George R. R. Martin, American novelist, best known for his series of epic fantasy novels, A Song of ... [+]
There’s been a flood of Game of Thrones-related news in the last few days, concerning the past and future of the show.
First, former writers/showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss sparked headlines by admitting that they weren’t quite qualified to adapt George R.R. Martin’s novels, which was swiftly followed by the announcement that they would no longer be involved with the Star Wars franchise.
But Benioff and Weiss are old news, and Game of Thrones isn’t quite dead yet (despite their best efforts). No doubt motivated by the wild success and gargantuan pop-cultural impact of the show, HBO has officially greenlit one of the many Thrones spin-offs that were in development, House of the Dragon, and killed another, The Long Night. Currently, none of the other spin-offs are believed to be moving forward.
The Long Night was planned to be a prequel series to Thrones, a story featuring the ancestral Starks and their ancient, original conflict with the White Walkers. The series was to star Naomi Watts, “a charismatic socialite hiding a dark secret,” and depict the fall of the Golden Age of Westeros.
It’s not clear why The Long Night wasn’t ordered to series; Deadline mentioned “issues” during filming of the pilot, although the original pilot for Thrones was famously rocky, and had to be almost entirely reshot.
But the ancient White Walker conflict was a bit of a poisoned chalice anyway, as the infamous Thrones episode, also titled “The Long Night,” single-handedly destroyed the allure of the frost-bitten wraiths.
During that episode, the Night King was defeated quickly and easily; the thought of watching an origin story of a character who turns out to be largely irrelevant isn’t particularly appealing. That being said, Westeros crumbling to corruption while an environmental apocalypse rages in the background certainly would have been topical; the original White Walkers/climate change metaphor was, sadly, squandered.
The spin-off prequel that is moving forward at HBO, House of the Dragon, is based on George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, a fictitious history book of Westeros which Martin once jokingly dubbed “the GRRMarillion,” an allusion to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, which details the dense lore of Middle-Earth.
Fire & Blood is less … biblical than The Silmarillion, covering only the dramatic reign of House Targaryen and their shaping of the society that Thrones introduced us to. Of course, any story involving House Targaryen is bursting with violent betrayal, incest, and dragons.
The inclusion of those three provocative elements might be the surest bet to win back a big chunk of the former Game of Thrones audience, especially the ones who might not be typical fantasy fans.
For all that Benioff and Weiss got wrong, they did manage to change the television landscape, pushing fantasy further into the mainstream, beyond even the reach of The Lord of the Rings. In a sense, Thrones managed to make dragons “cool again.”
Actually, I take that back - dragons were always cool - but before Daenerys hatched her babies, there were very few depictions of the fire-breathing beasts in film and television, and the ones we had weren’t nearly as intimidating. The dragon, integral to so many of the world’s myths and legends, wasn’t treated with the respect it deserved, prior to Thrones.
It remains to be seen if HBO manages to imbue the new series with substance, and not solely rely on the visceral thrill of blood, sibling-sex and dragon warfare.
I’m choosing to be optimistic; much of the infrastructure from eight seasons of Thrones must remain, along with the knowledge of how to depict a believable, beautiful fantasy world. It’s all about the writing, and hopefully, House of the Dragon won’t feature characters who, after watching a Targaryen burn an entire city of innocents to the ground, solemnly states:
“I know a killer when I see one.”
