HBO has finally revealed that the eighth season of Game of Thrones is set to premiere on April 14.
The announcement arrived before Sunday’s season three premiere of True Detective. HBO teased the reveal on Friday via Twitter, sharing a screenshot of a text message thread between HBO and the “Boss.”
GoT fans have had the longest wait yet for the show’s final season. Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss previously explained that they intended to spend a year and a half creating the last episodes of the show. Given the series’ global following, the stakes are pretty high.
In July, it was said that the eighth and final season was set to include eight new characters, and one battle that took 55 nights to shoot—and each of the six episodes could be as long as 90 minutes.
Now, with the ending of GoT just around the corner, production on HBO’s prequel series has kicked off. Rumored to be titled The Long Night, the show will take place thousands of years before the original show. It had already been announced that Naomi Watts and Josh Whitehouse had been cast, but now The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that eight more stars have signed on as regulars: Naomi Ackie, Toby Regbo, Ivanno Jeremiah, George Henley, Jamie Campbell Bower, Sheila Atim, Denise Gough, and Alex Sharp.
