'Game of Thrones' Season 8 Premiere: When to Expect the Final Season

Joseph Schmidt

11/08/2017 03:21 pm EST

It seems like the shortest season in Game of Thrones history passed us by in the blink of an eye.

Every season before featured 10 episodes, all airing within the span of two-and-a-half months. Season 7's truncated tenure only had seven episodes, but the series managed to press down on the gas pedal while giving us the longest runtimes in the show's history.

With the stage set for the final battle between the Night King and the kingdoms of Westeros, not to mention Cersei versus Daenerys, you might be wondering when the final episodes of the hit series will air on HBO.

You might even be wondering how many episodes are left in the series, or what to expect after it finally wraps?

Unfortunately, we don't have an exact date for the the premiere, but we do know a time frame of when we could see Season 8 episodes based on previous shooting schedules and comments from various executives and actors involved with the show.

Here's everything you need to know for Game of Thrones Season 8.

Game of Thrones Season 8 Premiere

HBO's programming president Casey Bloys previously said to Entertainment Weekly that we won't see the final season of the show until late 2018, maybe even early 2019. Bloys also said that showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff were hard at work breaking down the episodes.

Recently star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister in the series, said in an interview with Collider that the actors will report back for filming in October. So the scripts are very likely close to being finished.

The seventh season of the series began filming in August 2016, almost a year before its premiere in July 2017. So production didn't go much quicker despite the smaller amount of episodes in the season, especially with many of them being longer than the average runtime.

Weiss and Benioff said the benefit of the shorter seasons allows the productions a larger budget per episode.

With that in mind, we can probably expect to see the eighth season premiere of Game of Thrones sometime in September, if they maintain a similar shooting schedule.

Game of Thrones Spinoff

With only six episodes left next season, the series will likely fly by quickly with an explosive culmination.

Expect to learn the results of the battle with the Night King in what's sure to be a deadly winter, as well as who will finally unite the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros on the Iron Throne.

But after that?

HBO has plans for a spinoff series. In fact, there are multiple in the works. George R. R. Martin, author of the source material, has been helping consulting HBO writers to develop the various different series, and HBO executives are planning to put one of them into production.

This plan makes sense. Rather than putting all of their eggs into one basket, Bloys will probably push the project with the most potential.

Fans are clamoring for a spinoff based on Robert's Rebellion, the rise of the Targaryen Dynasty, or even a series based on Martin's spinoff novellas 'Tales of Dunk and Egg.' But expect HBO execs to push for something more open ended so they can make their own choice on the series' trajectories, rather than being dictated by the plots of books that have yet to be written.

Either way, show creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff will not be involved.

It's an exciting time for Game of Thrones fans, despite facing down the end of an era. Expect more news in the coming weeks as filming for Season 8 starts to gear up.

[h/t] Entertainment Weekly & Collider

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