Game of Thrones’ (GOT) seventh season saw characters travel to new lands and team up with unexpected characters: Daenerys landed in Dragonstone and also flew North of the Wall at the end of the season, Jon Snow formed an alliance with Khaleesi and went to King’s Landing to negotiate with Cersei, and Arya and Bran Stark finally returned to Winterfell after seasons away from home.
Season 8 is expected to have even more relocations. In an interview with TV Guide, GoT actor John Bradley (Samwell Tarly) revealed that the series characters will find themselves in new surroundings in the final season.
Bradley said, “Each of the characters this year is placed in a completely alien environment at some point in the season that they’ve never been placed in before,” he said. “The thrill is seeing how they react to it and how they respond… This season, I think, more than any other is stretching these characters.”
The end of Season seven has already given a preview of the relocations. Jon and Daenerys were en route to Winterfell, a new location for Dany; Jaime Lannister was fleeing King’s Landing after leaving things on a shaky note with Cersei; Euron Greyjoy was heading east to retrieve the Golden Company; Sam left the Citadel with Gilly and Little Sam and arrived in Winterfell with mind-blowing information about Jon’s heritage; and most importantly, the White Walkers and Army of the Dead finally made it south of the Wall.
However, the wait for the final season is long. Last week, actress Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) confirmed that Season 8 won’t return until 2019. The cast is currently in mid-production, with about six or seven months left.
The cast is aware of how excited fans are and how high their expectations will be for the final season.
“We know that we’ve got a real job to do. This has been a part of peoples lives for so many years,” Bradley said, “This is our eighth season, and we are kind of feeling the pressure to get it right because we want to satisfy people. We want to give people a payoff that they’re going to be happy with.”