If there’s one thing we ought to have learned from Daenerys Targaryen’s triumphant return to Westeros at the end of Game of Thrones, it is that you should absolutely never, ever give the people what they want.
We all thought we were desperate to see the rightful queen of the seven kingdoms finally make it to King’s Landing, where she would no doubt swiftly hook up with Jon Snow, bring peace to the entire realm and defeat the White Walkers with dragonfire and a side order of overwhelming destiny. Some of these things did actually happen. But as it ultimately turned out, Dany was never better than when wandering Essos with little more than her name, some baby dragons and the memory of Khal Drogo to keep her warm at night. They say be careful what you wish for, but one thing’s for certain, very few Games of Thrones fans ever wished for the greatest character of the entire series to suddenly discover she was a nutty Targaryen after all and burn down most of King’s Landing just as it appeared the bad guys had all been defeated.
Perhaps the way showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss royally screwed up the ending of the show (and to be fair, it could all be George RR Martin’s fault – we’ll find out sometime around 2089 when The Winds of Winter and its sequel finally make it into print) has informed some of the downbeat antipathy that’s come the way of prequel TV series House of the Dragon recently. According to Samba, the show’s second season has experienced a major viewings slump – 61% from the finale of season one to the end of season two – and the main complaint seems to be that it’s all a bit slow and tedious.
A tale of Fire and Blood this might be, but at times this season it felt like those famous flames had dwindled to the status of a flickering candle, while the wet stuff on display seemed more like that last drop of ketchup you can never quite get out of the bottle. Alicent going camping; Daemon spending what felt like decades wandering about Harrenhal having freaky dreams and visions; the interminable prospect of another small council meeting about grain shortages: in Game of Thrones, right up until the end, it always felt like the show was building towards something truly climactic. Not so much here, though the episode with the dragons was fabulous enough that most of us will keep watching for at least a little while longer.
While we wait for season three, there’s the prospect of several other shows set in Martin’s world to slaver over. But will any of them really recapture the majesty of peak-season GOT?
For that to happen, fans may need to accept that we’re never going back to Arya’s adventures in the free cities, or Bran’s frozen dabblings with the Three Eyed Crow. Because many of these upcoming concepts look quite different. First up (and with a very brief trailer already released) is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, based on Martin’s books about Sir Duncan the Tall and his squire Egg (who is secretly the future King Aegon V Targaryen). Rather than continent-spanning tales of political intrigue in which we get to be a fly on the wall as the most powerful men and women of Westeros and Essos battle for dominion, Martin’s Dunk and Egg books are all about seeing his world from the viewpoint of the lowliest knight in the realm, a soldier so far down on his luck that he can barely feed himself or fit into his stolen armour. The tone is much lighter than in the A Song of Ice and Fire Novels that inspired Game of Thrones, with the pair more likely to find themselves bumming around tournaments in the hope of making some ready cash than riding dragons or fighting frozen zombie armies.
Also primed for release at an unknown future point is Nine Voyages, starring HOTD’s Steve Toussaint as Lord Corlys Velaryon, aka the Sea Snake. Imagine this one as a bit like CS Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, or Homer’s The Odyssey, in that it will focus on our hero’s seaborne journeys around the vast continent of Essos. Latest reports suggest that the show may now be animated to save on budget costs, which suggests it might be more of a collector’s piece for fans of Martin that want to know everything they can about his world, rather than a prime time mega-budget live action show in the vein of GOT or HOTD. Expect this one to feed into another mooted animated series, The Golden Empire, about the fabled Yi Ti civilisation in the far east of Essos, since we already know Corlys made it there from Martin’s books.
A little more epic-looking is the prequel Aegon’s Conquest (though surely it will get a better title) about the original conquest of Westeros by Aegon the Conqueror and his dragon-riding sisters, Rhaenys and Visenya. The Hollywood Reporter said recently that the project is back in development as a TV series, after once having been considered as the basis for a movie. HBO won’t have any issues with the subject matter, in terms of spectacle and action, as Aegon and his dragonriders are known to have conquered six of the seven kingdoms (Dorne held out) in just two years thanks to their winged beasties. The only problem here might be the sense of anti-climax, because it’s not easy defending your realm when the other guy is riding giant airborne reptiles with the ability to incinerate entire armies. Presumably HBO has a plan to make this a more even battle – maybe the North has got some White Walkers on its side or something?
Finally, there’s Ten Thousand Ships, which Martin recently revealed has been revived (after at one point appearing to have been cancelled) with the help of the Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Eboni Booth, who is currently working on a pilot. Martin described the project as a “Game of Thrones spinoff about Nymeria and the Rhoynar”. Fans who are up on the author’s work will recall that Nymeria is the founder of Dorne, who left Essos more than 1,000 years before the events of Game of Thrones, sailing down the river Rhoyne with her armada of ships and eventually to Westeros after her homeland was conquered by the Valyrian freehold.
It’s possible to imagine this one as a little like Battlestar Galactica on Essos, as the Rhoynar flee from everything they’ve ever known and set out in search of a new home. (Though whether there will be Valyrian dragons constantly harrying them like nefarious cylons is anyone’s guess.) Essos is said to be so huge that Nymeria’s journey could easily make Frodo’s quest to Mordor in The Lord of the Rings look like a trip to the local bakery for coffee and a donut. It might well be several seasons before the princess and her crew even reach Dorne, and even then they will need to conquer it. Let’s hope she doesn’t pull a Dany and set fire to the entire eastern corner of Westeros just as we’ve got to know and like her, as I don’t think any of us can go through that again.
Do any of these look like the new Game of Thrones? Well, not precisely, but maybe that’s sort of the point. And perhaps it’s time for those grumbling about House of the Dragon’s pace and frequent random wanderings into the realms of inconsequence to face up to the fact that in the absence of an Arya Stark or Jon Snow sequel series, the current offering might just be the best we’re going to get when it comes to high-end inter-dynastic double-dealing and gigantic, fire-breathing monsters of the air.
On the other hand, maybe we should all just rewatch Game of Thrones and pretend it ended after that brilliant, near movie-length episode with the White Walkers. Bran the King and Dany stabbed to death by Jon Snow, really? Did we honestly wait eight seasons for this?
