There are only three episodes of Game of Thrones left and, according to star Kit Harington, the next one is the best of the final season.
Even though “The Long Night” featured the epic Battle of Winterfell, which came to a shocking conclusion, Harington said the next episode will keep viewers on their toes.
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“One of my favorite episodes is 4 because the characters have seemingly got what they needed,” Harington told Entertainment Weekly. “The world is safe now. They’re celebrating and saying goodbye to lost friends. But as an audience you’re going, ‘This is only episode 4, something’s going to happen.’”
Harington said that was the “cool thing,” since the characters also know something crazy has to happen. As we have all learned from the past seven and a half seasons, no one is really safe in Westeros.
“There’s something twisted and uncomfortable about it,” Harington said. “It’s so Shakespearian.”
The next episode is the last episode of the series directed by David Nuitter, who helmed the first two episodes of Season 8. Nutter also won the Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Dama Series for the Season 5 episode “Mother’s Mercy.” He also directed “The Dance of Dragos,” “The Rains of Castamere,” “A Man Without Honor” and “The Old Gods and the New.”
Like “The Long Night,” Episode 4 will also be longer than usual. It will run about 80 minutes and finally shifts the action back to Daenerys Targaryen’s (Emilia Clarke) plot to take the Iron Throne from Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey). HBO also released photos of a mass funeral in Winterfell.
Episode 4 has some big shoes to fill on Sunday night after “The Long Night,” which racked up an astonishing 17.8 million total viewers. It was the most-watched episode of scripted television for 2019, even beating shows on the broadcast networks.
While the battle scenes impressed the fans (who could see it) at home, Harington said there was one part of filming that disappointed him. He spent much of his time on the back of a dragon.
“I was slightly pissed off I was on a dragon, it stops me from fighting in a crowd. It’s going to look cool but I wanted, in some ways — just as Jon does — to get back down on the ground,” Harington told EW. “The fact he can fly a dragon means he has to but his place is down there amongst the sword swingers. But that whole episode should be mesmerizing.”
Still, Harington told the magazine he was happy with how the episode turned out, even if Jon Snow did not kill the Night King. Instead, it was Maisie Williams’ Arya Stark who struck the fatal blow.
“I was surprised, I thought it was gonna be me,” he said. “But I like it. It gives Arya’s training a purpose to have an end goal. It’s much better how she does it the way she does it.”
New episodes of Game of Thrones air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
Photo credit: Helen Sloan/HBO
