How to watch Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 6: Watch the series finale on your TV, laptop or any other device
HBO's most popular TV show of all time came to an epic conclusion this weekend
Game of Thrones aired its last episode (Season 8, Episode 6) at 9pm on Sunday, 19 May in the US, and at 2am and 9pm on Monday in the UK.
The series finale – named The Iron Throne – was HBO’s most-watched TV show of all time.
No matter how unhappy you are with the season, or how many petitions are signed for a remake of Season 8 – even if they do gather over one million signatures – producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are not going to remake it.
What you got on Sunday night, therefore, was the final curtain call.
What time did Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 6 air?
As with the first five episodes, Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 6 aired at 9pm ET on HBO in the US on Sunday, May 19.
The episode was simulcast at 2am in the UK on Sunday night/Monday early morning on Sky Atlantic and Now TV Entertainment Pass, with a repeat telecast at 9pm on Monday, May 20.
You can now download and watch the episode instantly on HBO GO, Now TV and Sky Atlantic.
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How to watch Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 6
How to watch Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 6: Now TV
Your best option to watch the final episode of Game of Thrones in the UK is to subscribe to Now TV. This is the best ways to watch Sky TV channels without a contract and stream content on all your devices. Now TV has different passes, letting you watch all sorts of content that is broadcast on Sky TV.
To watch Game of Thrones, you’ll need Now TV’s Entertainment Pass, which costs a rolling £7.99 a month, but you can cancel at any time. The Entertainment Pass currently has all 72 episodes of Game of Thrones – all of the first seven seasons and the first five episodes of Season 8.
Each episode of Game of Thrones’ final season will be available to watch for 30 days after it is broadcast, but Seasons 1-7 of Game of Thrones will only be available until the end of May.
How to watch Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 6: Sky TV
If you have a Sky TV package, then you’ll need Sky Atlantic to watch Game of Thrones. The easiest way to get this is via Sky TV. Packages start at £22 per month but are subject to installation fees and 18-month contracts.
How to watch Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 6 wherever you are: use a VPN
What if you’re going to be away from your country when the final episode of Game of Thrones airs on Sunday night in the US or the early hours of Monday morning in the UK?
You certainly don’t want to miss the season finale and have the whole thing ruined by spoilers that flood social media streams pretty much as soon as the episode starts. Thankfully, we’ve got you covered.
The best way to watch Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 6 if you’re out of the country is to use a VPN. These services are reasonably-priced and let you geo shift your PC’s location. So, for example, you could be holidaying in Spain, but setting the VPN to the UK will trick your PC into thinking that you are actually in the UK.
READ NEXT: Best VPNs 2019
You can then log into Now TV or Sky Go and stream Game of Thrones as it airs in the UK or download and watch it at a convenient time. We’ve compiled a list of the best VPN services. Not all of these work with UK servers, so we’ve highlighted our top two services that guarantee you UK access.
ExpressVPN is our best-rated VPN and for good reason. It’s the fastest VPN we’ve used, has 24/7 customer support and useful tutorials and guides you can find online. Its fast speed ensures that you get lag-free streams regardless of where you are browsing Game of Thrones from.
NordVPN is our second-favourite VPN. It’s not as fast as ExpressVPN so only use it if you’re not too far away from the country that you want to access. For example, if you’re in France and want to connect to a UK server, you should be fine, but if you’re in Turkey, for example, then your stream might be laggy.
Game of Thrones: The legacy it’s leaving behind
Despite what people think of this final season, or how it all ends, Game of Thrones will go down in history as one of the best television spectacles of all time – a TV show that ruled a decade and defined a generation.
The show first aired in April 2011 a whole nine years ago. Back then, President Obama was in his first term in office. Closer to home in the UK, it was the year Prince William and Kate Middleton got married and the year the riots took place in England.
Even though the first season of Game of Thrones was on during each of these events, few people – except for maybe a few ardent book readers of George R R Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novel series – paid attention to it. But with the passage of time, Game of Throne soon became water-cooler conversation.
When the first season began, everyone was rooting for its protagonist Ned Stark and his honourable demeanour before we realised that good guys don’t always win in Martin’s world. Another episode that shocked all the non-book readers was undoubtedly The Red Wedding.
Over time, Game of Thrones became one of the most watched, pirated and talked about shows on the planet. Aside from all the online buzz around a show, you know it has reached another level of popularity when people name their kids after characters in the show (Khaleesi wasn’t even the name of a character) and start quoting lines from the show in everyday conversations.
The most popular lines from the show will undoubtedly be Ygritte’s “You know nothing Jon Snow”, Tyrion Lannister’s “I drink and I know things” and Arya’s series-long mantra: “There is only one thing we say to the God of Death: ‘Not today.'”
Even though most of the characters we have come to root for and love have either been killed off – often in gruesome fashion – or changed to become people we don’t recognise anymore (we’re looking at you, Starks and Targaryens), there’s no denying that Game of Thrones is and will be one of the greatest TV shows of all time.
With the rise of subscription-based TV services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO Go, it may even be the case that the next massive television blockbuster will be one we can binge-watch and not have weeks to anxiously ponder upon. That itself will put Game of Thrones in a rare class of its own.
Is there going to be a Game of Thrones prequel?
Given the unparalleled success that Game of Thrones enjoyed for so long, it came as no surprise when HBO announced plans for further series exploring the fantasy universe’s long history. The final episode, therefore, won’t be the last we see of Westeros; HBO has greenlit at least one prequel which will be set long before the War of the Five Kings.
The series has reportedly started shooting under the working title Bloodmoon, with actress Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive) and Jonathan Whitehouse (Poldark) in prominent roles. At present, there is no release date for the new series. There could more Game of Thrones prequels, all set up to a thousand years before Robert Baratheon travelled north to Winterfell to request his best friend Eddard Stark to become his faithful Hand of the King.
What about George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire book series?
George R. R. Martin is involved in all of these Game of Thrones spin-offs, so this could mean that Martin’s final two books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series – The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring – could further be delayed.
Upon seeing the early reactions to Game of Thrones’ final season, it won’t be a surprise if the next two books become instant best-sellers given that it’s almost certain that the TV series and books will have different endings. So if you don’t get the ending you want on Sunday, Martin is your best hope.