Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister. Game of Thrones TV show image via HBO.

Don’t expect more than seven episodes in the seventh season of HBO‘s Game of Thrones TV show. Lost veteran Jack Bender, who directed “The Door,” and “Blood of My Blood,” in Game of Thrones current sixth season, was asked if he planned to return to the fantasy drama series.

Bender said he didn’t know, because his schedule is busy, the series has its regular directors, and Game of Thrones season seven will only be seven episodes long. When HBO renewed Game of Thrones, the episode order was not mentioned in the press release.

Showrunner David Benioff has previously said the entire series would total 73 hours. The sixth season finale will be hour 60. The first six seasons of Game of Thrones were each 10 episodes long.

Here is the exchange, from Vanity Fair:

Are you coming back next season?

[Bender:] I don’t know the answer to that. They’re only doing seven [episodes], and they’ve got their regulars who have done it forever. I know that I had a wonderful experience doing the show and I know that Dan and David are thrilled with the shows, but I’ve got this series I’m mounting for the beginning of 2017 based on Stephen King’s trilogy of books, starting with Mr. Mercedes. Brendan Gleeson is playing the lead, which I’m thrilled about, Anton Yelchin, and I’m in the process of mounting that. I haven’t been asked yet and I also don’t know what their schedule is going to be. But under the best of circumstances, schedule and everything, I had a great experience doing the show. If available and they wanted me to, I would love to do that.

What do you think? Will you be disappointed if there are only seven episodes in the seventh season of HBO’s Game of Thrones TV series? Are you ready for the series to end, or should it run longer?