‘Game of Thrones’: Night King Actor Reveals New Details About Episode 3’s Ending

If you somehow haven’t heard how Sunday’s episode of Game of Thrones ended and don’t want to, stop reading here — spoilers ahead.

By now, though, you probably know that Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) was ultimately the one to take down the Night King (Vladimir Furdik) during the Battle of Winterfell, stabbing him with her dagger causing him to shatter to pieces. This, in turn, took out the Night King’s army, the members of whom were just seconds away of killing everyone in their vicinity.

The grueling episode took 55 days of shooting to film and closed out a seasons-long arc of GOT‘s story with the death of the Night King, bringing an end to the mystical being and putting the show’s focus back onto the battle for the Iron Throne.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Furdik, who is also a member of the stunt team, opened up about his villainous role and filming the climactic moment with Williams, sharing that the scene was a difficult one to shoot.

“It was a very emotional day and night,” Furdik recalled. “It was so strong. I spent all my energy playing it, and she as well. It was not an easy day. It was cold. There was rain. She was on a wire, in a harness, jumping many times. It wasn’t just the one time; it was maybe 15 times. When I have to hold her under the jaw and it looks like she dies, we had to spend a lot of energy on that particular scene.”

“It was very, very difficult,” he continued. “We are very good friends. We know each other. It wasn’t easy for me to [pretend to] hurt her. When I grabbed her under the jaw, it wasn’t easy [on a practical level]. If you make a bad move — if you don’t grab her well — she could have an injury. So I was under pressure and she was under pressure. It was not an easy day.”

Furdik added that the episode, which consisted of a number of fight scenes, was planned down to the last detail and took months to shoot due to its sheer scale.

“When I heard that it was going to be a three-month shoot, I said, ‘Oh my God. This will be crazy,’” the stuntman said. “Then I went to the set, where we did one month’s preparation before shooting. It was a three-month shoot, and one month before. Then we did another month on a stage inside, reshooting some small pieces. This was one of the hardest jobs of my life.”

“We had meetings with [the individual actors for their own battles], depending on who’s fighting with who: Jorah (Iain Glen), Daenerys (Emilia Clarke), and what they are doing,” he revealed. “For every battle with these actors, we prepared exactly the movements for them. Every kill, and every move they made, was prepared over weeks and weeks, and hours and hours. We were so busy. Every move that happens doesn’t happen just because; it happens because we prepared it. Every jump — everything.”

Game of Thrones airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

Photo Credit: HBO