Game of Thrones season 7 premiere will be one of its longest episodes ever

The clock is slowly ticking on Game of Thrones season 7 and the inevitable endgame that follows. Thankfully, HBO have seen fit to cram as much Thrones onto our TV screens as humanly possible, starting with a bumper-sized premiere that would make it the 2nd longest opening episode in Thrones history.

The Telegraph are reporting that HBO listings for the July 17 premiere have the season 7 opener totalling in at a hefty 59 minutes, just a few minutes short of the 62-minute pilot. That’s a whole lot of time to kill, but I’m confident they’ll be able to fill it with something interesting…

The season 7 premiere is dwarfed in comparison to Battle of the Bastards (60 minutes) and the gigantic season 6 finale The Winds of Winter (69 minutes), but is still a whole 9 minutes longer than sob-fest The Rains of Castamere (50 agonising minutes), so expect the show to cover a whole bunch of Westerosi bases.

The extra-long episode comes off the back of confirmation of a shorter season – 7 episodes to be precise – with the final season clocking in at a meagre 6 episodes, so every second counts.

Have no fear, though, as the cast have been regaling anyone who’ll listen with tales of just how much awesomeness is crammed into the fast-paced penultimate season, with “things that now take a season, now take an episode”.

Image: HBO