We’ve all been bracing for an intense final season of Game of Thrones, given not only the shocking end to Season 7 last year but also the ultimate showdown between the living and the dead that the series has spent years building up to. Comments from multiple cast members and directors over the several months haven’t done anything to tamp down that expectation, and now, even the soft-spoken Missandei is assuring us that “people will have their mind blown when they watch the final [season].”
“I think what we can expect from the final season of [Game of Thrones] is just a real push,” Nathalie Emmanuel recently told India news service IANS. “Like in the last couple of seasons, we have seen the pace of the show increase with the stakes getting higher and higher. There are so many storylines that have to come to conclusion. We have to play them out, so the pace of the show is continuing on that sense.”
“All of the things that you expect from ‘Game of Thrones’, but at the same time since it is the last one, the emotions will be so much more intense,” she said. “I am very excited for people to see it. We have been working so hard on it.”
Emmanuel also confirmed that while the filming on Season 8 is finished, “It took us longer to shoot this season than any of the seasons.” Naturally, that has led to an even longer gap between seasons seven and eight — and while the waiting is enough to try the patience of the Seven, we’ll be here to keep you updated with news in the meantime.
hodor
ASNAWP!!
I know we keep saying it, but every episode just HAS to be considerably longer than 60 minutes. I realize it takes a long time to film big scenes, but like Emmanuel said, there is so much to tie up. Still, I don’t think people particularly like to read “push” and “fast pace” too much because it brings on the “rushed” feeling. No matter how long the season runtime ends up being I think many are going to think they could have slowed a bit and fleshed it out for more episodes.
I’ve never waited so much for anything.
Hey all, I’m not usually one to make predictions about what-will-happen-when, e.g. will they fight the NK in episode 2 or 3, etc. including when the final season will air. HOWEVER I read recently that the Oscars airdate has been moved from Feb 23rd (the last Sunday in February) to February 9th, and I wonder if this will make it possible for HBO to air Season 8 earlier than they would have if the Oscars had held to their original date.
Oh, Miss Sunday. How I’ll miss you.
She’s one of the few characters that I really have no idea if she’ll make it through to the end or not. I can see Greyworm dying since he’ll be where the meat of the action is, so obviously the odds of him dying are much greater than Missandei’s, but then again, no one is safe in the last season. Not even No One herself.
Even though Greyworm’s odds of dying are pretty high, I don’t know if he’ll make it out alive or not. I kind of feel like Greyworm and Missandei are a package deal since they are so devoted to each other. I have a hard time imagining a scenario where GW dies, but Missandei lives and goes on to do….what? I don’t think Dany will take the IT, so what does that leave Missandei left to do? Go back home to Naath I guess? No idea. That’s what makes the speculation fun though.
The Oscars are a movie awards. The Emmy Awards for tv are in September with a set season for qualifying (June 1 – May 31).
Clob,
It’s not about qualifying for the Oscars, it’s about not wanting to air an episode on the same night as it.
Sorry, Gwidhiel, I understand now you were talking about the Oscars moving so GoT could air earlier and not be on against their ceremony. (my edit didn’t seem to work)
Clob
All good – I’ve edited my clarification instead. 🙂
Gwidhiel,
Yep, I did misread/misunderstand initially. Then I made the site shudder when I tried to edit. 😛
Clob,
You’re absolutely right about the danger of a six-episode final season feeling rushed. The way I look at it, there are so many loose threads to tie up, so many mysteries to unravel, and so many unresolved character interactions and emotions, that inevitably there are going to be some fans who feel their favorite characters have been shortchanged. I think there’s enough material in the 67 episodes already aired, e.g., story lines set up that remain unresolved, that could justify another fifteen episodes without any fluff or filler.
Again, I’m not being critical. It’s not for me to second-guess the showrunners’ judgment that they can properly conclude the story in six episodes. Maybe I worry there won’t be breathing room for “high thread count”™️, character-rich interactions amidst ratcheted-up action sequences. Maybe I’m biased and feel they should devote five of the roughly six remaining hours to Arya, leaving sixty minutes to squeeze in Jon, Dany, NK et al.
Or maybe I just don’t want the show to end. 😕
™️ Thronetender 2017
Oh, and yes:
ASNAWP!
Mr Derp,
“…but then again, no one is safe in the last season. Not even No One herself.”
_________
Don’t say it. Don’t fooking say it.
#LastWomanStanding 👸🏻
That was you? I thought I felt a tremor in the Force.
“We’ve all been bracing for an intense final season of Game of Thrones, given not only the shocking end to Season 7 last year but also the ultimate showdown between the living and the dead that the series has spent years building up to.”
————
I must be in the minority. I’m not that juiced up about an ultimate showdown between the living and the dead. I’m sure the battle scenes will look amazing. I’m just not that emotionally invested in the NK or his fellow WW kagniggets. (If only the show had featured him in a song-and-dance number early on, like the alien in “Spaceballs”, the Star Wars parady.)
Well, you can include me in that minority. It’s difficult to be that invested in that part of the story because the NK is a silent, one-dimensional character, and no one wishes to see the wights “win” – they’re pitiable, if dreadful.
Don’t worry. 🙂 I think Arya is about as safe from being killed as Sam or anyone. Sure, she’s likely to be in the position to die as easily as anyone, but can you reeeeally see her being killed. She’ll get out of danger in one manner or another. Besides, who would have the balls to write a death scene for Maisie’s Arya!?!? 😛
I just amused myself with some imaginations that the NK simply had a sore throat from the cold and when he gets South becomes all chatty and sounds like Beric or James Earl Jones… or better yet, a whimsical Irishman. 😀
Haha, or how about a Russian? Not to tar all Russians with the Putin brush but given the US’s current state of affairs, having Vladimir Furdik’s Night King deliver bursts of Slavic-inflected dialogue would be rather enjoyable.
Or perhaps the Night King could tweet?
With all of these massive gatherings of characters being in the same location, it’ll give the show a little more flexibility with the way they’re able to merge and thread remaining storylines. I feel like they’ll have plenty of time to merge political drama and deep character moments with action as they usually have.
“Crooked Daenerys fell for the lies of the Fake Ravens and flew in with her Dragon, so i had to burn a huge wall and fire them all.”
and tons more of that.
and, his first spoken word will be
yeah! whirling an ice cane. i totally see this, and i don’t know if it’s good that i see this. or if the picture you just burned into my head will make season 8 a long wait for this revue number, and nothing else.
thank! you!
I just snorted my covfefe. Love it!
ETA: apparently you can’t use spoiler code within a blockquote? I’ve just removed the word instead.
https://media1.tenor.com/images/a4336770130bc875bdf9ac3b76a09183/tenor.gif?itemid=5555960
Sigh. Nathalie is so darn beautiful.
Gwidhiel,
“I didn’t breach the Wall! It was the Nights Watch and lowlife Lyin Edd! No Collusion! Wight Hunt!”
LOL
Pigeon,
I see what you did there.
Ten Bears,
(ᗒᗜᗕ)՛̵̖
Clob,
I don’t know, I think people who hope for super long season 8 episodes are setting themselves up for disappointment.
What I expect is that Nutter’s episodes 1,2,4 will be around 65-75 minutes; Sapochnick’s 3&5 to come in at 80+ minutes and for Dream of Spring (probably the name of the last episode) to be 90 minutes +
Mr Derp,
This is something I’ve been wondering about myself. I mean, what’s Missandei’s role right now? She’s kind of an advisor to Dany I suppose, and then there’s her love story with Greyworm, but I agree that it’s hard to imagine what she’ll do after the war. It would be kind of nice to see her and GW stick together as one of the few surviving couples, but I could just as easily see her being a heartbreaking loss for Dany. If she does survive, the only thing I see her doing is continuing on as advisor (assuming Dany survives though).
Ok, look..!! I’m getting through this long night we’re in pretty okay. Don’t stress me out! 🙂
Gwidhiel,
“…the wights ….they’re pitiable, if dreadful.”
______
Right. With one exception: I did feel sympathy for Captured Wight in S7e6-e7. Poor guy got bashed in the head, and bagged and slugged by Sandor; then kicked and smacked by Sandor if he even moved or whimpered; then impaled on a dragon spine, and then chained up and imprisoned in a crate in a cargo hold, where Sandor would periodically taunt him.
By the time of Jon Snow’s dragonpit show and tell, when Sandor kicked over the crate and Captured Wight ran screaming towards Cersei. he wasn’t trying to hurt her. He wasn’t running towards her as much as he was running away from Sandor.
If he could talk, he would’ve been screaming and crying: “Help! Help me! That monster won’t stop beating me and calling me names!
#RIPCapturedWight
death by chickenfire,
/painkiller-infused whiskey out nose
Ten Bears,
Your capacity for empathy outstrips mine by a mile
#HahaMyrandaSquishyFace
#HowDoWightsScreamWithoutFleshyVocalCords?
Clob,
“…Besides, who would have the balls to write a death scene for Maisie’s Arya!?!? 😛”
…………..
Let’s see… Someone who:
• Wouldn’t be able to go out in public ever again without being hissed and booed;
• Could never eat food at or order food from a restaurant without a waitress spitting in it, a waiter “milking his eel” into it, or a chef using rodents in place of beef;
• Would singlehandedly cause the syndication value of GoT to plummet from $20,000,000.00+ down to $1.50;
• Would incite a firestorm of condemnation for playing into the stereotype that gender nonconformist female characters somehow have to be punished or die at the end;
• Would be clueless enough not to anticipate that the backlash would be a thousand times worse than the reaction to Sansa’s rape and Shireen’s burning;
• Would be personally responsible for breaking the hearts of millions of daughters;
• Would leave pissed off fans like me with the feeling that I’d been duped into wasting 73 hours watching a nihilistic, dreadful story;
• Would insure that GRRM never finishes the books (if that’s the fate he had in store for Arya);
• Would bring out all the armchair quarterbacks and wannabe screenwriters with their griping that “D&D are hacks” and “I could do better”;
• Would not only expose GRRM to condemnation for crafting a crappy ending, but ensure that the term he coined, “pulling a Lost” (describing his disappointment with the ending of “Lost” and likening it to its showrunners leaving a pile of fecal matter at his doorstep), will be thrown back at him a thousand-fold;
• Would make viewers ask themselves: “Why did I watch this little girl suffer repeated traumas if she was only going to get killed off at the end? What kind of vile douchebag would write this kind of ending?”
• Would be okay with the writers’ and producers’ cars being torched by an anonymous collective of embittered fans claiming that the burnings are sacrifices ordered by the Lord of Light;
• Would have to be incredibly shortsighted in failing to utilize Maisie Williams’s talent: Maisie portraying Arya’s reaction to other characters dying would far more poignant than acting an Arya death scene. (Just look Maisie’s face presses against Yoren’s chest as her father is about to be executed; her quiet heart to heart conversation with Yoren right before the NW caravan is attacked; or stabbing the table in anger after Joffrey had Mycah killed.);
• Thinks it makes a show “edgy”, “subversive” “dark” or “artistic” to arbitrarily kill off a hero or heroine at the very end;
• Is too lazy or lacks the creativity to come up with a satisfying, logical conclusion so instead resorts to cheap shock value; or
• Is a girl-hating incel.
Ten Bears,
“Could never eat food at or order food from a restaurant without a waitress spitting in it, a waiter “milking his eel” into it, or a chef using rodents in place of beef;”
Stannis Baratheon: “Luxury!”
Lord Commander Thorne: “Paradise!”
Hard to read too much into these comments really as they could be interpreted very differently but my take is very much that S8 will be fast paced with a lot of big moments and hurtling towards the end of arcs for key characters. I am just hoping for adequate closure on what they built up, whilst I know there will be big action scenes they also need to tie up everything over six episodes and that feels like a lot right now.
I think it’s already been reported that they won’t be super long but longer than ‘normal’ and probably around the hour mark rather than the usual fifty minutes with one or two episodes longer. Don’t qoute me exactly on that as it’s very late here and my brain isn’t optimal right now.