You probably expected it, but feared it all the same: Your favorite characters in Game of Thrones are probably going to die in the show's final season. At least that's what a top executive hinted at this week.

Variety reports that during a panel called 'The Best of HBO' at the INTV Conference in Israel, executives gave some insights into what it was like to be there during a read-through of the show's final episodes.

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'It was a really powerful moment in our lives and our careers,' Francesca Orsi, HBO's senior vice president of drama, said during the panel. 'None of the cast had received the scripts prior, and one by one they started falling down to their deaths.' It's unclear whether she's referring to their characters' deaths, or the actors' general shock at what happened. Either way, she's definitely hinting at incredibly dramatic plot points to come.

Orsi also said that during a table read of the last six scripts of the show, everyone stood and clapped for 15 or 20 minutes. 'It was amazing,' she said. 'By the very end, everyone looked down and looked up and tears were in their eyes.'

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We have until 2019 to get to see what happens, but in the meantime we can speculation on the planned spinoffs, which will air even later than that. 'It feels like corporate malfeasance to not continue [the story],' Orsi said. 'That's why it spawned three, four, five spinoffs […] we're going big.'

But they're still trying to figure out how to make it work, budget-wise, Deadline notes. 'There is a conundrum if we do take off on one of these Game of Thrones spin-offs, where do we start?' she said at the panel. 'We can't obviously start with the budget of season 8 but would it be a Game of Thrones season three budget?'

Either way, it would be a safe bet to expect dragons.

From: Esquire US