Game of Thrones season 8 episode count confirmed; Ed Sheeran appearing

sLet’s begin this story by confirming the Game of Thrones episode count rumors that have long been out there … though are they really rumors at all?

Let’s backtrack to back when the news first came out that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were planning to have a season 7 that lasted for only seven episodes. They had said that the plan was to do an eighth and final season of only six. While we and everyone else believed that message to be true, there was likely still this sentiment / irrational hope that the show could somehow expand that order. There were suggestions from HBO programming head Casey Bloys that there was an interest in doing more, but that does not seem to now be the case.

While at the SXSW festival in Austin this weekend, Benioff and Weiss confirmed the news once more that there will only be six episodes in the final season — it may stink for the fans, but we’re rather fond of the notion of doing only however any episodes you feel that there is enough storytelling space for. It’s absolutely better than trying to stretch out the story far longer than you need to just for the sake of doing so. You don’t want any show to overstay its welcome, which is why the ending for Breaking Bad was so fantastic since it clearly could’ve gone on for another season or two.

This wasn’t the only news that came out of the event today…

Ed Sheeran appearing

This news was confirmed by Entertainment Weekly, who made it rather clear that producers for the series have been trying to get the singer on the show for quite some time now. We imagine that this is similar to some of the other musician cameos, which have been for the most part very small roles.

Sheeran does have a little bit of acting clout. He appeared in an arc on Kurt Sutter’s The Bastard Executioner for FX, and also made an appearance on NBC’s brilliant-but-canceled Undateable. This is exciting news, and if you’re worried about a distracting celebrity being on the show, don’t mean. Any sort of bluster over the casting feels for now akin to much ado about nothing.

Interested in some further Game of Thrones season 7 news?

We’ve discussed the recent teaser poster, the premiere date, and a whole lot more over at the link here. We like to think that it’s all worthy of being checked out. (Photo: HBO.)