Blizzard of blood
Winter of death on ‘Thrones’
BELFAST — It was nothing less than a supernatural gor’easter.
After years of anticipation, winter finally came roaring onto “Game of Thrones” Sunday, ripping through the series with an epic, eyepopping battle that devolved into a frozen holocaust: a blizzard of blood and, for many, fates worse than death.
In an unexpected and sudden attack, the mysterious, human-hating White Walkers, led by their thorn-skulled “Night’s King,” unleashed a sorcerous storm of ice, wind and snow that tore through the huge free-folk settlement of Hardhome, where more than 100,000 hard-bitten humans had gathered.
The icy demons arrived in its wake, slaughtering men, women and children, presumably to recruit into their ghoulish
army of undead warriors.
“What happens here is dark, very dark,” Kristofer Hivju, who plays the flame-haired wildling general Tormund Giantsbane, told the Daily News on the Belfast set of the HBO series.
“I can only imagine how this will all end,” he said.
The sudden loss of about 95,000 people was something new, even for a show in which favorite characters frequently suffer horrible, unexpected deaths.
Caught in the middle of the invasion was Night’s Watch Lord Commander Jon Snow (Kit Harington), who found himself crossing swords with a vicious, inhuman foe.
“Jon is one of the best fighters in the kingdom,” Harington said during a break while filming the scene.
“We’ve seen him win these incredible fights in the past, but against this thing, he just stands no chance — he tries to fight and he’s just thrown around like a cat with a f----ing mouse.”
During the duel, Snow was grabbed, shoved and swatted by the hulking, supernatural swordsman.
“This Walker was playing with him,” says Harington.
“It becomes a sort of survival thing with him. Jon gets beaten up and manages to just make it out alive, and we find that there’s another thing that can kill White Walkers besides ‘dragon glass’ — Jon with his sword,” made of Valyrian steel. Harington says the roiling battle was a shot of adrenaline in a season that has been heavy on dialogue.
“There’s been a lot of politics and talk this season, and I was getting antsy,” he admits. “I kept wondering, ‘When do I get to do some fighting?’ and then this sequence came up, and of course it is incredible.” The breathtaking sequence was shot last fall in the Magheramorne quarry near Belfast and took nearly a month to film.
Teams of technicians transformed the