Gather round, ye Game of Thrones fans. June 16 marks exactly one month until everyone’s favourite HBO fantasy returns for its penultimate season.
The team behind the show have been characteristically cagey about what’s going to happen in season seven, and if you’re a #nospoilers kind of fan, you probably prefer that any and all soul-crushing scenes come as a shock, anyway. But as we count down the days until the July 16 premiere, we cling onto seven (mostly non-spoilery) things we already know.
1. Plot-wise, season seven is basically a culmination of everything that has gone down on the show since 2011. And because the White Walkers don’t wait for anyone, you can expect the storyline to hurtle forward at a much faster pace. Cast member Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister, told Entertainment Weekly he was shocked when he read the scripts. “A lot of things that normally take a season now take one episode,” he said. Showrunner Dan Weiss added that things were moving quicker because “in the world of these characters, the war that they’ve been waiting for is upon them.”
2. Season seven will only have seven episodes as opposed to the usual 10. But dry your eyes, because according to Liam Cunningham, or Sir Davos Seaworth as we know him on the show, the reduced episode count is actually good news in the long run. “Originally, [the show] was only going to be seven seasons. But we decided to split that into seven episodes for season seven, and six episodes for the final eighth season. So, in reality if you’re an optimist, you’re getting an additional three episodes.” (Don’t worry if math is your weak spot — our heads are spinning, too.)
3. Let’s talk duration: according to community website Watchers on the Wall, episodes one, two and five will clock in at 59 minutes, episode three at 63 minutes, episode four at 50 minutes (the shortest of the season), episode six at 71 minutes, and episode seven at a whopping 81 minutes. That means the finale will be an hour and 21 minutes — long enough to constitute a feature film — and will mark the longest episode of Game of Thrones to date.
4. To hear Jon Snow, the King in the North, say it in a trailer, “The Great War is here.” Which brings us to all the speculation around the promos released thus far. Season six ended in a brawl, but more sweat, blood and guts are definitely on the way as a battle seems to be brewing between the Queens and Kings of Westeros. In terms of individual characters, Daenerys, her horsemen and dragons are making their way across water towards (presumably) world domination; Cersei seems prepared to destroy anything in her path; and Jon Snow is back with a vengeance. Someone will definitely die but its anyone’s game as to who.
5. We all heard Sansa Stark’s announcement in the sixth season finale: Winter is finally here. The brutally cold season has dawned on the Westeros, and as a result, the cast and crew had to move their filming schedule to the wintertime. This means they were three months behind their usual schedule, which also meant the show was pushed back to a July premiere instead of April.
6. Depending on what you consider to be spoilery, this next point about a possible cast member’s return may be a spoiler. We all saw Khal Drogo, Daenerys’ husband, die at her hands in season one. But rumours have been circulating that Drogo, played by Jason Momoa, could come back to life this season. Momoa posted a photo of himself next to Kit Harington in September, with a caption about how excited he was for GoT’s next season. Could that be a clue? After all, Harington knows a thing or two about resurrected characters. Relatedly, tabloid! spotted Momoa in Dublin back in August of 2016, not too far from where the series usually shoots.
7. Season seven, which took six months to shoot, will be the biggest in terms of production, including different sets and new locations. Though the cast and crew returned to the heavily featured Northern Ireland, a good chunk of its winter scenes took place in Iceland. They also headed over to Spain, and rumour has it that Daenerys Targaryen and her soldiers may set foot onto the Muriola Beach in Barrika to join the other kingdoms fighting for the Iron Throne.