If you, like us, are still reeling from Sunday’s season finale of Game of Thrones, fear not; showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have reflected on the going-ons of a truly massive episode, and how the chess pieces stand going into the show’s final two seasons.
Of course, much like Natalie Dormer’s quotes from earlier today, both Benioff and Weiss venture deep into spoiler territory when speaking with Deadline. Yes, dear readers, the night is dark and full of spoilers. If you’ve yet to lay eyes on “The Winds of Winter” bookmark this page and return when you’re safely caught up.
[zerg]First up, Weiss began by outlining the ways in which season 6’s finale acted as the culmination of individual story arcs, be it Arya (Maisie Williams) facing the trials and tribulations of Bravvos or Jon Snow (Kit Harington) standing tall against a divided Night’s Watch.
WEISS: It’s great, because things have finally, in the past season or two, started to contract in a very positive way. It was such an expansive world for such a long time. Obviously, we’ve had to say goodbye to a lot of characters and storylines we loved a lot. The ones that are left are ones we’ve been engaged in so long. Writing for Maisie [Williams] is always great, writing for Peter [Dinklage] and Emilia [Clarke] is great, especially now that they’ve come together in the same story line. Writing all the stuff for Kit [Harington] and all of the epic stuff he went through to get to now. There isn’t anyone left we don’t love writing for, because we’ve been writing for them, for so long. We know then so well at this point.
Looking further afield, Benioff then spoke about how HBO is conscious of Game of Thrones overstaying its welcome, and how he aims to send off the politically charged flagship on a resounding high note.
BENIOFF: It’s two more seasons we’re talking about. From pretty close to the beginning, we talked about doing this in 70-75 hours, and that’s what we’ll end up with. Call it 73 for now. What Dan says is really true, but it’s not just trying not to outstay your welcome. We’re trying to tell one cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end. As Dan said, we’ve known the end for quite some time and we’re hurtling towards it. Those last images from the show that aired last night showed that. Daenerys is finally coming back to Westeros; Jon Snow is king of the North and Cersei is sitting on the Iron Throne. And we know the Night King is up there, waiting for all of them.
The pieces are on the board now. Some of the pieces have been removed from the board and we are heading toward the end game. The thing that has excited us from the beginning, back to the way we pitched it to HBO is, it’s not supposed to be an ongoing show, where every season it’s trying to figure out new story lines. We wanted it to be one giant story, without padding it out to add an extra 10 hours, or because people are still watching it. We wanted to something where, if people watched it end to end, it would make sense as one continuous story. We’re definitely heading into the end game now.
“The Winds of Winter” brought the curtain down on Game of Thrones season 6 with aplomb, but what were your thoughts on the season overall?