What Will Game of Thrones do with an extra season (or two)? 

, a popular fantasy program you may have heard of, will run for at least eight seasons. This was in contrast with what executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss had long said about the show’s expiration date: that 

Generally speaking, Lombardo’s announcement was met with applause. Whatever misgivings fans may have had with Season 5 of the show, more 

is normally thought of as a good thing. Now that we know that the show will be sticking around for an extra year (at least), the question becomes what the showrunners plan to do with the additional time.

David Benioff and Dan Weiss, thinking deep thoughts.

First of all, lets get something straight. While Benioff and Weiss have stuck pretty close to their seven-seasons narrative, they 

waffled from time to time, with Benioff admitting to 

that “There’s a temptation to keep going with it because we’re still having fun, but you don’t want to ruin it by tacking on a couple of extra years.” Weiss also chimed in during that interview: “We’re not sure whether it’s going to end up being, say, 70 or 75 hours — but it can’t be 100 hours. It would start to feel like a bogged-down mess.”

It seems, then, that there was an admission the show’s creative team that more than seven seasons may be needed to properly tell the story. This seems pretty reasonable. After all, the producers needed two seasons of television to adapt 

series. Presumably, Martin has two more books on the way: 

(notwithstanding his admission that he may push it to eight books if the need arises). Martin’s novels are not getting shorter, so it stands to reason that the producers will need more than 20 episodes of television to cover what will very likely be two (or three) very thick books.

Apart from the adaptation issues, an extra season would also come in handy just given what we know of the show. Since Season 1, fans have been eagerly awaiting two big events: for Daenerys Targaryen to invade Westeros, and for the White Walkers to mount an attack on the area south of the Wall. Season 5 saw these plots inch forward—Drogon the dragon is now big enough for Daenerys to ride him into battle, and the White Walkers added several thousands soldiers to their army of the dead—but both of them have a lot of ground to cover before they arrive at a resolution.

The Night’s King, invading a kingdom near you around 2017.

And that’s not even mentioning all the other irons the show has in the fire. For example, Arya still needs to become an assassin, travel back to Westeros, and insert herself into events. Sansa still needs to rally the North and kick the Boltons out of office. Cersei still needs to butt heads with the High Sparrow, who still has the Tyrell children in custody. Plus, if casting rumors can be believed, the extended Greyjoy family will show up in Season 6. These stories do not seem like they’re winding down. They’re either coming to a boil or, in the case of the Greyjoy plotline, just getting started. It’s hard to believe that all of this could be satisfactorily wrapped up in two seasons.

At the same time, Weiss is right to be wary of overextending the show and turning into “a bogged-down mess.” HBO is making a ton of money off

, so it makes sense for the network to want it to last as long as possible. But television is littered with once-great shows that overstayed their welcome (

, etc…). Many fans have already called out Season 5 of 

 for what they saw as a drop in quality, and it would be a shame if the show continued to slip until it was a pale imitation of what it once was.

To me, eight seasons sounds just about right. It’s long enough to wrap up all various plot strands in a satisfying way, but not so long that the producers and actors risk becoming apathetic. What Benioff and Weiss have to do is balance their obligation to tell the story well with the temptation to extend the show’s lifetime arbitrarily. While HBO doubtlessly wants the latter, Lombardo admitted that he’ll defer to Benioff and Weiss when it comes to the final decision. “I would be open to anything Dan and David want to do,” he said. “It really would depend fully on what they want to do.” Let’s hope that Benioff and Weiss use their power wisely.

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to GRRM’s meeting with his editors? What if he told them he wants to split books again bringing the total to 8, so HBO wants to simulate that with 8 seasons? GRRM’s non-committal to 7 books would be a good reason for D&D to sometimes dance around an ending for GoT on television.

8 seems just right, because the end of Season 4 felt like the halfway point. A lot of plots were either wrapped up or “entering their next phase” such as:

Arya sailing for Braavos after wandering the Riverlands for 3 seasons.

Sansa escaping Kings Landing with Littlefinger.

Tyrion killing his father and escaping Westeros (and freeing Cersei of the 2 men who kept her in check for 3 seasons).

Boltons driving out the Ironborn and begin ruling from rebuilt Winterfell.

Dany has conquered Slavers Bay and rules from Mereen (and sadly has exiled Jorah and locked up 2 dragons).

Season 5 has kicked off Act 2 with Dany struggling to rule, Cersei unleashed in KL, new tensions with Dorne, Jon witnessing what the WW are capable of, Arya in training, etc.

Odd question – we already know that GoT is getting seven seasons.

Question surely is: How do you feel about Game of Thrones getting eight seasons?

D&D have had to make so many contractions from the source material already (most of which has been necessary to make it work on TV) but adding an extra season to what D&D had always thought would give them the space to focus as much on character development, particularly those scenes where characters with opposing agendas meet, rather than simply ticking off essential plot points of the individual story arcs.

Looks like tons of fans are losing intrest and want a movie! Oh…wait. You mean oh 3 percent want a movie?

The main issues with season 5 was the contraction and blending of storylines to streamline GRRM’s narrative especially in regards to A) Dorne and B) Sansa.

These two parts were probably the weakest in season 5 with the Dorne sublot taking the cake.

From a show perspective, it would have been unreasonable to follow the books on Dorne as too many new characters would need to be introduced and the convoluted plot line would have taken too much screentime to adapt. D & D didn’t come up with an inspired compromise as we all saw last season…

Sansa’s change was probably for the better as nobody but book readers would have bought the whole Mance is dead/ not dead, Jeyne Poole is Arya Not schtick that GRRM wrote. At least this chain of events was somewhat feasible and leads more directly to the Sansa mobilizes the North to oust the Boltons theory that most believe in.

The whole Greyjoy storyline will need to be gutted to fit in the show and who knows if Jon Connington and crew ever see the screen…

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How many children did Cersei really have? ***Current on TV show to read***