A lot of great television shows have diluted their overall quality by dragging on longer than necessary. This could have been done either as fan service, or to milk a successful concept. Either way, the show’s legacy tends to take a hit because of it. It looks like “Game of Thrones” will not fall into this all too familiar trap, and is set to wrap up the series with a final season containing only six episodes.

The countdown begins

While most people are looking forward to season 7 that will be out on July 16, 2017, executive producers of “Game of Thrones” – David Benioff and D.B Weiss dropped a huge bombshell regarding season 8. During their discussion at SXSW, the duo dropped some major hints about how they intend to wrap up the gripping story.

“It’s only going to be six episodes for the final season," David Benioff said during the panel discussion. "From the beginning we’ve wanted to tell a 70-hour movie. It will turn out to be a 73-hour movie, but it’s stayed relatively the same of having the beginning, middle and now we’re coming to the end.

It would have been really tough if we lost any core cast members along the way, I’m very happy we’ve kept everyone and we get to finish it the way we want to.”

Future of the series

This means that fans of “Game of Thrones” will only have 13 episodes to look forward to before the show wraps things up for good. The shortened seventh season will only have seven episodes too, meaning the last two seasons will be the shortest of the series by quite a margin.

HBO has expressed interest in creating a spin-off or a prequel/sequel once the show ends, but Benioff and Weiss have made it clear that they will not be a part of this project if it ever happens. Benioff had this to say regarding the topic: “I think HBO might well do [another series] and I look forward to watching it and I think it be great, but I think they should get new blood in.”

The producers also dropped another piece of interesting news regarding the seventh season of the show, and involves a cameo appearance by singer Ed Sheeran. Apparently one of the stars of the show, Maisie Williams, has been a fan of Sheeran for some time now, which is why the producers decided to involve the singer in the show as a part of a surprise for the young actress.

All in all, it looks like the series is set to end in a flurry of surprises, and I cannot be more glad that the producers have put quality before quantity while making these big decisions. This could seal the fate of “Game of hrones” as one of the best shows ever made on television.