'Game of Thrones' Season 8, Episode 3 Runtime Length Makes It the Longest

From here until the very end, Game of Thrones will only have super-sized episodes hovering around the 80-minute mark. Next week’s Great Battle of Winterfell, however, will forever remain the longest single episode in the show’s history. That record was previously held by the Season 7 finale, “The Dragon and the the Wolf,” which clocked in at exactly 80 minutes.

HBO publicly confirmed the runtimes for each Season 8 episode in March. Sunday night’s “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” was the last “normal” Game of Thrones episode at 58 minutes long. Episode 3, however, will run for 1 hour and 22 minutes — that’s four minutes longer than Season 8, Episode 4 and two minutes longer than Episodes 5 and 6.

Update, 4/28/19: See who lived and who died during the Battle of Winterfell

The longest Game of Thrones episode of all time will be 82 minutes long and feature the longest continuous battle sequence in cinematic history, longer even than the 40-minute Battle of Helm’s Deep in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

We still don’t know the title for Episode 3 yet, but it could be something simple like “The Battle of Winterfell.”

Production on the episode lasted 11 weeks of grueling night shoots with an estimated number of 750 people involved in front of and behind the camera.

“This final face-off between the Army of the Dead and the army of the living is completely unprecedented and relentless and a mixture of genres even within the battle,” co-executive producer Bryan Cogman told Entertainment Weekly of the episode. Does that mean the war against the Night King really does end in Episode 3? Is the back-half of Season 8 all about the final war against Cersei Lannister?

Miguel Sapochnik directed the episode, and since he’s the man responsible for “Hardhome” and the Emmy-winning “Battle of the Bastards,” you can rest assured it’ll be a tense and gruesome affair.

“It was the most unpleasant experience I’ve had on Thrones,” Jorah Mormont actor Iain Glen said to EW. The Hound actor Rory McCann echoed the sentiment: “Everybody prays they never have to do this again.”

Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 3 will air on HBO Sunday, April 28 at 9 p.m. Eastern.