Game of Thrones’ final season will only have six episodes, making it one of the shortest yet, but the team behind the series at HBO has thought of a way to combat the feeling of loss some fans may have.
Paula Fairfield, sound designer on the show, told an audience gathered at Con of Thrones this past weekend that each episode could be treated like a feature-length special. That means each of the six episodes would run close to 90 minutes in length, making the season feel like it was closer to eight or nine episodes instead of the paltry six.
Fairfield just said the Season 7 finale of GAME OF THRONES will be 82 mins. Final season they're considering making each ep feature length!
— David Chen (@davechensky) July 1, 2017
To put this into perspective for those fans who aren’t anxiously looking at the runtime of each episode, most episodes run approximately 55 minutes in length. There are exceptions, of course, like last season’s, “Battle of the Bastards,” which ran for 68 minutes.
Game of Thrones’ eighth season won’t be the only one to receive longer than usual episodes. A report from Watchers on the Wall suggests that the show’s upcoming seventh season will have two of the series’ longest episodes yet. The season seven finale will run for 81 minutes, according to the report, while the penultimate episode will run 71 minutes.
This won’t help fill the void in your heart when Game of Thrones eventually comes to an end, but having six feature length episodes back-to-back will hopefully make it a little easier to move on. There are a few Game of Thrones spinoff ideas currently in development, which should also help.
Game of Thrones returns on July 16 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.