Luckily for Liam Cunningham's Ser Davos, Stannis Baratheon is no longer around to chop off fingers. That's the fate that the Game of Thrones actor might face for his loose lips with a reporter from The Independent. Cunningham, talking about the new season, inadvertently broke news about its possible release date.
"I've been disappointing various people around the world because it was meant to come out in April. It's July now, I think," Cunningham said. "There's going to be a launch and something special happening this year for the premiere. The bad news is, there will only be seven episodes and the final season starts [filming] again as far as I know in September."
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Well, that's a bummer. Cunningham narrowed it down, at least, to a range of only five Sundays. That's considerably narrower than the original projection we had of: ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
The actor was quick to issue a semi-denial.
Davos don’t know date. Mongo only pawn in Game Of Thrones. #gameofthronesseason7
— liam cunningham (@liamcunningham1) February 27, 2017
In practical terms, this isn't really anything we don't already know. The season was slated to be shorter from the start, which is probably a good thing. Even the best of GoT has suffered from narrative bloat as the series struggled to wrestle its challenging source material to the ground. Now we'll have (hopefully) less meandering around castles in two-person scenes that seem to only be killing time until next time Daenerys' dragons go HAM on Westeros. Unfortunately, that also means less time for Varys and Tyrion to banter and drink wine.
On a more hopeful note, having a tentpole show in the midst of summer should help cure some of those mid-year doldrums. It's tough to figure out anything to do when it seems like half your office is on vacation and there's only baseball on TV. Now, at least, we'll have the parentage of Jon Snow to talk about.
If you'd like to catch up on some theories during the four month slog between now and July, click here.