Apparently, the Game of Thrones showrunners have not formally settled on how long Season 8 will be, which might actually make sense.
Game of Thrones is coming to an end soon. It is known. First, we know neither of the last two seasons will last the now-traditional 10 episodes. Second, there’s supposed to be a seven-six split, with seven episodes airing this year and six presumably in 2018. Even actors like Iain Glen have essentially confirmed that information, right? Well, that may not be so.
Speaking to TVLine, Casey Bloys, the president of programming over at HBO, basically said that the final season of the show might have a slightly different episode count. TVLine had asked him why Season 8 isn’t technically on HBO’s slate yet. His response: “The only thing we’re working out is how many episodes they want to do”.
Just let that sink in for a moment. Apparently, six episodes may not be enough to cover the remaining sections of the story. Think back to Glen’s interview. Curiously, he kept to the seven-six split of episodes, but also said that there were “fifteen hours left in Thrones as understand it”. At the time, yours truly speculated that there could be episodes lasting an hour and a half. That would keep to the count of 13 episodes while accounting for the missing time.
However, with this new information from Bloys, it could very well turn out that Season 8 could instead add two more episodes, bumping the count to eight. Alternatively, there could just be seven episodes — but again with additional running time, should we take Glen’s statement at face value.
Bloys added that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are “still figuring out”, saying that he thinks they’re still “trying to get a shape of the season”. In other words, the final 13 episodes could become something different entirely.
Next: Game of Thrones S7: The Spoilery Six
Game of Thrones returns this summer, and Season 8 will air at some point with some number of episodes.