“Game of Thrones” is going to extreme lengths to avoid spoilers this season

This Game of Thrones season might be dark, but in a surprising move, it will not be full of spoilers.

In a bold move on HBO’s part, they have decided not to release media screeners ahead of time for upcoming episodes. What does this mean? It means that magazines and websites that cover Game of Thrones (like, ahem, us here at HelloGiggles) won’t get to see episode ahead of time, and will have to wait until they air on HBO, like everyone else. This, ultimately, gets rid the worrisome chance that an episode will be pirated, via DVD, and uploaded online (and this is actually super illegal, FYI).

“We’re not sending out press copies this year, anywhere in the world,” HBO programming president Michael Lombardo firmly explained to Entertainment Weekly. “There will be no copies for review. It’s painful for [showrunners] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss when leaks happen],” Lombardo said. “When you have press copies, inevitably friends ask, ‘Can I see your copy?’ There are things that happen. We talked about the upsides and downsides… but [the media will] understand.”

It was actually Benioff and Weiss who asked for media copies not to be sent out this year, and HBO agreed. This is a very smart move on their part, since this is the first season where the TV show has passed by George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire saga. That means, no one—including book readers!—will have any idea what’s happening from episode to episode. Everything is going to be a TOTAL SURPRISE and we’ll all get to experience whatever shocking/gruesome/heart-wrenching things happen together.

Also, this is just a really smart way to avoid spoilers, while also building nothing but ridiculous excitement for Season 6.

Obviously, even with this strategy, not all spoilers will be avoided, but for the most part everyone is going to stay 98% spoiler free (and that 2% is made up of mostly all those long-haired Kit Harington sightings from this past year).

The new season returns April 24 at 9pm. SEE YOU THERE.