Winter is coming, but it won’t be here until the spring.
HBO, in a Tuesday morning tweet, announced that Game of Thrones will begin its final season in April 2019, teasing fans with a 30-second compilation of clips from previous seasons. (We’re pretty sure, for instance, that Ned Stark won’t be sitting on the Iron Throne at the end of the series, but that won’t stop clip devotees from scouring the teaser for any clues.)
“Every battle. Every betrayal. Every risk. Every fight. Every sacrifice. Every death. All #ForTheThrone,” the network wrote, along with a series of tweets for individual characters.
AT&T-owned HBO, which is in the midst of an ongoing battle with Dish Network, has kept an especially tight lid on the production of the final season. That’s understandable, given that the last season of the show was pirated more than 1 billion times, with the premiere alone being pirated 90 million times. (The series is regularly one of the most pirated television shows of the year.)
Every battle.
Every betrayal.
Every risk.
Every fight.
Every sacrifice.
Every death.
All #ForTheThrone. Pic.twitter.com/WReVt473SH— Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones) November 13, 2018
Another reason for the secrecy is the show has chronologically surpassed the plot line of the George R.R. Martin book series upon which it is based, so even fanatics of the series don’t know what comes next.
While Game of Thrones is about end, HBO’s not walking away from its most popular series. Casting has already begun on a spinoff series, which is expected to debut in 2020. All totaled, the network hopes to create four spinoff series.