This is the last time we're ever going to be doing this.

It's completely unexpected.

I mean, I audibly gasp.

The first episodes of every season are always a challenge, but for the final season, it was a lot of pressure because we had all these characters convening at Winterfell.

We thought that the arrival was a way to capture what was at stake for Dany and for Jon, for

Arya on the ground and for Tyrion and Varys and Grey Worm and Missendei on horseback.

Everybody has a slightly different take on what's happening here.

David Nutter directed half the season for us, and there's no more beloved director in the business.

Usually, a director on Game of Thrones will shoot for three days and he has two days prep and then he maybe shoots for a full week, but Nutter just had to go all out for eight or nine weeks of shooting.

I was so happy that he was back for the final season.

David Nutter really felt like part of the family.

We shot a lot of the parade stuff at the end of the year where we had kind of the two shortest days of the year.

Then we came back and it kind of brought some scope to it.

Winterstown is a settlement just outside of Winterfell, and so that road was snowed.

We built the little buildings that led up the road.

It was completely redressed to be the Winterfell little town.

It's basically a huge parade.

The ADs sort out background, villages, reactions, so you're actually working with the extras in a way so you're getting a performance out of everybody.

We work with the military advisers, so all of these guys look professional marching step.

When we tell them to do something, they do it.

We teach them some very basic drill movements so they know how to stand.

Everything's under a command, a whistle blast, so they get to learn to react in a military style in a disciplined style.

Anything that's on the page, we tend to show rather than just imply.

If you're going to say you want to see thousands of Unsullied, then we have to show it.

It's a significant, big scope moment, so the challenge was definitely to find ways to really make it seem like thousands are arriving.

You have to have a vantage point from higher up.

When I read the opening sequence and I saw this little boy running to try to see the parade and see the show and see what he's missing, I felt like that little boy, because

I'd been gone for two seasons.

So in some respects, I kind of was that little boy.

Daenerys arrives and immediately, Sansa wants to make it very clear that she runs this shit.

This is a tough crowd.

I think Jon knows Sansa well enough now that when it comes to Dany, he knows she's going to have some difficulty.

Jon is in love with her, has bent the knee.

He's got googly eyes on.

He's got beer goggles on.

I basically sat down with Sophie and told her, you have to remember one thing.

This is your house.

Queen Daenerys of House Targaryen.

Thank you for inviting us into your home, Lady Stark.

The North is as beautiful as your brother claimed.

As are you.

You're meeting the family.

You want to do well.

You want them to like you, goddammit.

And you're met with a stony, stoic silence.

It's not a comfortable homecoming, no.

There were a lot of people on set, kind of like a giant game of where's Waldo.

In the first episode, a couple of our friends from the comedy world were in a scene.

They gouged my eye out.

They gouged my fucking eye out.

They can put it back in, right?

Right?

Yeah.

Benioff told me they would.

When we found out that George Lucas wanted to visit, we thought maybe it was a practical joke.

And then we were really excited and also nervous because it's George Lucas.

Your sister doesn't like me.

If it makes you feel any better, she didn't like me either when we were growing up.

Can I print?

For George to be sitting in my director's chair, that was so cool for me.

I had George Wilde speak to Kit and Emilia.

Okay, okay.

That was great.

Great, great.

No direction for you.

I don't really care about you.

I don't care what happens to you.

What's going on?

I mean, like, the first time, like, I could remember telling stories was me as a little kid mashing together these, like, Stormtrooper dolls.

For so many of us, he's the one who started our obsession with this kind of big, epic storytelling.

And of course, Dan puts a fever through the writer Dave Hill's head.

Three, two, one, go.

I very much learned the lesson that sometimes when you write two words, that you then create so much work for everyone involved.

Oh, I get an ax in the head.

Simple enough.

Next thing I know, I'm flying to London to go out to have my face sculpted, be wrapped in plaster and molded.

The day of, I'm in a chair for four and a half hours.

It was great to see that we were basically going to get to take Dave Hill out, one of our writers.

It's quite a challenge.

It's actually going to get to take Dave Hill out, one of our writers.

It's quite nice to be able to kill fellow crew members off in the nicest kind of way.

Having to go and be the one who gives the performance is so much more difficult than

I imagined.

And I was just trying desperately not to screw it up.

And I did the first time.

And then the second time, got it right.

The godswood tree, such an iconic piece of the show.

To create that godswood tree is a huge amount of effort.

Every year it would have to be painted white.

It would be coated in latex.

A sculpted face would be applied to it.

The greens team would go about adding branches to it with flocked red leaves that Kevin Fraser would paint up for us.

It's a process where you take a flock, which is a fibre, and actually adhere it to the leaf on one surface.

So obviously you got some quite interesting dynamics when things were lit and shot.

You used to be taller.

When I first got the scripts, it was like a bunch of lords and ladies talking.

And I was thinking, are we ever going to get a scene together again?

And then finally got to that scene, and I was just beaming.

The really spooky thing was turning around and seeing her for the first time.

And what I wanted to try and get was this kind of punch to the gut of literally turning around and seeing time having passed.

You still have the sword.

Needle.

Needle.

The most amazing thing happened.

I just didn't have to do anything.

Because you had two actors who hadn't worked together since season one to get a chance to show pure, true love.

The one thing I've told the actors in season eight, the audience just want to see you breathe.

To watch Kit grow as an actor on the show has been incredible.

And I think the fans are going to love it, because I loved it.

I hit you right in the face.

I'm so sorry.

Part of the fun of the episode was bringing back together all these characters.

It's also the challenge of the episode, because you don't want it to feel like it's, you know, just the reunion episode.

Ready, and action.

Leave him be.

Leave him be.

The Hound and Gendry, we thought it would make sense for kind of the one-two punch of these two people who would serve very, very different roles in her life.

Is that Command Lady Stark?

Don't call me that.

He still thinks that she's the same girl that he left beforehand.

You've gotten better.

Thanks.

So have you.

I think for Arya, it's remembering who she was before.

I mean, you look good.

Thanks.

Like, I used to be that girl, and that's who I was in love with, and thought I would follow to the end of the world.

The Hound-Arya reunion, that's the thing we were most excited about writing.

You left me to die.

First I robbed you.

Everyone would hope that the reunion between Arya and the Hound would be laughs and giggles, but actually it starts off as like cold, because it's kind of the defense mechanism for both characters.

You're a cold little bitch, aren't you?

Guess that's why you're still alive.

There's also Tyrion and Sansa.

There's something between Tyrion and Sansa that you can't quite put your finger on, because they're, you left me, and then you know what happened to me, and I know what happened to you.

Apologies for leaving like that.

Yes, it was a bit hard to explain why my wife fled moments after the King's murder.

It's tricky with them.

They have to watch their words around each other, but at the end of the day, she does trust him.

And at the very end, we have the silent reunion with Jaime and Bran.

If he tells the rest of the clan the truth, I'm done.

I'm dead.

To me, I wanted to make sure that with respect to people getting back together again, those all had their credence and importance, but also I didn't want the audience to forget the fact that the impending doom was coming.

Hey, camera mark.

They're coming.

There's no way around it.

This is a great horror movie sequence that Dave Nutter directed the hell out of.

Somehow Beric and Tormund survived falling down that wall of ice.

We find that it's strangely, there's blood everywhere, but there's no bodies.

Stay back, he's got blue eyes.

I've always had blue eyes.

Did you find anyone?

The scene in The Last Hearth, we have some mandala of limbs and body parts the Night King has left behind, which form this kind of pattern.

And in the middle of it, we have Ned Umber, who's basically pinned to the wall on a huge stake.

Obviously, we know what happens to people who were killed by the Night King and the White Walkers.

The young boy was suspended in a harness and then to basically kill the White,

Beric uses his flaming sword and takes out the White.

We had to shoot that on a stunt guy called Paul Lowe, who is of a similar sort of stature to the actor playing Ned.

Game of Thrones is the first time I've done a full burn, so that's a nice tick, what I guess a lot of stuntmen want to have.

And for that, because he was going to be engulfed in flames, we had to make a lookalike fire mask.

Very good, you can hear me okay, yeah?

I love what you've done with your hair.

It's a message from the Night King.

Being Beric Dundari and I'm always setting people on fire.

You have the mask off, you talk through it, what the process is going to be.

We'll roll the cameras, okay?

The first three, two, one, will be to light the sword.

Then it'll be three, two, one, action for Nick to stab you.

You lift your arm up to stab on three, okay?

On action, he's going to stab you, hold this position like this.

When you hear me start to count, that's when you start to react.

You then have to go and do it.

They'll gel you, they'll spritz you, and they'll light you.

Yeah, you have an idea of what it's going to be like.

But when I was set on fire, you've only got these little small eye holes.

All I could see were little flicks in my eyes of a little bit of red.

And the first time they'd done it, it went over and they put me out.

And I said, was I on fire?

And he said, yeah, it was massive.

You've completely ruined horses for me.

It almost seemed like he knew where I wanted to go.

You're quite a fucking...

Fuck's sake.

We're shooting in Iceland.

Beautiful.

We only have about six hours of light.

So we all come out about three hours before the sun rises.

Griff and Electric get to lay about a 40-foot track.

Art department was laying down all the bones for our nest for our dragons.

Some of those locales in Iceland are so breathtaking that real environments just help the actors so much.

So if it's Kit and Amelia walking past a frozen river in Iceland, and they're shivering, that's real.

Yeah, this fire lady dragon mama is not used to the cold.

No problem.

I can stand in snow all day.

I just love that I could go there with Amelia.

I got to show this thing that's been such a large part of the Thrones world for me.

I got to show her Iceland.

Magic dragon ride.

I like it.

It's just felt like the magic carpet ride.