Game of Thrones Director Finally Explains Why The Hell Ghost the Direwolf Wasn't In "Battle of the Bastards"
Tech Insider – “Game of Thrones” outdid itself for the penultimate episode of season six with one of the craziest battle sequences we’ve ever seen. Among the standouts of the day when it came to leadership, though, Ser Davos Seaworth was a worthy adversary to the Boltons.
But among the epic and visceral scenes of warfare, some fans were missing a key element: Jon Snow’s direwolf, Ghost. The beast was conspicuously absent from the battlefield. In fact, we haven’t seen much of Ghost since Jon was resurrected in the second episode of the season.
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Holy shit, what a nerd headline. Sometimes I out-nerd myself so hard I have to do a double take. I’m telling you, the lack of sports on TV is really fucking with my routine – I’m a huge Thrones fan, but after the hour ends that’s it for me until next week. Now I find myself deep in the Reddit rabbit hole reading theories and watching Making-Of features and shit all night. Anyway…
Obviously “Battle of the Bastards” was one of the best episodes of television in history (maybe THE best – it’s currently the highest rated TV episode in history with at least 1,000 votes cast, topping Breaking Bad’s “Ozymandias”). But if there was one and only one complaint about it it was the fact that Ghost was nowhere to be found. The most badass non speaking character on the show didn’t make a single appearance in the most badass episode in the most badass fight scene. KFC had his 5 biggest questions, but mine was why wasn’t Ghost around to rip throats out? Or to finish off Ramsay?
It’s a pretty sensible answer.
“I would prefer to have ghost with Davos [rather] than with Jon,” Cunningham said. “Even though it’s his direwolf, I just like the idea of an insurance policy.”
When we lamented about the absence of Ghost in “The Battle of the Bastards,” Cunningham assured us that wouldn’t have ended well for the direwolf. “Yeah that would have been cool, [but] obviously a big battle like that is no place for a direwolf,” he said. “They’re not gonna last very long – I mean look at what happened to Wun Wun, the last of the giants.”
“Battle of the Bastards” director Miguel Sapochnik also spoke with Business Insider’s Jethro Nededog, explaining the absence of Ghost. “[Ghost] was in there in spades originally, but it’s also an incredibly time consuming and expensive character to bring to life,” Sapochnik told Business Insider on Monday. “Ultimately we had to choose between Wun-Wun and the direwolf, so the dog bit the dust.”
It’s always about money. That, and I guess a big dog wouldn’t exactly thrive in a 10,000 person battle. Whatever, back to Reddit for me. Tell Spags to do the next blog, I’m gonna be a while.