Pre-production for season 8 of Game of Thrones has been underway for several weeks, with crews at work in Belfast, Ireland before the season seven finale even aired. It appears as though that work is continuing along at a steady pace, with what look like Dothraki huts spotted this week at Belfast’s Titanic Studios, the Thrones HQ.
According to Los Siete Reinos, the hut in the pic below appeared on set with two others, one of which is the same size, while the third is “much larger”:
We can’t confirm that this is a new, different hut or the same that was spotted during filming in 2015 for season six, as any differences could be attributed to the angles.
However, it’s interesting that two huts of the same size and a “much larger” one were seen — could the larger one belong to Dany as her army, which includes the Dothraki horde, as they set up camp in the North? We know that she and her new squeeze Jon Snow were heading for White Harbor at the end of season seven in order to travel to Winterfell, which will presumably serve as the base of operations for the battle against the Night King and the army of the dead.
Speculate away — but we’ll continue to keep you posted on any and all production developments we come across as we endure the Long Night wait for season eight!
Arya!
My money says Drogo flashback. What, there’s no room for them at Winterfell?
She is going to die and be reunited with Drogo in the Night Lands 😣
I for one would not be sorry to see the Dothraki drop out of the story altogether. Aside from the flashy horsemanship tricks I find them a one-dimensional bore. Kind of like Mad Max movies before the invention of the wheel.
Boy the Dothraki are gonna need something better than tropical huts, need igloos or Yurts!
We have never seen seen Unsullied field quarters.
They too are gonna need some more furs.
The dothraki army dwarfs the Knights of the Vale army, and even they aren’t able to fit inside Winterfell to live there 24/7. In the overhead shots of Winterfell this season, we see tons of tents outside of Winterfell, which are presumably the camp for the Vale army.
I agree that the huts are for the Dothraki stationed at Winterfell. However, I think it might be odd for the Queen to be expected to stay outside Winterfell in a hut. You’d think Dany would get a spot to stay inside, but meh, who knows.
After Dany meets Bran and Arya, she might insist to stay in her living quarters with her army outside of Winterfell. I wouldn’t blame her.
Hahahaha! Definitely might feel like a compromise to royal security. Dany + Bran isn’t one of the potential meetings that people have been avidly anticipating (at least on WotW), but now you’ve got me thinking that it might be a very amusing scene. I’d love to see Bran’s current weirdness rattle Dany’s arrogance a little.
Gonna get crowded at Winterfell next year with the Vale and Dothraki stationed there. Hope those grain reserves hold out for a while.
I honestly wish the show had taken one of the female members of the Dosh Khaleen into Danys inner circle.
I feel like that would’ve been an interesting new addition to her council.
I’m all for GoT intel and fan theories, but $10 says they were just rearranging or making room in the studio lol
I kind of agree. I thought the one they introduced in either “Oathbreaker” or “Book of the Stranger” (can’t remember) during the Vaes Dothrak plot would eventually become a more important character, but alas, it was not to be.
Why is everyone ignoring all the other metal structures? Dont let the hut distract you. The truth is out there!
*Cues the X Files theme song*
Boojam,
Maybe they can conjure up a polar bear wight hunt in season 8 for some thicker furs.
Bran: “I saw you boinking your nephew. His ass was beautiful.”
Mr Derp,
Yea same.
Or the woman who was the leader. She had a very commanding screen presence.
dany goes back to essos confirmed
Ser Josh,
Dany meeting Arya is something im looking forward to.. after Arya and Jon have their moment. I’m assuming part of Jon and Danys arrival will be to announce Jon bending the knee and a marriage alliance/ if not marriage it will be obvious to those in the room that something is going on.
I want a scene with Arya confronting Dany one on one, almost taking the “threatening older brother role” could be a funny scene with Dany throwing some snark back. lol
“I saw your brother touch your boob. You must have felt relieved when his face melted.”
Ornela.
Ditto. It looked like she might be worked into Daenerys’ group but then she just disappeared after the temple burning. I guess if they had wanted more women with her other than Missandei they wouldn’t have killed the previous ones huh.
I suppose Daenerys taking over all of the khalasars doesn’t mean they changed their culture. They probably got to work on rebuilding the temple in Vaes Dothrak and the dosh khaleen remained there. It’s a bit of a sad story for Ornela having to stay with the smelly women and not getting to meet the dragons…
They’ll probably add snow to those huts as thousands of Dothraki need to be housed in the North. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Dany decides to reside in one of those huts since she is their “khal” even if there’s room in Winterfell. But also because if the big reveal will happen early on (like the first episode), both Jon and Dany may want distance from each other, depending on how they feel about it. #Awkward
Me too! Emilia is about the only woman on the show that’s not head and shoulders taller than Maisie. 😛 Seriously though, I am anxious to see how they would get along. As I’ve mentioned before, I was disappointed that they didn’t show Arya learning languages with the FM because I want her to speak to Daenerys in Valyrian. I’m holding out hope that she’ll be able to even though they never showed her learning it. 🙂
You know its the off season when we are all speculating over the appearance of a hut on the back lot.
Also the Bran jokes are hilarious. ^_^
That would be priceless. I still remember the time L7R mistook a reflector for a woman in a white dress outside the ToJ. Then there’s that “leaked” night shoot from last season that ended up having nothing to do with GoT.
elybe,
Lol, yes! I remember this. Wasn’t that the scene where someone was lit on fire and everyone was speculating about the words the burning dude was saying? “Khaleesi, what kind of magic is this?” or something stupid like that.
Been calling it and still calling it….. Bran names Winterfell in the past because that’s where the NK is defeated in Season 8.
The huts could be outside Winterfell, or they could be on the Kingsroad to Winterfell, when they receive news of NK and his army being south of the Wall already! 🙂 But aren’t huts the permanent structures in Vaes Dothrak, and normally Dothraki would stay in tents?
Yes, I imagine that Daenerys may want to stay with her Khalasaar and her Unsullied, and her dragons; the latter presumably wouldn’t be inside Winterfell. Plus after the #Awkward reveal, it may be good for D and J not to stay in bedrooms close by! 😉
At this point, I am FAR more interested in Jon picking up a few words. He is a Targ, he should pick up Valyrian from Daenerys and Missandei. He needs to talk to Drogon and Rhaegal soon. And they only understand Valyrian, with a smattering of Dothraki.
Oooh…… neat idea! That didn’t occur to me. So what do you think Bran is, in the past? Could he go back, become Bran the Builder, name Winterfell and build the Wall?
I personally don’t think they’ll build a wall again. It would be strange to to build another wall since the show has talked so much about how the Wall had divided the Wildlings from everyone else. Jon Snow basically sacrificed his life to bring the Wildings across the Wall only for Bran to put it back up? Meh, it’s certainly possible, but kind of against what the show has conveyed. I suppose it all depends on how the remaining 6 episodes play out.
Oh God… wild speculating over minutiae has started.
It’s going to be a long wait until season 8.
Just wait until Inga starts up with the offseason tinfoil.
Ryan,
Kay,
You might enjoy this theory from Secrets of the Citadel.
It is known.
Are we sure that these are the Dothraki huts? For me they look more like the ones of the Wildlings. But on the other hand they are quite similar, so I don’t know.
One way or another, the Dothraki are on the King’s road and they are separated from Daenerys. I bet that she will arrive to Winterfell first and that the Dothraki will be still in the Riverlands when the Night King hits the North. Therefore, they might be tempted to turn back and go to the nearest port (Cersei should work on that). And then someone like Jaime will have to talk with their commanders and talk them to them. So, the huts many be required for the meeting between the Dothraki commander(s) and Cersei’s envoys and or Jaime.
elybe,
Yes, that “leaked” night shot was interesteng. Have the showrunners set some poor stuntman on fire just to mislead the fandom?
Sort of like when I met my husband’s family for the first time (his mom is a nun, his brother a wrestler, and he has a two-legged dog). I feel you, Dany.
Mr Derp,
I see you missed me terribly. 🙂 Already started (see above).
Do we ever get a number of how many Dothraki Daenerys brought with her to Westeros? if it’s all of them then there is gonna be a lot huts outside Winterfell. Though, I imagine she would leave a few thousand men on Dragonstone to hold it.
I’m excited for Bran and Dany to meet. These two are arguably the human characters with the most mystical elements in their storyline. I’m expecting discussions about their visions and the whitewalkers.
Inga,
Yeah, I was also thinking the huts could potentially be a Golden Company encampment buuut if they were going to have some sort of scene in Essos, it would probably be on location somewhere rather than Titanic Studios. But who knows, it could also be a Golden Co. encampment in Westeros.
Also, I felt that the leaked night shot last year could’ve also been a way to weed out the leakers on filming locations. For instance if the leaked footage came from someone within the filming crew/extras, it may be easier to determine who leaks footage as the extras are required to provide their phones before they go on set (a rule not always followed).
Mr Derp,
That was the one! I even posted in that thread that it couldn’t be from Field of Fire 2.0 (the popular theory at the time) since we already had set photos confirming that the ambush happened during the day, but it got drowned out by the chorus of “Dany’s setting Jorah on fire, oh noes!!!!”
Jon struggling to train Rhaegal because of the language barrier is the sequence I never knew I wanted until now. I wanna see a montage of Jon butchering commands in Valyrian and accidentally setting shit on fire when all he wanted was for Rhaegal to lie down.
Terribly indeed. I missed you like a hog misses slop. I missed you like I misses a rock in my shoe 😉
(If you haven’t seen Django you’ll probably be wondering wtf I’m talking about)
It would’ve made for an infinitely less exciting scene, but on a pragmatic level, instead of setting the Loot Train ablaze maybe Dany could’ve captured the wagons to supply her own troops? Admittedly, I’m no Ser Ulysses S. Grant, but der-hey.
No, I haven’t seen Django (don’t know what it is). But from my side it was a hint towards Tyrion talking about Sansa in Ep3.
Flora Linden,
Thank you for that video link. Extremely interesting. If this came to pass, it would explain what D&D said about one more WTF moment from the end of the story when they talked with GRRM. I thought before this that the Hodor-Bran thing from Season 6 was a foreshadow of Bran going back in time and permanently warging a boy who would become Bran the Builder. But this video is sooooo much more. That all of old Nan’s tales are of the present events and characters, but coming down from the distant past. A nice closed time-loop indeed.
I also wonder about LoL and his followers. They seem to be the opposite in the sense that someone from the future has been giving the Red priests and priestesses – Melissandre and Kinvara, for example – imperfect visions of what will come to be. But I have yet to come up with a good idea of who LoL could be. Some future Targ descendant – from Jon and Daenerys’ line, who is a greenseer (Stark genes) but also represent Fire because of his targ lineage. He will be told this tale and will travel back to his/her past and give these imperfect visions to the LoL followers in order to make sure these things happen? Could TPTWP be the LoL? 😮
😀 😀 I can see Rhaegal laughing when Jon is trying to talk to her/him. Also, I know dragons can change their sex. I would like Rhaegal to be a girl when Jon is ready to be a dragon rider.
Yeah, Rhaegal ought to be a gal.
Kay,
I’ve been head-canoning Rhaegal as settling on “female” after bonding with Jon for ages now. Glad to see I’m not the only one!
Hope they got good insulation in those huts.
Mr Derp,
Ditto. I was hoping the women would play more of a role in overthrowing Vaes Dothrak. On a side note, how can Missendei by Dany’s “most trusted adviser” when she never talks at war councils?
Agreed and I wish they had taken the time to build up a Dothraki bloodrider character like they did with Tormund for the Wildlings. They’re just as mute on the show as the Unsullied who aren’t Grey Worm. Staz Nair’s character would have been a good way for the audience to have some sort of a connection to the Dothraki. I would have loved to have seen a scene showing the Dothraki reacting to crossing the Narrow Sea and what they think of Westeros. Missed opportunity, imo.
Inga,
They could be repurposed as crannogs
Haha Exactly….These huts have no purpose at this point of the show. They are surely just moving them to some place else.
Danny is not a Queen.. She’s a Khaleesi!!
I saw Yeahclarke on twitter talking about this article and questioning why people are surprised that the Dothraki are in S8. This article doesn’t really tell us a lot though, just that they may be using some huts, if so could it be bringing Dany’s body to Dosh Khaleen? The only other alternative is they are filming in some huts at a battlefront.
I’m kind of expecting the Dothraki to either by wiped out in the great war or go back to Essos, surely they cannot remain in Westeros given they are essentially savages and very unlikely to change their behaviour.