Some "Game of Thrones" fans who have read the novels that inspired the TV series are wondering if the show's next season might lack a little punch.
Readers of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" books might think the next bit of the story is a little less compelling than what played out in the fourth season, but show co-creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss say there won't be a dip in drama.
"After finishing season 3, we were nervous about season 4 -- we'd been looking forward to the Red Wedding for so long that once we shot it, we feared everything beyond that would seem like an anti-climax," the duo tells Entertainment Weekly.
"For season 5, again, the fear started to dissipate when we outlined it and realized how much story we had to tell. Now that we're nearly finished with the first drafts of each episode, we see no reason why the coming season shouldn't be the strongest yet."
They say the special effects crew will be hard at work again bringing some of George R. R. Martin's fantasy characters to life.
"The White Walkers aren't going away. The dragons aren't getting any smaller. Melisandre's still sorceressing, the giants are more pissed than ever, and Jaime's almost done building his jetpack. So a yeah, the fantasy's not going away. It is a fantasy show."
But some critics have their doubts about the upcoming season, which is expected to premiere sometime next spring but still doesn't have a confirmed start date. Buzzfeed has listed six reasons why the fourth "uneven" season was a letdown.
For starters, Buzzfeed argues that the controversial portrayals of sexual assault were over the top, gratuitous and far too common.
"To say that the show frequently depicts rape is not an automatic condemnation: Certainly there are ways it can work, when handled with the appropriate amount of respect and horror, in the context of the story. But in season 4, rape became the worst kind of background noise, peppered throughout for no narrative reason other than to justify that TV-MA rating," writes Louis Peitzman.
"Suddenly the notorious sexposition scenes of the first season felt almost quaint: Yes, the nudity, at times, was gratuitous. But at least that was consensual."
