After seven seasons, 67 episodes and countless grisly deaths, “Game Of Thrones” is finally nearing its endgame-of-thrones. With **SPOILER** Littlefinger in the ground, Jon and Daenerys incestuously hooking up, and a blue-fire-breathing undead dragon in the hands of the Night King **END SPOILER** just six episodes of HBO’s blockbusting show remain.
The eighth and final season of the adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic likely won’t arrive until 2019 thanks to the coming of winter (shooting has to start later due to the greater number of snowy environments), and likely a heftier-than-usual effects elements, but production is gearing up for the final run of episodes, and HBO have announced, via The Hollywood Reporter, the directors who’ll be bringing the final run to the screen, and they’re all familiar names for Thrones fans.
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David Nutter, Miguel Sapochnik, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will be dividing up the final six “Game Of Thrones” eps, with only Weiss being a newcomer to the director’s throne on the show (he’s co-directing the finale with Benioff, with whom he created the show and has showrun since the beginning: Benioff previously helmed the third episode of Season 3). Nutter, a TV veteran going back to “21 Jump Street,” has six previous credits in Westeros, including most famously “The Rains Of Castamere,” the bloody Red Wedding episode.
Sapochnik, meanwhile, might be the show’s biggest breakout director: he’s only helmed four episodes, and only beginning in Season 5, but his work includes the killer “Hardhome” battle episodes, the brutal “Battle Of The Bastards,” which won him an Emmy, and the tremendous Season 6 finale “The Winds Of Winter” (all three ended up on our list of the best ever episodes of the series). Sapochnik, like Nutter, skipped Season 7, being busy on Netflix’s new cyberpunk sci-fi show “Altered Carbon” starring Joel Kinnaman, but he’s returning for this go-round, which is bound to be good news for fans.
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Not directing any episodes this time out? Any women, something that’s been the case since Michelle MacLaren helmed an episode sometime in Season 4. Hopefully one of the five spin-offs that HBO is currently developing will fix that. “Game Of Thrones” will return sometime in the future, most likely 2019.