Game of Thrones Showrunners Reveal How Many Episodes Are Left

The showrunners of Game of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, revealed there are only a maximum of fifteen episodes left for the show in an interview with Deadline. While talking about the sixth season's finale (read Dave Giggs' review of the finale here), Weiss stated that roughly two more seasons were left for the show. "From pretty close to the beginning, we talked about doing this in 70-75 hours, and that's what we'll end up with. Call it 73 for now."

The interview pointed out to Benioff and Weiss that they could keep going with the show for quite a while without overstaying their welcome, but Weiss and Benioff were firm. "We want to leave while all the people watching this show are really into it. Get out at a high point and not have it be, well thank god that's over," Weiss stated. Benioff went on to say that they wanted to tell a story that had a specific planned ending rather than an indefinite one. "It's not just trying not to outstay your welcome. We're trying to tell one cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end. As Dan said, we've known the end for quite some time and we're hurtling towards it."

He said that they won't let the show's popularity influence them into straying from this plan an unnecessarily pad the story. "The thing that has excited us from the beginning, back to the way we pitched it to HBO is, it's not supposed to be an ongoing show, where every season it's trying to figure out new story lines. We wanted it to be one giant story, without padding it out to add an extra 10 hours, or because people are still watching it."

The pair also discussed the difficulty of doing the sixth season of the show now that they no longer had George R.R. Martin's books to rely on for guidance. They noted that the show had strayed far from the books long before this, with more and more changes happening with each subsequent season. "When you make a few changes, those changes multiply and now we get to the point we're beyond the books."

They admitted that not having huge iconic moments from the books like Cersei's walk of shame to rely on for this season was their biggest challenge. There were a couple of plot elements that happened this season that came from George R.R, Martin himself, like "the Iron Islands, and the things that happened there, and the great reveal with Hodor", but other than that, they were on their own.

But Benioff and Weiss wanted to rise to the challenge and honor what George R.R. Martin had created. Weiss said that being able to go it one their own was "a testament to George's characters and the world he created." He went on to say, " At a certain point, if we weren't able to do it, then shame on us. George gave us an incredible gift with probably more fantastically drawn characters than I've seen in pretty much any book ever. If we weren't able to do that, we weren't the right people to be running the show here."

It's sad to hear that Game of Thrones will be over soon, but I'm glad to hear that Weiss and Benioff want the story to have a real direction and ending and won't be dragging it on forever until everyone's sick of it. How do you feel about Game of Thrones being close to end? Do you think Weiss and Benioff have done a good job with this last season without Martin to guide them? What do you think the big finale will be?

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