'Game of Thrones' season 7 release date, plot spoilers: Upcoming season to return in the summer with fewer episodes; Jon Snow someone extraordinary?

After much speculation on the release date of "Game of Thrones" season 7, HBO has made it official. Winter will come summer of 2017.

Entertainment Weekly had first dibs on the information that HBO recently put out regarding the seventh season of Emmy favorite "Game of Thrones." As per HBO, the series will not be returning until summer 2017, which is way off the show's usual spring premiere. Moreover, the network has confirmed that season 7 would only consist of seven episodes, three less than its usual run.

Since winter would play a major part in the upcoming season, it would mostly be shot in Northern Ireland, Spain, and Iceland, the latter of which has been speculated in the past weeks.

"Now that winter has arrived on Game of Thrones, executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt that the storylines of the next season would be better served by starting production a little later than usual, when the weather is changing," Casey Bloys, HBO's programming president, told EW. "Instead of the show's traditional spring debut, we're moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule."

Executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have told Variety that they have their eyes set on two shortened seasons to end the popular series based on George R.R. Martin's book series. If the penultimate season would have seven episodes, the finale season (8) would be somewhere between six or eight episodes.

Meanwhile, there are speculations that Jon Snow (Kit Harington) might be the next Azor Ahai, the god that red priests and priestesses praise.

According to Unreality TV, Jon Snow might be more than a Targaryen prince and that he could be the next one holding the Lightbringer. Likewise, there are speculations that the one possessing the Lightbringer could bring an end to the mother of dragons, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke).

Of course, all those are mere speculations and fan theories, which could be proven true or not when "Game of Thrones" season 7 drops in summer 2017 on HBO.