Excuse Me — Where Was Gendry During Game Of Thrones' Battle of Winterfell?

In the "inside the episode" portion of Sunday's Game of Thrones, co-showrunner D.B. Weiss described the Battle of Winterfell as "19 or 20 characters all involved in a very chaotic situation," and that's just him talking about the main characters. The war against the dead brought together Lannisters, Starks, Targaryens, Mormonts, and more, so not everyone got a ton of screentime. What happened to Gendry during the Game of Thrones battle wasn't immediately clear, because he stopped showing up early on in the battle sequence. But if that's got you worrying about Arya's flame, there are a few reasons you can sleep soundly now that the battle has been won.

Even though they were faced with a pretty much unwinnable battle with the dead, not that many major characters lost their lives. Those who did received proper send-offs and enough of a scene that fans were very clear on their fate. Theon Greyjoy, Lyanna Mormont, Jorah Mormont, Beric Dondarrion, and Melisandre were amongst those who died in the battle, and they each had ample screen time denoting their deaths. Gendry was seen fighting the wights, but wasn't the focus of many scenes later on. If he had died, we would have seen it.

The battle may have taken place only at Winterfell, but there were still a lot of locations within Winterfell to show and a lot of character stories that needed screen time. The showrunners said in the "inside the episode" portion that they wanted to flip back and forth between the straight-on action scenes and also other more quiet scenes so as not to bore viewers with an endless battle sequence. Time was given to Jon and Dany's fight on the dragons in the sky, Arya's attempt to go unseen in the castle, Bran's warging in the Godswood, and the goings on in the crypt as well as the battle on the field.

As the episode wore on, it was building towards the moment where Bran and the Night King would meet. That's when Theon got his death scene, and Arya got her moment in the sun when she ended the literal whole war. That had nothing at all to do with Gendry. He was an infantryman in the episode, knocking wights off walls, but not as necessary to the building plot about injured dragons, the Night King's arrival, the crypts opening up, Jon and Dany's attempt at survival, and Bran's potential death. But Gendry was somewhere, out in the roiling battle. That's for sure.

Weiss said that they even moved away from Arya's storyline (and Gendry is now part of that) for a while in the episode so that fans wouldn't be thinking about her in that moment with Bran and the Night King. They wanted her to come out of nowhere for audiences. It's clear that the showrunners planned everything meticulously, including who got screen time and where and why and how.

Yeah, Gendry appears to be in the episode 4 promo. In one scene, he's standing behind Arya and the other Winterfell people as they survey the rebuilding of Winterfell. He's also shown kissing Arya, so that storyline is far from over. Plus, that means Gendry and Arya are still candidates for that endgame theory that says they will join their houses like Robert Baratheon promised Ned Stark in Season 1.

Basically, no matter how little time he got in this episode, Gendry's not going anywhere just yet. It's going to be just fine. For now, anyway.