The longest battle shoot in Game of Thrones history comes to a close

For months now, the Game of Thrones production has been shooting a spectacularly ambitious battle sequence for season 8 — we’ve seen them hard at work at Moneyglass, where the Winterfell set is located; and at Magheramorne Quarry, where they’ve erected a giant green screen. The plan is to take things shot at those different locations and stitch them together into one incredible battle sequence to take place at Winterfell.

Now, filming on that battle sequence is finally complete. The “producer types” shared a thank you message with all the cast and crew members who had worked on the sequence, including longtime assistant director Jonathan Quinlan, who started with the show as a trainee on the very first episode:

Quinlan’s original Instagram post has been removed (I hope HBO didn’t give him too stern a talking-to), but he originally wrote this caption: “55 consecutive nights. 11 weeks. 3 locations. You’ll never again see anything like it.”

For reference, the most elaborate battle sequence the crew had filmed up to this point was probably the Battle of the Bastards in season 6. For that, the production was parked at Saintfield, Northern Ireland for over a month. The upcoming Winterfell battle scene, on the other hand, required shoots at multiple locations and lasted for over twice that long. And the end product is all for a single episode.* It does indeed sound like this is something that’s never been done before in the history of television.

Speaking of Saintfield, that may be the third location Quinlan refers to in his Instagram post — we know the crew returned there for season 8, but we’re not quite sure what they filmed.

Congrats to the cast and crew for putting this together. We can’t wait to see the fruits of your labors!

Next: Joe Dempsie teases a bigger role for Gendry in Game of Thrones season 8

*We’re guessing this sequence will happen in Episode 3, given who’s directing that one and when a battle at Winterfell would logically take place over the course of the six-episode final season, but nothing is certain.

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h/t Watchers on the Wall