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1MAN : And action ! This is humanity's last stand against the death that has come for them . MIG U EL SAPOCH N I K: The idea of  doing anything  that was 45-minute non-stop battle, to me, was terrifying ,  because of battle fatigue.  We couldn't just have a battle. We had  to follow  the  characters through  the  story.  Anyone will tell you that was the hardest episode of TV  anyone in this show has  done. We had 11 weeks of night shooting .  That was quite a feat for any  crew  to go through,   'cause you literally  become  vampires.  We must've broken records in some way, even  just broken,  like,  human working records.  I said to my guys, "You might not want to do it again ,  "but you won 't regret doing it  the  first  time. ' It's a real testament, to the entire Belfast crew, who gave us something that no amount of money could ever buy. We've been building towards this for so long now. You think back to the very beginning of the very first episode,  and it's Beyond  the  Wall  where the White  Walkers are stalking a group of rangers.  This is the culmination of one of the key story lines in the whole show. We sat in the writers' room with  a massive diagram of Winterfell.   lt was like a football locker room.  We had a white marker, and we went through saying ,  "Foes  here.  Foes, move  there. What defense  would you have  here?"  And  we  just worked out  the  strategy.  SAPOCH N I K: We need  to break up  where we're  shooting,  and what it looks like, so that we feel marked differences between the  different locations,  even  though it's all essentially happening in Winterfell.  MAN : Action ! We've never been in anything but a pretty small fraction of Winterfell . We knew  that, especially for Episode 803,  we were gonna need a lot more Winterfell  than  we've ever had before.  Because  the entire episode  takes place in Winterfell,   and you have  19  to 20 principal characters   all involved  in  a very  chaotic  situation,  Deb knew she needed to at least double the size of Winterfell . We needed to create a different gate. We needed  to  feel like,  as  the  script  dictated,  that Winterfell was surrounded.  PAU L G H I RARDAN I : The main  consideration for Winterfell  was just to make it much more visual ,  to fill  the frame  better.  This has been not the case for the entire series.  It has grown from this small event into this massive thing   that is  reflected in the  story.  You can't expect the set to look the way it's necessarily described in the script. There' s a certain amount you  have  to fill in  with  your imagination.  They filled it all in for us. In David N utter's words, he was, in the early episodes, building Winterfell up so Miguel could knock it down . And the thing that was really important to us was working out how Winterfell would close itself down , what steps would the residents of Winterfell take in order to protect themselves against the Army of the Dead? One of the  things that was  hit  upon quite early was dragonglass,   and  how  would  the  residents use dragonglass  in  order to protect themselves?  The living do have some time to prepare for this battle. And one of the things they know going into it is  that they're going to be outnumbered.   And another thing they know is that  the Whites  don 't like  fire  and dragonglass.   So, they're trying to use those weapons as best they can.  It's lining the walls in the way that you might see a security wall  topped  with  broken glass in our world.   lt's also in  the  courtyard  in case the  walls do get  breached  to try to prevent  the Whites from  completely flooding.  They've done all that they could with dragonglass,  but nothing they would do would ever be enough.  We knew this episode was gonna be almost entirely battle,  and that can get really boring, really quickly, ifyou're not careful.  Part of what we cared about a lot here was getting Miguel on board . FRAN K DOELG ER:  l think that  we went  to Miguel  because Miguel had had some of the most challenging battle sequences,  and  he had done them  brilliantly.  He  was going to set  himself the  challenge of not repeating  himself,  a way of looking at  the  action sequences  that would distinguish them from the other sequences  and actually bring out something  in the drama. One of the ways we could keep this being interesting is not make it a battle, per se.  That  the  way you would normally  imagine  a battle,  it  usually has a beginning, a  middle  and an  ending. We  know  we need  that.  But what we also were trying to do was to give each act a genre. It's a cross between action set pieces and a horror movie. Fairly early on , I had a good idea of what I wanted it to be. Because,  obviously,  the  tricky thing  with  Ep 3 is it's all at  nighttime. And we developed an idea of playing a lot in darkness, seeing  less, and hearing and  feeling more  than necessarily seeing  it. And this is just my own personal feeling .  L  didn  't  find the Whites  scary anymore.  They're the  monsters.   So, in a way, you  need them  to be scary,  and we need them to not just be some zombies, and we need them to feel like they're something other.  From that  emerged this idea of,  firstly,   "What  if we  don 't  see them  "until they actually are right in front of us?"  And the only way we could think to do that is I thought of the horror movie convention of  ifyou're in a haunted house  in the middle of nowhere,  and  the  only light that emanates  from  that  field is  that house  itself, and everything else drops into darkness, it makes what would , by day, be just another meadow or town ,  or whatever it  is,  that gives it an ominous  feeling. Having a steep drop-off into darkness where we would not be able to see the  scale of  the  army that was coming to attack us  emerged  out of that.   l think it's  the  first 20 minutes.   And you don 't get to  see the  monster at all,   you just hear  them. And I think, for me, that was one of the most scary ideas, because what if it didn't work? (CH UCKLES) (WIG HT SNARLI NG) (GASPS) Shooting at night hides a multitude of sins, in terms of a battle.  It  did expand.  L think  we'd  never thought  it  was gonna take quite as long.   Although, during  the  prep  period, it became obvious that the episode was just getting bigger and bigger. As soon as we did get that outline, I thought, "Oh , this is not what we had imagined at all ." Because it has Whites and dragons, fire and night work, 11 weeks of it. It was something that you didn't want to focus on too much . You just treat it day by day, tick it off. It's always more difficult for the crew than it's for the actors. It speaks to the quality and hard work that goes into this show. CAU LFI ELD:  That's  the  most amazing thing about our  crew is  that  David and Dan write it down and then we all try to figure it out. The scene that I've seen many times, but as we get more finished shots, it really gives me a tingle, is when the  Dothraki and Jorah first charge into  the  darkness,  and the big trebuchets are firing . ROB CAMERON :  From a set -dec perspective, we were involved with the catapults and trebuchets with armory.  So, Tommy provided a couple ofpractical trebuchets.  Then we had three or four made that were background ones. A trebuchet is a very large,  centrifugal throwing arm.   l like to build everything as practical.   And  we  can actually get  the  projectile to  fire.  It went about maybe 30  meters, which is  a good  distance. Not in the historical reference. It'd be a waste of time. That wouldn't get you very far.  But  the fact  that  it  still  threw the  projectile,  it  would still do all  the  action and everything could be done on  camera. Once it left the trebuchet, then , obviously,  visual effects would take over.  The more real stuff you can have in the frame, then the  less you have to lean on   your  facilities  or your visual effects houses,   to give you digital things or CG  elements, CG flames, CG mist, CG smoke, the  better offyou are.  (ALL G RU NTI NG) SAM CONWAY: Over the 11-week period,  that's a lot of smoke,  a lot of changes in weather, a lot of equipment, a lot of crew to cover all that. We had  multiple  wind machines, which we had  to move every shot.  We had  multiple smoke  machines which we  also  had  to move every shot   and every setup.   Along  with the  snow as  well, we had foam  snow,  we had  paper snow,  we had hand-held  snow guns.  We had all sorts of things just trying to surround every part of the action . SAPOCH N I K: The  fog of war  sequence, the whole  point is nobody knows  where  anybody  is. Everyone underestimated how powerful , how brutal this attack was gonna be. They  lasted a fraction of  the time they  thought they  were  gonna last.   All of  these  are reasons   for us to  feel the  chaos  of  that particular  moment. (ALL G RU NTI NG AN D YELLI NG) My goodness ! It was overwhelming . You're on this huge set. It's filled with smoke.  It  feels like  maybe  1,  000 people on  the  set  with  extras,  crew  and cast.  Death and horror coming from places you never imagined . Every time you think, "Oh , now there's a little break," and you realize, "No, there's no break."  lt's just crazy onslaught.  It all just starts to fall apart,  and  decisions have  to start being  made  on  the fly. (SHOUTI NG I N VALYRIAN) AN DERSON :  And that's all  mixed in with the  stuff of  like, "Who am I doing this for? Who am I sacrificing my family for?" WEISS:  lt was important to  see how  difficult   that  decision  was for Grey Worm to  make. As soon as he pulls the rope on that trench , he knows that every one of his men , he's never gonna see again . He makes the choice, but you can tell his heart is grieving as he does so. To read the word "trench" on the page, it doesn't sound like anything , but it took such a lot of work to try and resolve it  to a point that it was a convincing  method of defense. Originally, it was planned at 50 feet outside the Winterfell main gate.  L think it  ended  up more like 80  feet. And that was a big job between art department and special effects. So, it was us and Sam's team . CONWAY: The complicated  process  of the trenches began with the concept of it being a first line of defense. Therefore, it had  to be  impressive.  lt  had  to be very big,   because of hundreds of thousands  of Whites  attacking.  We can't have real logs in there,  'cause it's burning pretty  much  every night for  six weeks.  It has to be a steel thing,  come up with a technique for igniting all these troughs,  so you have a  nice wave of fire  igniters.  We put five different cameras on it,  because  we knew we were  only gonna  be  able to do this a couple of  times  just 'cause of  the  nature of  it.  And  we'd figured  out  where  all those  five  different cameras would  need  to  be. And the special effects team did a great job of getting that thing to light up. We'd synched a camera move to exactly the speed of how it was going to light up.  And it worked really  well. (WIG HTS SCREECH I NG) WAG N ER:  For a long  time, Miguel  always  mentioned hell  to  me. This episode is just turning into hell for each character.  A  nice moment  to introduce that would be  when the trench  goes up,  which,  on  the  one  hand,  for our antagonist,  is almost a saving moment,  because  the trench  eventually keeps  the  Army of  the Dead  away from  them, but at the same time, it actually turns, image-wise, into hell . WEISS: We wanted them  to  feel,  at least in that  moment, "Maybe this is all gonna work out, maybe things are all gonna be okay."  Those kinds of moments, those moments of hope  help,  emotionally, shape  the episode, because it gives it somewhere to go when the hope is thwarted  and things go  the  wrong way.  And we thought that would help us with the episode as a whole, in addition to providing us with a visually memorable moment. The actual battle itself, Dany's impatient to get in there. She's like gunning for a fight. She's ready to take this guy down . She's a fierce warrior, although you don't really see a lot of hand-to-hand combat with her.  And  she  knows  how  to  fight  to  the death.  Especially at this point,  there' s a lot of anger.  She's got all of that in her to put into this fight.  So, it's just not  the  matter at  hand, but I think, because of everything on an emotional level that's gone on , she' s able to go into  her cold- blooded  side. The N ight King has exhibited various powers over the series. And one of the things that we know the dead bring with them is the weather,  and part of it is just battle tactics.  The  two dragons are probably   our hero's best  chance of  winning this  fight. So, it's very much a conscious choice by the N ight King  to neuter  his  opponent's greatest weapon.  Dragon fighting was one of the most exciting things we had on the table,  and it was also one of  the  most difficult things   that  we had  on  the  table.   lt was a  definite  group effort.  When you're creating something that hasn't been seen before, like three  dragons having a  fight in midair, it  takes a lot of imagination.   lt takes looking at whatever  reference  you can possibly call up.   "What do birds ofprey look like  "when they're  going at it against one another?"  CARN EY:  lt's sort of an aerial dragon  dogfight. So, originally, the whole thing was just in this storm . And then we came up with the idea of, "Let' s get  them  up out of  the  storm above  the  clouds."  KIT HARI NGTON : The  VFX boys, first of all, are brilliant.  That buck is amazing .  First  time  you go on  it,  you're  like,  "This is  awesome. '  Very hard to stay concentrated,   because you go  in,  you  do, like, 10  minutes of a move  and then you go back to your trailer for, like, 45 minutes. That sounds like an ideal day.  But it's not actually  what  you want to be doing.  You want, in some ways, as an actor to be at the coalface, just staying there, staying in the moment. Otherwise,  your energy goes.  So, I found it really tough . CARN EY: Whenever we have  a shot  where the  dragons  need  to breathe  fire, we  want to simulate as best as possible  the  light effect from that  fire  and  how it  interacts  with the  characters and  the  actors  in  that  scene  and  the  environment.  Where the  dragon  fire is  going  is  moving.   So,  we're  trying to create  the effect of the  light   moving from one place to another.  That just really helps sell the believability of all that dragon fire. BAU ER: We had the  big flamethrower on  the Spidercam  onstage   that was shooting 40  feet of fire  as fast as  we  could do  it.  And  we had  a robot arm that moves as fast as you want.  So for Viserion , when he's blasting Jon , he' s so  damaged  by this point, so  he' s leaking  fire. We  actually  did  laser cuts from  the  digital  model of  those openings,   and then bronze casts  were made  and then  fitted with fire  jets  so that the fire would interact with those surfaces properly.  And then that was put onto this robot  with  a quick arm.  And then the camera was also on a motion-control rig , too.  And then  we added a fire  rig on  the  Technocrane   around  the  stage  in  our  element  shooting.  It was either six or eight weeks of solid element shooting . (G ROWLS) - Bran ! - Go ! One of the most challenging shots in Episode 3 is when the direction of battle is switching  and Jon Snow goes back to  the  castle.  And Miguel saw it as a oner. We  actually shot it  in  a series of shots  which will be cut together in the end .  But one of  the  biggest ones  is when we  travel through  the  courtyard extensively.  DAVI D MORGAN : Kit's very aware of the camera, and he's very good at finding his marks  and  finding  different positions that are  required. I had to always keep track of where I was in the fight, who  l was following, what l was doing.   lt felt  much more complicated  than  the  battles.  We needed Jon to make his way through a courtyard  and bear witness to all of  the  characters   that  we  know and  we care  about,  that he knows and he cares about, dying , essentially being overwhelmed , and for him to have to stay on track,  to know that  the  reason  he's there is  to get  the  Night  King,  and that humanity  depends  on that  choice. But it wasn't so much about showing any single story line as it was getting the sense of them all mixed into this chaos together  and thinking that  the  chaos was gonna  wash  over  them  and consume  them. It's physically challenging , it's physically demanding . We were shooting a scene that...  l  mean,  l probably never looked cooler in my entire  life,  l was stood upon a pile of bodies  fending  off  Whites. And the funny thing was that we said to the stunt guy, there were about 1 5 of them attacking me at the same time, and I said , "If you manage to get me down , take me down ."  l  had  to  fight  for real.  And it was extreme intense and extreme exhausting .  L saw some of  the  footage and l think it looks real   because it is real.  (ALL G RU NTI NG) G H I RARDAN I : The  prop team have been very, very busy.  I don't think they'll want to see another mound of dead bodies  for a very long  time. Rob Cameron and Gavin Jones came up with the idea of molding these bodies into these discs.  So,  the  on-set  crew  would be out to pick  the discs  up,  move them  around and  each disc  would have  maybe five bodies molded onto it.  That was a  piece of  genius, really,   and allowed us to get through  the  season  with much  greater  efficiency. A much less painful sort of process in order to build up the feeling of the war dead in  a way that  we hadn  't been able to  achieve before. Another challenge is that we not only built these massive sets,  but nothing stayed  the same. Every night the team would meet, "Tomorrow this is what has to happen ." What has to be snowed and what has to be cleared , what dead bodies do we have, which dead bodies do we have.  Are they  fresh dead? We knew that in the episode, that at some point, the  Night King was gonna resurrect  the dead.  But in doing so,  there' s obviously all  the  cadavers and  bodies, which  are in  these  tombs in  the  crypt  which would rise as well at the same time. Nobody thought of that. He's bringing all the dead people back to life  and they put  the women  and  children in a crypt with all the dead people. (CH UCKLES) For us that was exciting , 'cause it was gonna be a brand-new challenge. We referenced  ancient  mummies, we  looked at corpses and skeletal figures.  It was scary, 'cause all the stunt guys that played the dead guys, they're in full brilliant makeup.  And they're around dark corners,  you don't fully know where they're all coming from . -(PEOPLE SCREAMI NG) -(WIG HTS SNARLI NG) Shooting in the crypt was a lot of fun , actually.  It was a first for  me seeing White  Walkers.  The whole action was really fun , 'cause I never get to do any action . We were  running around, Tyrion and l,  we felt like action stars even though we probably ran five meters. That's not a set. That place really exists.  It's terrifying down  there. So it's kinda great, you have all this epic battle going on upstairs,  and then this genuine,  like,  horror  movie down below. It was one of the scariest days of my life. (LAUG HS) BEN IOFF:  Winterfell was kind of  the home  for  the show,  and one of  the  things that always struck us   as a  horrific  aspect of  this, is  that  these  hallways and rooms  where we  spent a lot of good  times, with  characters that  we care  about   has now  become  a horror set, because it's been  invaded  by  undead. We  couldn 't  imagine  a better protagonist   for that horror sequence than Arya.  Partly because we care about her so much , but partly because she's the one in the midst of it. (G RU NTS) MAISI E WI LLIAMS: We pick her  up  after  being  hit  and taking a fall and running off  She's in a really bad way and in a lot of pain ,  and l guess what l was trying to play was,  like,  trying to play  the drive  to keep on and keep pushing on and keep going.  But also this insane fear of, "What have I got myself into,  "what am l doing?"  So, the library in Winterfell was something that I was very excited about designing . That was heavily influenced by the director, Miguel Sapochnik, who wanted  to have a two -tiered  room,  where the Whites could look down . He really wanted to be creating almost a horror movie in there as well .  To be able to build  the  suspense, to be able to go  inside from shadow  to light and to be able to  pace her  around that room.  I took Maisie in there  and  we were  gonna have  nine Whites  or something in  there  and l gave  them  all a path and then l told  her she had  to make  her  way through it without being  seen. And we figured out this whole choreographed piece where  everything was a near  miss. Usually every time that I've been running as Arya, I've been very focused and head down , running as fast as I can ,  and for this one, it was more  of  a desperate scramble  through the corridors and not being able to think clearly enough to make a plan ,  until  she' s saved by  Beric. (SCREAMI NG) (G RU NTS) As soon as we first saw Beric in the third season , we started talking to each other about like, "Well , why this guy?" And it was always important for us that Beric have a reason and that that reason be fulfilled before he dies. RICHARD DORMER: When Beric  tries to just let Arya get away,  he's trying to hold himself up, but he's also trying to stop the Whites getting to her.  And  when  l saw that, l really  had  a lump in my throat.   l was kind ofproud  of the  character for being so brave.  Realizing that they are sacrificing themselves for her, and realizing that she is here for a reason , and Beric clearly knows that.  It's not until  she sees Melisandre  and business  mode comes  back again.  And she realizes that this is what she has to do,  and this is what  she  was meant to  do. What do we say to the God of Death? Not today. WEISS: One of the  great things   about having this many people you care about,  in an episode and in a sequence together is  that sleight of hand  becomes  a little bit  easier,  l  hope, where  you can pull people's attention and focus   to people that they care about a lot.  Like  Jon and like Dany,   Theon and Bran, not to mention, Tyrion and Sansa in  the  crypt.  So, hopefully, you have so many places that your attention's pulled  that you forget that Arya Stark ran out of that castle  with the  battle drums playing.  As was discussed in Episode 2, the battle plan is  to lure  the  Night King out. So, that means that   Bran is  the  bait and  he' s in  the  very center  of  Winterfell in  the  godswood.  The  reason  the  godswood was chosen is because  it' s such an  iconic  location.  But it's also the weirwood tree has long been a source of power  for Bran in particular.  (RAVENS CAWI NG) WI LLIAMS:  Just  when  you think that it's all over,  and just when you think that Jon Snow's gonna be the hero, again ,  Arya appears through  the mist. (YELLS)  Shooting that was tedious,  but so great to be able to perform all these different beats within maybe two seconds of footage. She does jump out of nowhere and that's a wire rig . It's a wire rig we did on location , but the location wasn't ideal .  It was really hard to get a crane in  there. And we've obviously got the weirwood tree, which is  basically  condemned, it' s all  held  together  with wires.  So, it was tricky to do it  there and we did a version of it there. But then we had to redo it  because it  didn  't have  the  ability to control it as  much  as  we'd hoped, and it needed to get a real , "boom ," out-of-nowhere moment. KRISTI NA BASKETT: We did  a lot ofjust testing.  Her flying through the air, and making it look exactly how they wanted it to in shot.  So, my role in that was doing just all of  the  testing for  it. Then , by the time we got that dialed in , we brought Maisie in to do a few jumps, and once she felt comfortable, she  was in costume and  did  that on  the day. Maisie does almost all the stuff on her own . She  has an  excellent  stuntwoman for  the  dangerous stuff,  but most of it's actually Maisie.  And learning  how  to do  these  various tricks  with the knife, and learning how to flip the knife from one hand to the other. Once we  saw  how well she  could do it in that moment  with Brienne, we  thought,  "This is the way it's gonna end  "against  the  Night  King. ' I'm really proud of myself. I'm proud of everyone. I'm proud of the work that was put in . And I'm grateful that it was me and not Kit. (LAUG HS) I was pissed that it wasn't me killing the N ight King . I could've. . . I would've given you , like... I'd have bet you thousands. BEN IOFF:  l think it's probably  three  years or something  we've  known  that it was gonna be Arya who delivers that fatal blow  to  the exact  spot  where the child of the  forest   put  the  dragonglass blade to create  the  Night  King, and he's uncreated by the Valyrian steel . That's such a nice, little full-circle thing as well ,  that that's  the knife  that was  destined  to kill Bran.   And  here it is  saving  him. BEN IOFF: He's the  king on  the chess  board,   and  when the  king is toppled,  the game is over, it doesn't matter how many pieces you have left. So, we wanted to show that and we wanted to see where each of  our characters  were in these moments,  so it was kind of radiating outwards  from the  godswood.  COSTER-WALDAU :  At  the end of  that  whole fight, (SNAPS FI NG ERS) there's this moment, and then they all drop. They  call it deanimation. Theyjust  deanimated.  That was so  impressive,  because usually  when  you  see this in a movie, most of it is CG I .  But  here,  so  much of it' s in -camera, it' s real.  I'd be excited enough just watching that happen on-screen  and thinking,  "Wow. What  a great  ending!"  But actually getting to be  there  and react to that as Bran  is  pretty special.  At the end of it, it's a victory for the living ,  but at great cost because  some of  our favorite characters fall.  Jorah's entire life has been building up to this moment. H is ultimate redemption is to give his life for the woman he loves and the woman he betrayed .  And  we knew  that that  scene in his  hands would be fantastic.  (WIG HTS SNARLI NG) All he ever wanted to do  was to  fight  to protect  her. And if he could have chosen a way to die, this is how he would have chosen to die. IAI N G LEN : My  favorite  scene  to shoot was my  demise. When I read it, I just thought, "Yeah . Of course." CLARKE:  Holding  him  for  the  first  time, she  finally sees  what she  has closed  her eyes  to  this whole time. And it's too late. (SOBBI NG) You gotta go to your own depths to bring out that. BEN IOFF:  lt's really hard to fake that kind ofpure  grief like  that,  and Emilia just really brought in those moments. I think a part of it was  because  she  and lain  had been  working together for so, so long,  and it's all coming to an end . CLARKE: We've been with these  characters for so many years,  we've been , like, to hell and back with them . It gets to a point where, like, it sounds crazy,  but it's not a huge amount of acting.  BEN IOFF: There  are a  few  moments  in the  final season  where characters are saying things to each other that we don't hear, and that's very much by design . And I think Dan and I both had ideas of what he's trying to say.  But  we're  never gonna hear those words.  WEISS: We knew  that Episode 3 was pretty  much  an  episode- long  battle sequence.  And  we  certainly felt  exhausted  by  the time we were done, but that was sort of the idea of the entire episode, that you're in it with these people, and you're in an impossible situation with these people, and by the end , you should feel some small fraction of the exhaustion  that they  feel after  having  endured this experience. By the end , for Grey Worm and I think for a lot of the characters, it' s just exhaustion on a different level.  I loved every second of that. The  torture and  the  brutality,  the  horror that you  see in  our  faces is real . (LAUG HS) It was hard and it was bloody.  And l must say that   l 'm impressed  that  we made it  happen.  Kudos to the crew. I don't think I've seen people work as hard as they have.  It's amazing,  the  work they  had done.  It's a  cliché,  but it really couldn 't have been done without  them. I've said it before, I will say it again , we have the hardest-working crew in the industry, full stop. And at the helm of it, we have Miguel , who is extraordinary at shaping these incredible  action sequences,   and without  him, the whole episode would have just crumbled . It never would have got done. There were so many people involved in this, and there was so much thought that went into every single section , you know, it physically hurt to make that show. In television , this has probably never been done before and it's probably never gonna get done again .