‘Game Of Thrones’: HBO Hints More Episodes Could Be Coming In Final Season

Warning: This article could contain Game of Thrones Season 7 and Season 8 spoilers.

For months, Game of Thrones fans have heard that showrunners David Benioff and Daniel Weiss planned to end their epic HBO series after 73 episodes, with eight episodes airing in Season 7 and six episodes airing in Season 8. But it’s not so cut and dry, according to a report by Entertainment Weekly.

Apparently, the premium pay service hasn’t yet officially greenlit Game of Thrones Season 8. Before anyone gets panicky, the reason for the delay is that Benioff and Weiss are still deciding how many episodes they want to produce in the final season, says HBO’s programming president, Casey Bloys.

“They’re still figuring out the shape of the season, what they want to do,” Bloys said. “I’ll take as many as they want to do. If they give me eight, I’ll want 10. But it’s really up to them. They’ll let me know.”

Not only could there be a few more episodes in Season 8, Bloys said the showrunners are also exploring the idea of a Game of Thrones spin-off or prequel.

“It’s such a big property we would be foolish to explore it, but it’s a pretty high bar,” he said. “We’ll take some shots at it. I’m not going to do it just to do it. It has to feel very special. I would rather have no sequel and leave it as-is then have something we rushed out.”

However, Bloys explained that a prequel is more likely than a spin-off.

“A prequel feels like it has less pressure on it [than a spin-off],” he said. “[Author George R.R. Martin’s history of Westeros] gives you areas in which to say to a writer, ‘If you were going to do this, then go flesh it out,’ and we’ll see what comes back. But I don’t feel any pressure that we have to have something.”

Actor Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont) also hinted that Game of Thrones Season 8 could be longer than six episodes in a recent interview with Radio Times.

“There are fifteen more hours left in Thrones as we understand it, but that may change, but that’s as far as we know,” he explained. “I think the scale and size of the set pieces, the world that is being created it’s just getting more and more extraordinary and they feel they need that time to shoot seven hours as opposed to ten.”

Of course, even if the final season of Game of Thrones ends up being longer than originally planned, Glen knows that his character may not live to see the series finale — or even the final season.

“I don’t know of course if I am going to make the last one. I am sort of doing a head count, but I think it’s certainly under ten people who were in the original pilot and have been in every season since. I have grown very attached to it. I love the people involved. Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff] are very benign showrunners and very good people.”

The news of more episodes or a possible prequel should be very welcome to fans who have to wait longer than usual between seasons. As the Inquisitr previously reported, the filming of Game of Thrones Season 7 was delayed so the cast and crew could take advantage of a real Northern Ireland winter during filming, which plays into the final seasons’ “winter is here” theme.

“‘Winter is here,’ and that means that sunny weather doesn’t really serve our purposes anymore,” Benioff and Weiss told Deadline. “So we kind of pushed everything down the line, so we could get some grim, grey weather even in the sunnier places that we shoot.”

Are you excited to learn that there could be more than six episodes of Game of Thrones Season 8?

Game of Thrones Season 7 returns to HBO later this year.

[Featured Image by HBO]