It’s hard to believe we’re nearly halfway through the penultimate season of Game of Thrones. We’ve got four episodes left of Season 7 before we plunge into the finale six of Season 8. We may be getting less episodes – or, as former grammar Nazi Stannis would say, fewer – compared to previous seasons, but on the upside, they’ll also be extra long.

The Season 7 premiere was the longest episode to kick off a season at 71 minutes, and the finale will be the longest Game of Thrones episode yet at a whopping 81 minutes. But those record-breaking lengths are bound to be topped next year. Last month we learned HBO was planning to make up for the final season’s short-episode order with hefty running times. At the Con of Thrones fan convention earlier this month, GoT sound designer Paula Fairfield let slip that every episode of Season 8 might be “feature length,” according to Vanity Fair.

“Feature length” could mean a lot of things. Are we talking The Hateful Eight-style, upwards of three hours? The somewhat more traditional two hours? Or a snug 90 minute feature, a true blessing these days? Who knows! But we have a little more info from HBO themselves.

The network’s programming president Casey Bloys spoke to The Hollywood Reporter last week and revealed that the scripts from the final season have been written. While Bloys said he didn’t know exactly how long those episodes will be, he confirmed that Season 8 will likely have extended running times. But two hours? Bloys thinks that might be stretching it:

I imagine they’ll be longer but… I’m not sure [how long]. We haven’t had that discussion yet because I don’t know how long the episodes are going to be. Two hours per episode seems like it would be excessive, but it’s a great show, so who knows?

So again, it all comes down to what type of “feature” we’re talking about here – a bloated Wolf of Wall Street or a neat and tidy Dunkirk? At the very least, we can probably expect something beyond the typical 60-minutes-and-change. This show’s got a lot to wrap up; Dan Weiss and David Benioff surely need all the time they can get.

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