Fans of Westeros rejoice: Popular HBO television show “Game of Thrones” (2011-present) is returning in just a few short weeks. The fifth season of the series, which is based on the fantasy novels of the same name by George R.R. Martin, will premiere on April 12. Devotees of the books should take note, however, because the newest season is going to make some deviations from the original story.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on March 17, show creators Dan Benioff and David Weiss and producer Bryan Cogman discussed how the fifth season of “Game of Thrones” will differ from its book counterpart. Benioff noted that while the first season was extremely faithful to the source material, each successive season has deviated more and more from the story laid out in the novels.
“It’s always been about adapting the series as a whole and following the map George laid out for us and hitting the major milestones, but not necessarily each of the stops along the way,” said Benioff in the article.This assertion is further bolstered by George R.R. Martin’s recent reveal that certain characters who don’t die in the books will die in the fifth season.
“There are always going to be some people who want everything to remain exactly as in the books,” continued Benioff in the interview with Entertainment Weekly. Benioff said, “For us, it was never a choice.”
There have, furthermore, always been fears amongst fans that the television show will surpass the publication of books, as exemplified in a recent article in Vanity Fair. Martin is notorious for taking years to write his novels, whereas HBO releases a season each year. The fifth season will combine the plots of the fourth and fifth books, and so the show will be caught up with the source material. Martin has yet to finish the sixth book in the series, which will be titled “The Winds of Winter.” The author has cancelled several upcoming appearances at conventions for the purpose of completing this novel.
But even if Martin finishes “The Winds of Winter” before the sixth season of “Game of Thrones” is released, it is still likely that the ultimate end will be seen on TV in the show’s seventh season before it’s read in the seventh book. Benioff and Weiss apparently know how the series ends, so they will write a finale accordingly. As stated in the Vanity Fair article, in an address at the Oxford Union on March 20, Benioff even confirmed that the saga’s ending will be spoiled in the seventh season.
While the impending fifth season premiere is exciting, fans of the books and the show will have to recognize the differences between the two, and accept that the ending of "Game of Thrones" will not come initially by the original author’s hand.
