There's More Bad News for 'Game of Thrones' Fans—And This Time, It's the Episode Length

• Game of Thrones fans, begin hyperventilating now: The first two episodes of the last season will be shorter than 60 minutes (opens in new tab), Entertainment Weekly reports. 
• Episode 1 will be 54 minutes, Episode 2 58 minutes. Granted, that's all of eight missing minutes total, but STILL. Every minute counts in GoT, am I right?
• Feeling behind on the details of this last season? We have all the updates, right here (opens in new tab).

I have the sneaking suspicion that this final season of Game of Thrones is just going to be a six-episode exercise in ripping my heart out, trampling on it, and then somehow figuring out a way to keep doing that over and over again. The latest news to come from the show? HBO has informed us that the first two episodes won't even crack 60 minutes as had been initially predicted, per EW.

Before we all start panicking about a half-hour GoT episode (seriously, they won't be able to do ANYTHING in that time—a couple of Cersei smirks and that's it!), the first episode is 54 minutes and the second episode is 58. We're not talking about massive cuts to content. But considering that episodes 3-6 are going to be an extended 80 minutes long, I would have expected the creators to hang on to every single possible minute for dear life.

EW reporter James Hibbard totally called it (opens in new tab) in January, though: "My speculation is that, if this information is accurate, that 60, 60, 80, 80, 80, 80 will translate into two episodes that are nearly an hour and then four that are between 70-85 minutes—so, still, plenty of super-sized episodes (quite possibly the longest average episode length in the show’s history), but not quite as perfectly rounded as what was estimated on stage.”

(Wait, does that mean the big episodes might be missing more minutes?? Hold me.)

As a reminder, all the quotes from the stars that hint at the final season (opens in new tab) have been really depressing. Emilia Clarke said, "Everybody has done a lot of crying filming the last season, so we’re all feeling very bittersweet and existential crisis-y, the usual." Kit Harington said (opens in new tab), "Everyone was broken at the end." Gwendoline Christie said (opens in new tab), "You're going to need therapy." I am VERY WORRIED.

Here's the trailer, in case you missed it:

See you on April 14. Bring tissues.

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