Game of Thrones season 8 is officially five months away

The wait is almost over, Game of Thrones fans. Season 8 has an official release month, if not an official release date, and we’ll take it.

For over a year now, Game of Thrones fans have languished without a new episode of the show. To be fair, we’ve all known that this time hasn’t gone to waste; production hasn’t been sitting on its collective hands just waiting for us to be hungry enough. Instead, there’s been a lot of filming, and that’s before you get into post-production processes, like re-recording dialogue, editing, special effects, and so on and so forth.

But HBO has heard our cries, fans, and it has answered … by giving us a release month (April 2019) and a purpose to tweet: #ForTheThrone (now with Iron Throne emoji, because that’s just how Twitter works these days).

This all came with a sizzle reel put together mostly of footage from every single season. A good majority of those moments that made you freak the first time you saw them show up here, even briefly, just to remind you what Game of Thrones has already done before you even get into what it’s going to do next season.

Check it out below:

With seven seasons of good to legitimately great television, it’s hard not to be able to put together 30 seconds of some of the best footage in order to call up fans’ nostalgia and excitement once more. But to cut together 30 seconds that flows together well is still a challenge, and it’s one that this teaser meets and exceeds.

A longer version has also appeared on the Game of Thrones YouTube account:

To accompany the teaser, the show’s official account has also started sharing iconic images from seasons past:

And clips have also started to appear with the new hashtag on YouTube:

Sure, there’s no new footage here, although that’s not a surprise considering that only the month has been announced. We’d expect something a bit more substantial whenever the official premiere date hits the internet — although substantial in this case means “anything more than the few seconds we already have.”

Admittedly, that’s a low bar, but it’s still a bar, right?

Tell us what you think of #ForTheThrone and the Game of Thrones return date!