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'Game of Thrones' final season sounds like a bloodbath

Are fans of the HBO show ready to watch some of their favorite characters die when the show returns in 2019?

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
jon-snow-winterfell

Jon Snow knows nothing, and when it comes to who's going to die in "Game of Thrones" final season, neither do fans.

HBO

"Game of Thrones" fans have known from the first season (Ned Stark, nooooo!) that author George R.R. Martin is willing to kill off any character, no matter how beloved. Now that the show has moved beyond Martin's books, it looks like characters still aren't safe.

HBO executives attending the Innovative TV Conference in Israel this week say the deaths come fast and furious in the final season, Variety reports.

"None of the cast had received the scripts prior, and one by one they started falling down to their deaths," said Francesca Orsi, HBO senior vice president of drama.

Naturally, no one dared reveal who exactly gets to take the big dirt nap (Cersei? Jaime? Jon Snow? TYRION?). But Orsi said there were tears after the final six scripts were read.

"It was amazing," she said. "By the very end, everyone looked down, and looked up, and tears were in their eyes."

" Game of Thrones " is set to return to HBO sometime in 2019. And fans are still waiting for author Martin's next book in the series, "The Winds of Winter," which has no announced release date

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