Game of Thrones director admits there’s a glaring problem with Beyond the Wall episode

If action is what you come to Game of Thrones for then the latest episode will not have left you wanting.

(Spoiler alert: If you've not watched the Beyond the Wall episode and don't want to know what happens, then don't read on. Spoilers are coming.)

We had a Revenant-style (White Walker) bear attack, then a nerve-shredding Walking Dead-style stand-off with the Army of the Dead followed by oodles of hack-and-slash as Jon Snow and his band fought off the undead legions.

That in itself would be enough to sate your average action aficionado. But then we had all three Targaryen dragons mobilised to rescue the stranded King of the North and his men after which an epic battle ensued, Viserion was slain by the Night King and then resurrected as a White Walker dragon.

It’s exhausting just recapping it all.

Yet it seems to pack that amount of action into a single episode something had to give. In this case a plausible timeline, which left many fans of the show baffled.

Primarily with the speed at which Jon managed to summon aid from Daenerys and her scaly offspring. First he had to send Gendry sprinting back to The Wall to inform Ser Davos to get a raven off, which then had to fly across half of Westeros to Dragonstone, alert Daenerys, who had to scramble her dragons and fly all the way back north of The Wall to relieve her embattled ally.

And all this happened while Jon Snow et al were stranded in the middle of a frozen lake with scant supplies and surrounded by the Night King’s hordes.

The exact timeline between Gendry setting off and Daenerys arriving was not elaborated and the group did lose (an admittedly already bear-savaged) Thoros to exposure. But some fans were left irked by the improbable timings of it all.

Now the director behind Beyond the Wall has admitted that the episode’s timeline did get ‘a little hazy’ and was ‘straining plausibility’ at points.

In an interview with Variety, Alan Taylor said: “We were aware that timing was getting a little hazy. We’ve got Gendry running back, ravens flying a certain distance, dragons having to fly back a certain distance…In terms of the emotional experience, [Jon and company] sort of spent one dark night on the island in terms of storytelling moments.

“We tried to hedge it a little bit with the eternal twilight up there north of The Wall. I think there was some effort to fudge the timeline a little bit by not declaring exactly how long we were there. I think that worked for some people, for other people it didn’t.

“They seemed to be very concerned about how fast a raven can fly but there’s a thing called plausible impossibilities, which is what you try to achieve, rather than impossible plausibilities. So I think we were straining plausibility a little bit, but I hope the story’s momentum carries over some of that stuff.”

So basically the hope is viewers will be so engrossed in the pulsating action of these new episodes to care that much about the far-fetched timings

Yet fans who have followed the TV series this far will have become used to the pace of the earlier series, which followed George RR Martin's books closely. And George RR Martin is an author who likes to painstakingly build a plot.

Meanwhile the TV show has gone past the books and we are now in the middle of two mini-series that are hurtling towards the grand finale of the series. So it’s to be expected that events will start move faster, albeit maybe not with the eyebrow-raising licence of the latest episode.

However if you’re already happily accepting legions of the undead and gigantic dragons soaring across your screen, then it’s fair to consider your disbelief already suspended.

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