‘Game of Thrones’: HBO Will Not Screen Final Season Episodes in Advance

Fans hoping to find out even the tiniest details about Game of Thrones‘ upcoming eight and final season from advance reviews of episodes are officially out of luck. HBO will not be sending out screeners of the final season to critics.

The decision to withhold screeners — and thus making critics wait until episodes air — is in keeping with a policy that has been in place for the past two seasons of the wildly popular series. The practice of sending out advance screeners ended in Season 5 after the first four episodes leaked online. The person responsible for those leaks ended up not being a critic, but it was enough for screeners to be discontinued to protect spoilers from getting out.

And the thirst for spoilers is real. Ahead of the show’s seventh season, HBO was hacked for spoilers — including episodes and an alleged script and with Season 8 being the final season, HBO went to some seriously high-tech lengths to prevent spoilers from getting out. Those measures included using a device on set that could kill drones flying in the area to prevent them from getting spoiler-filled images.

“If a drone flies above sets, there’s a thing that can kill the drones which is really cool,” star Sophie Turner told Entertainment Weekly last year. “It creates a field around it and the drones just drop. It’s very X-Men.”

Of course, tightening up security, withholding screeners, and shooting down drones can only do so much. Another potential source of spoilers are the stars of Game of Thrones themselves and Turner even told W Magazine earlier this year that she’s not been the best at keeping secrets — and has even revealed the ending to some close to her.

“Are you scared of keeping big secrets like that?,” W asked.

“Terrified,” Turner replied. “I’m so bad at keeping secrets. I don’t think people tell me things anymore because they know that I can’t keep them. I’ve already told the ending of Game of Thrones to a few people.”

W proceeded to ask the next logical question: “Were you drunk?” Because who among us hasn’t gotten a little boozy and revealed some important information? However, Turner doesn’t have that excuse to fall back on.

“Nope, sober,” she replied. “I was like, ‘Hey, if you want to know, I’ll tell you.’ But it’s people that I know, not random people. It’s people that I know will keep the secret.”

Game of Thrones returns to HBO on April 14.

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[ H/T: Entertainment Weekly ]