Winter is coming, and then spring, but how long into the spring will we have to wait for "Game of Thrones" Season 6? At this point, everyone is still very Jon Snow about the premiere date -- aka, we know nothing -- but yesterday, HBO announced a bunch of spring 2016 start dates, and it led to some troubling speculation about GoT's return.

Every past season of "Game of Thrones" has launched its 10 episodes in early-or-mid April or the end of March. That may still be the case, but Entertainment Weekly got us all nervous when they surmised that HBO's newly announced dates for "Vinyl," "Girls" and "Togetherness" mean GoT will probably return later than we expected.


Here's how they put it:

HBO usually airs its original programming for up to two hours on one night a week (Sunday), and Thrones tends to start after the network's late-winter shows conclude – usually very late March or early April (last year Thrones returned April 6). No premiere date for Thrones has yet been announced. But given that the winter programs have 10 episodes each, Thrones couldn't return in early April, or even mid-April,even if all three shows ran for 10 weeks straight.

So we're looking at late April at the very earliest. In theory, the show could return April 17 if it was paired with the winter comedies for two weeks, but only if HBO decided to no longer air Thrones with fellow Emmy favorites Silicon Valley and Veep for the start of its run – something the network has done the past two years. It's more likely HBO will want its spring drama and comedies in sync, and use its premieres to cross promote each other like usual."

But slow down! Many fans are still thinking GoT will premiere April 17, 2016. As one put it, "Vinyl will wrap up its first season on April 10 cause it's two-hour premiere on February 14. So Game of Thrones will premiere on April 17."

EW wasn't ready to buy the April 17 argument but -- if it's true -- then not only is it not a delay, it's the same exact premiere date as Season 1!


However, the idea of a "delayed" Season 6 got some fans thinking maybe HBO was waiting for author George R.R. Martin to finish the next book, "The Winds of Winter," and maybe The Powers That Be want to start the new season after the book comes out. That's probably wishful thinking -- although we wouldn't say no to Book 6 arriving in 2016 -- and it's most likely that Season 6 will premiere in late April, either April 17 or maybe April 24, which would be later than past seasons but not exactly a huge difference.

Fans are just very impatient to learn the fate of Jon Snow, not to mention Myrcella and others who may or may not be dead or on the way to dead or on the way to being less dead than before. (The whole season could easily turn into a Monty Python sketch.)

Do you have a theory on the GoT premiere date or will you just wait and see if it's still April or even May or ... summer?

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