With less than two months left until the Game of Thrones Season 8 premiere, fans are more anxious than ever to see how the story of Westeros will come to an end. And oddly enough, the one person you'd think would know the answer to that question is almost as in the dark as fans are. Believe it or not, George R.R. Martin doesn't know how Game of Thrones ends, and considering he's the one who created this entire franchise in the first place, that's pretty surprising and could very well be the biggest plot twist of the season. (OK, probably not, but you get the point.)
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Martin admitted that he has "mixed feelings" about the series coming to a close and that a big part of him wishes he'd been able to finish the books first before the show wrapped up. “It’s been an incredible ride,” he told EW. “And almost all of it has been great. Obviously, I wished I finished these books sooner so the show hadn’t gotten ahead of me. I never anticipated that.”
Martin has spent the last eight years working to finish the sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter, though at this time no publication date has been announced. The delay caused the series to surpass the books back in 2015 during the Season 5 finale, which saw Jon Snow get murdered by his fellow men of the Night's Watch.
With no source material to go on, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have had to take some creative liberties with the storylines, though they've remained in constant talks with the author throughout the process in order to still include specific details about certain characters — like Hodor's heartbreaking backstory, for example. Which is why it's so surprising that Martin has very little insight into how Season 8 will come to a close, particularly since he's been so involved in the creative process prior to this.
“I haven’t read the [final-season] scripts and haven’t been able to visit the set because I’ve been working on Winds,” Martin explained to EW during the same interview. “I know some of the things. But there’s a lot of minor-character [arcs] they’ll be coming up with on their own. And, of course, they passed me several years ago. There may be important discrepancies.”
Martin was also given the opportunity to make a special cameo appearance during the show's final season, but ended up deciding against it in order to focus on his writing. So while the series itself may be coming to a close, the author has no intention of slowly down anytime soon and fully intends on keeping the story of Westeros going for years to come. “It’s the end for a lot of people,” Martin told the outlet. “It’s not the end for me. I’m still deeply in it. I better live a long time because I have a lot of work left to do.”
And for that, we're all grateful.
