Game of Thrones' seventh season might not be over yet, but it's not too early to look ahead to the next. Here's what to expect on GoT Season 8.
This is the final season.
In June 2016, HBO programming president Casey Bloys announced Season 8 would be Game of Thrones's last. "[The showrunners] have a very specific plan about the number of seasons they want to do," he said during a press tour. "If I could get them to do more I would take 10 more seasons. But we take their lead on what they [need] to make the best version of their show."
There will only be six episodes.
At the end of Season 6, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss told Variety that they only had 13 episodes left, which meant seven for Season 7 and six for Season 8.
The episodes will be feature-length.
Though the episode count has decreased, the runtime will not. While episodes have traditionally been an hour long, the ones in Season 8 are clocking in at 80 minutes or more, according to GoT's sound designer, Paula Fairfield. And apparently the team hasn't discussed a cap on episode length (yet). "Two hours per episode seems like it would be excessive, but it's a great show, so who knows?" HBO's Casey Bloys said.
There is no air date yet.
Like the current season, Season 8 could arrive later than usual. Though the showrunners are hoping to air next year, the premiere could be pushed back as far as 2019, since they haven't started shooting yet, Bloys told Entertainment Weekly in June 2017.
The script is already written.
GoT's final episodes have already been penned, Bloys confirmed during the TCA press tour in July 2017. But in the show's classic tight-lipped fashion, we have no idea what happens, and probably won't until it airs.
Filming will reportedly start October 2017.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) appeared to hint that Season 8 starts filming this fall in a new interview. "I don't know what's going to happen next season, he told Collider. "We go back in October, so maybe in the next few weeks, we'll get the scripts and I'll find out."
Cersei might make an appearance.
In an interview, Lena Headey hinted that her character, Cersei Lannister, makes it to the end of Season 7. "I [assumed] oh, I'm going to die," she told Time, recalling the time she read the script. "And then, I went straight to the end. I was really in shock. I think obviously, now, there's got to be some body count at the end of [season] 8." The quote led some fans to believe this means means the Lannister monarch makes it into GoT's eighth and final season.
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