Small Council: We have to wait longer for a shortened Game of Thrones season. What now?

Earlier this week, we learned two pieces of important news: 1) Game of Thrones Season 7 will be seven episodes long, as opposed to the usual 10; and 2) It won’t air until the summer of 2017. Usually, new seasons start up in April. How do we feel about this? Are we upset? Do we see silver linings? Does it make a difference? Let us know what you think below, and vote in our poll.

DAN: On a gut level, less Game of Thrones is a bad thing. Of course I’d rather have more episodes sooner rather than fewer episodes later. When I take a step back, though, I can see how the delay, at least, is good for the overall health of the series. Yes, Season 7 will air later than usual, but that’s only because the production is filming later than usual, and that’s only because it wants to take advantage of naturally snowy landscapes, winter having come and all. I like that the producers care enough about the show’s verisimilitude to risk fan ire so they can get the look they want. They’re invested, and investment will result in a better season.

I’m a little sadder about the the fact that Season 7 will be a mere seven episodes long, but not because I think it requires more. In hindsight, it’s clear that Seasons 5 and 6 were all about setting up an endgame, and now that the curtain has risen on Game of Thrones’ final act, I can see it making good time. After all, characters who for years had been separated by distance and intention are now united. Before, the show had to follow the different journeys of Daenerys, Tyrion, and Theon. But now they all share a goal, and we can check in on all of them at once, which will save on time. In the end, I think the story will fit nicely in the confines allowed it.

No, I’m sad because, for the first time, the end of Game of Thrones is really, truly in sight. What the show is doing—having a shortened penultimate season followed by an even shorter (probably) final season—sounds like what other prestige shows have done at the end of their runs (see The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men). At this point, I’m invested in the show, too, and it’ll be hard to see it go. Still, this is the way showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have chosen to end it, and by this point, I think they’ve earned the right to exit on their own terms.

The Castillo de Almodóvar del Río, one of the Season 7 filming locations, in the snow.

KATIE: I’m 100% with you on this, Dan. Game of Thrones has always had its endgame in sight, and now that we can see it clearer than ever before, it’s time to get down to business and do whatever’s best for the show. Efficiency is key, otherwise the next two seasons would unnecessarily drag (as is the case with many a good show that ultimately went for quantity over quality). Sure, I don’t want to see the end, but what’s the point of going on forever if what’s going on isn’t any good? We talk a lot about “set-up” episodes, and if we want to see more action than strategy, the showrunners have to cut back on time and get us to the big picture.

I’m bummed we have to wait longer than usual, but it’s not like we don’t have plenty to mull over and talk about in the meantime; there’s always something to keep us busy, even if that something isn’t new episodes coming at us as quickly as possible. At the end of the day, this is how the next two seasons are going to shake out, so we might as well get used to it and have faith that it’ll pay off as usual. Game of Thrones has always been worth the wait.

COREY: We had heard this was coming for a couple months now, but I can’t say the official declaration was any easier to take. It’s like when your favorite player goes down in a heap and has to be carted off the field. We learn a few days later he’s officially down for the season, but it doesn’t make it any easier. The wait between seasons already seemed to stretch into eternity, and these extra few months added to it aren’t going to make the wait any more fun.

That being said, I trust in Benioff and Weiss that the added time will be put to good use. I know the public reason is the need for filming in the darker months of winter, but I have to think, and hope, that the additional time will also be used to polish up the next two seasons. Nothing defines a show and its legacy like the end game, and I am OK with a little extra time taken to get everything just right. I am worried about what exactly their definition of “summer” is, since it’s an entire season, but hopefully they mean the start of summer rather than the end.

And while I love Game of Thrones, I fully support the producers’ decision to keep the show to a fixed number of episodes. The last thing I think we all want is for Game of Thrones to drag out longer than it needs to. So while I would love to watch the show perpetually, I don’t want a watered down narrative arc that takes forever to get anywhere. Hopefully producers can give us enough tidbits over the next year to keep us all satisfied through the long night, but we shall see.

RAZOR: Get a subscription to Netflix and binge every fantasy show and film in its extensive library. When you’ve finished that—in, like, two weeks tops—rewatch all the seasons of Game of Thrones. When that’s done—in another two weeks—pray to the old gods and the new that George R.R. Martin has finished The Winds of Winter so you can read it and reread it, and then go to message boards and tell everyone their theories are dumb and inferior to yours.

Is it going to suck, having to wait extra months for the Season 7 premiere? Sure, but there’s only seven episodes in Season 7, so worrying about when the show is starting should be the least of your worries. What bothers me more is we’ll have three fewer hours of story in Season 7, which might make it feel rushed.

My concern for Season 7 is that the showrunners are going to cram the show’s many plotlines into two small a space. We’ve got Dany’s army (complete with three still-growing dragons) traveling to King’s Landing, Jon’s army preparing for the invasion of the Night King’s army, the Night King’s army destroying the Wall and coming into the North, and Cersei scrambling to assemble an army. Oh, and let’s not forget that Sam is in Oldtown and that there’s a murderous band of Iron Islanders led by a crazy guy who doesn’t play by the rules.

How do the showrunners cram all that into seven episodes without making it feel rushed and incomplete? These are the things we should all be concerned about, not how late the season is actually starting.

ANI: Welp. Seven Gods, Seven Kingdoms, Seven Books, Seven….episodes.

You can rant and rail and sob and shake your fist at the sky, but what good will that do? There are things in life we have to accept. I will never be 5’10” and easily be able to reach high shelves. Taxes will always be due on April 15th. Some people will never understand that Reply All is a bad idea. David Bowie is not coming back, no matter how terrible 2016 gets. And Game of Thrones Season 7 will not debut until Summer of 2017.

To be fair, they set themselves up for this, starting by pushing back Season 6 as far as they humanly could and still have all ten episodes air before the voting period of the Emmy nominations closed. By pushing that back, it meant that the post-season interviews would snowball directly into the post-Emmy nomination interviews would roll directly into the SDCC interviews, which meant that the filming period, which usually starts around mid-July and runs through mid-December, would already be pushed back and then back and then back again. With the announcement that the production wants to film during the actual winter months (in order to get that proper sun angle in the on-location shoots, not to mention the grey and cold, and maybe even some snow they don’t have to budget to pour all over an landscape in August), that sets everything back further. If the plan isn’t to start filming until September (about two months later than usual), that means that it probably won’t end until February, and then they’ll have the usual four-month run-up they need for CGI and post-production, plus promotion, and that’s putting the debut of Season 7…at the beginning of July. Summer 2017.

Hey, look on the bright side: Martin’s got extra time now he didn’t know he would have Maybe we’ll get lucky and this year he’ll beat the show to the finish line.

Season 3 filming in Iceland