While we wait for Sunday’s Game of Thrones season 3 episode “The Rains of Castamere,” Cat Taylor takes us behind the scenes of episodes 7 and 8.

The Making Game of Thrones blog has been updated by assistant to the showrunners Cat Taylor, who provides an in-depth look into filming the season 3 episodes “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” and “Second Sons.”

Taylor talks about the creation of iconic sets and the amount of different locations they use to tell each part of the story.

Writing about Daenerys’ season 3 journey, she says:

Daenerys’ journey took the Wolf Crew all over Europe, with many of her biggest scenes (the Unsullied Army, the Walk of Punishment) taking place across Morocco and Croatia. When Daenerys meets with the Yunkai to discuss terms of surrender, the team was located in Little Barrage, just outside Tazentoute in Morocco. The dragons, I’m afraid, did not have the animal passports that are required in North Africa and were added in by our lovely VFX team at a later date.

Taylor also talks about the real American bear which was used for Brienne and Jaime’s bear pit scenes:

The bear himself was actually filmed in Castaic, CA. His name is Bart II, and he lives in Utah. He’s been seen in ‘We Bought a Zoo’ with Matt Damon. He was one of six bears that were looked at, along with the possibility of an animatronic bear and a man in a bear suit – but the last two options were rejected as not realistic enough.

Gwen [Christie] and Nikolaj [Coster-Waldau] both travelled to L.A. to film in the pit, but they did not fight directly with Bart. His reactions were filmed against green screen and matched to their movements later.

Read the full entry on the Making Game of Thrones blog to learn more behind-the-scenes secrets from the set!

Game of Thrones returns Sunday at 9/8c on HBO with season 3, episode 9, “The Rains of Castamere.”