Maisie Williams stars in “Game of Thrones”

Winter is here, folks. After a grueling, almost year-long wait, "Game of Thrones" is back, and boy oh boy is there a lot to chew on. Season 6 of the critically acclaimed series premieres Sunday, April 24, on HBO.

From Jon Snow's (Kit Harington, "Pompeii," 2014) death and the unknown fate of Sansa (Sophie Turner, "Barely Lethal," 2015) and Theon (Alfie Allen, "John Wick," 2014) to Tyrion's (Peter Dinklage, "Threshold") adventures and Arya's (Maisie Williams, "Doctor Who") eye-opening predicament, fans are itching for answers -- especially since there's no more source material from which to glean even an inkling of what's to come.

So, just like Snow, we know nothing except what has slowly leaked out, and even still, it's not much. We know that Bran (Isaac Hempstead Wright, "The Awakening," 2011) and Hodor (Kristian Nairn, "Four Warriors," 2015) are back -- and with the Three-Eyed Raven (Max von Sydow, "Shutter Island," 2010) -- after remaining conspicuously absent throughout season 5. We know Golden Globe winner Ian McShane ("Deadwood") joins the cast for a minor, yet important, role. We know that we meet members of Samwell Tarly's (John Bradley, "Borgia") family. But other than casting news, everything's shrouded in mystery.

Of course, mystery is good and often welcomed, unless you're like the legions of fans who have read the books on which the show is based and are worried about spoilers. George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire has captivated audiences since the first novel's release in 1996, but Martin's been a bit slow with releasing his novels, and only five of the seven planned works have been published so far.

Still, series creators and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss assured fans in an interview with Entertainment Weekly last month that there's nothing to worry about.

"People are talking about whether the books are going to be spoiled -- and it's really not true," Benioff said. "So much of what we're doing diverges from the books at this point. And while there are certain key elements that will be the same, we're not going to talk so much about that. ... People are going to be very surprised when they read the books after the show. They're quite divergent in so many respects for the remainder of the show."

Weiss added that they knew it was inevitable that they'd pass the books, so they took a silver-lining approach, hoping the fans would, too.

"At a certain point, we realized we were going to outpace the books," he said, "and we kind of chose to see it as a great thing on both sides -- there's this amazing world George has created, and now there are two different versions, and there's no reason we can see why you can't be thrilled and surprised and dismayed by both of these different versions of this world."

Isaac Hempstead Wright and Max von Sydow as seen in “Game of Thrones”

Martin, for his part, told IGN in February that, in a perfect world, he would have had the sixth book, "The Winds of Winter," published by the start of "Game of Thrones'" sixth season, but other factors stalled that desire.

"Ideally, I would have liked to have finished the books and have the story complete, but the show moves at a faster pace than I do," Martin said. "That's partly because I'm a slow writer and I've always been a slow writer, and also I've had a lot of distractions in the last few years. I wrote several episodes [of 'Game of Thrones'] in the early seasons. I'm a co-executive producer. That took up a considerable amount of time. But it is what it is."

He's right -- it is what it is, and now the books' fans and the show's fans are in the same place. No one, save the cast and crew, knows where the story's heading, and after a hugely successful fifth season that broke the record for most Emmy wins by a series in a single year (12 wins of 24 nominations), it's tough not to feel excited for season 6. Benioff even fed the frenzy with a bold statement about the new season.

"Usually there's an episode or two we're kind of nervous about that didn't turn out as well as we hoped," he told Entertainment Weekly. "This season there is not a weak episode. ... We're always reluctant to say it's 'the best season yet' because so much of that is in the eyes of the beholder. And Dan [Weiss] and I are so close to it that it's impossible to be unbiased. But that's my sense -- watching [the episodes] all together now, this is the best one we've done."

Let that sink in: "The best one we've done." If that doesn't get you hyped for the new season of "Game of Thrones," then nothing will. So get set to return to Westeros, Essos and everywhere in between as season 6 of the hit drama "Game of Thrones" premieres Sunday, April 24, on HBO.