Creating Game of Thrones

BGL’s Game of Thrones window, prior to solder.

Picking the subjects of our window was not difficult: Dany and her dragon would be primary and Jon, girded for battle, would be secondary.

Daenerys Targaryen is the most complex of characters, linked by birthright to the game, at first victimized by her crazed, despicable brother and later reborn as an avenging angel whose ennobling vision is consumed by the very fire that gave it birth.  

Daenerys Targaryen, alternately conquered and conquering, brutally and shockingly captivates the audience, an audience that knows well that Emilia Clarke’s performance rightfully will be etched in memory for years. 

Like Clarke’s Daenerys, Kit Harrington’s Jon Snow captured a Winter wight and the imaginations of millions.

In the penultimate episode of season six, Jon’s reckless stance against Ramsay Bolton’s cavalrymen and overwhelming odds is just the beginning of an end.

GOT’s brilliant director Miguel Sapochnik unleashed all of his many skills.

Jon’s horse is shot out from under him; and Jon draws Longclaw to fight the battle of the bastards, a battle that has the never-less-than-sadistic Ramsay ordering mindlessly the slaughter of his own men. The shielded phalanx chokes Jon’s forces. The ensuing battle is breathtakingly chaotic.

It is a terrifying episode that underscores how Jon Snow, who ‘knows nothing,’ knows never to give up.