Couple of news stories:
- One last 'Inside The Episode' was in the can to be shown after the finale, but HBO blocked it out and deleted it. Those are the interview segments with Benioff and Weiss, source of the now-infamous "Dany kinda forgot about the Iron Fleet" quote. Presumably cutting the segment was either a direct reaction to the meme-ification of that previous Inside The Episode, or HBO had some idea of how the finale would be received.
- In episode 3, during the Battle of Winterfell, there were plans for a scene in which a large pack of direwolves take on the wight dragon. This is purely my speculation but perhaps it was intended to be Nymeria's big payoff (Arya's stray direwolf). I can kind of see why it was dropped, as it would just have been a big CGI f**ktacular, but interesting to note that Miguel Sepochnik seems to be implying that it was his decision not to make the sequence. Seems like a surprising level of creative control for a TV director. He also wanted to kill a bunch of people during the battle, including Jorah in the first charge, but was overruled.
