I have eagerly awaited the final season of Game of Thrones, and its strange blend of fictive medieval Britain, supernatural monsters, and pornography. Over the seasons the plot has gained speed and focus while the pornography has vanished and—incredible as it seems—we can also detect that George R.R. Martin’s fantastic story has a message. Perhaps we can explain its enormous success by considering how, at a subconscious, dreamlike level, it deals with humanity’s most profound problem.

It won't surprise you to hear that Game of Thrones is a pirate magnet, but the sheer scale of that piracy may be reaching new heights. The analytics company MUSO has determined that people pirated the show's season eight premiere just shy of 55 million times in the first 24 hours. About 76.6 percent of those viewers relied on bootleg streams, while the rest were split between downloads (12.2 percent), public torrents (10.8 percent) and private torrents (0.5 percent).

“Game of Thrones” opened to massive ratings on Sunday night. According to figures released by HBO, the Season 8 premiere drew 17.4 million viewers across all platforms (linear, HBOGO and HBO NOW), including 11.8 million who watched on the linear channel. And that is only those who watched Sunday night. Expect the total viewers to go up considerably once delayed viewing is factored into the final numbers.

Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss discuss the final season of their blockbuster HBO series in a deep-dive, spoiler-free conversation. Below are new behind-the-scenes insights about creating the hugely anticipated final six episodes of the global fantasy hit as the Emmy-winning duo discuss writing the finale, the season’s massive battle episode, author George R.R. Martin’s contribution, fears about spoiler leakage, their favorite scenes, and their rare arguments amid an obsessive drive to create the best possible drama. (Note: A few of these quotes were previously published in EW’s season 8 cover stories.)

Few people are happy to see Game of Thrones come to an end, even if millions of viewers around the world are excited to see how the story wraps up. Firmly in the former camp: George R.R. Martin, the award-winning author who first introduced the world to Westeros in 1996's A Game of Thrones, the first book in the ongoing A Song of Ice and Fire odyssey.

The perfect snack for your Game of Thrones viewing party.

“I’ve never told this story publicly, but now it’s time.”

Here are the alleged runtimes of each of the episodes in season 8 of Game of Thrones.

The great battle is over. The snowy ground is streaked with blood. Beloved heroes lay dead outside the castle gates. Winterfell is quiet. And then… A sudden roar from above. A gust of wind. A blur of low-flying movement. A dragon? No. An ice dragon? Worse. “F—king spoiler helicopter just flew right over the set!” says an alarmed crew member. This could be a disaster. It’s April 2018 on the set of the final season of Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland.

A recent study estimated that half of Game of Thrones's main characters have been killed off over the past seven seasons, which makes it very likely that one of your favorites was among them. Though fans have come to expect death as one of the hallmarks of the epic HBO series, it doesn't make it any easier when it happens. Viewers have invested enough time and emotion into the show that some have even started petitions against killing off certain characters—or bringing them back from the dead.

Game of Thrones | Season 8 |

HBO will finally reveal the exact return date for the final season of Game of Thrones. Up until now, the network has only said the show is coming back in April, 2019. But which Sunday in April? The 7th? The 14th? The 21st? Dear god, it’s not the 28th is it? Just tell us it’s not the 28th!

Winter is coming ... even to the insect world. The final season of “Game Of Thrones” won’t premiere until April, but an entomologist in Nebraska is already helping to hype the show. University of Nebraska-Lincoln entomologist Brett Ratcliffe has named three beetles he discovered after dragons from the HBO series: Drogon, Rhaegal and Viserion, according to the Omaha World-Herald.

“Game of Thrones” star Iain Glen has lifted the lid on the efforts of the show’s producers to avoid spoilers and leaks from the eagerly anticipated final season. “They’re absolutely paranoid now about anyone finding out anything about the series and spoiling it,” he said in a BBC radio interview to be broadcast Friday. “We weren’t allowed a written word on a page. Everything was accessed through iPads with different security you had to get through to access it, which caused a problem for the actors, I have to say.

The actress, who recently appeared in Fremantle’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, is working on a slate of drama projects co-developed by the American Gods producer. Her first series is Vivling, a series based on the life of legendary British actress Vivien Leigh, as first revealed by Deadline in May.

George RR Martin has revealed that he has found it hard to finish the long-awaited sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, as the rise in fame and popularity that came with the television adaptation Game of Thrones has become a “considerable weight to bear”. In an exclusive interview with the Guardian ahead of the publication of his next book, Fire and Blood, a history of the fantasy universe of his hugely popular series, Martin said he’d been wrestling with The Winds of Winter, which has been eagerly awaited by fans since the last book in the series, 2011’s A Dance With Dragons.

Game of Thrones writer George R.R. Martin has revealed that he is developing some new shows for HBO, in addition to the Game of Thrones prequels he is already working on. In a new interview with The Guardian, Martin said that as well as working with HBO on the five different Game of Thrones prequels, he is developing “a couple of other shows for HBO” adding that he “can’t talk about them yet.” Martin is additionally working as an executive producer on Who Fears Death and the superhero series Wild Cards.

HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel has found its male lead in Josh Whitehouse.

HBO is beginning to plot what comes after Game of Thrones when it concludes next year. The network has been working on succession plans for the show for over a year, with five potential projects in the works, and it just ordered a pilot for one of them: a prequel that takes place thousands of years before the present show, from series author George R.R. Martin and Kick-Ass and Kingsman: The Secret Service writer Jane Goldman.