sackheim (via Deborah Riley), directing Game of Thrones is “like trying to build a house on a lava flow.” Nice and evocative, that.
• Sackheim talks about the Kübler-Ross model, which posits that people who are dying go through five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The idea behind the sequence immediately after Jon Snow’s resurrection was that he experiences them in roughly reverse order.
• Again, the director references painting. For Jon Snow’s post-resurrection scene, Sackheim was inspired by Renaissance-era painter Caravaggio.
• Unsurprisingly, Sackheim was inspired by westerns for the fight at the Tower of Joy, specifically Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West. “That was sort of the idea behind the wide vistas and the tight closeups and the low angles…what you’d call gunslinger angles, sort of over the hilt of the sword, as opposed to over a gun belt,” he said. They also shot the Vaes Dothrak scenes in the same area where Leone shot several of his movies, so westerns in general had an influence on this episode.
• The intertwining roots in the Three-Eyed Raven’s cave really are roots. Specifically, they’re Rhododendron branches that have been individually sanded, painted, and hung from a grid in the ceiling. As the Raven, Max von Sydow is sitting on an office chair that rolls in and out of position.
• Sackheim talks a bit about the comedy scene in Meereen, the one where Tyrion tries to get Grey Worm and Missandei to engage in conversation. He mentions that, because comedy isn’t something the show does a lot, it’s challenging to find a rhythm. That might explain why this scene is so, uh, bad.
• Dean Charles-Chapman says very little during the episode, although when he does speak, we learn that his ordinary accent isn’t nearly as posh as Tommen’s. He thanks his dialect coach at the end.
• Qyburn’s laboratory is shot in Shane’s Castle in Northern Ireland. Reportedly, it’s real, it’s authentic, and it’s really gross. The area where the High Sparrow hangs out under the Sept of Baelor is also shot there.
• The production tried getting Maisie Williams to wear contacts during Arya’s blind phase, but she found them “intolerable,” so a lot of it ended up being done with CGI.

Episode 604, “Book of the Stranger.” Commentary by Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei), Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont), and Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm).

• It’s kind of hard to tell when actors are being serious on these commentaries (the three of them admit this is the first time any of them are watching the episode, although they all have good knowledge of the show), but Nathalie Emmanuel says she’s read the books. “They’re good.”
• The lot of them weren’t thrilled with having to lie about Jon Snow’s resurrection during the time between Season 5 and 6. Anderson: “I’ve lied to pretty much everyone I care about in the last year.”
• Anderson, Emmanuel, and Glen consider themselves “the Targaryen crew.” They may not be an official family like the Starks, but they represent their queen.
• Anderson would love it if Littlefinger and Varys “discovered powers” and had at each other like in Harry Potter. “And Littlefinger rides in on a unicorn. Cause there’s unicorns on Skaagos, I was told.”
• Emmanuel went to a Star Wars-themed Christmas party thrown by one of the actors playing the slavers. “I dressed as a Sith Lord. It was great.”
• Look, this commentary is a good time. The actors have a lot of fun remembering how hard it is to keep a straight face when working with Peter Dinklage and Conleth Hill on set. But this quote from Glen kind of sums up a lot of it: “I just apologize to all the viewers that we haven’t actually mentioned one plot point the entire time.”
• It seems that scene in Daenerys’ throne room where Missandei, Grey Worm, and Tyrion meet with the freedmen was very difficult, because no one could get the Valyrian lines right. Glen: “I have seen the best of actors undone by Valyrian.”
• Michiel Huisman is apparently as attached to Daario’s prop knife as Daario is to the real thing.
• These three have an interesting discussion about the moral underpinnings of the High Sparrow’s fanaticism, disentangling the good intentions from the harmful execution. Anderson: “This show is so good at just fully expressing the fact that the world is grey.”
• Anderson gives close to giving us a spoiler when he talks about wandering in to the set for Dany’s throne room in Meereen, which he says is “storage” at the moment. He’s about to say something else he saw, but stops himself.
• As I mentioned, none of these three had seen the episode before watching this commentary. Emmanuel is very happy to see Osha again during her scene with Ramsay, and is crushed when…you know. Things improve when she reacts to Dany frying the khals, though.
• Anderson on the showrunners’ restraint in keeping plots and characters apart for so long: “It’s almost like they do the best kind of fan service in that that don’t do fan service. And then because they hold things back, and they withhold, then when things do come together it’s so much more satisfying.”
• Anderson’s final question to the group: Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or a horse-sized duck? Discuss.

Next: Two sides of the door

Episode 605, “The Door.” Commentary by Gemma Whelan (Yara Greyjoy), Pilou Asbæk (Euron Greyjoy), Ellie Kendrick (Meera Reed), and Kristian Nairn (Hodor).

• Neither Gemma Whelan, Ellie Kendrick, nor Pilou Asbæk had seen this episode before. Nairn was on it, though. He’s the go-to guy for plot explanations. But we should remember that some of these commentaries were likely recorded before the episodes aired, or immediately after.
• Again, the actors mention that the director of this episode, Lost’s Jack Bender, is a painter. He actually brought paintings onto the set. Note to hopeful directors: take up painting.
• Asbæk was recording this episode while filming Ghost in the Shell in New Zealand. “It’s interesting.”
• Ellie Kendrick on the play Arya watches: “I love it. It’s like Game of Thrones drag.”
• Speaking of the play, that smash cut to the actor’s penis shocks everyone, as it must.
• More than usual, this commentary plays like listening to a group of friends watching the episode and having a good time reacting. It’s fun—the group freaks out when the Children of the Forest create the first White Walkers, and completely lose it when the wights invade the cave—but if you’re looking for deep insight into the episode, look elsewhere.
• According to Abæk, Euron doesn’t have an eye patch, as in the books, because Benioff and Weiss thought it was a silly idea. Also, apparently there’re a couple of lines from Euron to Theon that got cut.
• Apparently, Iain Glen once played Ellie Kendrick’s dad when they both appeared in The Diary of Anne Frank. That could have been very interesting.
• Nairn: “I have a Warcraft character called Kinvara. I think she stole my name.” [long pause] Kendrick: “Cool…” [everybody laughs uproariously]
• We’ll let Gemma Whelan take us out: “We’ll miss you, Hodor! I’ll never hold a door closed the same way again!”

Episode 605, “The Door.” Commentary by prosthetics supervisor Barrie Gower, camera operators Chris Plevin and Ben Wilson, and executive producer Bernadette Caulfield.

• Caulfield on the Sansa-Littlefinger scene: “And that she makes him feel so bloody uncomfortable is just wonderful.”
• An interesting note on that scene: they’re meeting in an old brothel in Mole’s Town, “the kind of brothel that Littlefinger runs.” It’s likely the one that Ygritte and company ransacked in Season 4. That adds another layer to already twisty scene.
• There are about “45 or 50” individual faces in the Hall of Faces that are then duplicated. The old lady whose face the Waif takes on later is the face of prosthetics supervisor Barrie Gower’s mother.
• It took the better part of eight hours to get the Children of the Forest into costume and makeup. Appreciate that for a second.
• Things you don’t think about: the production had a very difficult time filming the scene where Dany bids goodbye to Jorah because a huge amount of fog rolled in right before shooting was scheduled to begin. And then, as soon as it came, it left, revealing the tremendous views. “Everybody was taking selfies on this day.”
• If you ever want to complement a behind-the-scenes film professional, ask them where they shot an interior scene. Apparently, they take a lot of pride in making sets look so good it tricks viewers into thinking they’re filming in some elaborate location.
• Fans of Brienne and Tormund will be happy to know that the behind-the-scenes professionals are hoping they end up together, too.
• Per Caulfield, the Castle Black set is the show’s oldest standing set.
• The camera operators were stuck on the Three-Eyed Raven’s cave set that they went a little stir-crazy and started communicating by saying “Hodor” to each other. It’s a weird job, working on a film set.
• Another thing you normally wouldn’t think of: the actual wolf who played Summer the direwolf was shot in Canada. Then the wolf was sized up in post and inserted into the finished footage. Bran and company are acting opposite nothing.
• It’s hard to know how many people knew about Hodor’s true origins before the script for “The Door” arrived, but no one on this commentary knew. It seems to have been as surprising to them as it was to viewers.

Next: Bloody broken nobody

Episode 606, “Blood of My Blood.” Commentary by director Jack Bender, director of photography Jonathan Freeman, John Bradley (Samwell Tarly), and Hannah Murray (Gilly).

This commentary has a bit more of a serious tone than the others, perhaps because director Jack Bender isn’t a regular crew member, so the Game of Thrones regulars were on their best behavior. In any case, it’s full of interesting bits.

• Film nerd alert: for the opening sequence where Meera is dragging Bran through the snow, Bender says he was inspired by Diane Keaton crossing the tundra in Reds.
• According to Bender, actor Joseph Mawle knew tons of information about his character, Benjen Stark. That was helpful, because the actual script didn’t give him a lot to go on.
• Bradley makes a good point about how the episode cuts directly from Bran’s trek beyond the Wall—where Sam spent a couple season’s worth of time—to the bucolic Reach, where Sam grew up. The contrast shows us “just how displaced he was all that time.”
• Bender praises Natalie Dormer’s work in this episode, noting that she had “to walk a very fine line” of convincing both Tommen and the audience that Margaery’s religious conversion was sincere, but also suggesting the possibility that she was faking it.
• In the original script, Gilly was supposed to be at ease in the scene where she walks out in a dress for the first time. Murray convinced showrunner Dan Weiss that that wasn’t realistic given Gilly’s lifetime of wearing brown sacks and flats, so we got her memorably awkward walk. Good call, there.
• Bender notes something that never occurred to me: a lot of the dialogue scenes on Game of Thrones are still, with the actors not moving around much. For the Tarly family dinner scene, Bender had James Faulkner (Randyll Tarly) do a take where he got up and walked over to Heartsbane as he was talking about it, but Benioff and Weiss liked the one where he remained sitting. I think that was the right call—a powerful guy like Randyll doesn’t need to move around to establish that he’s in charge of a situation.
• Bender on Game of Thrones: “I’m very proud of the emotion that you guys play in this show. I mean, I feel like it really feels very grounded and true and not sentimental.” That’s another good point, and food for thought. How does a drama play emotion without being sentimental? I think Game of Thrones pulls that trick off, but the arithmetic of it is tricky.
• Obviously, the theater scenes in Braavos poke fun at the show. The question is whether they step over the line between light fun and obnoxious, distracting meta-humor. I think they stay on the right side of that line, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. According to Bender, when he asked Benioff and Weiss if he was mocking the show too much, the showrunners encouraged him to go further with it.
• It’s still amazing to think that the show got Richard E. Grant, a famous actor with a long career, to come on Game of Thrones for a bit part as a theater troupe leader. Bender and Bradley crack up during Grant’s brief rant to Lady Crane backstage.
• In gross footage we didn’t see: at the end of the Walder Frey scene, he nibbles the ear of the young girl he’s manhandling. Ew. Maybe it got cut because it would have been redundant, what with Cersei nibbling Jaime’s ear in the next scene. Again: ew.
• Murray went to university with Ellie Kendrick (Meera Reed). Huh.
• The snow in the Benjen-Meera-Bran scene was fake, something I hear a lot of in these commentaries. I’m starting to get an idea of why the production wanted to wait until actual snow fell to film parts of Season 7. Faking it must be expensive.
• Bender was sure that Daenerys had “a glimmer of fanaticism” during her big speech to the Dothraki at the end of the episode. “How far is she believing her power and where will it take her?”

Episode 607, “The Broken Man.” Commentary by producer/writer Bryan Cogman, Ian McShane (Septon Ray), and Natalie Dormer (Margaery Tyrell).

This is one of the better commentaries on the set, thanks in large part to Bryan Cogman. Dormer and McShane are engaging, but Cogman is clearly excited to be working on this show, and his enthusiasm is catching.

• Ian McShane’s resonant voice instantly makes this commentary worth listening to.
• Cogman confirms that the reason for this episode’s cold open was done to keep people from seeing Rory McCann’s name in the credits.
• The optimistic opening scene, where all of Brother Ray’s followers were helping build a sept, was an homage to the barn-raising scene in Witness.

• Cogman admits that the Brother Ray character was a blend of a couple different characters Brienne meets in A Feast for Crows, which we figured. Interestingly, he also says that, while it’s hinted that the Hound is still alive in the books, they weren’t sure where George R.R. Martin was going to take it. “We took that kernel and fashioned this storyline.” So who knows if anything like this will show up in the books?
• Casting Ian McShane as Brother Ray was Cogman’s idea. McShane: “That’s because you wrote a two-page speech.” Cogman is very proud of it, and rightfully so.
• When Ian McShane agreed to do Game of Thrones, he was looking forward to coming on set and seeing old buddies like Stephen Dillane and “Charlie” (Charles Dance). “And then you killed them all!” His nickname for Clive Russell (the Blackfish): “Big Clive.”
• Cogman, Dormer, and director Mark Mylod approached Margaery’s scenes very carefully. As Cogman said, Margaery has to fool the High Sparrow into thinking he’s successfully brainwashed her, and Dormer has to play that in such a way that the audience isn’t sure where her head is at. She did different versions of her scenes where she revealed more and less to the viewer, and it was blended together in the edit.
• The final scene Natalie Dormer filmed was the one where she slips the note into Olenna’s hand. She was sad about leaving the show, so the emotion came naturally.
• Hilariously, McShane straight up asks Dormer if the show killed off her character because she had another gig. Cogman: “Sadly, it was purely for story reasons.” That also provides an excuse for Cogman to ruminate on the structure of Seasons 5 and 6, with the former being about bringing the characters to their lowest point, and the latter being about rebirth and reclamation. In this episode, both the Hound and Theon experience kinds of rebirth.
• Cogman on the book-show relationship: “We’ve essentially adapted the first five books…and George gave us sort of broad strokes about stuff that’s gonna happen ultimately in the books, but it’s very much become its own thing in a lot of ways.”
• Cogman reiterates the company line on timelines: different subplots move at different rates. For example, even though they occupy space in the same episode, Jon and Sansa’s tour of the North takes a couple of weeks, while our trip to Brother Ray’s camp happens over the course of a few days.
• All of them fall over each other praising Bella Ramsey (Lyanna Mormont), for obvious reasons.
• At least for this commentary, the group is recording before “The Broken Man” aired on TV, which may explain why so many of the actors on these tracks haven’t seen the episodes yet.
• Originally, Jaime and the Blackfish were both supposed to be on horseback during their parlay scene, but for safety reasons that idea was dropped.
• Cogman points out that the scene in Volantis is the only brothel scene in Season 6, and it was specifically set there to make Theon feel uncomfortable, as he can’t partake. “For anyone who wants to accuse me of writing a gratuitous brothel scene, there’s actually a character reason for it.”
• A funny exchange happens after Yara’s line about “fucking the tits off that one.” McShane: “Then you lose the evangelicals on that one.” Cogman: “Oh, they’re watching, they’re just not admitting it.”
• Cogman calls Brother Ray’s speech to his followers “a bit of a paraphrasing version” of a speech from the books, by which I assume he means the broken man speech from A Feast for Crows. McShane describes it as “sort of an AA for serial killers.”

• A good line from McShane to end on: “It’s a shame you can’t go to the movies and see stuff as good as this.”

Episode 608, “No One.” Commentary by director Mark Mylod, Essie Davis (Lady Crane), and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister).

• The episode starts with a look at Lady Crane playing Cersei during Joffrey’s death scene in “The Bloody Hand.” I didn’t think about how weird this bit must have been for the actors. Obviously this is a scene in a TV show, but there’s a real audience of extras watching that fake play. So Davis, who’s playing Lady Crane playing Cersei, had to balance her instinct to act for the stage, which involves projection and wide emoting, with he instinct to act for the camera, where the emotions can be much smaller. Twisty.
• Mylod identifies parentage as a key theme in this episode. Obviously, that applies to the scenes between Arya and Lady Crane, but Mylod also pulls it out of the Jaime-Blackfish scenes.
• As noted elsewhere, one of the guys the Hound kills—the young one—achieved notoriety by doing Game of Thrones impressions on YouTube. The show gave him this role “as a thank you for supporting the production.”

• David Benioff’s favorite line from the episode was Cersei’s “I choose violence.” There’s a reason it was such a hit when it appeared in promos.
• Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, who plays the Mountain, has to be very patient while shooting this show. “The character spends a lot of time standing in the back of shot looking threatening and it’s not like we can use a stand-in.” Good point from Mylod—it’s not like 6’9”, 400 lb bodybuilders grow on trees.
• Nikolaj-Coster compares Jaime’s conversation with Edmure Tully to Jaime’s bathtub conversation with Brienne back in Season 3, on account of how rich and layered both are. Agreement all around.
• In taking Riverrun, Jaime achieves what Mylod characterizes as “a great victory.” “It sets him up so beautifully for the episodes to come, to see that he actually has become the leader that his father wanted him to be.”
• Originally, every part of the Battle of Meereen took place in “Battle of the Bastards,” but Mylod complained that he didn’t get to direct any action, so they moved the start of it into “No One.” Helpfully, Coster-Waldau is on hand with an impression of Mylod as a petulant child. “I want a battle!”
• Mylod enjoyed the comedy of the scene where the Hound and Brotherhood Without Banners haggle over which of the turncloaks they each get to kill, and suggested that it would be possible to make an entirely different, comedic version of the show. Elsewhere, Benioff and Weiss have suggested the same thing. Basically, Game of Thrones is always just a few beats away from becoming a Monty Python sketch.
• These three get into an interesting discussion about “horse dick continuity” during the scene where the Hound and the Brotherhood eat near a stream. Also, Rory McCann wore a prosthetic penis for the bit where he peed. Yet more movie magic.
• Like everyone else who watched the Arya-Waif chase scene, Nikolaj-Coster was reminded of The Terminator.
• Mylod says the show was trying to misdirect the audience into believing that Arya was going to die at the end of the episode. She does get pretty beat up, but…really? Did anyone believe they were going to kill off Arya before she got back to Westeros and started crossing names off her list?

Next: Two bastards enter...

Episode 609, “Battle of the Bastards.” Commentary by director Miguel Sapochnik, Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark), and Kit Harington (Jon Snow)

This track is another highlight. These three have fun together, but also give good insights.

• Around the set, everyone referred to the Battle of the Bastards as “Bob.” That’s a pretty nice piece of natural camouflage. To keep things about Jon’s resurrection hush-hush, Jon Snow was called “LC” and Kit Harington’s trailer was said to belong to “Hot Pie.”
• The bit where Dany’s dragons torch one of the slavers’ boats was filmed in Banbridge, Northern Ireland (they weren’t allowed to actually set the boat on fire because it was needed for other scenes). The conversation between Dany and the masters was filmed in Spain while the shots of Dany riding Drogon were filmed in Belfast. It looks seamless, but this scene was assembled from all over Europe.
• The purpose of the Battle of Meereen is to show what the dragons can do, so we know “what’s in store later on down the line.” Intriguing. Also, Sapochnik has a good line about the slavers’ predicament: “The summary of what just happened is these guys are now fucked.”
• Turner and Harington reiterate that, during the parlay scene with Ramsay, the horses would not freaking cooperate. In addition to the moving, there was much peeing and farting and pooping. Apparently, it’s even harder to get horses to stand still than it is to make them charge into a line of soldiers.
• Sapochnik identifies the scene where Sansa admonishes Jon for not taking her advice as a turning point in the relationship between Sansa and Jon. Turner: “And it was just nice having a good shouty scene. I love having a good shouty argumentative scene, especially since my whole run on the show has been me being fairly quiet. And crying.”
• Harington notes that, because he and Turner basically grew up together on set, they already felt like siblings, which helped with their dialogue scene. Turner: “You do feel like an irritating, shorter older brother.”
• Both Harington and Turner liked that the writing paid tribute to the history between these two characters, and didn’t make their renewed relationship completely magnanimous. Harington: “She always felt that Jon was a intruder, and he always felt that she was stuck up.”
• Unfortunately, Sapochnik also portends “the beginning of a split” between Jon and Sansa, which tracks with what Turner has said about Season 7 in interviews. Harington and Turner are adorable in this commentary, though, and even recite the scene from “The Winds of Winter” where Sansa, standing with Jon on the walls of Winterfell, tells him that winter is here.
• The Jon-Melisandre scene, where they chat in a tent, was filmed…in a tent, in the middle of a field. Harington was rather upset that he didn’t get to go into a studio for this occasion. Sapochnik: “There was definitely discussion about shooting this in the Paint Hall (a studio space in Belfast), and then we decided not to, because you were in it.”
• On the one hand, it’s amazing how little the actors seem to know about the parts of the show that don’t directly involve their characters. (They’re blown away by the idea that Daenerys has a scene with Yara and Theon, for example.) On the other hand, they’re pretty funny about it, so it’s fine. Turner: “We don’t actually know what show we’re on at the moment. It’s The Walking Dead or something.”
• As on the other commentaries, this group jokes around. However, there are two things that set them apart: 1) They actually take a break from the jokes to talk about substantive stuff, and; 2) The jokes are pretty funny, particularly when Turner takes a loud, perfectly timed bite of celery right before the Battle of the Bastards begins. There’s also a funny running gag where they make believe that Liam Cunningham (Davos) gets incredibly angry whenever he’s not on camera.
• Sapochnik shot the battle part of “Battle of the Bastards” sequentially, which had to have helped the actors get into the scene.
• Once the battle starts, the group tends to fall into sincere amazement—there is much oohing and aahing. A random sample from Harington: “Wow, fuck!” A random sample from Turner: “Oh my god. OH MY GOD.” Sure, there’s not much serious discussion, but it’s kind of hard to blame them.
• Harington, who also took part in “Hardhome,” points out the differences between those two battles. For one, the set for “Battle of the Bastards” was much barer, and depended more on the performances from Harington and Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton). One thing they had in common, though: “Both of them should feel…not in any way neat or comfortable….It’s just nasty and messy and dirty.” Well done.
• As Sapochnik points out, the Battle of the Bastards is “set up on a series of mistakes that the hero makes, and the fact that he survives—and really that anybody survives—is a complete miracle…You don’t survive this because you’re really skilled. You survive this because you’re really fucking lucky.”
• Sapochnik didn’t play Wun Wun the giant—that honor went to actor Ian Whyte. But he did occasionally run around the set carrying a 14-foot pole with a ball on the end of it to let the extras know where Wun Wun was supposed to be. Turner: “Miguel was doing a lot of pole work during production.”
• Sapochnik reiterates that the scene where Jon Snow is nearly trampled to death by his own men was invented on set. It just goes to show how big a role serendipity plays in greatness. That’s the best bit in the episode, and nothing about it was scripted, including the parallel to the Daenerys slave-surfing shot at the end of Season 3.

• Sapochnik: The idea was that Jon “gets slightly reborn down there, ’cause he finds a desire to live stronger than before.”
• Turner when Sansa and Littlefinger show up with the Knights of the Vale: “You’re welcome, bitches!”
• Sapochnik’s favorite shot from Season 6 is the bit where Sansa starts to leave Ramsay to his dogs, but changes her mind at the last second and decides to stay and watch a while.

Episode 609, “Battle of the Bastards.” Commentary by director of photography Fabian Wagner, visual effects producer Steve Kullback, and visual effects supervisor Joe Bauer.

• After “Hardhome,” the team had a good idea of how to approach a big battle episode like this. “We had a good shorthand. We could get right to the panicking.”
• Obviously, most of the stuff in the Battle of Meereen is computer animated. However, some stuff is real. For example, the fire Drogon breathes in the scene where Daenerys confronts the Masters above Meereen was shot off of a motion-controlled crane on a 20-foot platform above the actors. It’s described here as “a 50-foot flamethrower shooting almost directly at camera.” These people have interesting jobs.
• It’s no secret that special effects are everywhere on Game of Thrones, but I’m still surprised when it turns up in unexpected places. For example, the field in Northern Ireland where the Battle of the Bastards takes place was dressed by the team, but everything in the distance is actually a panoramic shot from Iceland inserted into the sequence, because the natural horizon was too pretty.
• When Sansa tells off Ramsay Bolton and rides away from the parlay (“You’re going to die tomorrow, Lord Bolton. Sleep well.”), it’s not Sophie Turner on the horse. Actually, it’s not even a person! That’s a CGI Sansa. The team wanted her exit to be particularly dramatic and used digital wizardry to get a wider shot.
• Does Wagner ever light characters based on their psychology? Short answer: yes. “You always want to try and create a look that resembles the story or the character.” That’s an interesting line of questioning I wish would be pursued further.
• Only one of the burning crosses on the field of battle is real. The others were inserted digitally.
• It rained for one day on the set. Then there were “four days of horrible sucking mud.” Things got rough.
• They even overlaid Kit Harington’s face over that of the stunt actor when he falls off his horse. What can’t they do with special effects these days?
• We’ve known this for a while, but it bears repeating: this shot does NOT involve special effects:

• “It was a little disconcerting showing up every day and seeing a very realistic pile of dead bodies day after day.”
• Before filming, Benioff and Weiss looked at three different animated samples of the arrival of the Knights of the Vale. In each one, the size of the army was different: small, medium, and “preposterous.” They ended up going with the medium version.
• Wagner points out how the storming of Winterfell is sort of a reverse of a similar sequence from “Hardhome.” There, the wights were at the gate and we didn’t want them to get in and kill the heroes. Now, the good guys—Jon, Tormund, Wun Wun, and their army—are outside the gates of Winterfell, and we want them to bust in.
• In the episodes final scene, the special effects team removed the hounds’ wagging tails to make them seem more menacing.
• The special effects artists animated a bit where the dogs rip off Ramsay’s jaw, but Benioff and Weiss thought it was too much.

Next: The winter winds are blowing in

Episode 610, “The Winds of Winter.” Commentary by executive producers/writers David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), and Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister).

• Peter Dinklage on the intro sequence: “Not since the opening credits of the Love Boat has there been such an opening credits.”
• Director Miguel Sapochnik had some kind of a hand in coming up with the piano theme that plays throughout the lengthy opening sequence in King’s Landing.
• David Benioff on Arya’s direwolf: “Nymeria could still be out there somewhere, hunting deer, rabbits, sauce pots…”
• It’s gotta be said that these four don’t offer a lot of insight, something they freely admit. They’ve been doing this for a long time—maybe they’re past being interested in commentaries. As an example, during Pycelle’s death scene, they talk about wanting to visit Norway and the European pop band A-ha.
• The scene where Cersei pours wine on Septa Unella was as uncomfortable for actress Hannah Waddingham as it looked, what with wine getting in her habit and turing her hair pink.
• Dinklage suggests a new line for Cersei in the scene where she see Tommen’s body: “That hot witch was right.”
• The snotty maester Sam meets at the Citadel is played by Frank Hvam, “one of the great Danish comedians,” according to Benioff. They sought him out because on his work on a show called Klown.
• When watching the scene where Sam enters the Citadel library, fans weren’t the only ones who thought of the scene from Beauty and the Beast when Belle enters the library. It was on Benioff’s mind, too.
• Look, I’m just transcribing jokes here, but I enjoyed this bit of ribbing about David Benioff’s high-minded tastes in books. Dinklage: “Benioff makes his children read Proust.” Benioff: “Nothing wrong with that.” Headey: “Proust keep you regular!” Literature humor!
• When Melisandre rides away from Winterfell, it’s “definitely not Carice [van Houten] riding a horse, cause Carice is deathly afraid of horses.”
• Although there isn’t a lot of sincere engagement with the material on this track, Benioff admits that he openly loves the scene between Sansa and Jon on the ramparts of Winterfell. Then they all quiet down to hear it. What a weird commentary track this is. Also, the falling snow in this scene is actually soap bubbles. #MovieMagic
• Is Daario Naharis coming back for Game of Thrones Season 7? It doesn’t sound like it. Dan Weiss on his exit: “He just walks off the show.”
• Benioff and Weiss were having a debate recently. Who takes more joy in defeating their enemies: Arya, Cersei or Daenerys?
• Another moment worth noting: the foursome wonder if Charlie Manson watches Game of Thrones from prison. Again, what a weird commentary track this is.
• Lena Headey hadn’t seen the episode yet, and actually takes off her headphones and closes her eyes during the Ned Stark flashback to avoid being spoiled. I say again: WEIRD.
• Also, Benioff and Weiss confirm that, when they first met with George R.R. Martin, he asked them who Jon Snow’s mother was, and they correctly answered Lyanna, thus proving they were worthy of making a television adaptation.
• Benioff and Weiss originally signed on Bella Ramsey (Lyanna Mormont) for one scene, but loved her so much they kept bringing her back. Weiss: “And now she’s the star of the show.”

Episode 610, “The Winds of Winter.” Commentary by special effects supervisor Sam Conway, camera operator Sean Savage, and producer Chris Newman.

• Years ago, when the production team first conceived the Sept of Baelor set, they weren’t expecting to hold a trial there—they weren’t apparently thinking that far ahead. It required a lot of meetings with director Miguel Sapochnik to figure out how to repurpose the space. I’d say they pulled it off.
• The folks here draw a comparison between the kids killing Pycelle and the wight children tearing apart Karsi in “Hardhome.” I see it. In both cases, gah the creepiness.
• The guys make an interesting about how the Sept sequence reverses Game of Thrones’ usual habit of dealing out death to characters we like. They identify Tommen as the only “innocent” in all this. I wouldn’t call Margaery innocent, but I think she’s earned the right to be called a sympathetic character.
• “It’s like Cersei has a list, like Arya has a list.” “Everyone’s on her list, though.”
• The set where Cersei tortures Unella also stood in for Balon Greyjoy’s throne room on Pyke.
• Newman compares Sam’s first sight of Oldtown, Westeros’ center of learning, to a commoner from the provinces seeing Rome for the first time. “Only of course to be majorly disappointed, cause it’s never what you expect it to be.”
• The conception of the Citadel library is interesting. Obviously, it’s done with visual effects—no set is that huge. And yet, the producers admit that it’s very probably going to be back in Season 7, but they’re not sure which parts of it. So we see more CGI work, they may build a chunk, or there might be a combination.
• Watching Olenna shut down the Sand Snakes, these guys can only do what the rest of us do: laugh in delight. “I wish was in some of our meetings.”
• A fun tidbit: the weirwood tree where Benjen leaves Bran and Meera is the same one where Jon and Sam took their Night’s Watch vows back in Season 1. It’s “within spitting distance” of Castle Black. I still say Benjen could have dropped them off closer, though.
• Apparently, Kit Harington was sick while shooting the “King in the North” scene at Winterfell. Pushed through it alright, though.
• The Red Keep throne set is the only set in Belfast to have remained unchanged since the start of the show.