Game of Thrones is back in Spain for one last time! With season eight filming in Itálica reportedly scheduled to begin next week, the production crew has had much less time to prepare the location than they did last time, but they’re getting it done anyway: in a single week since construction began, the main work has been completed!
Itálica’s amphitheater in Santiponce, Seville has been partially open during construction, which, despite an apparent ban on taking photos, resulted in many more photos and videos (including aerial footage!) of the set’s construction than we are used to:
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Though built much more quickly, the platform over the animal pit looks just like it did for season seven before it was embellished. If you recall, this is where Jon, Daenerys, Cersei and a dozen other characters met to hash out their differences in the face of the real enemy: the White Walkers and their army of the dead. If whatever happens here in season eight turns out to be just as momentous, the Dragonpit scenes filmed in the coming weeks will be ones to which we should pay close attention.
Will it be another tense political parley? Perhaps a certain long-awaited duel? May we see Drogon, Rhaegal and/or the undead Viserion perish in this dragon cemetery? There are too many exciting theories right not, but we should see what it’s actually all about soon enough, as the cast arrives in Seville and we hopefully get a glimpse of filming.
Preparing for Jon Snow vs Night Snow
Joe Weaver,
Corecction, Jon vs Night King
I still have no idea how they’re going to get cast in and out of there without us finding out each and every one of them. Maybe they won’t even try since they didn’t seem to last time as they were out and about in Seville. Without some leaks floating around we wouldn’t really know as much of what’s happening but it does still seem like it has the potential to be the most spoiler-filled of S8 filming so far. Can’t wait! 🙂
Clob,
I don’t think they’ll be able to hide them. Maybe they’ll try harder than last time. It was truly impossible to hide those 17 or 18 cast members, so they didn’t even bother. If this time it’s fewer, just a couple actors, maybe it’s worth a try.
Whatever this ends up showcasing, I’m just happy to see it get showcased. This was a wonderful set in Season 7.
Luka Nieto,
I suppose that would be sort of a give-away as well and cause some ripples in our conversations here huh… Well, pretty much anything is going to get us going. If we hear/see any number of them we’ll have questions about those not apparently present. If they’re few enough to sneak in and out, more questions.
I’ve learned that specific people not being present doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ‘eliminated’ though. I was 95% certain that Grey Worm was gone when Jacob wasn’t there for filming the first time.
Lots of conjecture incoming!
We have seen what appears to be an un-armed Jon with Cersei.
Could this be a show trial for Jon, possibly with the 7th cavalry riding in to rescue him just in time?
Looks as though there’ll be another meeting at the Dragonpit after all, if they’re seemingly using the same platform/ set.
Kinda bummed if that’s the case.. its just way too repetitive if you ask me.
Lovely dirt.
Why would Jon be on trial? I know there was some speculation the Golden Company would attack Winterfell but Jon being captured seems very unlikely in my opinion.
My interpretation of the Croatia filming was
This will be the testing grounds for Cersei’s secret weapon. An army of Franken Lannisters created by Qyburn. Then the NK sees it, falls in love and asks for Cersei’s hand and we have the unwholiest of weddings. With Qyburn taking the speton’s place.
(Dr Evil laugh)
Eonwe,
Tyrion, Varys, Bronn and the Hound are going to look so cute in their bridesmaid gowns.
It’s not too farfetched. Aren’t many of us sort of expecting Cersei to direct Qyburn to mass produce more zombie-Mountain-type soldiers? IIRC, in S7E7, before seeing the wight, she ‘joked’ that it would be an improvement in their condition for the inhabitants of KL to become part of the army of the dead…..
If Cersei is still in power for these scenes, it seems it would not be a good idea for Dany/Jon’s forces to meet with her in her territory.
As others suggested, maybe it’s a post-hostilities meeting place where the fate of the defeated and Westeros in general is decided…..
If they are building it out with the same exact specs, perhaps it’s for a scene that takes places immediately after Jon and Dany sail away on “the love boat.” Although, with such a long filming schedule there, it seems like it must be a complicated shoot.
It admit, though, that I’ve somewhat lost the time sequence in the last two seasons. How much Westerosi time has passed between Jon’s resurrection at the onset of Season 6 and Season 7’s boat sex finale?
LadyGoodman,
Good luck trying to find a timeline that makes sense. Sam´s spent the whole season 6 traveling to Old Town but he left that city and arrived to Winterfell in one chapter. There´s also Theon and Yara journey from the Iron Islands to Meereen in a couple of chapters (look at a world map to see the distances). And Varys was in the season 06 finale in Dorne and then he was with Dany´s fleet in the same chapter.
There´s also Euron´s fleet. A World of Ice and Fire tell us that Braavos can build a war galley per day thanks to the assembly line and the differents ships parts already build. How much time took that fleet to be built?
And then there´s S07Ep06 which doesn´t make any sense. It looks like Jon and cia spent a couple of days in the frozen lake until Dany arrives to the rescue. Crows and Dragons can reach Match speeds.
So my advice. Don´t make calculations. For all we know next season we may see Cersei with a flat stomach but still pregant and Dany´s showing like she is five months into a pregnancy.
Ëonwë,
Agree with all of this. But I think Dany flew off NOTW because she couldn’t just sit and do nothing, not because she obtained a Raven after Gendry/Usain Bolt made it back to Eastwatch.
At least 6 months must’ve passed between the Sept blowing and Dany landing at DS to give time for Ollena to travel to Dorne, Varys to get to slavers bay and back to Westeros. A lot of folks are OK with the patchy timeline.. I’m not one of them.
I reckon it must be at least 1y between Jons resurrection and the fall of the wall.
Ëonwë,
Also, don’t forget Euron has that big cock nobody saw. He can achieve anything.
Apollo,
Oh God! I forgot Euron and his pecker. Seriously. What the hell were thinking the writers when they wrote the kingsmoot? It was one of the worst parts of the show. They already had the material in the books, one of AFFC finest moments and we got… Euron speaking of dicks.
Thanks! That jives with my personal Westerosi calendar but the ship building/world crossing logistics were making me question whether several years had passed.
I rewatched season 7 whilst home sick this weekend and I was trying to determine just how fresh Jon’s stab wounds are!
Isn’t the platform part of the Dragonpit though? That wasn’t set up just for the parlay I don’t think. i.e. Cersei didn’t have that platform built in the Dragonpit. Or if she did, maybe it just wasn’t taken away/dismantled.
If we see the same tents and chairs go up, however, then that would be a stronger indication that another meeting were to take place. Otherwise it could mean that any number of things could happen here.
Everybody needs to be just a little bit. It would be really tough to do an entertaining program AND show a more realistic passage of time. It’s especially difficult when there were so many characters and places to cover. I do understand wanting to have a grasp on time spans though.
Clob,
… and I have found myself trying to compare what we do have a general idea for length of time to when we don’t. Meaning, show equalling books, up to Jon’s assassination was a period of close to three years (Jon Arryn killed 298 AC to Snow in late 300). To me it feels like there’s been less time since Jon was resurrected than before. Just for me personally then I tend to think it’s around late 301 AC. Not very scientific I know. Without Westeros holidays or more mention of Name Days on the show it’s tough to pinpoint.
Clob,
and then of course there’s the realization that we don’t know how long a year is on their planet… Sure, George probably wrote with 365 days is a year in mind, but what if their year is 200 days or 450 days?? They could have a really slow orbit, or even an elliptical orbit which could account for the messed up seasons….
Okay, maybe we don’t need to throw that into it. 😛
_____________
• If I see one more last-minute, just-in-the-nick-of-time cavalry riding to the rescue, I’m turning off the TV and tossing a brick into it. Same thing if a hero is on the brink of defeat – when someone comes up from behind and stabs the bad guy in the back.
• “[W]hat appears to be an unarmed Jon with Cersei”:
(Hold on a minute…where’s that damn tinfoil hat of mine? … Oh, here it is.)
That may very well be Little Aegon’s Valonqar moment.
Clob,
Apollo wrote: “A lot of folks are OK with the patchy timeline.. I’m not one of them.”
Clob replied: “Everybody needs to be just a little bit. It would be really tough to do an entertaining program AND show a more realistic passage of time. It’s especially difficult when there were so many characters and places to cover. I do understand wanting to have a grasp on time spans though.”
_____________________
With the caveat that the show stages so many spectacular scenes with so many great characters that I’m loath to nitpick over details like inexplicable travel times and apparent geographical impossibilities….
• I was not thrilled with the “Beyond the Wall” director’s dismissive (non-)answer when he was asked about Dany’s warp speed flight from Dragonstone to the Frozen Lake. Perplexing details like that can take the viewer out of the “immersion” into the fictional world.
• I do not necessarily want to see boring, “filler” travelogues, or characters wasting precious time with dialogue like “Gee, it’s been four days since Gendry sprinted back to Eastwatch to summon help. I guess we’re really f*cked… Oh wait! Here comes the Mother of Dragons to save us! Hallelujah!”
• However, there have been many occasions when a line or two inconspicuously integrated into a conversation can establish the passage of time from a preceding event. For example…
(to be continued in a minute..)
(Continued from 11:30 pm Comment)
For example, as an unrepetent member of the Arya Super Ninja Assassin Warrior Princess Brigade, a while back I had scribbled a description of the kind of Sansa-Arya reconciliation conversation I wish we could’ve seen instead of the sudden “Gotcha!” moment in S7e7 (“How do you answer these charges…Lord Baelish”).
Anyway, after the cold open to S7e1 when Winter came for House Frey courtesy of Arya, Jaime’s conversation with Cersei in which he remarked that they needed new allies because the Freys were all dead, plus the friendly Lannister soldiers who told Arya they were in the Riverlands because, as Captain Understatement explained, there had been “some trouble” with the Freys, established unobtrusively that several days or more had passed since Faceless Walder/Arya’s Arbor Gold party.
I am NOT complaining. Just observing…
With the ionic execution sites gone from Kings Landing, this could be an execution site. Maybe someone is having another and final champion battling someone for his or her life?
Ten Bears,
I too am aboard the ship against the cavalry appearing at the last minute to save the day. We saw that at the Blackwater in s02, we saw it at the wall back in s04, we saw it in the Battle of the Bastards and we kinda saw it last season with Dany coming to the rescue.
Come on dudes, give us some twist for the final season.
Eonwe,
I think we will have a Ned death or more this last season.
Enharmony1625,
Doubtful. The Dragonpit was the home (or cage effectively), that housed the last of the dragons. That wooden platform would’ve served no purpose for the dragons, it’d simply be kindling. The platform was put in for these scenes to cover the gladiatorial pit underneath the amphitheater. Besides which- the timber was/is brand new whereas the ruins themselves have hardly stood the test of time.
Apollo,
6 months for Olenna to travel from KL to Dorne??? Where do you get that idea from?
I actually think the time lines aren’t off as long as we understand that the scenes we see aren’t chronologically shot in the sense that just because we move to a Samwell scene from a Cersei scene doesn’t mean that these scenes take place on the same day, week or even month. I’m perfectly fine with that and have found very little “time traveling” going on. However, crappy storytelling/plotting is a whole other game. Season 7’s episode 6 still irks me to name but one example.
Apollo,
So what was the Dragonpit in its heyday: a domed stadium or something? Before the Targ dragons shrunk in size over several generations, couldn’t they just burn through the enclosure, or bust through the walls like Dany’s two dragons did in S6e9 when they joined Drogon and Dany in their aerial assault on the Masters’ armada in Mereen?
If, as I’ve posited, dragon behavior and physiology is modeled on pet birds, they’d get angry and bored and start going psycho if penned up with no chance to exercise, ie, fly around. What was the Targaryens’ reason for confining them? We saw how unhappy Dany’s dragons were when she chained them up in a dark dungeon.
(If you can’t fly around and burn sh*t, what’s a dragon supposed to do for fun? If you’re a Targ, why even have dragons if you’re going to warehouse them like farm animals fattened for slaughter to make Oscar Meyer cold cuts?)
I recall Tyrion explaining that dragons don’t do well in captivity. Did GRRM go into detail about dragon psychology in the books?
Excuse my preoccupation: I’ve owned pet birds – well, they’ve owned me – for twenty years. Other people clip birds’ wings and keep them couped up in small cages all day; after a while, the birds will start mutilating themselves (plucking out their own feathers) out of boredom; get depressed; stop chirping; and hate their “jailers.” But give them freedom to fly, and they’re happy, loyal, and pleased to be part of a human “flock.”
– End Tangent –
“Goodguys all die and the Night King sits on an ice throne.
Works for me.
That’s not what I said. I said 6 months from the Sept explosion to Dany’s arrival to allow time for several journeys including Ollena’s.
But more specifically, it’d take months for Varys to travel from Dorne (post Ollena meeting) to Mereen and back to Dragonstone with the fleet.
Ten Bears,
Yes to all your questions (except the one about GRRM explaining dragon psychology). 😝
I can’t recall the reason they were penned in the dragonpit off hand, perhaps they’d become too difficult to manage.. will check. Also- we may learn more with the next book that’s coming on the Targaryen line.
If Dany had told Tyrion “I’m not going to sit here and do nothing when dragon fire might be needed north of the Wall,” the whole Gendry/ravens/dragon flight time kerfuffle could have been avoided. Simply, without exposition or overwrought timelines.
Ten Bears,
The Dragonpit was a domed arena of sorts. If you google the Dragonpit’s GoT Wiki page it goes into a little detail. I guess the Targaryens would chain up their dragons here when they weren’t riding/using them, and they kept the juvenile dragons there to grow up. There was a riot after the Dance of Dragons where a mob rushed the Dragonpit and it took thousands of rioters to kill five of the dragons in the pit. It is explained, “The Dragonpit itself was left in ruins when the dragon, Dreamfyre, crashed into the ceiling in an attempt to escape, bringing down the entire structure, killing itself and several hundreds of rioters.”
So I guess that kinda sorta explains why they didn’t just escape like Dany’s dragons did in Mereen. A little.
This is also assuming that we can trust the Wiki page, but I tend to think we can in this case.
Edit: I guess it is also supposed to be much, much larger in the books. The Wiki page describes it as, “Despite it’s simplistic name – “dragon pit” – it was actually a gigantic colosseum-like mega-structure. Thirty knights could ride abreast into its entrance.” So I’m guessing, in the books, it wasn’t as cramped for the enormous full-grown dragons.
Apollo,
Yeah, I should have reviewed footage of the parlay in 7×07 and looked closer at the platform.
I do agree that it would be redundant for another big meeting of sorts, so I hope that it turns of that the platform just wasn’t taken down after the last meeting. It’s not like the Dragonpit is being used for anything so the platform needs to be removed in order to make way for other events or anything.
I’m still hoping it will be the site for some epic dragon scene.
… but, but, but… what if that cavalry is the actual Arya Super Ninja Assassin Warrior Princess and her personal brigade of Sandor, Gendry and Hot Pie!?!? 😉
Ten Bears,
The Dragon Pit was built by Maegor the cruel as a legacy to his ego (like the Red Keep).
Maegor was denounced by the Faith as an abomination born of incest. He fought in a trial by seven and was the sole survivor. He spent nearly thirty days comatose but woke. Then he mounted Valerion the Black Dread and flew towards the Sept of Commemoration and burned it (with the faith militant men who were inside).
From the ashes Maegor ordered to build suitable stables for Balerion and the rest of the Targaryen dragons. And so a colossal building was erected. Keep in mind that it should house Balerion and up to twenty more dragons. So in the books the Dragon Pit it’s huge. Because Balerion was the biggest dragon Westeros ever saw.
Dragons didn’t grow small. It’s more like they never aged to be as ancient as Balerion. The Dance of Dragons killed nearly all of the Targaryen dragons. And the youngest survivors were quite posible killed by the masters according to a AFFC.
The Dragon Pit collapsed upon itself when one of the dragons tried to break through the the dome the night King’s Landing people revolted and killed the dragons housed there.
Enharmony1625,
Me too. It seems they’ll be filming there for some time, so I’m totally intrigued as to what it’ll be.
He did. But not in the way of saying in an interview “Well dragons are…”.
No, George has tell us a few pieces of dragon´s througth a character. Septon´s Barth (Jaehaerys I hand) and his nearly lost works “An unnatural history”.
Septon´s Barth is George himself discussing his own world meta.
According to Barth, the children of the forest (and later the first men) greenseers could take control of ravens and even made them speak the human tongue. That´s how the raven system was created but as the magic faded, so did the system until what we have today. Ravens trained to travel to certain locations carriying scrolls. The maesters don´t give any credit to Barth´s words.
BUT as we saw in the book and series, Bran and the three eyed raven can indeed take control of crows. And in ADWD and one of the leaked chapters of TWOW, we see that Bran can make those ravens he controls to speak.
So yeah, Barth wasn´t senile when he talked about ravens and greenseers.
How this relates to dragons? According to Barth dragons don´t have a gender. Like the valyrian wording of prince. It can be either male or female. And this hypothesis by Barth makes sense, since there are no recordings of Dragons mating or engaging in courtship. With so many dragons in the early Targaryen reign… nobody saw two giants winged lizards procreating?
Barth also has another thing to say about valyrian´s dragons. They were breed by the valyrians. They´re not a natural species. They were created by crossing the fire wyrms of the fourteen flames with maybe the flying wyrms of sothoryos.
So I´m gonna jump into a tinfoil. The series tell us that the white walkers were created by the children of the forest as a weapon against the first men. So maybe the book version, the Others, have the same origins. They´re unnatural beings created by magic as weapons.
George has said that the Ice and Fire of his books are the Others and the Targs Dragons. It makes sense. Unnatural beings made by magic. There´s speculation on wether the world´s seasons are a result from some unnatural tampering. Well, it´s been noted in Westeros that since the last Targ dragon died, summers were getting shorter and winters were lasting longer.
Jaehaerys,
Thanks for the answer. (“The Dragonpit itself was left in ruins when the dragon, Dreamfyre, crashed into the ceiling in an attempt to escape, bringing down the entire structure, killing itself and several hundreds of rioters.”).
I do not know about trusting a Wiki. However, that sad scenario sounds realistic enough. Frightened birds will crash into walls, windows and ceilings that they’d ordinarily avoid.
Not to get too far off point….
I sometimes wonder if it’s part of human nature – well of some humans – to want to drive grand, beautiful nimals into extinction. I saw evidence of that in a whaling museum in Connecticut; in a book with photos of hundreds of buffalo carcasses; TV coverage of mass dolphin slaughters in a cove in Japan (Maisie Williams has fiercely protested this); idiots shooting elephants just to saw off their tusks; and smiling morons posing with the lion they just murdered because …I don’t know why.
________
Oh, well that’s a different story! Then I’ll be doing cartwheels and watching that scene on a perpetual loop all night. (Which is pretty much what I did after watching my dagger-flipping princess with her new ‘do and spiffy new combat suit walk into the WF courtyard and put on a show with Brienne in S7e4.)
Ten Bears,
Not a wiki. It is extracted from A World of Ice and Fire, an encyclopedia coauthored by Martin himself.
But I wouldn´t call the dragons beautifull animals. They´re living weapons used first by the valyrian dragonlords and later the Targs in their wars. George has said that they are nuclear weapons.
Ten Bears,
Yeah, the only reason I would trust the Wiki page in this situation is because (like Eonwe eluded too, but I think he wasn’t aware that I actually did find it from a Wiki page) all the ASoIaF Wiki pages are created by fans that found the info from the A World of Ice and Fire books and the ASoIaF series. Anyone can tamper with them but I tend to think only dedicated fans are adding to/putting the pages together, so I trust it. Now, trusting that everything written in the history book and the novels actually happened in their fake history is a different story completely (that is what I love about GRRM’s writing, he makes things realistic in that not everything from history can be trusted as facts).
You pose a very interesting question of human nature. I would like to think that it is not in our nature to drive animals to extinction, and that it just unfortunately happens because many people want what animals have to give, and they don’t care about the consequences. If animals didn’t have resources that humans desired, I would like to think that driving animals to the point of extinction just wouldn’t happen. But that is the optimist in me. Some people are greedy and tend not to care about others as long as they are profiting, which is an unfortunate reality for many species of animals. It truly is sad.
Jaehaerys,
I would also add that the “it’s only me who’s doing it, so nobody will notice” mentality contributes to widespread problems like extinction.
A lot of people, for whatever reason, tend to think they’re the only one doing something in particular, so it won’t cause a noticeable problem. Unfortunately, many people tend to think this way, so it ends up being a lot of people are doing the action that causes the problem, not just one. That’s partially how you get widespread problems.
Example: “I’m some asshole who loves to shoot exotic animals from far away because it makes me feel tough. It shouldn’t be a big deal since I’m the only one doing it.”
Well guess what, a lot of people do it, which is why some of these animals are extinct or nearly extinct.
Another example: “I don’t want to vote. It’s always between a douche and a turd sandwich, so I think i’ll just skip voting this year. It’s only one vote, so how could it possibly make any difference in the grand scheme of things?”
Meanwhile, post-election, the same people who didn’t vote end up bitching the most about the government not doing what they want because their guy lost.
Another example: “I’m the guy who can’t seem to keep up with rush hour traffic on the road because I’d prefer to pay attention to my cell phone, but hey, I’m the only one doing it, so it shouldn’t cause a problem right?”
Meanwhile, half the people on the road are driving while staring at their phones making an accident inevitable and traffic piling up to the point of a standstill.
-End rant-
I my opinion they may use this place to shot Iron Throne room when it get destroyed. It may look like this.