Game of Thrones Season 8 seeks return to Southern Spanish locations — in 2018!

A month ago we learnt Game of Thrones may return to the sunny parts of Spain to film its last season, despite the arrival of winter in 2016’s “The Winds of Winter” finale. Now, it has been made official: HBO is in talks to return to certain key locations in Andalucía which we haven’t seen on-screen yet but will play a climactic role in season seven.

Perhaps even more crucially, the timetable for this possible shoot gives us a better idea of the season eighth air-date. If you were hoping previous reports warning of an even longer wait than this year’s would turn out to be wrong, you may be disappointed!

Today, ABC reported on these news: yesterday, June 19, HBO contacted the Regional Government of Andalucía in order to put things into motion. Particularly, the show is looking to return to two locations in Seville: the Reales Atarazanas or Royal Shipyards, and the amphitheater of Itálica, a relatively well-preserved ancient Roman city.

If you followed our production reports late last year, you should be well aware these locations will not only depict a previously unseen King’s Landing landmark, but that they will host the greatest reunion of characters in the history of the show. These locations returning for the final season of Game of Thrones is a big deal, especially considering they are said to be “indispensable for the sake of narrative continuity.”

Itálica’s amphitheater in Santiponce, Seville

As essential as these locations may be, there could be a problem in the horizon: the Royal Shipyards are supposed to undergo restoration efforts on March 2018. The show will reportedly not return to Itálica if they can’t also film at the shipyards, which makes sense, as together they make up a single Westerosi landmark. The local government is currently squaring the dates to make everyone happy, which will hopefully work out.

That last bit of news may confuse you — what does it matter if they are restoring the site on March of next year? Shouldn’t Game of Thrones have begun and finished filming long before then? Usually, that’s the case, but we had already heard season eight may take a while longer, and this seems to clinch it: season eight will film throughout Spring of 2018 at least, which means the show will probably still be in the middle of production at the time of the year it traditionally airs. Going by typical post-production schedules, the last six episodes of Game of Thrones should arrive in late 2018 or early 2019.

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