What Will Game of Thrones do with an extra season (or two)?

Yesterday, HBO President Michael Lombardo announced that Game of Thrones, a popular fantasy program you may have heard of, will run for at least eight seasons. This was in contrast with what executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss had long said about the show’s expiration date: that it would run for seven years.

Generally speaking, Lombardo’s announcement was met with applause. Whatever misgivings fans may have had with Season 5 of the show, more Game of Thrones is normally thought of as a good thing. Now that we know that the show will be sticking around for an extra year (at least), the question becomes what the showrunners plan to do with the additional time.

David Benioff and Dan Weiss, thinking deep thoughts.

First of all, lets get something straight. While Benioff and Weiss have stuck pretty close to their seven-seasons narrative, they have waffled from time to time, with Benioff admitting to Entertainment Weekly that “There’s a temptation to keep going with it because we’re still having fun, but you don’t want to ruin it by tacking on a couple of extra years.” Weiss also chimed in during that interview: “We’re not sure whether it’s going to end up being, say, 70 or 75 hours — but it can’t be 100 hours. It would start to feel like a bogged-down mess.”

It seems that there was an admission among the show’s creative team that more than seven seasons may be needed to properly tell the story, even if they were hoping they could do it in seven. This seems pretty reasonable. After all, the producers needed two seasons of television to adapt A Storm of Swords, the third book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. Presumably, Martin has two more books on the way: The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring (notwithstanding his admission that he may push it to eight books if the need arises). Martin’s novels are not getting shorter, so it stands to reason that the producers will need more than 20 episodes of television to cover what will very likely be two (or three) very thick books.

Apart from the adaptation issues, an extra season would also come in handy just given what we know of the show. Since Season 1, fans have been eagerly awaiting two big events: for Daenerys Targaryen to invade Westeros, and for the White Walkers to mount an attack on the area south of the Wall. Season 5 saw these plots inch forward—Drogon the dragon is now big enough for Daenerys to ride him into battle, and the White Walkers added several thousands soldiers to their army of the dead—but both of them have a lot of ground to cover before they arrive at a resolution.

The Night’s King, invading a kingdom near you around 2017.

And that’s not even mentioning all the other irons the show has in the fire. For example, Arya still needs to become an assassin, travel back to Westeros, and insert herself into events. Sansa still needs to rally the North and kick the Boltons out of office. Cersei still needs to butt heads with the High Sparrow, who still has the Tyrell children in custody. Plus, if casting rumors can be believed, the extended Greyjoy family will show up in Season 6. These stories do not seem like they’re winding down. They’re either coming to a boil or, in the case of the Greyjoy plotline, just getting started. It’s hard to believe that all of this could be satisfactorily wrapped up in two seasons.

At the same time, Weiss is right to be wary of overextending the show and turning into “a bogged-down mess.” HBO is making a ton of money off Game of Thrones, so it makes sense for the network to want it to last as long as possible. But television is littered with once-great shows that overstayed their welcome (Happy Days, The X-Files, Frasier, The Simpsons, etc…). Many fans have already called out Season 5 of Game of Thrones for what they saw as a drop in quality, and it would be a shame if the show continued to slip until it was a pale imitation of what it once was.

To me, eight seasons sounds just about right. It’s long enough to wrap up all various plot strands in a satisfying way, but not so long that the producers and actors risk becoming apathetic. What Benioff and Weiss have to do is balance their obligation to tell the story well with the temptation to extend the show’s lifetime arbitrarily. While HBO doubtlessly wants the latter, Lombardo admitted that he’ll defer to Benioff and Weiss when it comes to the final decision. “I would be open to anything Dan and David want to do,” he said. “It really would depend fully on what they want to do.” Let’s hope that Benioff and Weiss use their power wisely.

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• Published on 07/31/2015 at 1:13 PM CDT
• Last updated on 07/31/2015 at 5:51 PM CDT