Bad news Game of Thrones fans, HBO has promised that the fantasy epic will never get a revival.
Since 2011, HBO's big-budget masterpiece has wowed fans around the world. Breaking records and sweeping award boards, it will be a sad day when Game of Thrones rolls its credits for the last time in season 8. Building toward an epic climax, we can't wait to see who will be left sitting on the Iron Throne when winter finally comes, but who would like to see the story carry on from there?
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Speaking to THR, HBO programming president Casey Bloys has promised that the show will not continue in its current form beyond its final season and that the network will never return to the Game of Thrones idea:
"That's not happening. This story, A Song of Ice and Fire, is done. There's no revival, reboot, spinoff talk."
It is a double-edged sword, but there is a sense of reassurance that Game of Thrones will be preserved as is. However, even with HBO vowing to leave show where it ends, that won't stop some far-off rights buyout and a different network remaking the story a la Lord of the Rings in a hypothetical future.
Revival talks are a little presumptive when you consider that Game of Thrones hasn't even aired its final season yet, but would we really want to milk it for all its worth? In this era of reboots and revivals for the likes of Prison Break, The Office, and even rumors of a Lost resurgence, it seems that the norm is to resurrect TV shows despite their apparent end, but is it necessarily a good thing? You only have to look at longstanding shows like The Walking Dead or Grey's Anatomy to hear some accuse them of going past their sell-by date. Speaking about the recent fifth season of Prison Break, it failed to live up to the hype of its formative years but still managed to scrape by for season 6.
While Thrones may not live past its final six episodes, at least fans of George R.R. Martin's world can head back to the Seven Kingdoms with those five spinoff shows. The main show will wrap in 2019, but bosses have confirmed that we shouldn't expect the spinoffs until at least 2020. Characters like Kit Harington's Jon Snow and Emilia Clarke's Danaerys Targaryen may not pop up in any of the other shows, but Martin and company have teased there could be some ancestral connections between the two worlds.
Season 9 of Game of Thrones would be most fans' wildest dreams, but it is a testament to the work of showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss that they have a clear vision of when and how to end the saga. In the meantime, audiences will have to sit back and wait for the show's final run next year and see how HBO will close the book on the ice and fire frolic.
More: Game of Thrones Season 8 Episodes May Not All Be Feature-Length
Source: THR