We had to expect this news eventually, but now it's real and has been confirmed - Game of Thrones will end the season after the next one.
HBO's new programming chief, Casey Bloys, confirmed the news at the annual Television Critics' Association press tour and announced that the long-running, smash-hit fantasy series will come to an end in 2018, but stopped short of mentioning how many episodes each season will have.
"If I could get them to do more, I would take 10 seasons but we want to take their lead with what they could do and what the best version of the show is," explained Bloys to THR. He did, however, say that D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, the show's producer, envision a total of 75 episodes for the entire series.
With the completion of Season 6, there's now been sixty episodes, meaning there's fifteen episodes left between the seventh and eighth season. It could very well mean that there's seven episodes for Season 7 and eight episodes for Season 8.
As for the question of spinoffs, HBO have said they're receptive - but that it's still way too early to tell what's happening. "It's not something I'm opposed to but it has to make sense creatively. I'm not sure the guys can wrap their heads around it when they are about to start production. We're open to it; the guys aren't opposed to it but there's no concrete plans right now."
Look, if we're doing spinoffs, we'd rather see a prequel that takes place during the War of the Usurper / Robert's Rebellion and show us the Battle of the Trident once and for all. That scene at the Tower of Joy was one of the best moments in the last season and the fact that there's such a rich backstory just waiting to be explored is all the more interesting.
Then again, can you keep that level of quality up indefinitely? Will it start to get stale? Who knows.
Via THR
