At least one non-human character is confirmed to have a big part in Game Of Thrones' final season

The two most pressing mysteries in Game Of Thrones season seven were “what happened to Gendry?” and “where’s Ghost?” (“R+L=J” came in third), one of which has already been resolved by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. But heading into the final season, viewers still want to know where Jon Snow’s direwolf has been since the man of too many titles presumably decided not to include him in the Battle of the Bastards.

The answer, according to VFX supervisor Joe Bauer, is “on his way.” Bauer assures The Huffington Post that Ghost will be back for the series’ denouement. “Oh, you’ll see him again,” says Bauer. “He has a fair amount of screen time in season eight.” In news that should appease even the most rabid of Ghost fans, the direwolf “does some pretty cool things in season eight.” (No word on if “fight an ice dragon” is among those cool things.) And there were no Westerosi politics involved in Ghost’s disappearance—it can be chalked up to how difficult it is to film wolves doing direwolf things. Bauer says for quality’s sake, they “always shooting real wolves and doing a scaling trick with them, but the real wolves only behave in certain ways.”