User blog comment:Werthead/Official: producers will not wait for Martin to finish the books/@comment-1600847-20130329132454/@comment-5014364-20130329174902

It is absurd to think that a TV show would recast child actors because their age doesn't exactly match their on-screen characters.

Yes, a year goes by between each season....then about a year of Westeros-time passes during the few weeks they're filming, during which the actors "catch up" with their on-screen characters.

Oh I see what you mean:  the TV series has already established that it's Timeline is different from the books. I.e. in the books, only maybe 3 years pass between books one and five (outside chance of like four years). So Arya starts out around 9 years old and is 12 or so in book 5.

In contrast, the TV series is following a "one season = one year" formula. Combine this with the fact that Book 3 "A Storm of Swords" was split into two seasons, and SIX YEARS are officially going to pass between the parts of the story corresponding to the first novel and the fifth novel, "A Dance With Dragons" - keeping in mind that the child actors were already aged up by about two years when the show started, so Arya was 11 in Season1, we're going to be dealing with a 17 year old Arya instead of a 12 year old Arya by Season 6.

This is official, it's already what they're doing. In season 2 characters refer to the fact that a year has passed, Robert's Rebellion is now "18 years ago" instead of "17 years ago".

"Recast all of the child characters so they match the age of the book characters"?! Seriously?!