Spoilers ahead for season 7, episode 4, “The Spoils of War”
Game of Thrones threw a dragon-shaped curveball at viewers last night as Daenerys took to the battlefield in a big way: dragonback, attacking Jaime Lannister’s forces as they were heading home from their recent victory at Highgarden. With Drogon torching her enemies from the sky, and the Dothraki slaughtering every man in sight on the ground, the Khaleesi cleaned up in a matter of minutes.
Actually shooting the sequence took quite a bit longer. In a nearly 14-minute video released on the Game of Thrones YouTube channel, the show’s creators talk about the battle’s explosive effects, Dany’s ride, and the burden on their poor, poor stuntmen.
The “loot train attack” may sound more like an Overwatch special event than a Game of Thrones battle, but it’s one of the show’s most impressive sequences to date. It apparently even set a new world record for most people set on fire, which the show’s creators have been bragging about since June. Kudos to everyone involved, but especially the stuntmen, who had to hold their breath and remain chill while they were being torched.