A Landmark Game Of Thrones Episode Happened Because Of An Awkward Conversation With HBO

It may be hard to imagine in 2025, but there was a time when the "Game of Thrones" showrunners weren't sure if they could pull off a big battle. Long before the triumphs of "Hardhome" or "Battle of the Bastards," the fantasy series started off with a relatively low budget and a reluctance to get too crazy with the spectacle.

For the first 18 episodes, the hit series primarily featured one-on-one combat scenes. When it came to the biggest battle sequence of the first novel, where Tyrion fights with surprising valiance at the Battle on the Green Fork, the show opted out of it entirely. Instead of letting Tyrion fight, they had him get hit in the head at the start and wake up when the battle was over. It was a funny scene, but more importantly, it was a frugal scene.

But the second book in the series built up to the Battle of the Blackwater, a battle that all but destroyed Stannis' standing in the War of the Five Kings, and which played a pivotal role in the personal journeys of countless characters. Unlike Tyrion's season 1 battle, this one couldn't be glossed over. It had to be a massive, intense, episode-length sequence, something HBO had never done before.

Co-creator Dan Weiss recalled in a 2012 interview with GQ how he'd received the script for the episode, written by series author George R. R. Martin himself, and immediately knew they'd have to make cuts. "There was a call a month after he gave us the script, where we said, 'George, we hate to tell you this, but the chain's not going to be in it,'" Weiss explained. "And then we had to call and say, 'George, we just don't have time for so many horses. They slow things down.'"

Although "Battle of Blackwater" needed to be scaled down for TV, the episode still had an incredibly ambitious budget by HBO's standards at the time. It was ambitious enough that the showrunners had to confront the HBO execs about it and try to squeeze a few extra millions from them. 

"We had one really intense conference call with the HBO brass," co-creator David Benioff explained. "It was awkward. They said, 'So, what are you guys talking about, an extra $500,000?' We said, 'Noooo ...' 'You guys need a million dollars?' 'Ummmm ...'" Weiss finished the story, "I think we asked for $2.5 million. We got $2 million-something. That's a lot of money in TV."

Although HBO was reportedly hesitant to allow its TV show to operate under a movie-scale budget, the showrunners convinced them that a big-budget, large-scale battle was exactly what the show needed. As Weiss put it, "The entire season was pointing toward this confrontation. To do what's normally done on television — the Shakespearean model of talking about battles off-screen — would completely kill the season." Ultimately, the HBO execs understood that their big epic fantasy show would need to feature big epic battles if it wanted to keep the fans happy and keep growing its viewership. 

The results were hard to argue with: "Blackwater" is often considered one of the best episodes of the series, and in hindsight, it's definitely one of the most important. The episode not only convinced HBO that it was worth it to invest heavily in these big action spectacles — the show would repeatedly outdo itself in the big battle department in later seasons — but it was the first episode to take place entirely in one city. "Game of Thrones" told a sprawling story that spanned two full continents, but "Blackwater" stayed in one location and let a single intense situation play itself out in full. "Blackwater" figured out the formula behind several of the series' best episodes, and the series was never the same.