In Game of Thrones’ sixth-season finale, our heroes make a literally chilling discovery: “Jon, a raven came from the citadel,” Sansa tells her supposed brother as snowflakes dance around the pair. “A white raven. Winter is here.” While that plot development has been promised since the start, it may have practical consequences as the show moves ahead—pushing back production timelines for the series’ seventh season.
Speaking on the UFC Unfiltered podcast, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benihoff and D.B. Weiss claim that they may have to delay filming in order to ensure that climatological conditions better match their narrative needs. Though they claim they “don’t have an airdate yet” for the next season, they’re “starting a bit later because … sunny weather doesn’t really serve our purposes anymore. So we pushed everything down the line so that we could get some grim, gray weather.”
While it doesn’t sound as if the delay will be substantial, it may mean waiting just a little longer to find out Daenerys’ fate. One person who might be happy? Author George R.R. Martin, whose slow writing process meant that the television series outstripped the narrative of his published novels this season. As Willa Paskin noted early in the sixth season, it was a pleasure to see the Benihoff and Weiss finally crawl out from under Martin’s shadow. Nevertheless, this delay might give him a welcome chance to catch up, despite his own glacial pace.
