Showrunners Claim GAME OF THRONES Season 6 Won't Spoil Upcoming Books
Now that I've caught up with all of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels, I'm just like all of the other book readers out there who watch Game of Thrones. But the big difference is that I've caught up just in time for season 6, which is the first season that actively goes beyond Martin's novels in a major way; this means that now book readers and non-book readers are on a more level playing field, but it also kind of sucks for those of us who put all of the hours into reading the books. I mean, season 6 has to spoil the upcoming books, right? According to the showrunners, not necessarily:
“People are talking about whether the books are going to be spoiled – and it’s really not true,” Benioff told EW. “So much of what we’re doing diverges from the books at this point. And while there are certain key elements that will be the same, we’re not going to talk so much about that – and I don’t think George is either. People are going to be very surprised when they read the books after the show. They’re quite divergent in so many respects for the remainder of the show.”
“What makes the books so great is that George doesn’t make meticulous blueprints for every beat of this story and then fill in the blanks dutifully going from A to B to C, fleshing out an outline,” Weiss added. “At a certain point, we realized we were going to outpace the books and we kind of chose to see it as a great thing on both sides – there’s this amazing world George has created and now there are two different versions, and there’s no reason we can see why you can’t be thrilled and surprised and dismayed by both of these different versions of this world.”
I think the experiences of watching the show and reading the books are different enough that reading the new books won't be as disappointing as many might assume, especially if they're true to their word about diverging in major ways from Martin's intended path. Plus, there are plenty of characters that are dead in the show that aren't dead in the books. The novels also present a much richer and expansive world to dive into just by the nature of the medium. In an ideal world, we'd be able to experience all of the twists and turns of the story through Martin's prose first, but because of the delays in writing and the speed at which the show moves through each season, that's an impossibility; here's hoping the two end products will be different enough to keep some major surprises in store for the book readers when all is said and done.