'Game of Thrones' season seven apparently has a "much faster pace"

If there’s one complaint that people might have about Game of Thrones – and it’s one I still won’t stand for, because the show is basically perfect – it’s that sometimes it can feel a little slow; a little like the gradual creeping in of the long winter.

There have been some brilliant episodes where very little has happened – much of the beginning of season six was pretty slow paced. But there’s still no denying that it was the season’s final two episodes, ‘Battle of the Bastards’ and ‘The Winds of Winter’ – in which fucktons happened – that stole the show.

That’s why you have to feel more than a little excited at the latest news coming out of the Game of Thrones camp – the news that everything will be going down at a much faster pace.

“I’m like, ‘Already? Now?! What?!'” said Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) when asked by Entertainment Weekly about his reaction to the season seven script. “A lot of things that normally take a season now take one episode.”

Kit Harrington (Jon Snow) is excited by the change: “This season is really different than any other season because it’s accelerating toward the end,” he said. “A lot of stuff collides and happens much much quicker than you’re used to seeing on Thrones… it’s so different than what everybody is used to. It’s quite exciting.”

This season is just seven episodes long as opposed to the usual 10, so viewers had been hoping for more action-packed episodes to make up for it, but showrunner Dan Weiss says the shortened run isn’t actually the reason for the change of pace.

“Things are moving faster because in the world of these characters the war that they’ve been waiting for is upon them,” he said. “The conflicts that have been building the past six years are upon them and those facts give them a sense of urgency that makes them move faster.”

Essentially what he’s saying this that the already turmoil-heavy world of Westeros is about to be thrown into a whole load more turmoil. We’ve known a huge war would be coming from pretty much the first episode, and with just 13 more installments to come, it has to go down pretty sharpish.

So yeah, I’m excited. While one of the best things about early Game of Thrones was all the scheming and the politics – and I’m sure that will continue at least as long as Cersei is alive – a whole season of Red Weddings and Bastard Battles sounds banging.

Make it 16 July already.