Game of Thrones cast: Season 7 has a much faster pace than we’re used to

After taking its time with season 5, Game of Thrones picked up the pace of its storytelling considerably in season 6, with characters meeting up, shipping out, and killing their enemies. Today, Entertainment Weekly posted new interviews with several cast and crew members, and it sounds like that trend is going to continue. For example, here’s how Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) reacted when he received the season 7 scripts: “I’m like, ‘Already? Now?! What?!'”

"I feel like I’d been lulled into a different pace. Everything happened quicker than I’m used to … a lot of things that normally take a season now take one episode."

Kit Harington (Jon Snow) agrees. “This season is really different than any other season because it’s accelerating toward the end, a lot of stuff collides and happens much much quicker than you’re used to seeing on Thrones … it’s so different than what everybody is used to. It’s quite exciting.”

This isn’t the first time Game of Thrones cast members have alluded to season 7 being a little different than what’s come before. For example, immediately after she received the season 7 scripts last year, Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) took to Twitter to get her feelings out:

So it sounds like season 7 is going to be a thrill-a-minute affair. Should fans be happy the show is barreling towards the finish line? Or should we be nervous? Whatever the case, showrunner Dan Weiss said that the faster pace wasn’t a result of the season being seven episodes as opposed to its usual 10:

"Things are moving faster because in the world of these characters the war that they’ve been waiting for is upon them. The conflicts that have been building the past six years are upon them and those facts give them a sense of urgency that makes [the characters] move faster."

And fellow showrunner David Benioff put it another way:

"For a long time we’ve been talking about ‘the wars to come,’ Well, that war is pretty much here. So it’s really about trying to find a way to make the storytelling work without feeling like we’re rushing it — you still want to give characters their due, and pretty much all the characters that are now left are all important characters. Even the ones who might have started out as relatively minor characters have become significant in their own right."

The characters are much less spread out now, which should allow events to unfold more quickly. We won’t know for sure how things play out until we see the new episodes for ourselves, starting with the season premiere on July 16. Until then, we’ll let GoT writer Bryan Cogman have the last word: “There are White Walkers and dragons and once they start to come together the story has to go where it goes.”