Major spoilers for “Game of Thrones” Season 7.
The opening scene of “Game of Thrones” Season 7 is still one of its most memorable. In it, Arya Stark — wearing the face of Walder Frey, who she killed at the end of Season 6 — tricks the rest of the Frey family and poisons them. She then removes the face and tells Walder’s wife: “The North remembers.”
However, what we don’t realize is that a lot of that face-changing involved practical effects, including an actual mask made of actor David Bradley’s face.
“I was thrilled they made a full head prosthetic,” said actress Maisie Williams in a new HBO post-season show. “As an actor, to really reveal yourself and take another face off your face rather than just pretend, that just made it a lot easier and a lot more fun.”
All of this is shown off in the new HBO behind-the-scenes series “The Game Revealed.” Each episode is a breakdown of one of the season 7 installments, with insight into how they managed certain effects-heavy scenes. This includes the aforementioned Frey massacre, along with the initial White Walker parade.
“The Game Revealed” also goes into the thought processes behind other scenes and the amount of work that was put into the smallest details. For example, the hand-painted map at King’s Landing was actually hand-painted and the painter we see early in the scene was actually the designer of the map.
Watch the full episode above. Unfortunately, fans will have to watch the remaining six episodes on HBO platforms.