If you haven’t sent out your viewing party invites or purchased the cozy weighted blanket you’ll need to comfort you as watch Game of Thrones’ upcoming final season, I suggest you hurry. And as if the end of the series wasn’t enough emotional turmoil to bear, HBO just announced that it will be airing a two-hour documentary after the series finale, as the final goodbye for die-hard fans.
Game of Thrones: The Last Watch (get it?) will air on May 26, a week after the final episode of the eighth season (or, to be precise, the final episode ever). The documentary takes fans behind the scenes and “delves deep into the mud and blood to reveal the tears and triumphs involved in the challenge of bringing the fantasy world of Westeros to life in the very real studios, fields and car-parks of Northern Ireland,” according to a press release. Cameras will follow the cast and production crew “as they contend with extreme weather, punishing deadlines and an ever-excited fandom hungry for spoilers.”
According to HBO, with the end of the series on the horizon, the project is “much more than a ‘making of’ documentary—this is a funny, heartbreaking story, told with wit and intimacy, about the bittersweet pleasures of what it means to create a world—and then have to say goodbye to it.” So you might want to save an extra box of Kleenex for this one.
The eighth season of Game of Thrones will kick off on April 14. Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen, sent fans into a tizzy when she revealed that she wandered around London for “three hours aimlessly” when she read the final script.
“It might as well have been raining and I would’ve just walked in it not knowing what to do,” Clarke told Press Association, adding that she shed “loads of tears” while filming her last scenes and turned to wine to help her cope. I mean, same.