Warning: Spoilers for the season six finale of Game of Thrones are mentioned below.
For Sunday night’s season six finale, Game of Thrones drew a series high of 8.9 million viewers and a 4.4 rating in the 18-49 demo. However, despite the HBO fantasy drama reaching new heights in its popularity, the showrunners have confirmed the series is nearing the end.
In an interview with Deadline, show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss revealed that there will only be two more shortened seasons. Benioff stated that the plan from the beginning was for the show to be a total of 70 to 75 hours. Sixty hours over the span of six seasons of the show have already aired, meaning there are only fifteen more episodes at the most. “Call it 73 for now,” Benioff said.
“Like President Obama, we want to leave while all the people watching this show are really into it,” Weiss explained. “Get out at a high point and not have it be, well thank god that’s over.”
Benioff further added:
“As Dan said, we’ve known the end for quite some time and we’re hurtling towards it. Those last images from the show that aired last night showed that. Daenerys is finally coming back to Westeros; Jon Snow is king of the North and Cersei is sitting on the Iron Throne. And we know the Night King is up there, waiting for all of them. The pieces are on the board now. Some of the pieces have been removed from the board and we are heading toward the end game. The thing that has excited us from the beginning, back to the way we pitched it to HBO is, it’s not supposed to be an ongoing show, where every season it’s trying to figure out new story lines. We wanted it to be one giant story, without padding it out to add an extra 10 hours, or because people are still watching it. We wanted to something where, if people watched it end to end, it would make sense as one continuous story. We’re definitely heading into the end game now.”
Season seven of Game of Thrones is set to arrive in 2017.
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