Producers and writers for Game of Thrones have told Entertainment Weekly that Season 6 will feature the biggest battle sequence yet.
“It’s definitely the biggest,” Game of Thrones writer and producer Bryan Cogman said. “We’ve always wanted to get to a place—story-wise and budget-wise and time-wise and resource-wise—where we would be able to do a proper battle, with one army on one side, one army on another side.”
“We wondered, ‘Why don’t you see more fully fleshed-out battles in movies and TV?’” Game of Thrones showrunner Dan Weiss said. “Then you get into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to actually shoot these things in a way that isn’t just helter-skelter chaos but actually gives you a sense of battle geography and the ebb and flow, and you realize why.”
So who will take part in this giant battle?
The Game of Thrones Season 6 trailer probably has the answer.
Footage includes lined up cavalry, wildling fighters, archers and a row of shields with the flayed man sigil of House Bolton. It would seem a resurrected Jon Snow is marching South with an army of wildlings at his back, likely looking to take back Winterfell from the Boltons.
Miguel Sapochnik, who directed Season 5’s undead siege, “Hardhome,” returned to direct the battle episode. The other Game of Thrones showrunner, David Benioff, said horses would be a part of the sequence, which matches up with the cavalry-heavy trailer footage.
A “proper battle,” with two armies in the field, seems like a natural progression for a show which has tried to top itself every year. While Game of Thrones Season 1 knocked Tyrion out with a war hammer to avoid showing an actual battle, Game of Thrones Season 2 brought us the complete Battle of the Blackwater. Subsequent seasons brought The Battle of Castle Black and the destruction of Hardhome by the undead forces of the Night’s King.
Game of Thrones will return to HBO on April 24.
