As of Season 7 Episode 2 of Game of Thrones, it seems we haven't seen Ghost since
Jon was brought back to life at Castle Black
He also wasn't there for
the Battle of the Bastards
either. So where is he?
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13CGI is expensive you know– AegonJul 24, 2017 at 14:48
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2 Answers
In Universe, we do not know where Ghost is currently. The actor who plays Davos theorised that the battle is not a safe place for Ghost, and so that's why he isn't included in the Battle of the Bastards.
Yeah that would have been cool, [but] obviously a big battle like that is no place for a direwolf,” he said. “They’re not gonna last very long – I mean look at what happened to Wun Wun, the last of the giants.”
I would assume that Ghost is with Jon (just off screen) but it's definitely possible that he is off hunting, or still at Castle Black.
Obviously, this does not jive with book passages or previous scenes showing various direwolves in battle.
Out of Universe, the director explained that Ghost was cut from that battle for budgetary reasons, the same reason that all of the direwolves' roles have diminished as the series has gone along.
"[Ghost] was in there in spades originally, but it's also an incredibly time consuming and expensive character to bring to life," Sapochnik told Business Insider. "Ultimately we had to choose between Wun-Wun and the direwolf, so the dog bit the dust."
Interestingly enough, it seems that Direwolves may be more expensive to create then the Dragons (which also haven't made much of an appearance yet this season).
Though the series showed a lot of the wolves in season one, their appearances have been noticeably rare in later seasons, with two being brought back in season six only to be unceremoniously killed off.
That’s no accident. Game of Thrones has found that now that the direwolves are big enough that they have to be CGI creations, they’re very expensive and difficult to animate. (They seem to have been much more challenging than the dragons, perhaps because it’s more difficult to convincingly animate an animal that we expect to look and move like a real wolf.)
Out of Universe, this would continue to hold true for future episodes. It's simply too expensive for them to film Ghost walking next to Jon as he goes about his daily routine.
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4The wolves in season 1 were real dogs actually, so there was no need for CGI... Sophie Turner actually adopted the dog that played Lady (or so i read on interwebz)– VahxJul 25, 2017 at 13:52
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@Vahx yeah I saw the same thing. I wonder of GoT regrets making the dire wolves so big that they couldn't still be played by a dog. They look sweet now, but it almost seems like they're making major plot decisions based on avoiding putting a dire wolf in a scene.– kuhlJul 25, 2017 at 14:07
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"the same reason that all of the direwolves' roles have diminished as the season has gone along" Other than Nymeria's unexpected appearance, which other direwolves still exist? Isn't Ghost the only one? Lady was killed, Shaggydog's head was presented by Ramsay, Robb's DW was sown onto his corpse, and I can't remember what happend to Bran's but his DW has been absent from the story for a while now.– FlaterJul 25, 2017 at 14:58
He's at Winterfell
Brian Cogman, who is one of the show's main writers (especially the writer of that particular episode) and co-executive producer mentioned on Twitter that:
FYI... We shot a Jon/Ghost scene. Didn't make it in. I tried! Thx for watching, everybody. #Stormborn
He goes on to further say:
He's at Winterfell. The scene was a brief goodbye beat.
So that means that the good news is: once the DVD/Blu-Ray versions come out, we'll see that cut scene and hopefully get a better idea of where exactly Ghost is.