When Game of Thrones season 7 finally gets started this summer, it's going to move fast. That isn't to say things have been slow in the last six seasons, but the cast and crew of HBO's hit series told Entertainment Weekly that it's largely been leading up to this. Jaime Lannister actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau admitted he wasn't prepared for it when he first read the script.
“I’m like, ‘Already? Now?! What?!' Coster-Waldeau said. "I feel like I’d been lulled into a different pace. Everything happened quicker than I’m used to … a lot of things that normally take a season now take one episode.”
Showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff explained that this isn't just because Game of Thrones season 7 will be shorter than the others with only seven episodes. It's because, after seasons worth of scheming and skirmishing, the real war has finally begun on all fronts: ice zombies, dragons, Starks, everybody's in on it.
“Things are moving faster because in the world of these characters the war that they’ve been waiting for is upon them,” showrunner Dan Weiss explains. “The conflicts that have been building the past six years are upon them and those facts give them a sense of urgency that makes [the characters] move faster.”
“For a long time we’ve been talking about ‘the wars to come,'” showrunner David Benioff added. “Well, that war is pretty much here. So it’s really about trying to find a way to make the storytelling work without feeling like we’re rushing it - you still want to give characters their due, and pretty much all the characters that are now left are all important characters. Even the ones who might have started out as relatively minor characters have become significant in their own right.”
Read our full Game of Thrones season 7 recap for more details before the series begins in July. And check out these new Game of Thrones season 7 photos for some teases of the battles to come.
