Screenshot : Why Jon Didn’t Say Bye To Ghost ( YouTube

Note: This post contains spoilers for Game Of Thrones, season eight, episode four.




There were plenty of things to enjoy and lots more to nitpick in this week’s episode of Game Of Thrones, but one thing we can all agree was absolute bullshit was Jon Snow’s half-assed goodbye to his sweet, loyal boy Ghost. Soon after the episode aired, Twitter exploded with people’s reactions to Jon’s unwillingness to pet his damn dog, but now episode director David Nutter has come out of hiding to provide some answers and put all other theories to rest. The reason for the awkward goodbye, as you might expect, has to do with CGI.

“Since the direwolves are kind of CG creations, we felt it best to keep it as simple as possible,” Nutter tells Huffington Post. While we’re sure this reasoning made sense during the post-production process, as viewers, it’s a little harder to swallow. After all, Jon, Dany, and the Night King all rode atop giant CG dragons in the previous episode, Arya stabbed an ice man who then exploded into a million shards of ice, but Jon getting 10 feet closer to a slightly larger wolf is a technical impossibility.


Granted, the direwolves have been the bane of the Thrones after - effects department for years, which is why the ones that weren’t killed off early tended to just exist off-camera for seasons at a time. Giving Jon and Ghost an emotional farewell may have seemed inconsistent given their estranged relationship in recent years. “Keeping Ghost off to the side, I thought that played out better,” said Nutter. “He just walks off by himself, he turns to Ghost and has this moment with Ghost that I thought was very, very powerful.”

We would respectfully disagree and suggest that, if Ghost was going to suddenly reappear this season as a valuable asset, maybe he should have perished in the insane Battle of Winterfell, during which his difficult-to-render fur would be hidden by the mountains of scrabbling wights and a complete lack of adequate lighting. Instead, we’re left wondering why the fate of Westeros is being left in the hands of a man who can’t even give his dog a belly rub!


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