Entertainment

Sophie Turner Confirms Just How Long We'll Have To Wait For 'Game Of Thrones'

Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO

It seems as if you're going to have to wait a few winters before Game Of Thrones will be back. It turns out, Game Of Thrones Season 8 premiere date won't likely be until 2019. Sansa Stark herself, Sophie Turner confirmed the unfortunate news to Variety saying in a new interview, "Yeah, I’m really excited. Game of Thrones comes out in 2019." This is news to fans, since HBO teased that Season 8 of Game Of Thrones could come back in either 2018 or 2019. Unfortunately, based on Turner's comments, it nows seems that next year will be GOT-less, which gives you more time to come up with new theories for the final season. That's good, right?

Though, you likely won't get much help from the show. Game Of Thrones started filming its final season back in October and is trying its best to keep spoilers from being leaked. According to Vulture, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau told a Scandinavian talk show that the Game of Thrones actors won't receive Season 8 scripts as a precaution. Though, he may have been joking since he also said the actors would have their lines fed to them through an earpiece.

But, HBO did say the scripts would be the reason for GOT's later than originally planned premiere date. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly back in June, HBO programming president Casey Bloys said, "They have to write the episodes and figure out the production schedule. We'll have a better sense of that once they get further into the writing." Apparently, Turner now has a better sense of when Game Of Thrones will return, even if HBO hasn't officially confirmed it yet.

What is clear is that the show only intended to push back its final season premiere for good reason, knowing nothing less would be acceptable. After all, the network and the creators know that fans really, really, really want to see what happens at the end of Game Of Thrones. Seriously, what will Jon Snow do once he finds out Daenerys Targaryen is his aunt? Is Cersei going to become a White Walker? Did Tormund survive The Wall's collapse? It's what inquiring GOT fans want to know.

But, creators Dan Weiss and David Benioff also know that fans don't want the final season done quickly, they want it done just right, which gives them a little leeway. They can take their time if it means fans will get a better season.

The details of Season 8 are hard to come by, but it was revealed that Game Of Thrones' final season will be longer than ever. While it will have only six episodes — it's the shortest season in GOT history — all of them will be feature length, according to the show's sound designer, Paula Fairfield. She let this fun fact slip at a fan convention called Con Of Thrones in Nashville back in July.

She also revealed that the final season will break the show's current record for the longest episode, which clocked in at 81 minutes. So, when Game Of Thrones does finally return, plan to spend a lot of time with it.

Let's be honest, though, pushing the premiere back also means fans will have more time to revisit the previous seven seasons. This means, they'll have more time to comb over all the different plotlines and come up with the scenarios they'd really like to see. Not to mention, share all those thoughts on Reddit.

That certainly adds a bit of pressure for Weiss and Benioff to get this right. Especially since this is a fanbase that doesn't let much slide. But, it's also a group of devoted fans, who just got more excited knowing when Game Of Thrones will be back, even if it is later than expected. Better late than never, right?