Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have confirmed that the TV series will arrive at the same ending as George R.R. Martin’s final volume in his A Song Of Ice And Fire series.
The only snag is, while the author has shared future story arcs with the show’s creators, he’s not written the sixth or seventh books yet.
This means that events in the series will charge ahead of the books and inevitably... spoil quite a bit of them.
“Luckily, we've been talking about this with George for a long time, ever since we saw this could happen, and we know where things are heading,” Benioff said in a speech to the Oxford Union (via Vanity Fair) this weekend.
“And so we'll eventually, basically, meet up at pretty much the same place where George is going; there might be a few deviations along the route, but we're heading towards the same destination.
"I kind of wish that there were some things we didn't have to spoil, but we're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. The show must go on... and that's what we're going to do.”
Benioff adds that there’s still incentive for fans to look forward to future novels:
“There are certain things that are going to happen in the books that are different in the show, and I think people who love the show and want more—want to know more about the characters, want to know more about the different characters who might not have made the cut for the show—will be able to turn to the books.”
The show’s forthcoming season 5 will tie up loose ends from Martin’s fourth and fifth books - A Feast For Crows and A Dance For Dragons - so by the season finale, TV watchers and bookworms will at last be equal.
The scribe has currently sequestered himself away to tackle the sixth book The Winds Of Winter. And then there’s A Dream Of Spring still to write...
For more top TV news, subscribe to SFX.
