The production has spent months building an enormous King’s Landing set on a backlot at Titanic Studios in Belfast. Now, extras have finally shown up outside the gates, meaning that we will, at long last, see filming activity here. This set is humongous and exposed; there will be no stopping shutterbugs. We’re not sure how long the crew will shoot on this set, but considering how much time they spent constructing it, we’re betting it will be for a while.

Anyway, what extras have shown up? Watch the video below:

Those are Unsullied soldiers and Dothraki riders marshaled outside the city. Last we saw these two armies in the same place (together with several others), it was at Magheramorne Quarry, where the production — so far as we can tell — filmed a massive battle against the army of the dead, a battle to be set in the North. This sequence in King’s Landing probably happens after that, chronologically speaking. After all, last we left them, Daenerys’ armies were headed north. It looks like some of them will survive whatever awaits them up there and head south, either because they defeated the dead and they’re confronting Cersei’s forces, or because they didn’t and they’re seeking refuge. Either way, things are going to dicey.

In other news, filming has begun at Ballintoy Harbour, where the production loaded in late last week. In the past, the show has used Ballintoy to stand in for the Iron Islands. Below are a couple of pictures of the action courtesy of Oakleaf Photography. We’ve got the crew setting up before filming…

…and during:

So the crew is filming scenes at night. We’re not sure what what scenes they’re shooting, though. Any ideas?

This news reminds us of the reports that Game of Thrones will return to Highgarden in season 8. However, in that case, the crew won’t actually return to the castillo de Almodóvar del Río, where the earlier scenes at Highgarden were shot; they’ll just use leftover footage from season 7, meaning we’ll probably just see an establishing shot of the castle. In the case of the Iron Islands, the crew has actually returned to Ballintoy Harbour, and Irish Thrones, which first broke news of the return, reports that it’ll be there for some time. In short, this is probably about more than an establishing shot.

We also can’t discount the possibility that the crew is using Ballintoy to stand in for some other part of Westeros, although that’s the location it’s most prominently associated with.

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