It seems like it’s bad news for the fans who were hoping that the eighth and final season of HBO’s worldwide phenomenon Game of Thrones would return this year. On Thursday, HBO made the official announcement that the new episodes will arrive in 2019, as most of us expected. Actually, the network hinted at this situation when Season 7 ended in the summer. Actress Sophie Turner, who portrays Sansa Stark in the series said that she is not expecting new episodes until 2019. It seems that she was right, even if HBO only now officially confirmed it.

So, there will be at least one year of waiting for the highly-anticipated conclusion of the blockbuster series. It’s also worth noting that the eighth and final season is going to be the shortest yet, with only six episodes. However, it’s not a secret anymore that most of them are probably going to be longer than usual. Season 7 went this route too, when it aired an 80-minute-long episode. It also aired the shortest episode to date, at only 50 minutes.

Game of Thrones to return and end in 2019

It’s interesting that HBO has not confirmed when exactly in 2019 the show is going to come back. Usually, Game of Thrones premieres in the spring, but Season 7 premiered in the summer. This was because the crew needed a winter setting, so they had to wait for filming to start later in the year.

Still, this long wait might not necessarily be a bad thing. It offers showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss more time to work on maybe the most anticipated finale in TV history. Going into the final season, fans still have a lot of questions they need answered. Will Jon and Dany find out that they are related? Will Cersei get to give birth to her child? And most importantly, who will sit on the Iron Throne?

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