Half-way through its penultimate series, Game of Thrones delivered a war scene epic enough to be mentioned in the same breath as the Battle of the Bastards or Dance of Dragons. The Spoils of War pitted Lannister brothers Tyrion and Jaime together after several years apart as Daenerys finally takes matters into her own hands and releases the wrath of a considerably beefed-up Drogon.

The scene is helping the episode to be called the greatest ever put out across the HBO series, and it was the effort of first-time Thrones director Matt Shakman. Shakman, who has made a name for himself by directing the oft-improvised sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, has given a number of interviews about the making of the episode. Here's what we've learned.

Firstly, no horses were hurt

“Those horses are all fake,” Shakman told Insider, presumably meaning the ones which get torched by Drogon. And the real horses? “They're all well fed and well-loved and nothing happened to any of them in the making of it.”

The director didn’t think what he wanted to do was physically possible