Game of Thrones Showrunners on Long-Awaited Meeting

"She looks at him and she thinks this is some unwashed barbarian from the North."

By Alex Osborn

Full spoilers for Game of Thrones: Season 7 continue below. Check out our review of "The Queen's Justice."

The third episode of Game of Thrones' seventh season featured the long-awaited meeting of Jon Snow (Kit Harington) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), which proved to be quite confrontational. While Dany wanted Jon to bend the knee, Jon was trying to convince her there is a much bigger threat to worry about than Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey).

Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss break down the meeting between the two in the Inside the Episode for "The Queen's Justice," explaining the position these two leaders are coming from.

"He doesn't have much insight into what she's gone through, so I think he sees a rich girl with a fancy name sitting in a big chair with a fancy dress on proclaiming herself the queen of the world,"  Weiss said. "So I don't think he's looking upon her with as much respect as she has come to take as her due."

With regard to how Dany sees Jon, Weiss added, "She looks at him and she thinks this is some unwashed barbarian from the North and a bastard. His name is Jon Snow, yet he's calling himself king. If she knew what he'd seen, she'd be looking very, very differently at what he's telling her, but at this moment in time, she only sees somebody who is trying to carve up a piece of her kingdom for himself."

Instead, the merciless Cersei is on the forefront of Dany's mind, and as Weiss notes, "by the time you get to the end of episode 3, it's not at all clear that the playing field is nearly as lopsided as it was when we ended episode 1."

Benioff then spoke to the strategic move of Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) at the end of this week's episode. "Everyone kind of realizes that the two poles of power for Cersei and Jaime at this point are King's Landing and Casterly Rock," he explained. "But Jaime also knows he doesn't have the forces to defend both and makes the strategic decision to give up Casterly Rock, to use it as a decoy to lure the Unsullied over there to take it and get them on the exact wrong side of the continent."

So, the events at Casterly Rock play out contrary to Tyrion's (Peter Dinklage) expectations, as Jaime heads to Highgarden, which, Benioff explains, for Jaime is "much more valuable because Highgarden is the Tyrell's stronghold, which commands all the most fertile regions of Westeros. They are the wealthiest house, but fighting isn't really their forte."

Jaime isn't there for a battle, but instead is there to see Olenna (Diana Rigg), who delivers a shocking revelation to Jaime that turns the tables during his moment of victory. In her final moments, she reveals she was behind the death of Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) in Season 4. "She beats him in the middle of her own death scene and there's nothing he can do about it. He knows it's true the moment she says it," Weiss said, praising Rigg for her performance.

Alex Osborn is a freelance writer for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @alexcosborn.

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