Great news for Game of Thrones fans: season 3, which spans roughly the first half of A Storm of Swords, has been extended by almost a full episode’s worth of content.

EW reports today that Game of Thrones‘ third season, which will air on HBO next year, will super-size its episodes to include more events from the epic George R.R. Martin novel on which it is based.

Anyone who has read the A Song of Ice and Fire saga will know that season 3 of the series will include a lot of huge and epic moments, and of course one of the reasons they’re splitting the third book across two seasons is because there’s just too many important developments to cover in 10 episodes.

While the third season won’t be extended by any episodes, each episode will be a few minutes longer than what we’ve come to expect from previous seasons of the show.

Game of Thrones creator Dan Weiss explains that, “One of the great liberties with HBO is we’re not forced to come in at a specific time. We can’t be under 50 minutes or over 60, but that gives us a lot of flexibility.”

As such, expect the episodes to be closer to 60 minutes than 50 this time. Co-creator David Benioff reveals that in season 3, a lot of them are 56-57 minutes long, with the season 3 finale potentially running even longer than an hour (if HBO grants them the permission).

“A super-sized season, as befitting Storm of Swords,” Benioff reasons, and we can’t help but agree!

Game of Thrones returns on March 31, 2013. Are you excited? If you need something to fill the gap, check out Hypable’s Game of Thrones podcast Game of Owns, which is currently going through the first novel in the saga (A Game of Thrones) a chapter at a time!