When Game of Thrones fans heard that the seventh season would be trimmed down to only seven episodes, we all cried out in anguish. Not only that, but then we also learned that the show would be wrapping up in the eighth season with mere six episodes, and our hearts ached.
Tally that up and it leaves us with 15 hours until we leave Westeros for good (unless George R. R. Martin and the show runners, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, dream up something else huge for us). That's less than a day!
But, there's a major silver-lining that we overlooked in our misery.
One of the actors on the show, Iain Glen, who plays Ser Jorah Mormont, told RadioTimes.com that because the seasons are shorter, there will be more time to commit to each episode.
"They are taking the length of time it takes to shoot 10 episodes to shoot just seven this year and six next year," he told the site. "There are 15 more hours left in Thrones as we understand it, but that may change, but that’s as far as we know." He adds that "the world that is being created, it’s just getting more and more extraordinary, and they feel they need that time to shoot seven hours as opposed to 10."
Less episodes with the same amount of hours put into it could mean "Battle Of The Bastards"-quality each week. Hell yes. But, like the "Bastards" episode, it also means more death.
Photo: Courtesy of HBO.
Ser Jorah Mormont, played by Iain Glen, and Tyrion Lannister, played by Peter Dinklage, in Game of Thrones.
"I don’t know of course if I am going to make the last one," Glen admits. "I am sort of doing a head count, but I think it’s certainly under 10 people who were in the original pilot and have been in every season since. I have grown very attached to it. I love the people involved. Dan and David are very benign showrunners and very good people."
Glen also teases one plot point, telling the site that there will be more glimpses of the past: "This season you feel that the drama is moving towards its end game, more characters are overlapping so we are seeing a lot more of each other, than perhaps in the past."
It sounds like the final two season will be the best ones yet. I can hardly wait.