After first airing in April 2011, the award-winning HBO fantasy series, Game of Thrones, finally concluded on May 19. 2019 with the episode “The Iron Throne.”

This season was met with polarizing reception. Many fans’ primary complaint was the writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ decision to have 6 episodes rather than 10. This decision seemed to have led to a rushed season, in the eyes of these critics, and, consequently, left a lack of fleshed out character development.

Despite the criticism, season 8 revealed to be one of the biggest events in television history. Each episode raked in an average of 44.2 million viewers per episode. Additionally, the finale became the most-watched single telecast with 13.6 million viewers tuning in at 8:00 p.m. central time.

With the closing of the TV series, many fans itching for more stories of Westeros will surely turn toward the writings of the George R. R. Martin, whose main series, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” is the source material for the show. And while there is plenty to be read both within the main series now up to five books and the extended universe materials such as “A World of Ice and Fire” and “Fire and Blood,” many are hoping to hear a release date for the long anticipated “The Winds of Winter.”

The first book in the series, “A Game of Thrones,” was released in 1996 and the second and third books following shortly thereafter, Martin has seemed to slow down the pace with which the books are released. Originally, the gap between the release of the fourth book “A Feast for Crows” and the the fifth book “A Dance with Dragons” was the longest time gap between releases for any of his novels. However, with ADWD having been released in 2011, the 8-year-gap between it and TWOW has become the largest in the series.

Despite the amount of time already spent waiting and the lack of any kind of release date, official or non-official, Martin has assured all his readers and fans that TWOW is surely coming and is progressing.