George R.R. Martin Teases ‘Game of Thrones’ Could Have Lasted 13 Seasons

Fans are gradually coming to terms with the fact that Game of Thrones is wrapping up, but it sounds like the franchise’s creator isn’t among them.

In a recent interview with Variety on the Emmys Red Carpet, George R. R. Martin was asked exactly why Game of Thrones will come to an end next year. As he revealed, he actually thinks the series could have had a much longer life, even if the showrunners don’t agree.

“I don’t know,” Martin explained. “Ask David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] when they come through. We could have gone to 11, 12, 13 seasons, but I guess they wanted a life.”

As Martin went on to explain, he believes that the series omitted quite a lot of content from his original novels, which would have theoretically helped the show carry on.

“If you’ve read my novels, you know there was enough material for more seasons.” Martin added. “They made certain cuts, but that’s fine.”

But even then, it sounds like Game of Thrones won’t be out of the television landscape anytime soon, with an array of different spinoff series in development.

“We have five other shows – five prequels in development – that are based on other periods in the history of Westeros.” Martin continued. “Some of them just a hundred years before Game of Thrones, some of them 5000 years before Game of Thrones.”

In the meantime, fans will surely be turning their attention to Game of Thrones, with some of the series’ cast members hinting that the final batch of episodes will be satisfying.

“It was a surprise,” Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister, said in an interview earlier this month. “God, every time we got a new script I thought, ‘OK, this is probably going to be the one.’ But no. The Lannister kids made it to the end.”

“I wrote the writers when I finished reading and just said, ‘I don’t think you could’ve done a better job at finishing this story.’” Coster-Waldau said in a previous interview. “To me, it was very satisfying but also very surprising and all the things that I was hoping for. It still made sense. It wasn’t like one of those where the killer is suddenly revealed in the last act and you go, ‘Oh! I didn’t see that coming.’ Here, they’ve done a really, really good job.”

Do you agree with Martin’s comments about Game of Thrones ending? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

The final season of Game of Thrones will debut sometime in 2019.