Much like winter, the final season of Game of Thrones is coming, albeit not too soon.

HBO's Emmy-winning fantasy series will conclude with its upcoming eighth season, containing only six episodes as opposed to the traditional 10-episode order. (The series' penultimate season featured only seven episodes, for its part.) How will the story conclude for Jon Snow (Kit Harington), Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), among countless others? For a time, only author George R.R. Martin knew the answer. Now that production has completed on the series, several others are aware of how Game of Thrones will draw to a close — including creators and showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who certainly aren't going to reveal too many details.

With so much time between now and the end of Game of Thrones, there's no better opportunity to start preparing for the final battle against the White Walkers. Read on for everything we know about season eight so far, and bookmark this page as THR will continue to update ahead of the final season premiere.

When will the series end?

There is still no official return date for Game of Thrones' final season. Following season seven's finale in the summer of 2017, HBO's Casey Bloys hinted at a long wait for the final season, telling THR: "The shooting is complicated enough — on different continents, with all the technical aspects — and the special effects are a whole other production period that we're trying to figure out. That is a big factor in all of this." In January 2018, HBO confirmed a general 2019 release date for the final season. At the Television Critics Association summer press tour in 2018, Bloys gave an update on when to expect season eight, narrowing the timeframe: the first half of 2019.

How will the series will end?

Who will wind up on the Iron Throne? Will there even be an Iron Throne? These are the topmost questions heading into the final season, and while cast members are bound to stay tight-lipped on the matter, Emilia Clarke did offer one clue in an interview with THR: the production has filmed multiple endings in order to throw spoilers for a loop.

"I don't know that I even do now. I'm being serious. I think they're filming a bunch of stuff and they're not telling us. I'm being serious. I'm being deadly serious. I think that they don't even trust us." She adds, "There's lots of different endings that could happen; I think we're doing all of them and we aren't being told which is actually what's going to happen."

The first official look at the final season arrived in August 2018, by way of a promo reel HBO aired during the finale of Sharp Objects. The programming teaser offered little more than two seconds of footage from Thrones, featuring Jon Snow and Sansa Stark embracing each other at Winterfell. While not exactly groundbreaking, the footage nevertheless indicates Jon will return to House Stark's ancestral home in time to battle the Night King and the White Walkers, last seen bursting through the great Wall of Westeros.