Hey where the heck was Ghost last episode??
Too complicated on an already very complicated set. From the director :
"[Ghost] was in there in spades originally, but it's also an incredibly time consuming and expensive character to bring to life," the episode's director Miguel Sapochnik told Business Insider on Monday. "Ultimately we had to choose between Wun-Wun and the direwolf, so the dog bit the dust."
"Battle of the Bastards" was a complicated and expensive episode to produce. While a typical episode takes one to two weeks to shoot, Sunday's episode shot for 25 days, Entertainment Weekly reported. That included 600 crew members, 500 extras, 70 horses, and 25 stuntmen and women. Its price tag could lie somewhere between $11 million and $25 million.
"Anything with the giant is a challenge," Sapochnik told us, "because he's not there, and you have to shoot multiple layers for each shot, and get extras to react to something that doesn't exist, and then shoot the actual giant played by Ian Whyte months later on a green screen stage."
Plus, Wun Wun ended up giving his life to place the Starks back in Winterfell. While definitely sad, at least we know Ghost is alive and well.
The actor who plays Davos had an explanation as well, although I don't think it's reality since we know Robb's direwolf did great in battles:
“Yeah that would have been cool, [but] obviously a big battle like that is no place for a direwolf,” he said. “They’re not gonna last very long – I mean look at what happened to Wun Wun, the last of the giants.” He does have a point: an animal without armor would have easy pray for all those arrows. Considering that the show has killed off two direwolves this season (RIP Shaggydog and Summer), maybe we should be happy that Ghost was kept out of harm’s way. He lives to fight another day.