The battle for Winterfell in Game of Thrones' most recent episode was by far the largest scene the show has ever produced. Comprised of 80 horses, hundreds of extras, a giant, and all action with almost no dialogue, the show's first narrative battle scene (the others were massacres) set a new standard for cinematic TV.
"As soon as we wrote Episode 9, we knew it was going to operate on a scale that we had never operated on before," David Benioff, executive producer and writer on the show, said in a recently released behind-the-scenes video.
It was important to Miguel Sapochnik, who directed this episode and "Hardhome," that the psychological experience of the battle was salient. "We really wanted to get into the mindset of what it would be like to be in a battle like that," he said.
"It was hard," admitted Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow, the protagonist of the scene. "It was a long, long slog. And it couldn’t just be a battle. There wouldn’t be stakes. You have to be following someone."