- Warning: Spoilers ahead for HBO's "Game of Thrones."
- Director David Nutter explained Jon Snow's bittersweet goodbye to Ghost in an interview with INSIDER, saying that keeping the wolf apart from the actors helped mitigate any "issues" and simplified the process.
- This is why Jon didn't go over to Ghost and pet him goodbye, a choice which has been met with backlash.
- Visit INSIDER.com for more stories.
"Game of Thrones" fans who love the Stark direwolves were dealt yet another blow on Sunday night when Jon Snow said goodbye to Ghost from across the Winterfell courtyard.
According to the director of the episode, Jon didn't have any physical interaction with Ghost, despite his sad whining at seeing Jon leaving, because the production team needed to streamline the filming process.
"Well the good thing was [Ghost] wasn't right next to the actors and so forth," director David Nutter told INSIDER when asked about the challenges of having a CGI wolf in the scene. "So there wasn't any issues with green screen or situations where we're dealing with any kind of rotoscoping."
We asked if this meant keeping Ghost and Jon separated was part of the plan for simplifying filming, and Nutter responded with a simple "yes."
Read more:INSIDER's full interview with director David Nutter about 'Game of Thrones' season 8
The abrupt goodbye between Jon and Ghost has led to many fans expressing sadness and upset, given how important the direwolves are to the Stark children in George R.R. Martin's book series.
Why inserting the direwolves on "Game of Thrones" is so tough
Nutter mentioned both green screen and rotoscoping as elements which could've introduced more "issues" with the scene. This is because the direwolves on "Game of Thrones" are filmed separately from the rest of the entire show, and added into scenes digitally.
Rotoscoping is a time-consuming visual effects (VFX) process in which people have to go frame-by-frame to manually edit one element of a scene. Ever since the second season of "Game of Thrones," the wolves used to play Ghost, Grey Wind, Summer, Nymeria, and Shaggydog were real wolves shot on a Canadian greenscreen stage.
The VFX team would then effectively cut-and-paste (or to use the technical term, rotoscope) the wolves into the scenes you see on the show. This is part of the reason why the characters rarely physically interact with the direwolves; it makes it less complicated to work the wolves into a live-action shot if all they're doing is standing there.
VFX producer Steve Kullback once explained another reason why the wolves are kept apart from the cast.
"Wolves remain dangerous even after training," Kullback said in HBO's "Inside Game of Thrones" book. "The reality is, wolves can be trained to do only so much, and that has introduced a challenge in its own right, which the writers sometimes have to work around."
Jon Snow last physically "touched" Ghost on the fourth season, when his direwolf came trotting up after the Night's Watch had successfully killed all of the rebelling men who took up residence at Craster's Keep.
But Ghost all-but-vanished from the storyline for the rest of the fourth and fifth seasons. He cropped up again after Jon was assassinated and stood guard beside Jon's body, but again Ghost didn't physically interact with any characters for those scene. Then he went back off-screen.
Fans noticed his omission during the Battle of the Bastards. Surely Ghost would've been some help against the Bolton army? Director Miguel Sapochnik told Business Insider at the time that Ghost was originally meant to partake in the battle for Winterfell.
"He was in there in spades originally, but it's also an incredibly time consuming and expensive character to bring to life," Sapochnik said. "Ultimately we had to choose between Wun-Wun and the direwolf, so the dog bit the dust."
Ghost once again had a planned scene for the seventh season, but that was cut as well.
Read more: 'Game of Thrones' writer addresses fans desperate for a scene with Jon Snow's direwolf on season 7
So we arrived at the eighth and final season, and were gifted with only a few glimpses of Ghost. He first appeared on episode two, standing in the background behind Jon, Sam, and Edd. Then we watched him charge into battle on episode and three. And lastly, the courtyard goodbye scene.
Each of the Stark direwolves have a much larger importance to the story line in Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" book series. And though we know Ghost and Nymeria are still alive in the show's version of events, we don't expect any additional meaningful scenes between the Starks and their special wolves.
Fans will have to settle with knowing the "Game of Thrones" team wanted to simplify the production process and that meant a bittersweet parting of the ways when it came to the direwolves.
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