We’ve talked at length about how disappointing the final season of Game of Thrones was, but we’ve always made it clear that it’s the writing that ruined season 8. There’s no denying that a lot of work went into the final season, and we’ve got so many things to appreciate about Game of Thrones. The cinematography and music were two of the highlights of the season, as were the performances of several of the actors who did everything they could to make their characters shine.
HBO recently aired a Game of Thrones documentary that chronicles all the incredible effort that went into the final season of the series. The two-hour Game of Thrones: The Last Watch behind-the-scenes film delivered several tidbits from the final season, including an epic scene that shows us exactly how Kit Harington found out that his character would kill Daenerys in the finale. Thanks to an earlier interview with Emilia Clarke, we now know how both stars reacted to the news.
Harington found out about Dany’s fate during the table read, and that scene has already gone viral. Clips on Twitter and YouTube show how devastated the actor was to find out that Jon would kill Dany. The scene is very emotional and it’s not surprising to see it go viral, as it perfectly portrays the deep connections between these actors and the characters they played for nearly a decade. In the scene below from the documentary, we also get to see the cast’s reactions to other moments in the final season, including Jorah’s death and the killing of the Night King. Of course, the reaction to Jon and Dany’s final scene still takes the cake.
Unlike Harington, Clarke already knew about what was going to go down. The actress revealed as much during a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly. Clarke said she wanted to talk about the scene with Harington while the two were flying to Belfast for that table read. However, Jon Snow knew nothing of that scene, because he wanted to find out what happens during the table read:
Sitting next to Clarke on the flight, as it so happens, was Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow. Harington deliberately hadn’t yet read the scripts so he could experience the story for the first time with all his castmates. Clarke, positively bursting with wanting to talk about her storyline, found the flight maddening. “This sums up Kit and I’s friendship,” she says, and sputtered: “Boy! Would you? Seriously? You’re just not?…”
At the table read, Clarke sat across from Harington so she could “watch him compute all of this.” When they got to their final scene together, recalls Harington, “I looked at Emilia, and there was a moment of me realizing, ‘No, no…'”
And Clarke nodded back, sadly, ‘Yes…’
“He was crying,” Clarke says. “And then it was kind of great him not having read it.”
Now that Game of Thrones has been off air for more than a week and we’ve had time to accept that one of the best TV shows in history is over, it’s behind-the-scenes tidbits like these that will make us miss all the characters and all the actors who made us love Game of Thrones with such passion for so many years.
