George R.R. Martin has mixed feelings about the show ending before the books

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Several years ago the GAME OF THRONES TV series entered rare territory by becoming a show based on a beloved series that, while having plenty more show left to give, had no more books left to adapt. Come the end of season five the show officially surpassed the books in terms of where the story was going, and now as the series comes to a conclusion, fans will see how it all comes to an end before author George R.R. Martin has figured it out himself. But the author is trying to rectify that and has been cutting himself off from the series in several ways all in the name of buckling down and cracking away on the keyboard…or scrawling away on the quill. I don’t know how he does it.

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While talking to EW as part of their on-going coverage of the eighth and final season of the show, Martin said he has “mixed feelings” about the show coming to an end before the books have. The plan was to finish the books as the TV series went on, with the books coming to an end well before the show did. But the show’s seasons came and went much quicker than Martin anticipated, and instead of a complete story, he’s been having to feed to show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss a rough outline of what he had planned for the story.

“It’s been an incredible ride. And almost all of it has been great. Obviously, I wished I finished these books sooner so the show hadn’t gotten ahead of me. I never anticipated that.”

The fifth book in the series, “A Dance of Dragons,” came out in 2011, right around the time the show was getting started. The sixth book in the series planned to be called “The Winds of Winter” has been on the docket for a long while, with no release date currently in sight. Beyond that sixth book is Martin’s plan for a seventh, “A Dream of Spring,” which is obviously much further out than “Winds.” Now is the time to get focused and typing, though, and Martin revealed he hasn’t even read the scripts for the final season of the show, all in the name of working on the story he has in front of him, which even meant turning down a cameo this season.

“I haven’t read the [final-season] scripts and haven’t been able to visit the set because I’ve been working on Winds. I know some of the things. But there’s a lot of minor-character [arcs] they’ll be coming up with on their own. And, of course, they passed me several years ago. There may be important discrepancies.”

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Benioff talked about how this has resulted in a bit of an inverse, in that they once thought the books would spoil the show for audiences, but now the opposite has become true.

“[The concern] used to be that the books would spoil the show for people — and luckily it did not for the most part. Now that the show is ahead of the books, it seems the show could ruin the books for people. So one thing we’ve talked to George about is that we’re not going to tell people what the differences are, so when those books come out people can experience them fresh.”

As the show comes to an end, and the actors hang up their swords and wigs for good Martin is going to keep plugging away at his epic tome, just hoping he gets to live long enough to see it through.

“It’s the end for a lot of people. It’s not the end for me. I’m still deeply in it. I better live a long time because I have a lot of work left to do.”

GAME OF THRONES comes to an end starting April 14 and concluding May 19.