HBO finally revealed the premiere date for Game of Thrones season 7 on Facebook Live Thursday. If that sounds like something you would want to know, then please enjoy the following sentence: Game of Thrones will return on July 16, 2017.

During the extremely frustrating livestream, more than 100,000 fans were asked to type the words "FIRE" and "DRACARYS" over and over again, thus triggering actual fire to (very, very, very slowly) reveal the date by way of melting.


For reasons not immediately clear, the live ice-melting came to an abrupt pause before later starting up again:

When the broadcast was abruptly paused again, Netflix swooped in on the comments with a helpful suggestion:

Netflix really doing it.
Image via Facebook

The last time we talked Thrones, a certain Watchers on the Wall report spotted by Esquire had us all convinced that none other than (SPOILER?) Nymeria might be making her big return in season 7. Star Maisie Williams was seen in Calgary, notable for being the locale used for green screen-assisted direwolf sequences.

As Watchers noted, wolves from the Instinct Animals for Film group were also recently spotted in the region. One such wolf was an actor by the name of Quigley, a.k.a. Ghost. Though not named in photos from the trip, another wolf had palpable Nymeria vibes. Nymeria, of course, was last seen chomping on Joffrey's arm.

And don't forget: Game of Thrones will be no more after 2018, as season 8 will also be its last. Prequel possibilities, predictably, are already being discussed. "It's such a big property we would be foolish not to explore it, but it's a pretty high bar," Casey Bloys, boss of HBO programming, told Entertainment Weekly last month. "We'll take some shots at it. I'm not going to do it just to do it. It has to feel very special."

On a related note, today I paid a portion of my rent by watching a big block of ice melt. Thank you, HBO.