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It's confirmed - the final season of 'Game of Thrones' will only have six episodes

They better all be eight hours long

It's confirmed - the final season of 'Game of Thrones' will only have six episodes
13 March 2017

As Game of Thrones fans, we’re pretty hardened to crushing disappointment – we’ve gone through the cycle of “discover favourite character – fall in love with favourite character – watch favourite character get brutally murdered – discover new favourite character...” dozens of times by now.

One death we might never get over, though, is the death of the show itself – and much like winter, it is definitely coming.

This upcoming season will be just seven episodes as opposed to the usual ten, and it’s now been confirmed that the final season will have just six. 

The 'Game of Thrones' panel at SXSW in Texas

The, frankly, fucking terrible news was confirmed by show creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff at SXSW Festival in Texas, who were speaking to the audience about the show along with Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams (Sansa and Arya Stark).

Benioff said: "We have a 140 page outline for what's only going to be six episodes for the final season.”

While this means we’ll be getting four fewer hours of Game of Thrones next year, what we can at least hope is that we’ll get six thoroughly action-packed episodes to give the show a fitting finale.

And it’s looking more and more likely we’ll be getting a spin-off once it’s all over too. Benioff told the audience that he thinks HBO “might well do” a Better Call Saul style breakaway show once GoT wraps up – but if they do, he and Weiss won’t be involved.

The other big piece of Game of Thrones news from SXSW was the revelation that Ed Sheeran will appear in the upcoming season – as a surprise treat for Ed superfan Maisie Williams.

While we don’t know exactly what he’ll be up to yet, we’re pretty sure he’ll end up dying (I mean, it’s Game of Thrones) – we’ll just have to wait and see how.