Game of Thrones' seventh season, which aired from July to August 2017, was the HBO series' first season to feature less than ten episodes. Featuring only seven episodes, Season 7 moved at a brisk pace that put events into motion and characters in place for the series' upcoming, epic final season.
However, the faster pace was something that certain fans took issue with: traveling to the various locations in Westeros is something that always took considerable time, and something that the series always reflected -- that is, until Season 7. In it, characters reached their destitations, sometimes on opposing locations of the Westeros map, much faster then they ever had before.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on the set of Season 8, the writers and producers of the series addressed the fan complaint that the notion of time and distance was all but forgotten in Game of Thrones' seventh season.
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"We made a choice to ‘just get on with it’ last season," co-executive producer Bryan Cogman revealed. "You can sit at home and do the math on how long it took to get the boats from Point A to Point B and whatever that was, yeah, that’s what it was. There’s always something everybody has got to graft on to and I guess that outrage was better than others, so I’ll take it."
"You obviously don’t want any criticism of any kind," writer Dave Hill added. “But with all the things we were balancing to set things up for season 8, sometimes we had to speed things up within episodes. We had a lot of time cuts the vast majority of viewers didn’t catch. We could have a [title card] on there saying ‘Three Weeks Later,’ but we did not. Sometimes when moving pieces around you’re going to cheat a little bit.
However, it seems like that critcism will not factor into the series' final season. "[For season 8], we tried to keep more of the time logic rather than jet packs," Hill said.
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Season 8 of Game of Thrones, the show’s final season, will premiere April 14. It will feature six episodes with longer than usual runtimes. The HBO drama stars Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister, Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister, Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen, Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark, Maisie Williams as Arya Stark and Kit Harington as Jon Snow.