-(ARMY MARCHES, CLANKS) -♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
The kind of pomp and majesty of Dany's arrival,
it just felt like the natural place to start the season.
The arrival was a way to capture
what was at stake for Dany and for Jon.
Looking back to the very beginning
and how young Maisie was back then,
and wearing the Stark soldier's helmet falling over her head,
and she just looks like this little kid.
And now she's a grown woman, and she's there watching again.
But this time, she steps aside
to let a little kid come in to watch
'cause she remembers how thrilling it was.
It's a whole new procession, and so instead of Robert
arriving with Queen Cersei
and Jamie Lannister and The Hound,
it's Daenerys coming with Jon Snow.
I don't think the North
is the most welcoming place to outsiders.
Dany's smart. She senses that distrust, and she's...
gonna make the best of a bad situation,
but that doesn't mean that she likes it or she's happy.
When you're doing something good for people,
and you get met with what Sansa gives her
when they meet in the courtyard,
it's understandable that she would be upset.
We've been with these characters on a pretty regular basis
all the time for the past however many years.
The fact they're coming back together again
for the first time
means more to them than it may mean to us.
Lady of Winterfell...
Has a nice ring to it.
So does Hand of the Queen...
depending on the queen, I suppose.
I think that if Tyrion were to have shown up
on his own to Winterfell, he would've gotten
a much different reception from Sansa than he did
coming as the Hand of the Queen, Daenerys Targaryen.
There's also the specific thing that happens in that scene,
which is Tyrion has told everybody
that the Lannisters are coming to join the cause,
and it's amazing to her that this person
she thought was so smart would ever
take Cersei at her word on something like that.
I used to think you were the cleverest man alive.
How did you survive a knife through the heart?
I didn't.
DAVID BENIOFF:
are two of the most important characters in the story,
and they love each other very deeply.
Arya was the only one who treated Jon
like a real member of the family when he was a child,
and he was the only one who treated her
with the respect that she needed when she was a kid.
Jon has invited this...
huge army of foreigners into their home,
and Arya understands why he did it,
but Arya's on Sansa's side.
You are defending her.
I'm defending our family.
So is she.
I'm her family too.
Don't forget that.
BENIOFF:
when it comes to Starks.
Go on.
I don't know how to ride a dragon.
Nobody does until they ride a dragon.
No one's ever ridden a dragon except for Dany.
Only Targaryens can ride dragons,
and that should be a sign for Jon.
Jon's not always the quickest on the uptake,
but eventually gets there.
We wanted to kind of re-anchor their relationship.
It seemed important for it to involve the dragons,
since the dragons play such an important role.
It's a major thing for her when she sees
they have some kind of connection to him,
they allow him to be around them.
And when he flies up with her
and shows her where he used to hunt as a kid,
I think she falls even farther in love with him.
Seeing Jon and Dany on the dragons together,
it's a Jon and Dany moment, but it also seeds in the idea
that these creatures will accept Jon Snow as one of their riders.
Don't be afraid.
(DROGON SNORTS)
One of the challenges,
but also one of the exciting things
about this episode, this whole season,
is bringing together characters who have never met.
Sam has long been
one of the more important characters in the story.
But he's never seen Queen Daenerys,
and yet they're connected by various threads.
The obvious one, which we know
from the beginning of the scene, is Jorah.
Sam saved him, and so Jorah owes him this great debt.
What none of them realize until midway through this scene
is that they have another, horrible connection.
There are all these things that you know
about those characters
that the other characters don't know.
And some of them are very important.
Dany murdered Samwell's father and brother.
That's a really complicated thing for Sam
because he had a really fraught relationship with his father.
Yet Sam's older brother was not a bad person,
and died, really, quite bravely, standing by his father's side.
John Bradley did an excellent job.
The difference between the way he takes the news
of his father's death
and the way he takes the news of his brother's death,
it was a subtle thing that he does
with very few words.
It's the kind of thing that he could find out
in a number of different ways,
but it seemed like a very ineffective preamble
and way into that later moment.
Daenerys...
She executed my father and brother.
I've executed men who disobeyed me.
You've also spared men.
Thousands of wildlings when they refused to kneel.
-I wasn't a king. -But you were.
The fact that Jon's real parents were who Jon's real parents were
is not news to us at this point, but what we don't know
is the way that Jon is going to take this.
How's the explosion gonna look?
BENIOFF:
and Jon are more brothers than Bran and Jon ever really were.
He knows it's gonna hurt Jon
and it's going to shatter his whole worldview.
For all they know, the Army of the Dead
could attack the next day,
and someone has to tell Jon before that.
D.B. WEISS:
that he both knows is true and can't handle.
So he tries to throw things in front of it
to prevent him from having to deal with
the-- the truth of what he's being told.
The thing he throws in front of it here
is the fact that it means his father was lying to him
his whole life.
SAMWELL TARLY: You've never been a bastard.
You're a true heir to the Iron Throne.
The truth that Samwell tells Jon
is probably the most incendiary fact
in the entire world of the show.
We chose to play the whole thing on Jon's face
because, as great a job as John Bradley is doing
presenting this information,
he's really just presenting information we know already.
-Daenerys is our queen. -SAMWELL: She shouldn't be.
-That's treason. -It's the truth.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪