The weirwood leaves will barely have sprouted when Game of Thrones returns for its eighth and final season, according to HBO president Casey Bloys.
(For those of you not well acquainted with Westeros botany, that translates to: Thrones will return before summer 2019.)
The premium cable boss told reporters at the Television Critics Association summer press tour Wednesday that Season 8 of the fantasy drama will premiere in the “first half” of 2019.
His statement seems to back up what star Maisie Williams said in an interview earlier this year: That Thrones will be back in April 2019.
Every season of Game of Thrones has gotten underway in April, except for Season 3 (which started on March 31) and Season 7 (which got underway July 16).
In January, Bloys told TVLine that the 2019 start date came from showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff — and not the network. “It was based on when they felt that they could deliver a show that the are most proud of… I suppose we could’ve said to them, ‘You must deliver by this date… But we’ve worked with them a long time and I trust them to tell us, ‘This is the time we need to make it good.’ So I don’t know that it’s a delay as much as it is ‘This is the time required to deliver at the level that they think the fans expect.'”
