“Game of Thrones” fans will no longer be ghosted.
On Sunday, during the second episode of Season 8, Ghost, the direwolf of Jon Snow (Kit Harington), finally made his return.
It’s been a long time coming. The direwolf didn’t appear in Season 7, and he was scarcely in Season 6, though he showed up when Jon Snow came back to life. He was also cut entirely from one of the most memorable episodes of the series, “Battle of the Bastards.”
Fans took notice after the direwolf was again absent in the Season 8 premiere, and the memes began to pour in.
Prior to the season, “Game of Thrones” visual effects supervisor Joe Bauer told HuffPost that “Ghost does show up, and… he’s very present and does some pretty cool things in Season 8.”
On Sunday, that promise came true.
As Jon Snow, Samwell Tarly (John Bradley) and Dolorous Edd (Ben Crompton) stood on the walls of Winterfell, reminiscing about their fallen brothers of the Night’s Watch and awaiting the arrival of the army of the dead, Ghost finally appeared in the background.
He didn’t do a lot. In fact, he kind of just stood there, chillin’. But that was enough. The fandom has been waiting for this longer than we’ve been waiting for winter to arrive, and people could not keep their cool.
Bauer previously explained the absence of the direwolves to HuffPost, saying they’re a lot trickier to bring to life than you might expect. According to Bauer, real wolves are filmed and then scaled up, but they can “only behave in certain ways.”
“I think that has something to do with why the direwolves are in the show, but they’re not maybe as integral as they are in the books,” he said at the time.
If you blinked, you might’ve missed Ghost’s appearance in Episode 2, but you can certainly expect to see more of him on the way.
“He has a fair amount of screen time in Season 8,” Bauer told us.
With the Battle of Winterfell coming in Episode 3, however, it’s not looking great for the direwolf’s longevity. Until then, we’ll be saying our new mantra for the show: All wolves must not die.