Close Ups of the Weaponry of “Hardhome”
The Massacre at Hardhome has been one of the highlights of the season. We’ve taken a look inside the episode, and we’ve gone behind the scenes and looked at the special effects in a featurette. Now Making Game of Thrones has brought us close-ups of three of the weapons used in the battle: the axe carried by Lodoba, the pick axe and sword carried by Karsi and the sword the White Walker used in his fight with Jon Snow.
According to weapon master Tommy Dunne, the white walker weapon is a shard of ice on a stick. “The handle is a bit more samurai-ish. We’re very lucky, this year we found a brand new translucent rubber. It’s much more durable, much stronger, and we’re able to fight with it, which is the main thing.”
For Karsi, Dunne says the idea was to keep whatever they were using short handled and close to the body. That’s the same philosophy the show uses when designing many of the wildling weapons “[A]ny long sword would just gather snow, as will the sheathes.”
As for Loboda, since he is a Thenn, the idea was to carry over the same weapon we saw the Thenns fight with last year in The Battle for Castle Black, most notably Styr’s fight with Jon Snow. Loboda’s axe is based off the same design. It also helped mix up the weaponry to have the Thenns carry something different than the other wildlings. As Dunne says, “The wildlings all have different weapons. Obviously you’ll have axes. You’ll have bows, arrows, spears, and short swords.”
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