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'Game of Thrones' may make fans wait till 2019 for final season

Look, winter is coming, just on its own timetable, apparently. At least we're still on track for the second-to-the-last season coming next month.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper
2 min read
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"Oh great, like I haven't been waiting long enough to get my shot at the Iron Throne."

 HBO

We "Game of Thrones" fans are used to waiting. Don't even get us started on how long we've been waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish the scheduled sixth book in the series, "Winds of Winter." (That's not publishing in 2017, I just know it.)

Now Entertainment Weekly is reporting that the final season of the HBO hit fantasy series may be delayed until 2019, not 2018 as expected.

In response to a reporter's question asking if that series finale might not come till 2019, HBO's president of programming, Casey Bloys, confirmed the delay is possible.

More 'Game of Thrones'

"('Game of Thrones' showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss) have to write the episodes and figure out the production schedule," Bloys said. "We'll have a better sense of that once they get further into the writing."

The good news, of course, is that the second-to-the-last season, season seven, is still arriving on July 16. But it's just six episodes long, so we'll barely have fallen back into the world of Westeros before it's time to wait again. Possibly for well more than a year. Heck, Jon Snow could die and be reborn a dozen times by then.

Bloys is promising that this summer's brief season will be worth it though, saying, "I don't want to oversell, but I can't imagine anybody being disappointed in this season. It's amazing."

He also revealed that none of the current "Thrones" cast will be seen in the four prequels that HBO is planning.

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