Winter — er, fictional winter — is finally upon us, with the long-awaited eighth and final season of “Game of Thrones” debuting this Sunday.
While we still know relatively little about the final six episodes in D.B. Weiss and David Benioff’s HBO fantasy series, TheWrap has rounded up what details we do have regarding how all of this ends. (And if you need a refresher, here is a roundup of where we left off with everyone.)
And, look, we get that you are sad the small-screen adaptation of the George R.R. Martin novels is coming to a close. But just remember, what is dead may never die. (Did that help? Meh, we tried.)
1. The premiere date.
After months and months and months of teasing, HBO revealed in a cryptic promo that the final season will debut on April 14. This Sunday!
2. Here’s the trailer, featuring dragons, snow and a glowering Cersei.
Read a full breakdown here.
3. The episodes are gonna be long.
Sunday’s premiere will be the shortest of the bunch, clocking in at a meager 54 minutes. The longest episode of Season 8 will be the third, which has a runtime of an hour and 22 minutes. So say goodbye to your Sunday nights for the next six weeks and make sure you get those errands and household chores done earlier in the day.
4. Pretty much everyone has said something about how it all ends.
Emilia Clarke: “It f–ed me up,” the actress told Vanity Fair. “Knowing that is going to be a lasting flavor in someone’s mouth of what Daenerys [Targaryen] is . . .” Clarke added she’s “doing all this weird s–t” in Season 8. “You’ll know what I mean when you see it.” Great?
Maisie Williams: The young star revealed Arya was alone in the last scene she shot for the series which isn’t necessarily Arya’s last scene. “Arya’s always bloody alone,” Williams said. “But I was alone and I had watched a lot of other people wrap. I knew the drill, I had seen the tears and heard the speeches.”
Sophie Turner: The actress who plays Sansa said that, even though it was satisfying to shoot the ending for her and her castmates, viewers might be disappointed. “I think a lot of fans will be disappointed and a lot of fans will be over the moon, I think,” Turner said. “I think it will be really interesting to see people’s reactions, but for me reading the script it was just like heartbreaking to read at the very final page of the script it just says, ‘End of Game of Thrones.’ That was really emotional.”
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau: Jaime Lannister told TheWrap not long after production ended last July that “all the pieces fit into this massive jigsaw puzzle” in the end. “I mean, when I read it — I’ve spent so many years working on this and been guessing and trying to figure out how this will end — and when I read it, some of the parts of it I’d get, and other parts of it were just completely shocking and surprising.”
Kit Harington: Jon Snow knows everything — and it made him sad. “I cried at the end,” Harington told BBC One after reading the final script. “You have to remember that [after] eight years of it — no one really cares about it more than us.”
Peter Dinklage: According to Dinklage, there is a chance Tyrion won’t make it out alive — unless he’s totally screwing with us here — telling Vulture, “I think he was given a very good conclusion. No matter what that is — death can be a great way out.”
5. They were planning on shooting multiple endings.
“I know in ‘Game of Thrones,’ the ending, they’re going to shoot multiple versions so that nobody really know what happens,” Bloys said during a speaking engagement at Bethlehem’s Moravian College in September 2017. “You have to do that on a long show. Because when you’re shooting something, people know. So they’re going to shoot multiple versions so that there’s no real definitive answer until the end.”
TBD on if this actually how it went down.
6. The season will include a battle scene that took 55 nights to shoot.
“It makes the Battle of the Bastards look like a theme park,” Dinklage told Entertainment Weekly for their report on the series’ finale last year.
7. We’ve also had a few other glimpses of Season 8.
There is one here and here, and the first-look photos can be found here.
8. A furry friend is coming back.
The show’s visual effects supervisor Joe Bauer told the Huffington Post back in September that Jon Snow’s direwolf, Ghost, will return for the final episodes, saying, “He does some… he’s very present and does some pretty cool things in Season 8.”
9. But another is not.
10. We don’t know how it ends, but Joe Jonas does.
So does Emilia Clarke’s mom.
11. There will be a reunion.
Sean Bean told The Hollywood Reporter last October that a special hosted by Conan O’Brien and featuring old and new cast members had been shot in Belfast last year.
HBO confirmed to TheWrap the reunion special is in fact real, but will not air on the premium cable network. It will instead be released as part of a complete series box set at a later date.