Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen finally met in this week's Game of Thrones — a union that fans of George R. R. Martin's books have been anticipating for... well, basically the past 20 years, since the first novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series was published in 1996.

And with a meeting this momentous, no one was in the mood to be subtle — Melisandre literally said "I've brought ice and fire together," FFS — but it's safe to say that the prevailing temperature in the throne room of Dragonstone was "frosty."

Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss give us some insight into Jon and Dany's much-anticipated face-off in a behind-the-scenes segment after the episode, revealing that, after years of hype, both characters have a few preconceptions that they have to work through.

"She looks at him and she thinks this is some unwashed barbarian from the North, and a bastard - his name is Jon Snow, yet he’s calling himself king," Weiss notes. "If she knew what he’d seen, she’d be looking very, very differently at what he’s telling her, but at this moment in time, she only sees somebody who’s trying to carve up a piece of her kingdom for himself, and if what this guy is saying is true, then it really is an issue and she has her own very serious issues to deal with in the shape of the woman who’s now sitting on the throne."

You'd think that Dany would be a little less judgmental about "unwashed barbarians" given her time with the Dothraki — or maybe they're the reason she places such importance on personal hygiene.

Either way, Benioff points out that she wants to make Jon as uncomfortable as possible: "That audience chamber was built by Aegon Targaryen to intimidate anyone who came there."

(Sidenote: We've been hearing a lot about Aegon Targaryen in recent weeks — and we have a few theories as to why that might be.)

But Jon's first impression isn't much more positive, Weiss says: "He doesn’t have much insight into what she’s gone through, so I think he sees a rich girl with a fancy name sitting in a big chair with a fancy dress on, proclaiming herself the queen of the world, so I don’t think he’s looking upon her with as much respect as she has come to take as her due."

Benioff adds, "He’s a very strong-willed person, he didn’t come down there to bend the knee, he didn’t come down there to join her in her fight against Cersei — none of that matters at this point; all that matters is fighting the dead."

We've lost that loving feeling. Image: hbo

Harington himself opens up about Jon's first impression of Dany in a new Entertainment Weekly interview: "As far as Jon knows, he’s just meeting this queen he’s heard of and trying to negotiate with her — he’s not meeting Daenerys, who the audience has been watching for so many years. That helps with the surprise of it," he says. "He walks into the room and doesn’t expect to see such a beautiful young woman of similar age to him. Any young man’s reaction is going to be, ‘Okay…’ but he puts that aside, because he has to.”

He might think Daenerys is gorgeous, but Clarke agrees with the showrunners — Dany's not impressed: "It was fun to play — she doesn’t like him and she doesn’t believe him.”

Still, even if Jon and Daenerys don't have an instant rapport, the chemistry — however awkward — is undeniable, and Weiss says that everyone felt it while filming.

"The spine of the episode is about their meeting. It was an exciting, thrilling thing to watch happening even as we were shooting it," he says. "Once we realized that we were kind of getting a charge out of just seeing this happen on a set — which is a notoriously boring place — we had a sense that it would carry over to the finished version of the scene."

Luckily, Tyrion is there to grease the wheels and get Dany and her secret nephew back on the same page — and judging by this video preview of episode 4, the Mother of Dragons is going to be a lot more kindly disposed towards making an alliance with Jon once she realizes that she's kind of running out of other options.

Teamwork makes the dream work!