The sixth season of HBO's flagship series "Game of Thrones" will debut on Sunday, April 24, and it will be accompanied by some new programming. Bill Simmons, former ESPN personality who signed on with HBO last year, will deliver an after show for George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy series. "After the Thrones" will be hosted by Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan of The Ringer, Simmons' new website with HBO.
"After The Thrones" will make its series debut on Monday, April 25, a day after the season six premiere. To start, the show will only be available on HBO Now, HBO Go and HBO On-Demand, but high viewership could lead to its addition on the regular HBO lineup.
This move is similar to AMC's strategy with "Talking Dead" ("The Walking Dead") and "Talking Bad" ("Breaking Bad"). However, unlike AMC, HBO revealed earlier this year that they would not be sending out advanced screeners to TV critics and reviewers in order to avoid leaks.
The only problem with that logic is that the season itself may serve as one big spoiler. Martin did not complete his work on "The Winds of Winter," the sixth book in his series, before the sixth season is set to debut.
"I never thought the series could possibly catch up with the books, but it has," Martin wrote in January. "The show moved faster than I anticipated and I moved more slowly. There were other factors too, but that was the main one. Given where we are, inevitably, there will be certain plot twists and reveals in season six of Game of Thrones that have not yet happened in the books. For years my readers have been ahead of the viewer. This year, for some things, the reverse will be true. How you want to handle that...hey, that's up to you."
Both "Game of Thrones" showrunners have attempted to make the argument that because the show and books are two separate entities, there will not be any major spoilers. But since Martin has divulged to them the outline of his ending, we know that several storylines will unfurl in similar fashion to the books.
"Game of Thrones" will return on April 24.
