"Game of Thrones" Season 8 will be airing six episodes for the season finale, which is shorter than season 7's number of episodes. HBO's original series will also be getting a musical guest star on season 7 in Ed Sheeran as a surprise for Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark.

According to a report from Entertainment Weekly, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss confirmed during the featured speaker panel at the South by Southwest Film Festival that the hit series will only have six episodes for season 8. Benioff said that when the show was only beginning, they "wanted to tell a 70-hour movie," and they just slightly above their target, finishing the entire series in 73-hours.

He adds that they're happy to have kept the core cast of the series intact finish it in the way they want to. "It would have been really tough if we lost any core cast members along the way," Benioff said.

Though HBO has yet to officially announce the number of episodes for the season finale, Benioff and Weiss is already sure of the number of hours they'll be working on for season 8. They even divided who gets to write each episode, with Benioff saying they argued who gets "to kill Sansa."

With "Game of Thrones" Season 7 already set to premiere on July 16, 2017, the show revealed that they would be having Sheeran guest star on one of the show's episode. The Vanity Fair reports that Benioff said they have already been trying for years to have the singer guest star in the show as a surprise for Williams, who is a big fan.

Now they get to do it in season 7, but no confirmation yet on what role Sheeran will be playing. The singer now joins members of Coldplay, Of Monsters and Men, Mastodon, and Sigur Rós, as musical performers who made a cameo in the hit series. Check out the official teaser for "Game of Thrones" Season 7 in the video below.