Game of Thrones: WHY The Long Night director did not make Battle of Winterfell a ruthless episode

Is it even a good Game of Thrones season if one crucial character isn't killed off leaving fans on the edge? If your answer is no, we've got some news for you. For seven seasons, Game of Thrones fans waited for the Battle of Winterfell, which took place in the episode titled The Long Night, to unfold. The internet went wild guessing which crucial character would meet his/her end. From Arya Stark to Danaerys Targaryen, fans had theories of how each character could go down in the Battle of Winterfell. However, everyone was disappointed at how the battle between the living and dead played out. 

Yes, we became the flagbearers of "We love Arya" club following her unforgettable leap at the Night King. But the episode did not feature any jaw-dropping, plot twisting and edge-of-seat death scenes that left fans of the long-running show disheartened. Turns out, it wasn't just the fans who wanted a mind-boggling death scene in the episode. The Long Night director Miguel Sapochnik reveals that he intended to kill everyone in the episode. 

In new podcast interview with IndieWire, confessed he tried convincing showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss kill more characters. However, they did not want to kill the main characters for the D&D wanted to save it for the final. "There was the fear of it feeling like a remix of every battle we’ve ever done. There was the dissatisfaction of we couldn’t kill all the people… I wanted to kill everyone. I wanted to kill Jorah in the horse charge at the beginning. I was up for killing absolutely everyone. I wanted it to be ruthless so that in the first 10 minutes you say, 'all bets are off, anyone can die,'" he said. 

"David and Dan didn’t want to, and there was a lot of back and forthing about that, and ultimately it was because they were saving it for 'The Bells,' kind of… So it was hard. So I couldn’t kill anyone, and it had to be interesting - how did we do that? And again, credit to them, they let me engage early; it was a sustained engagement. I got to really question and argue with them, and I’ve learned with them when to stop arguing because there’s a point where they dig in and you just don’t wanna be there," he added. 

Sapochnik further explained that at the end of the day, the show is D&D's vision and not his. "The key thing is, it’s not my show; I didn’t come up with the show, I didn’t make it, I am a hired director to go and do that, they have let me in. And let me be involved and I’ve really loved doing that, but final cut is not mine, final cut is theirs. It’s their choice. Also, who’s ideas they take on board is their choice as well. So they let me engage and so I engaged at every level I could to try and think of 'how do we stop this from being a boring battle?' Because I get bored of battles, I’m not very interested in them," he explained. 

The director added that he tried to keep the episode interesting by giving each of them a story thread to keep the interests of the viewer intact. Which means there was "probably another 20 minutes of battle that is everybody’s story from the beginning to the end that we cut out, but we shot."

The director explained, "There are 24 characters in that battle, I gave every single character a story, all the way through - a specific interaction, all a journey that was not in the script, and I did it specifically because I needed to make sure that we all knew where we were and those looks [between characters] were built on something, they weren’t just looks ... I wanted to try and give [the actors] tasks and in giving them tasks, it created for them a story whether on camera or off camera, that meant I could dip in, I could say 'where are you right now, what are you fighting for?' I could give them simple questions and they were things that would engage them so they would remember what we were doing, because otherwise it becomes this laborious act of fighting and trying to remember not to get hit each time. We were hoping and striving for something that was a bit more than that."

What did you think of the Battle of Winterfell? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below. 

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