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Will ‘Game Of Thrones’ End In 2017? Season 7 Will Only Be 7 Episodes Long

By Gregory Wakeman
Published on: 10:37 PST, Jun 2, 2016

Game Of Thrones director Jack Bender has revealed that the next season of the HBO fantasy epic will only be seven episodes long, which has increased speculation that we could be close to the end of the series.

Bender was talking to Vanity Fair about his work on the show, which this season has seen him direct the episodes “The Door” and “Blood Of My Blood,” when he revealed that Game Of Thrones wouldn’t consist of as many episodes next season.

Bender was asked whether he’d be back to direct one or two episodes of Game Of Thrones next season, to which he responded, “I don’t know the answer to that. They’re only doing seven [episodes], and they’ve got their regulars who have done it forever.”

While there wasn’t too much to Jack Bender’s comments, it immediately set online tongues wagging, because numerous television shows have culminated with fewer episodes.

The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad decided to split their final seasons in half. The Sopranos’ sixth and final season technically consists of 20 episodes, but the first 12 were shown in 2006 while the final nine were shown in 2007. Before then each season had consisted of 13 episodes per season.

Meanwhile, Mad Men‘s final season was also split into two parts. Creator Matthew Weiner entitled Part 1 of Season 7 “The Beginning,” which consisted of seven episodes. These unfolded in May 2014. Part 2 was entitled “The End Of An Era,” ran for seven episodes, too, and came to an end in May 2015.

Similarly Breaking Bad’s fifth and final season consisted of 16 episodes. The first eight episodes were shown in August and September 2012, while the final eight episodes were aired in the same months but in 2013.

Obviously, this could all just be coincidental, and Game Of Thrones might be reducing the amount of episodes in its seventh season for other reasons. However, the fact that there is precedent from other television series of similar magnitude on the pop culture scale makes Jack Bender’s comments all the more intriguing.

There has been more attention surrounding the eventual conclusion of Game Of Thrones than ever before this season. That’s because the current crop of episodes are the first to have passed author George R.R. Martin’s novels.

George R.R. Martin was unable to complete the sixth volume of his Song Of Ice and Fire fantasy series, which is what has inspired David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ hugely popular Game Of Thrones. This meant that Benioff and Weiss were provided with an outline and information regarding the remaining storylines for the characters.

However, it’s believed that most of these plots and narratives have instead been created in the Game Of Thrones writer’s room. This suggests that Benioff, Weiss, and their team of writers know the exact trajectory for Game Of Thrones‘ future, and they’ve already intimately started to map it out.

Reducing seasons on the way to the end of the show would make sense, too, as they might realize that they have a hugely climatic moment that needs to bring a season to an end before then kick-starting another.

Of course, at the moment, this is all purely conjecture based off the comments of one director, whose information could well be out of date. All that we do know is that the current season only has four episodes left. After that we’ll just have to wait and see, but it sounds as though we might find out who the one true king or queen of Westeros is sooner rather than later.

[Image via HBO]

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