Our final voyage to Westeros begins.
WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Game of Thrones season eight. Obvs.
Game of Thrones is an absolute pop-culture phenomenon, so it's hard – not to mention heart-breaking – trying to imagine the television landscape without it.
Nevertheless, we'll soon be faced with that cold, hard reality – the last ever season of HBO's fantasy epic is coming. Feel unprepared? Here's everything you need to know about the end of the saga, from cast to plot spoilers to air dates.
Game of Thrones season 8 release date: When will it air?
It's going to be another long wait, with official word coming from HBO that the eighth and final season will arrive in 2019.
That timeline had previously been tipped by by Sansa actress Sophie Turner - with her on-screen sibling Maisie Williams later suggesting an April return date. However, Williams has since denied releasing that info, posting on Twitter that the quote was "completely false and taken from an interview I did years ago".
HBO President Casey Bloys had previously promised a long wait: "[David Benioff and Dan Weiss, showrunners] 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."
"We honestly don't know yet [when the final episodes will air]," Benioff admitted. "There's been a lot of back and forth about air dates. That's a long way off from being settled."
Bloys later acknowledged that Benioff and Weiss's vision for their grand finale is far more "complicated" than prior years.
"Our production people are trying to figure out a timeline for the shoot and how much time the special effects take," he said.
"The shooting is complicated enough — on different continents, with all the technical aspects — and the special effects are a whole other production period that we're trying to figure out. That is a big factor in all of this."
Ser Jorah actor Iain Glen has also suggested that bringing the show's sizeable cast together for the final outing also complicates matters: "We're all starting to be in the same storylines and so they can't [have two filming units] anymore. I think this last season will take much longer to shoot because they can only use one unit."
Once final GoT episodes land on HBO in the US next year, you can expect Sky Atlantic to simulcast the final season in the UK. (Though, if you can't stomach the thought of staying up that late, there's always the repeat viewing later in the day at the more manageable time of 9pm to look forward to. You can also watch it on demand any time after 2am.)
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