Game of Thrones Spent a Mere 55 Days Shooting One Battle Scene for Its Final Season

Complex reports that assistant director Jonathan Quinlan posted a photo of a card that was handed out to the cast and crew as a thank you for enduring a grueling 55-day battle scene shoot. He’s since deleted the picture, but the text reportedly read:

“This is for the Night Dragons. For enduring 55 straight nights. For enduring the cold, the snow, the rain, the mud, the sheep shit of Toome and the winds of Magheramorne. When tens of millions of people around the world watch this episode a year from now, they won’t know how hard you worked. They won’t care how tired you were or how tough it was to do your job in sub-freezing temperatures. They’ll just understand that they’re watching something that’s never been done before. And that’s because of you.”

Season 8’s crew of directors includes Miguel Sapochnik and David Nutter, according to IndieWire, who are famous for their work on the episodes “Battle of the Bastards” and “The Rains of Castamere,” respectively. Both those episodes featured bloody battles that everyone still talks about, so there are high expectations for the finale. It sounds like they’re living up to the hype—unless it just took 55 days because the cast was being fed the script one line at a time.