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Forget winter. It’s the beginning of the end that’s coming: Game of Thrones‘ eighth and final season kicks off April 14 on HBO.
And while it’s sad to say goodbye to Westeros favorites like Daenerys Targaryen, Sansa Stark, Jon Snow and assorted Lannisters, it’s good to know that GoT stars including Emilia Clarke, Sophie Turner, Kit Harington, Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Peter Dinklage aren’t going anywhere. They’re starring in the movies and TV shows you’re going to be watching in the next few years.
Since it premiered on April 17, 2011, GoT has won critical raves, earned a collective 47 Primetime Emmys (so far!), swept up audiences (a series-high 16.5 million viewers watched 2017’s Season 7 finale) — and made household names of its actors.
That last part wasn’t a given. When the original GoT cast was first assembled, only Dinklage, who’d been tapped to play Tyrion Lannister, and Sean Bean, who was tasked with taking on the doomed-to-die-sooner-than-the-rest Ned Stark, were familiar faces to U.S. audiences. (Dinklage had garnered Oscar buzz for the 2004 film, The Station Agent, while Bean had been a James Bond villain in GoldenEye and the brave Boromir in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.)
But the HBO series’ success ensured fame for all members of the GoT gang.
Now, as GoT winds down, we see the show’s stars branching out into Marvel Comics blockbusters (Turner’s Dark Phoenix and Williams’ The New Mutants), big-screen animated features (Harrington’s How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World and Dinklage’s The Angry Birds Movie 2) and even a pro-wrestling biopic (Headey’s Fighting With My Family). Check out the gallery below to see what’s in the cards for the cast.
PHOTOS: Here’s what the Game of Thrones stars are doing after the show ends