Winter is here. Can you feel it? And since August, we’ve been deprived of “Game of Thrones” in all its fantastical, suspense-ridden, holy-crap-Jon-Snow-isn’t-really-Jon-Snow glory. Unless, of course, you’ve been streaming it online (guilty).
We now know that the long-rumored delay of GoT is a reality — HBO confirmed that it won’t be airing until 2019 last week.
Send a raven.#GameofThrones returns to @HBO for its eighth and final season in 2019: https://t.co/FpWV0O0L9i
— Game Of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) January 4, 2018
We also know that season 8 will only consist of six episodes — and they will be long. Kit Harington suggested after the season 7 finale that “The Dragon and The Wolf,” which was a whole 80 minutes, was just a warm-up.
“I think that was a tester, that final episode, of seeing whether we can make an episode that kind of length and with that amount of story going on,” he told Deadline, also stating, “for me, the length of it, it being an hour and 20, really sets up what to expect for next year.”
Quite frankly, the wait is unbearable. Here’s why we won’t be getting our fix until 2019:
Extra filming to avoid spoilers
A report from Morning Call revealed that GoT producers will shoot alternative endings to season 8. This came shortly after the HBO hacks back in late July.
“I know in ‘Game of Thrones,’ the ending, they’re going to shoot multiple versions so that nobody really know what happens,” HBO president Casey Bloys said.
“Because when you’re shooting something, people know,” he continued, stating they’re going to shoot these “so that there’s no real definitive answer until the end.”
A spokesperson for HBO would not go on record about this issue.
Production will stop for Harington and Rose Leslie’s wedding
The couple asked that production be put on hold for their wedding day, The Telegraph reported after they announced their engagement in late September.
There’s going to be a Game of Thrones wedding pic.twitter.com/8UGGMCh9GH
— Elliot Wagland (@elliotwagland) September 27, 2017
Harington explained on “The Jonathan Ross Show” that they plan on having their castmates in attendance, and when he called one of the producers, he told him, “I’m getting married and it’s your fault actually.”
“I was like, ‘You need to factor in a Game of Thrones wedding by the way,'” Harington said on the show. “They [the cast] have all got to be there so the whole thing has got to shut down.”
The couple reportedly doesn’t have a date yet and are experiencing some trouble in the planning department because of their busy schedules. (Makes sense.)
Leslie — aka Ygritte — told Town & Country that she’s “trying to fit in” the wedding but finds it hard to dedicate the time.
As the magazine describes in its Feb. 2018 issue (of which she graces the cover):
“When an avalanche of questions about dates and locations and registry items comes her way, Leslie throws up her hands. ‘I haven’t tackled it,’ she says. ‘There’s just too much to do.'”
Producers really want to get it right
This week, Bloys told Entertainment Weekly that producers David Benoiff and Daniel “D.B.” Weiss wanted extra time to make the final six episodes the best they can be. (Ok, that’s fair.)
“Here’s what I’ll tell you: They take the time they need to do the show at its highest level of quality,” Bloys said. “These things take time. Here’s the one thing I can assure you: Dan and Dave were not sitting around on a beach waiting to go back to work. They’re perfectionists and this is the soonest it can come back at a level of quality that they are comfortable with.”
As Harington told Deadline regarding the show’s final season: “Of course, you guys won’t get to find out for a long time.”
Sigh. You know nothing, Jon Snow. We won’t tell if you won’t.
