During the first couple of seasons of HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” there were plenty of fans of the George R.R. Martin fantasy novel series that were avoiding watching the show until the novels were done. You know, so they weren’t tainted by the choices made in the series and the actors chosen for the roles. But as it turns out, the novels stopped being produced (a new one hasn’t been released since 2011) and the series kept chugging along. Now, those waiting for the novels are about to be left in the dark, as the series comes to a close later this year and folks who have watched the series will know who sits on the Iron Throne by the end.
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And according to a new interview with EW, author Martin has “mixed feelings about that.” He goes on to reveal that he’s taken a backseat for the final season of the HBO series to focus on the novels.
The idea always was that Martin would publish the novels as the series progressed, attempting to keep the written pages ahead of the filmed scenes. But then, the series caught up. And the author had to give David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (the brains behind the HBO series) the rough outline of where the novels were heading, so they could finish the show. Now, with the HBO series coming to a close (and a prequel waiting in the wings), Martin is 100% devoted to finishing his novels.
“It’s been an incredible ride,” the author said. “And almost all of it has been great. Obviously, I wished I finished these books sooner so the show hadn’t gotten ahead of me. I never anticipated that.”
One of the changes that Martin has made for this season of “Game of Thrones” is to avoid the scripts, which is new to him, as for the previous seasons, the author has penned at least one episode.
“I haven’t read the [final-season] scripts and haven’t been able to visit the set because I’ve been working on ‘Winds,’” Martin said. “I know some of the things. But there’s a lot of minor-character [arcs] they’ll be coming up with on their own. And, of course, they passed me several years ago. There may be important discrepancies.”
That last sentence is the key for fans of the novels. As has been stated before, since Martin only gave an outline of the books’ endings, there are plenty that could still be different. In fact, differences are all but guaranteed, as there are already so many changes the TV adaptation has made.
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Martin jokes at the end of the interview that he has a lot of work ahead of him, and the only thing that can stop him is his own longevity, which is something that fans of the novels are very worried about.
“It’s the end for a lot of people,” Martin says. “It’s not the end for me. I’m still deeply in it. I better live a long time because I have a lot of work left to do.”
The final season of “Game of Thrones” begins April 14, with the last episode premiering on May 19.