It’s the beginning of the end, folks.
Comprised of six episodes in total, down from the standard run of 10, Game of Thrones season 8 is now in production and looks set to deliver a fitting send-off to what’s been one of the greatest TV shows of the modern era. With the Night King on the march – perched on an undead Viserion, no less – and Cersei plotting a potentially devastating betrayal, the power players of Westeros will come together in epic fashion in 2019. And there’s also the small matter of Jon Snow’s true parentage.
So, there’s much to look forward to once the show returns then, and in a new interview with Huffington Post, star John Bradley, who plays Samwell Tarly on the hit fantasy series, promised big things to come. Speaking about the scale and scope of season 8, he teased that it’ll be “monumental.”
“We assembled a team of directors this year who have been in charge of some of our big episodes in the past… Clearly every single episode of the six you’ve got left in Season 8 is gonna be monumental and needs somebody at the helm who’s done that kind of high-stakes, high-octane direction before for us… I think what we used to call Episode 9 in Game of Thrones folklore – the episode when everything comes to a head and you get a lot of spectacular sequences -I think you’re gonna get six ‘Episode 9s’ this year… so I can’t wait!”
It’s an exciting time for the Game of Thrones community, to be sure, even if season 8 will herald the beginning of the end. With production now underway across parts of Northern Ireland, HBO recently announced the four directors tasked with helming Thrones‘ six-part final season. It’s an overly familiar roster of talent, too, what with series showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss locked in, along with Miguel Sapochnik (“Hardhome, “Battle of the Bastards”) and David Nutter (““The Dance of Dragons”).
Following an explosive seventh season, which ended with the Night King swooping into Westeros with a gargantuan undead army in tow, Game of Thrones is to stage its last hurrah at some point during summer 2019. And while there are spinoffs being planned, we imagine the network will hold fire on a successor series lest it risk over-saturation. Sometimes you really can have too much of a good thing.
