Game of Thrones season 8 to premiere in April 2019

Fans of HBO's hit series Game of Thrones are no stranger to long waits between seasons, and it's been known for some time that the wait for the show's eighth and final season would be especially long. But things were made even worse when it was announced earlier this month that Game of Thrones would be returning until sometime in 2019. Fortunately Maisie Williams, the actress who plays Arya Stark, has narrowed down that window to something a bit more specific.

It appears that April 2019 is the period we can mark on our calendars for Game of Thrones' return. Williams revealed the timeline, albeit accidentally, in an interview with Metro, although an exact and definite date won't come from HBO for some time.

"We wrap in December and we air our first episode in April [2019]," Williams said. "That's a four-month turnaround for these huge episodes. There's a lot that goes into the final edit. You would not want to rush this season at all. We owe it to our audience and our fans to really do this final season to the best of our abilities."

It's a relief to hear that the wait for season eight won't be the better part of two years. An April premiere would be in line with the spring debut of all previous seasons, excluding seven, which began in July of last year. HBO revealed the 2019 return just a few weeks ago, while we already knew that the final season will run only six episodes, the shortest by far.

Fortunately each episode is said to run well over an hour, the standard runtime for the series, even stretching beyond 80 minutes. As this will be the final conclusion for one of the world's most popular shows, and the producers having previously explained that they want to get everything just right, the longer production time makes sense.

SOURCE Metro