Recently, Game of Thrones visual effects supervisor Joe Bauer opined that the final season of the show wouldn’t be eligible for Emmy consideration for another “two years,” meaning it would premiere in June of 2019 at the very earliest (the cutoff date for Emmy eligibility is May 31), meaning fans would have to wait until next summer to see the final six episodes. Cue the outcry.
But then, like Azor Ahai during the Long Night, one man emerged to give us hope. James Hibberd of Entertainment Weekly, who has long had a direct line to the powers that be at Game of Thrones, plunged Lightbringer through the heart of the panic:
GoT returns for its final six episodes that will air during the first half of 2019. There have been reports over the weekend claiming the show’s return has been “delayed” to mid-2019 making [it] not eligible for Emmys until 2020. Rest assured, “first half of 2019” means exactly that, and HBO expects the show will air all its episodes in time for the 2019 Emmy eligibility cut off.
HBO programming president Casey Bloys made the comment about “the first half of 2019” about a month back, and we’re glad to hear that he means it. If HBO wants season 8 to be eligible for the 2019 Emmys, the first episode will have to debut on May 26 (the last Sunday of the month) at the very latest, and hopefully quite a bit earlier.
Under the Emmy rules, for a season of television to be eligible for Emmys in any given year, it has to air its premiere episode on or before May 31. That doesn’t mean that all the episodes have to air before the end of May; as long as the premiere is out in time, the other hanging episodes are grandfathered in. Thrones used this exception in season 5, when the final two episodes aired in the first two weeks of June. “Mother’s Mercy,” the season 5 finale, won two Emmy awards, for Outstanding Directing and Writing.
And while we’d love to think HBO would air the final season in April or earlier for the fans, airing it in late May could pay dividends; for one, it means the show will be fresher in people’s minds when it comes time to vote on Emmys, and for another, it will give the post-production team as much time as possible to work on what’s shaping up to be a very complex season of TV.
But in any case, we’re getting Game of Thrones season 8 a little earlier than we thought…we think.
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h/t GoldDerby
