Game of Thrones showrunners: Season 6, the best one weve done!

The most mysterious season of Game of Thrones yet is also the best — that’s according to the HBO drama’s Emmy-winning showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss. Normally the writer-producers are pretty cautious about making statements that raise fans’ already astronomic expectations for their international hit series. But they recently watched the near-final cuts of all 10 episodes, and we asked which aspect was the most exciting. 

“The whole season,” Benioff replied. “Dan and I talk about this a lot. This is not us trying to hype it. Usually there’s an episode or two we’re kind of nervous about, that didn’t turn out as well as we hoped. This season there is not a weak episode. We had great directors who knew what they were doing, paired with excellent [directors of photography]. We thought at the script stage it might be our strongest season. Then the episodes came in better than we hoped. We’re always reluctant to say it’s ‘the best season yet’ because so much of that is in the eyes of the beholder. And Dan and I are so close to it that it’s impossible to be unbiased. But that’s my sense – watching them all together now, this is the best one we’ve done. It’s also the one I’m proudest of, because it was the hardest.”

If season 6 turns out to be the strongest yet, that will be quite an accomplishment considering last year shattered Emmy records while averaging 91 out of 100 on Metacritic. But why was this new season the “hardest” to produce? And what, exactly, will make the new episodes so compelling? An upcoming issue of Entertainment Weeklywill go behind the scenes of season 6 with an exclusive report from the show’s set in Spain and Northern Ireland, plus we’ll have profiles of several stars from the show – reserve your copy of our big Thronesissue by going here now. 

EW has tons of online Thrones coverage planned, too – exclusive news, cast interviews, fan-favorite recaps, and more (without spoiling any of the significant twists to come). Follow @jameshibberdfor ongoing GoT scoop, subscribe to our Thrones email newsletter, and bookmark our GoT headlines and recaps hub. Thrones returns to HBO on April 24.