Skip to main content

Season 6 of Game of Thrones premieres April 24, along with Silicon Valley, Veep

game of thrones season 6 april 24 gameofthronesscreengrab
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Updated by Rick Marshall on 01-08-2016: HBO is reportedly in talks to renew Game of Thrones for a seventh and eighth season, according to Entertainment Weekly, with the eighth season possibly ending the series.

HBO has announced that three of its most popular shows — Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, and Veep — will return with back-to-back-to-back season premieres on April 24.

Recommended Videos

Game of Thrones kicks off the Sunday evening with its season six premiere at 9 p.m. With the show having finally caught up to the books, it’s anyone’s guess where the plot is headed over the course of the next 10 episodes, but a recent teaser hinted that a fan-favorite character thought to be dead and gone might not be so gone after all.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

After being absent throughout the entire fifth season, Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead-Wright) will be making a return this season. The young actor confirmed his return in July, and his voice can be heard in a trailer for season six.

Following the Game of Thrones kickoff, Silicon Valley will begin its 10-episode third season at 10 p.m. The comedy has always been reflective of the actual Silicon Valley, and that level of realism may be taken even further in season three. In October it was reported that former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo would be working as a consultant for the show this season.

Veep kicks off its fifth season — also 10 episodes — at 10:30 p.m. The show which stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus as former Vice President Selina Meyer, now president of the United States, as of the show’s third season. Season four was widely acclaimed by critics, and ended on such a note that it’s difficult to say what the fifth season will bring for the characters.

Thanks to services like HBO Now and HBO Go, it’s easier than ever to watch these shows as they air live (assuming the latter doesn’t have the same issues it did last year), but plenty of people will likely take a different route. Last month it was reported that Game of Thones remains the most pirated show on TV.

Kris Wouk
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…
The Red Wedding at 10: How the groundbreaking episode changed Game of Thrones forever
Robb Stark's body with his direwolf's head in Game of Thrones.

The so-called Golden Age of Television reached its undeniable zenith during the 2010s. Shows like Mad Men, Veep, Breaking Bad, and Stranger Things took TV to new and exciting levels of visual and narrative quality. However, no show had more influence or acclaim throughout the 2010s than Game of Thrones. The HBO juggernaut became synonymous with prestige television, delivering a perfect mix of political intrigue, high fantasy, and sex that became irresistible for critics and audiences.

Game of Thrones wasn't an instant success; it was only in season 3 that the show became the must-see show on television. Two events helped the show achieve this elusive reputation. The first was Daenerys' sacking of Astapor in the fourth episode, And Now His Watch Has Ended. The second is, of course, the Red Wedding. The episode it was featured in, The Rains of Castamere, changed the series' course, altering the fate of multiple characters and radically shifting the power balance between the noble houses of Westeros. The groundbreaking episode showcased Game of Thrones operating at full strength, and, as a result, allowed audiences to truly understand what kind of show they were watching.
Game of Thrones sends its regards

Read more
Star Wars’ distant past has potential for Game of Thrones-like drama
A collage of characters in "Star Wars: The Old Republic" promo art.

While pondering yet another big IP Disney+ series can seem like an exhaustive thought considering its current breakneck output, Andor's critical success for both the streaming platform and the Star Wars franchise as a whole gives a taste of the potential that the Old Republic could provide to a TV series. That's in addition to the benefit of being heavily separated from the Skywalker Saga legacy.

No series needs to be darker and more serious to be inherently better, but the level of tension and drama found in Cassian Andor's gritty origin story should be a seamless fit somewhere within the literal thousands of years worth of history in Star Wars' distant past. In the Old Republic, there's no shortage of Jedi, Sith, intergalactic factions, political intrigue, and more that could give Disney+ and Lucasfilm a major and long-running Game of Thrones-level drama to keep audiences reeled in season in and season out.
The Old Republic provides an embarrassment of riches

Read more
How House of the Dragon saved Game of Thrones’ tarnished legacy
Alicent and Rhaenyra clutch each other in House of the Dragon.

May 19, 2019, is a date branded on the pop culture lexicon. The finale to Game of Thrones, the television phenomenon that single-handedly revitalized the fantasy genre and redefined what "event television" meant, aired to the collective disappointment of millions of fans. The show's decline in quality had begun in season 7, with some questionable choices happening as far back as season 5, but the train wreck that was season 8 was beyond words. Consistency went out the window in favor of spectacle, resulting in a rushed season that reduced the world's greatest TV show into a sad shadow of its former self.

The controversial finale put a seemingly permanent stain on Game of Thrones. In the years leading up to its conclusion, HBO expressed interest in creating a franchise based around George R. R. Martin's World of Ice and Fire. However, the episode's terrible reception put the network's plan in doubt, with many wondering if the Game of Thrones brand was in a healthy enough place to support a franchise. Things got worse when the first spinoff, starring Naomi Watts, got unceremoniously axed -- even after shooting a $30 million pilot -- spelling doom for the would-be franchise. Alas, not all was lost; GoT still had an ace up its sleeve, and it was called House Targaryen.
Mother of Dragons

Read more