Above and beyond
The final season of Game of Thrones has a lot to live up to, and it sounds like HBO has given it the resources it needs to be like nothing TV viewers have seen before. “Usually, when we record the series, we need six months to do 10 episodes,” Pilou Asbæk (Euron Greyjoy) reminded fans. “This time we needed 10 months to record six episodes. Honestly, I can promise that this season will be spectacular.”
That’s a sentiment echoed by several of the stars. Here are some highlights:
- Turner: “his season is bloodier than ever. It’s full of betrayal, full of war, full of danger. That’s all I can say without giving too much away.”
- Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont): “The scale on which the final season has been mounted is amazing. Game of Thrones is the biggest TV show ever and the finale will reflect that. The production values are immense and the shoot is taking long because the sequences are more complicated.”
- Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth): “t was all new to us, and it is just, ‘Oohs,’ and, ‘Ahhs’. It is as it was in the past, it is just beautiful storytelling. Huge surprises. Wonderful stuff. I can safely say it will be a fantastic, fantastic finish to this incredible story.”
Showing shades of her Game of Thrones character, Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei) has been particularly eloquent on this front. “It definitely will not be rushed conclusion,” she said of the final season. “They’ve taken the exact number of hours to tell the story they want to tell and it will be brilliant. will never leave the fans unsatisfied, they won’t leave the fans left short, it will go over and above the fans expectations as they do every season.”
And Emmanuel was just getting started:
"I think what we can expect from the final season of GoT is just a real push. Like in the last couple of seasons, we have seen the pace of the show increase with the stakes getting higher and higher. There are so many storylines that have to come to conclusion. We have to play them out, so the pace of the show is continuing on that sense…There are so many characters and stories that haven’t found their conclusion. So, this season is going to be incredibly satisfying for people. It is going to be incredibly exciting and heartbreaking…[Season 8 will have] all of the things that you expect from Game of Thrones, but at the same time, since it is the last one, the emotions will be so much more intense."
We’ll let Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (Gregor “the Mountain” Clegane”) have the last word on this one: “The only thing I can tell you is that it will be epic!”