Director of last week’s Game of Thrones episode admits timeline is “hazy”

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Now, I know there are people who complain that GAME OF THRONES has become fan-fiction – overly action-oriented fan service that dumbs down the characters and plots. And I fully agree! However, as a fan, I also fucking love it! I mean, if it means SPOILERS zombie-ice-dragon? Then sign me up!

Though, unlike me, many fans are concerned about geography and timelines, and director of last week’s episode “Beyond the Wall” Alan Taylor, addresses these concerns in an interview with Variety:

We were aware that timing was getting a little hazy…We’ve got Gendry running back, ravens flying a certain distance, dragons having to fly back a certain distance…In terms of the emotional experience, [Jon and company] sort of spent one dark night on the island in terms of storytelling moments. We tried to hedge it a little bit with the eternal twilight up there north of The Wall. I think there was some effort to fudge the timeline a little bit by not declaring exactly how long we were there. I think that worked for some people, for other people it didn’t. They seemed to be very concerned about how fast a raven can fly but there’s a thing called plausible impossibilities, which is what you try to achieve, rather than impossible plausibilities. So I think we were straining plausibility a little bit, but I hope the story’s momentum carries over some of that stuff.

He went on to say, “it’s cool that the show is so important to so many people that it’s being scrutinized so thoroughly“

Now, if you’re someone that gets hung up on logistical things like that, and not able to deal with “fridge logic”, then that’s your thing. Nothing wrong with that (even Taylor admits it was stretching credulity). But for me, emotional resonance trumps all that, in the same way that you don’t question in JURASSIC PARK that the T-Rex’s pen all of a sudden becomes a fifty foot drop – because in the moment it’s scary and cool, and you don’t worry about the logistics. There were other problems with this episode (namely the plan was kind of dumb in the first place), but plot-related time displacement was – in my opinion – not one of them.

Meanwhile, you can see last episode of the season on HBO this Sunday!