'Game of Thrones' explains why you won't see Season 7 soon

SAN DIEGO -- Winter has come, but it's going to be a while before we actually see it.

At Comic-Con 2016, showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff explained that the seven episodes of the upcoming Season 7 of the show won't even start filming until the end of the year -- because it is apparently mostly set in a wintry landscape, and nature isn't cooperating.

"We don't finish shooting until February [2017]," Benioff explained. "We gotta shoot where there are trees ... We have to wait for the leaves to fall off the trees."

The season will screen in summer 2017 -- by which time, if the gods are merciful, George R.R. Martin will have published his next book in the series, The Winds of Winter.

Though shooting hasn't started, the production itself is in full swing -- as shown in a video screened after the panel.

The video amped up the excitement for season 7, but revealed almost nothing. Not an Easter egg in sight -- except if you look closely, you can see someone writing "Sansa cha ..." on a piece of wood.

Breaking news: Sansa has a chair in season 7!

Here are some other highlights from the panel, which was apparently sabotaged with alcohol provided by by Sansa Stark herself.

Also, the showrunners talked about author George R.R. Martin, who is not present at Comic-Con this year, almost as if he were past tense:

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There was a lot of love in the room for Hodor. The actor who portrayed the gentle giant received the most sustained applause from the audience, and repeatedly professed himself "overwhelmed."

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Sophie Turner declared what we all thought we knew from the end of Season 6: that her character, Sansa Stark, feels that she should be in charge of Winterfell and the North, not Jon Snow.

Asked where Sansa Stark would go in Season 7, Turner made this dark declaration:

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The dark shadow of Donald Trump hung over the panel, even though he wasn't mentioned by name. The actor who plays Varys suggested that the eunuch was effectively the opposite of Trump in Westeros:

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With so little information available about Season 7, the cast were asked to speculate about where their characters are going next. John Bradley, who plays Samwell Tarly, suggested that Sam might die in a horrific library accident after reaching for an "artistic" book on a high shelf.

Isaac Wright, who plays Bran, offered this:

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