It’s time to face the hard, cold facts: We have no idea when “Game of Thrones” will be back

Warning, the following post contains spoilers for Season 7 of Game of Thrones, as well as overwhelming despair over the unknown timetable for the final season of the HBO hit. If you aren’t caught up yet, head on over to HBO this instant to catch up, but if you are…feel free to wallow with me.

The Season 7 finale of Game of Thrones was only a few days ago and we’re already suffering from withdrawals. As we wait in anticipation for the final six episodes of the series — EVER — we must prepare ourselves to wait a while. And by a while, we mean about as long as it took to get from Dorne to The Wall back in Season 1.

Not to be the bearer of bad news, but we have no idea when the final season of Game of Thrones will air and chances are, it might not be until 2019.

But how are we going to know if Tormund survived the breach of The Wall? What’s going to happen when Jon finds out about his real parentage — and that he had sex with his aunt? Is Cersei going to truly descend into madness without Jaime? What’s the game plan for the Great War? WHO is going to sit on the Iron Throne in the end? I, for one, can’t imagine waiting very long for answers to these and the million other questions I have.

Considering the shortened Season 7 left us totally unprepared to say goodbye so soon, it’s almost amazing our brains haven’t exploded from this abhorrent news. But it’s not like we, the fans, haven’t been asking the tough questions about the final season’s air date — and going directly to HBO President of Programming Casey Bloys for answers. But, everyone’s being as coy as Ned Stark when asked about Jon Snow’s mom.

Over the summer, during a TCA press tour, Bloys told reporters that he didn’t know when the final season would air on HBO, saying that while all the scripts had been written, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss hadn’t finished creating the production schedule. Adding to Entertainment Weekly that the “cinematic” nature of the series could potentially mean the final season wouldn’t air until the end of 2018 or early 2019, Bloys remained relatively tight-lipped about any specific timetables. The HBO head was clear throughout the tour that he trusts Benioff and Weiss and understands that in order to produce massive undertakings like Game of Thrones, it means abandoning traditional timetables. This amateur sleuth (me) takes that to roughly translate to, “I’m not saying but I’m definitely saying that I have no idea how long it’s going to take which means probably forever.”

Additionally, star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) revealed that the series doesn’t go into production until October, something The Hollywood Reporter confirmed, adding that the production schedule could run from October 2017 to potentially August 2018.

While this seems like a crazy long production schedule for a season with only six episodes, Bloys admitted during the TCA press tour that expanded episodes like the season seven finale — which ran 79 minutes and 43 seconds — could become a new norm during the final season.

But, if the production schedule is right — and like, Jon Snow, we hope this person knows NOTHING — it means we’ll be looking at at least a seven month gap between the end of shooting and the premiere date but it all depends on the length of the episodes and the massive undertaking that is CGI. Hey now, it takes time to create a CGI dragon and entire army of the dead.

Okay, that was a lot technical information but long story short, we really don’t have a ton of concrete information about the final season so, like literally everything else on the show, all we can do is speculate. And seeing how D&D (and HBO) live for drama they’re definitely going to be as coy as they can so someone needs to get Amanda Peet on Conan to give us some answers.

But it’s okay. I have faith we’ll survive the terrible uncertainty that is Game of Thrones absence. Just take it from our old pal, Jon Snow:

Sure, we don’t know when, if ever, the beloved one-time Sean Bean-led series will return for its swan song season, but we can do what Thrones fans do best: rewatch (and/or read) the series, come up with crazy theories, and continue to speculate until our brains are fried or the series returns – whichever happens first.