Here’s Our First Official News About Game of Thrones Season 7

With Sunday’s season six finale of Game of Thrones still fresh in viewers’ minds, the first official news for the show’s 2017 return has just been announced. The directors for the (shortened) seventh season of the HBO drama have been revealed, according to Entertainment Weekly, and there are four of them: Alan Taylor, Jeremy Podeswa, Mark Mylod and Matt Shakman.

Taylor, Podeswa and Mylod are all Thrones veterans, having helmed episodes such as season one’s “Baelor,” season five’s “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken,” and season six’s “No One,” respectively, while Shakman is best known for his extensive work on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Additionally, during a recent interview with EW, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss revealed that the conclusion of season six, and specifically, the beginning of Daenerys’s journey across the Narrow Sea, was meant to set the groundwork for the end of the series. “Once she gets on those ships and crosses West, that’s when the clock on the end game starts ticking,” Weiss said. “The question has been: When is she going to get back across the Narrow Sea? When is she going to take back her homeland? It’s been a long time for her, and it’s been something that’s such an imperative for people watching. You know she’s not going to go there for a beach vacation…When she gets back to Westeros, it’s on. Her return is the first domino.”

The premiere of Thrones‘ seventh season will air on HBO in 2017.

Read more at EW.com.