China Releases Game of Thrones Season 8 With Heavy Edits

Game of Thrones

With Game of Thrones‘ final episode aired mostly throughout the world last Sunday, the episode took a little longer to come to China. As you might be aware, with the state-controlled media, the country has some rather strict guidelines as to what is allowed to be broadcast on TV.

In a report via The Verge, however, some of the edits they chose made the episode seem better suited to the Discovery Channel than HBO.

Warning – Spoilers Ahead!

What Was Cut?

Out of the entire episode around 6 minutes of footage was removed from the final Chinese edit. This included, for example, the scene where
Ned Umber’s body is pinned to the wall. Incidentally, did the jump scare get you?…

Cuts also included Theon rescuing his sister and Bron’s ‘liason’ with his female friends.

With the exception of the latter, the first two were rather important plot points and, as such, many are mocking the edits as completely undermining all aspects of the plot.

Why Were They Edited?

China has some rather strict rules regarding what is allowed on TV. While some of these are understandable (such as excessive violence or nudity) these can sometimes expand into more unusual areas.

For example, anything with a mildly supernatural or ‘undead’ theme is very unlikely to get passed.

It does, of course, raise the question of why they are even bothering to release it at all. I mean, surely any battles with the Night Kings army are going to have to be amazingly brief.

It does kind of make me want to watch the censored version. Literally only to see just how much of garbled mess it will be!

What do you think? Did you enjoy the first episode? How do you think it will all end? – Let us know in the comments!