April 2019 cannot come fast enough. Game of Throne season 8 is set to be an explosive ride filled with war and blood and intimacy.
Entertainment Weekly’s editor at large and self-professed Westeros war correspondent is one of the few journalists who have managed to snag multiple invites onto HBO’s GoT set.
James Hibberd featured in EW’s Game of Thrones Weekly podcast, in which he teased with yet more information about the upcoming season.
With the advent of the final season almost upon us, and rumours of a trailer being released soon, Hibberd discussed the set visits and speculation about what the show has in store for its fans.
Intimacy may play a prominent role.
Speaking on the podcast, Hibberd reveals: ‘There’s been so much focus on the “spectacularness” of the battles, but they’re not skimping on the one-on-one scenes and the character scenes.
‘I think people are going to be surprised about how intimate the final season is, in addition to the spectacular stuff that you’re expecting.’
He adds: ‘What you want in any final season is things to be unexpected but also make sense.
‘So you don’t want anything to surprise you for surprise’s sake. You want everything to feel earned and to look back and go, “okay, yeah, I could see how they were building to that.” And from that I know from the final season, it does that.’
His sentiment is in line with past GoT seasons, where the central themes are often contradictions – a character might be motivated by a lust for power, and a twisted love; another by a sense of justice and a sense of greed.
It stands to reason that the final season will look at the emotional ropes that bind, from Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen’s tragic relationship, to the twisted love story that is Cersei Lannister and her brother Jaime.
Hibberd also talked about his trips to the GoT set, where he said HBO has gone all out to build a realistic Winterfell, and he added that the show have amped up their fight scenes.
‘It’s shaping up to be what probably almost certainly is the longest consecutive battle sequence in cinema history,’ he said.
‘They’ve looked to try and find other ones out there, like [the one in] The Towers, in the Lord of the Rings, which is about 40 minutes, and in the movie 13 Assassins, which is also around 40 minutes. This is going to be longer than 40 minutes. It’s pretty nuts.’
April 2019 need to hurry up.
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