Following news that the Game of Thrones season 7 premiere will be longer than usual, the series finale is following suit with an extra-long episode.
According to EW, the finale this season will be clocking in at well over an hour.
It was reported this week that the first episode of season seven will run for 59 minutes when it premieres on 16 July in the US and simultaneously in the early hours of 17 July in the UK.
That marks the longest season premiere since the very first one, which clocked in at 62 minutes. Well, it did have a lot of stuff to fit in, including attempted infanticide.
The length of the season seven premiere lead to speculation that we'll be getting extended episodes throughout the shortened seven-episode run, though EW says that this isn't the case.
The site points out that the episodes will be bog-standard length for obvious reasons – if GoT producers needed more time to tell the story, they'd just make another episode.
That said, we'll actually be seeing a lot more from our favourites this time around, as Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), and Kit Harington (Jon Snow) are getting a lot more screen time.
"When I first read this season, I thought, 'Damn, I gotta learn some lines!'," Clarke told Entertainment Weekly. "We're actually filming longer now. I don't know how that's happening."
Game of Thrones returns to HBO in the US and Sky Atlantic in the UK in July.
