There’s plenty of good and bad news about the upcoming final seasons for Game Of Thrones. The bad is that both will be shorter than the preceding seasons and might start a little later than usual, things we’ve already known for quite a while. According to the show’s panel at TCA 2017, though, this is all by design and the good will outweigh the bad once the show returns.
Previous seasons have featured a few building moments to lead into an epic clash near the end of the season and a finale to set the stage for the next one with cliffhangers and other junk. The latter part caused plenty of fan speculation at the end of season five over the possible death of Jon Snow, but the show didn’t play around the same way with its shocking and revealing season six finale. That episode might be a hint at what we can expect in seasons 7 and 8, supported by the shorter orders and David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ desires to end the series the right way.
According to Deadline, the pair had thought about pushing for a six-episode final season, but went back on the decision after discussions with the network. Casey Bloys at HBO seems to indicate that the network might be pushing for more, telling Entertainment Weekly that he’s open to whatever he can get:
“They’re still figuring out the shape of the season, what they want to do,” Bloys said. “I’ll take as many as they want to do. If they give me eight, I’ll want 10. But it’s really up to them. They’ll let me know.”
EW notes that the pair told them that they had planned for the series to run “73 hours,” but it’s understandable why HBO might want to push for a little more from the series while they can. Bloys also addressed the discussion of a possible prequel, saying that it is more likely than any sort of spin-off featuring the characters from the show:
“It’s such a big property we would be foolish not to explore it, but it’s a pretty high bar,” he said. “We’ll take some shots at it. I’m not going to do it just to do it. It has to feel very special. I would rather have no sequel and leave it as-is then have something we rushed out..
“A prequel feels like it has less pressure on it [than a spin-off],” he said “[Author George R.R. Martin’s history of Westeros] gives you areas in which to say to a writer, ‘If you were going to do this, then go flesh it out,’ and we’ll see what comes back. But I don’t feel any pressure that we have to have something.”
Should be interesting to see if any of that comes to pass after the main series has ended. The possibility of a prequel series is pretty much a given, but bringing the right pieces together will be the difficult part. Fans would likely tune in no matter what, but would they stick around for the long haul? Plenty of time to speculate until the next season premieres.
(Via Deadline / Entertainment Weekly)
