Over the years, the Game of Thrones universe has garnered a reputation for full-on, high-scale battles. From the Battle of Blackwater Bay and Battle of the Bastards in Game of Thrones, to the Battle of Rook's Rest in House of the Dragon and countless others, the franchise knows how to dial things up to eleven.
In the penultimate episode of the latest spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, titled “In the Name of the Mother,” the series reaches its climactic battle. While not a battle of great numbers and enormous scale like others we've seen, it was just as epic and equally breathtaking. After evoking the ancient trial of seven, Aerion Targaryen and his seven knights make battle against Ser Duncan and his team — including the honorable Baelor Targaryen — in a brutal, gruesome brawl bathed in mud and blood.
By the end of the battle, Aerion yields before the audience and a beaten-up Ser Duncan, somehow still breathing, is declared champion. However, Baelor's fate was not so fortunate. He drops dead of a fatal morning star hit to the back of the head.
The set of the battle was about as gritty as it gets; the battleground was a thick bog of mud and blood. "When you're out there and you're shooting it, mud is drying up on you because it happens to not be raining for the first time ever in Belfast and you have to get the fire hoses on it," showrunner Ira Parker told Entertainment Weekly. "Plus, the wind changes and all of a sudden your mist coming in from one way is now blowing completely out, so you gotta go shift that all around. Plus you got stunt guys covered in fake sugar blood, which is attracting all the wasps. And meanwhile, you're trying to get in there and get everything you had planned. It is chaotic, and we embraced that pretty early on."
For the cast, the clash of steel wasn't the only danger. With the fake blood being made of syrup, star Finn Bennett (Aerion) recalls the infestation of wasps on set. “We had these fruit baskets that were part of set dressing that, I guess, we didn't replace. So we just had loads of rotting fruit around the set, and it seemed like every wasp in Belfast City traveled to our little patch,” he told EW. “I just remember wasps flying around everywhere. And the fake blood is made with a sugary syrup.”
Bennett spent a lot of time on the battlefield, peering through what sounds like the most inefficient helmet in Westeros — a duty he shared with stuntman Zach Roberts. "When I put that mask on, I couldn't see anything out of it; the eye holes are tiny," he added. "He's doing all of that blind. It was just filming it in sections, and then towards the end of the battle, that is actually me stumbling back into one of the shields there and he's hitting me with the shield. We just rehearsed it a lot. Yeah, it was great. It was taxing, but I enjoyed it."
Another star tasked with bringing the battle to life was Daniel Ings, who plays Lyonel Baratheon. For him, the biggest challenge wasn't the wasps, but keeping the horses in line.
"We're of course on horseback trying to get seven horses to stand and line up perfectly in a circle and all look badass while you're doing it," he said. "Someone's just like going backwards and one horse wants to come and try and chew on someone else's reins. I remember that was pretty tricky."
All of this is to say, the whole process was intense, to say the least. "It was absolute carnage,” Shaun Thomas (Raymun Fossoway) said. “Yeah, it was crazy. Really was."
One thing about this battle, however, that made it stand out from the crowd was the point-of-view shot inside Dunk's helm. It takes viewers literally inside his vision, and the technique worked wonders. "Once you go inside that helm, as well as the sound effects, the breathing, the points of the increased heartbeat, you feel like you're right in there with him," director Owen Harris said.
This POV was cleverly implemented to keep the narrative grounded in Dunk's perspective. "Although it's a battle of seven, the battle that's important to us is the one that Dunk's fighting," Harris added.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms airs its season finale Sunday, February 22 on HBO and HBO Max.