More than a year since Game of Thrones season seven came to a close, we finally have our first look at season eight.
In the first picture to come from the fantasy epic’s final chapter, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen are every inch the king and queen as they cosy up to each other as darkness looms over Westeros.
The image, which is featured on the cover of this week’s Entertainment Weekly, comes with quotes from executive producer Bryan Cogman, who gave the first real details of the cycle ahead.
‘It’s about all of these disparate characters coming together to face a common enemy, dealing with their own past, and defining the person they want to be in the face of certain death,’ Cogman said.
‘It’s an incredibly emotional, haunting, bittersweet final season and I think it honours very much what [author George RR Martin] set out to do – which is flipping this kind of story on its head.’
Kit Harington called filming the final season ‘relentless’.
‘Scenes that would have been a one-day shoot five years ago are now a five-day shoot. They want to get it right, they want to shoot everything every single way so they have options,’ he told the magazine.
Emilia Clarke added: ‘[Camera] checks take longer, costumes are a bit better, hair and make-up a bit sharper – every choice, every conversation, every attitude, has this air of ‘this is it’. Everything feels more intense.’
Next to nothing is known about the final run from Game of Thrones as the cast and crew have guarded every secret from the last six episodes to an inch of their life.
Though, speculation has obviously run riot in the show’s absence with fans throwing out theories left, right and centre: from Jon Snow being forced to kill Daenerys to the return of Khal Drogo.
Game of Thrones returns to HBO and Sky Atlantic in 2019.
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