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Game of Thrones breaks a Lord of the Rings record in episode three of final season

'The Long Night' is a feature-length episode

Author: Emma DoddsPublished 29th Apr 2019
Last updated 29th Apr 2019

The long-awaited return of internationally-beloved TV series Game of Thrones has certainly not disappointed fans so far. The first two GOT episodes, entitled 'Winterfell' and 'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms', garnered much attention since it's been almost two years since the seventh season was released.

As each episode is airing in the US on Sundays, that means it's being aired in the UK on Monday mornings at the less-than-sociable hour of 2am - but that hasn't stopped some die-hard fans from staying up to watch it, meaning that some have already seen the events of the third episode, 'The Long Night'.

Of course, most sane people haven't done that, and have either streamed it on NOW TV or will be tuning in to Sky Atlantic at 9pm tonight - so if you're one of those, turn back now. We've tried to make this article spoiler-free, but just to be totally safe... 🚨 SPOILERS AHEAD 🚨.

'The Long Night', which aired in the UK at 2am this morning and will air again this evening at 9pm, is the episode that the whole season has been leading up to so far, capturing what's been dubbed the Battle of Winterfell.

After the wonderful and heartwarming events of episode two last week, fans were resigned to the fact that things would probably all be going downhill, with most of the fan-favourites surely ending up dead.

The episode itself was the longest one of the series so far, clocking in at 82 minutes - and the battle took up pretty much the entire episode, meaning that it has now overtaken a record set by the Lord of the Rings film series for the longest battle scene in film history.

Take a trip down memory lane to see how the Game of Thrones cast looked then vs. now...


Game of Thrones breaks a Lord of the Rings record in episode three of final season
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Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Season 1

Kit Harington plays the broody Jon Snow - illegitimate son of Ned Stark... Or so we thought. Kit was 25-years-old when he took on the role of Jon Snow, and despite being from London, was able to do a pretty passable Northern accent.

The previous record was held by the Battle of Helm's Deep, which took place in the second film of the series, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and lasted for 40 minutes. GOT's assistant director Jonathan Quinlan revealed on his Instagram profile in a now-deleted post that the episode had taken 55 nights to film in 11 weeks across three locations.

There were also a whopping 750 people involved either in front of or behind the camera, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Here's everything you need to know about Game of Thrones season 8.

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