‘Game of Thrones’ Director Admits the Timeline Is a Little Messed Up

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for the latest episode of Game of Thrones! Continue reading at your own risk…

Game of Thrones has been moving at a breakneck pace this season, but many fans feel that the latest episode took things a bit too far.

In the span of just a few minutes, Gendry ran back to Eastwatch, sent a raven all the way to dragonstone, and Daenerys rode her dragons past the wall to find Jon and the others. That was quite a lot of travelling in such a short amount of time. Fans have been complaining about that pace over the last couple of days, and it seems as though the creative team knows it’s a bit of an issue.

While speaking to Variety, director Alan Taylor admitted that the timeline doesn’t exactly add up.

“We were aware that timing was getting a little hazy,” Taylor said. “We’ve got Gendry running back, ravens flying a certain distance, dragons having to fly back a certain distance…In terms of the emotional experience, [Jon and company] sort of spent one dark night on the island in terms of storytelling moments. We tried to hedge it a little bit with the eternal twilight up there north of The Wall. I think there was some effort to fudge the timeline a little bit by not declaring exactly how long we were there. I think that worked for some people, for other people it didn’t. They seemed to be very concerned about how fast a raven can fly but there’s a thing called plausible impossibilities, which is what you try to achieve, rather than impossible plausibilities. So I think we were straining plausibility a little bit, but I hope the story’s momentum carries over some of that stuff.”

Taylor went on to say that it wasn’t that big of a deal because the show is so incredibly popular. He said that this might be more of an issue if the success wasn’t there.

“It’s cool that the show is so important to so many people that it’s being scrutinized so thoroughly,” he continued. “If the show was struggling, I’d be worried about those concerns, but the show seems to be doing pretty well so it’s OK to have people with those concerns.”

The Season 7 finale of Game of Thrones airs on Sunday, August 27 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.