HBO is seeing a lot of division in both its lineup and its audience as of late. People can’t seem to agree on “Togetherness” (unsolicited opinion: it’s great), at this point you’re either with “Girls” or you’re not, and “Vinyl,” the network’s latest shot at an hour-long prestige drama, is getting mostly tepid reviews from critics who bemoan the show’s lack of originality as well as its reliance on the misbehavior of a cretinous, self-serving protagonist to fuel its narrative trajectory.
One show, however, that almost everyone agrees on is David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ “Game of Thrones.” The show’s many fans are utterly ravenous in their devotion to creator George R. R. Martin’s fictional world and I must say, as someone who’s not totally on the show’s wavelength, I am still consistently awed and bowled over by the world-building Martin and the showrunners have constructed together. Whether “Game of Thrones” is your thing or not, there is no denying the massively ambitious scope and tremendous depth of imagination that goes into its creation, much the economy employed in expanding this world over the course of five bloody and sometimes controversial seasons.
READ MORE: First Look: 24 Images From ‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 6
A new behind-the-scenes featurette for the upcoming sixth season has just dropped and it contains some juicy tidbits for the fans who’ve been watching since season one: namely, that there will be White Walkers in season six. That’s right, the Blue-Eyed Devils are back, and Barrie Gower — the show’s prosthetics supervisor for all ten episodes of the upcoming season — gives a fascinating talk here that details some of the ground-level detail that goes into creating the White Walkers, as well as the youthful impetus for his creature-intensive leanings.
“Getting into the world of prosthetics was always something I wanted to do,” Gower elaborates. “My father was the manager of a local cinema. I grew up with ‘Star Wars’ and the science fiction films of the ’70s. Quite early on, I realized I wanted to make creatures, monsters. So a show like ‘Game of Thrones’ is kind of like a bucket list thing.”
Meanwhile, if you’re a fan of the books, don’t worry, there will be no spoilers from the pages of George R. R. Martin in the upcoming seasons.
“People are talking about whether the books are going to be spoiled — and it’s really not true,” showrunner David Benioff told EW. “So much of what we’re doing diverges from the books at this point. And while there are certain key elements that will be the same, we’re not going to talk so much about that — and I don’t think George is either. People are going to be very surprised when they read the books after the show. They’re quite divergent in so many respects for the remainder of the show.”
Check out the new behind-the-scenes look here. “Game of Thrones” returns to HBO Sunday nights on April 24th at 9 p.m. PST.