According to Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, Game of Thrones Season 6 is so substantially different from the books that readers will still be surprised by events in the next A Song of Ice and Fire novel, The Winds of Winter.
“People are talking about whether the books are going to be spoiled—and it’s really not true,” Benioff said to Entertainment Weekly. “So much of what we’re doing diverges from the books at this point. And while there are certain key elements that will be the same, we’re not going to talk so much about that—and I don’t think George is either. People are going to be very surprised when they read the books after the show. They’re quite divergent in so many respects for the remainder of the show.”
Behold: Every. Single. Spoiler we know about #GameofThrones Season 6. On to April 24! https://t.co/sosmBEQBaU pic.twitter.com/MqBONrKJM8
— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) March 16, 2016
Whether or not Game of Thrones Season 6 will spoil the book would seem to come down to those “key elements.” As for Benioff telling EW “we’re not going to talk so much about that,” well, that would seem to be out of his hands.
“What makes the books so great is that George doesn’t make meticulous blueprints for every beat of this story and then fill in the blanks dutifully going from A to B to C, fleshing out an outline,” Weiss said. “There’s this amazing world George has created and now there are two different versions, and there’s no reason we can see why you can’t be thrilled and surprised and dismayed by both of these different versions of this world.”
While this sounds good in practice, most of the worst elements of recent seasons of Game of Thrones have come from divergences from the books. While A Song of Ice and Fire avoids dutiful “A to B to C” plotting, Season 5’s treatment of Daenerys and events at Winterfell felt subject to that exact TV plotting.
Game of Thrones Season 6 looks to spoil major plot elements for The Winds of Winter , but it sounds like Benioff and Weiss will be making enough changes that sorting out the spoilers from the changes will have to wait until the book’s release.
