Back when Game of Thrones was (arguably) the last water-cooler show of all time, HBO greenlighted a prequel series to GoT called House of the Dragon. The events of Game of Thrones took place twenty years following “Robert’s Rebellion,” where Robert Baratheon joined with the Starks, the Lannisters and everybody else to overthrow House Targaryen and the Mad King. House of the Dragon takes place two centuries before Robert’s Rebellion, when the Targaryens ruled the Seven Kingdoms with their dragons. The first season has been filming for months, and it will begin to air next year. The first trailer was just released:
I’m interested in this, but I’m not sure if it will become the next must-watch show. This might be closer to George RR Martin’s vision, as opposed to the terrible last seasons of GoT. We know (sort of) where “the Dance of Dragons” will end up, or at least the book readers will have a good idea. We know the end game: the descendent of these Targaryens, King Aerys II, the Mad King, will end up on the throne and Prince Rhaegar Targaryen will run off with Lyanna. Within the story of House of the Dragon, that’s two centuries away though. This is about Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen, I guess. I’m reading the Wiki page and I know it will be confusing at first. Rhys Ifans is in it! Nice.
#HouseOfTheDragon is set to premiere in 2022. pic.twitter.com/ZA6x6YqPEw
— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) October 5, 2021
Photos courtesy of HBO.
I just can’t do it. There is no point to me in watching any kind of GoT prequel because ultimately I know that the overall ending — in this case, of the Targaryens — was crap.
The audacity to treat Daenerys’ character like shit in the end only for them to have the AUDACITY to use her popularity for profit SMDH
I didn’t mind that she went mad. It was how they presented her madness that was stupid. She wasn’t crazy at all is the problem. She was right that her own allies were planning on assassinating her. When the Tarlys’ refused to bend the knee after a battle, that only meant death when you play the game of thrones. It’s funny how this same rationality isn’t applied to her character when Tywin Lannister literally had Elia Martell violated and her baby Aegon and Rhaenys murdered the way they did when Rhaegar lost during Robert’s Rebellion. Tywin literally gets called a military genius and ruthless politician when he didn’t show the children any mercy.
Totally, Daenerys is the main character used in advertising and promos etc, I don’t see bland Bran anywhere.
I sometimes think back to the episode where she landed in the dragon pit for that dumbass meeting and wish she’d just burnt them all there and then.
I’m not going to even lie: I 100% mind that Dany went mad. I’m not here for the story and I never will be. The Mad Queen was Cersei. In the books, we literally track her descent into madness. There is something nakedly misogynistic about making the other powerful woman in the universe go insane as well. “Well that’s how the books will likely end too.” Yup, and even though I’ve read every single one of them, I probably won’t read them going forward (if they ever even get written). I could say more but I won’t.
THANK YOU
Switch Daenerys/ Jon ending with Cersei/Jaime- then it MAKES SENSE
I hate the Danerys-went-mad ending of GOT. Maaaaaaaaaaaybe it was the way it was executed but I hate the core concept as well. All along the series we were rooting for the Starks and for Danerys and for Tyrion (and the ppl who helped them). It felt like a betrayal of the audience when Tyrion and the Starks turned on Danerys at the end. Even more so it felt like a betrayal that the writers turned on her. She freed slaves and stood for justice when no one else would. She was a hero to many, sure she was flawed, but she wasn’t crazy and she hated killing innocents more than anything. It just felt like everything after the Winterfell episode in the last season shouldn’t have been canon.
Yeah. All this. They gave all the female characters the short shrift. They never spent enough time on Sansa’s ascent into a real player (and, of course, all of those aha! moments just had to involve Littlefinger), they just totally phoned in the demise of Cersei (a pile of rubble? really?) and they didn’t bother laying the foundation for what drove Dany mad at all, just a sideways quote from Varys about her family being crazy on the flip of a coin and low key references to Varys trying to poison her and her starving herself at the end as a result.
I’m still mad, lol.
Also, don’t even get me started on Brienne, w.t. actual f. was that?
@Dee Kay book Daenerys clashed with tv show Daenerys, that’s why the ending pissed so many people, they created an all goodness image that didn’t exist. In the books she still has and uses slaves, not only in battle but in bed too.
She also started having visions in the 5th book, which indicates that her madness will be gradual if the following books are ever written.
If we are going to give a pass to a suffering and tortured woman then let’s give Cersei a pass, she went through a lot too. In fact, there are many parallels between the two.
@Sof I hear you but I don’t care about book Daenerys, I only watched TV Daenerys and she didn’t deserve to go insane in the last two episodes after being one of the main heroes for six years. I think a tragic ending of Jon and Dany basically facing off and saying, Only one of us can take the Throne, would have been a fine ending. If she took it and he conceded it would have been painful, if she was the one who conceded it also would have been painful, but either could have been King or Queen, so that ending would have been justified. If they had married, ignoring the incest part of it, and Jon was unhappy his whole life, that also would have been a fitting but tragic ending. The “mad queen” ending felt, within the context of the show, the worst and most nonsensical ending they could have chosen.
The good thing about the new GOT show is that all the books about that storyline are already written so hopefully the showrunners will not make an absolute mess of the ending this time around.
I hated what they did to Daenerys. She was on the ‘hero’s journey’ and did not get to complete her mission. She didn’t have to stay on the throne. But I did want her to win it and then choose a path that suited her better.
I’m rewatching the show for the third time now, and honestly Dany was burning people alive from season 1. Her burning everyone and everything in the last season isn’t really as much of a stretch as I thought it was the first go through.
I don’t understand this mentality. Just because you know how an overall story “ends” why would that ever prevent you from watching show about unrelated events?
Because it just does. It’s the way my brain works. The bad ending spoiled the whole universe for me (emphasis on FOR ME) and I’m not watching a series further developing and illuminating the history of a universe that has already been spoiled. But for those whose brains are able to separate the two, I genuinely hope they enjoy the show.
Man, the series finale was just so bad though. Like, so bad that it ruins my ability to even enjoy this show.
I love TV, I go back and watch old episodes of my faves alllll the time. I can’t even stand to sit through any episodes of GOT other than Season 1. The ending was just, hands down, one of the worst series finales out there. Worse than Little House on the Prarie, worse than Roseanne… I mean.
Seems obvious. I know that the story ends stupidly, so why would I be invested in what happens to these other Targaryens? Explain. The whole arc of their story was to have the family pointlessly die out. And now I’m supposed to care about which of them is king?
Isn’t it interesting that only 2 mad rulers were women while other men were rewarded with titles and considered ruthless but brilliant etc
You mean like Bran the Brave? Was that not the worst?
God, I am like spamming this thread, and I don’t even comment that much. This is how much I hated that stupid finale. Literally ANYONE else in that circle that was a main player deserved the throne over Bran.
Spam away! I am still so pissed off about it and we are definitely not alone. I remember when Benioff and Weiss did that stupid cameo in Westworld and everyone was livid 😂
That finale made so many people so angry that we have scrubbed it from cultural memory. I’ve never seen anything like it.
I have always had a minority view on this site when it comes to the end of the series (thought it was rushed but wasnt mad about it), but I DID hate that Bran ended up as king. That was just stupid. Tyrion’s little speech about “who has the best stories” was just STUPID.
It wasn’t even that it was men that got the titles; it just does not make any sense politically with Bran being King. With the North being independent, it means that the North is a FOREIGN country. Bran is the brother of the royal family who rules the North. Bran being king of the 6 kingdoms does not politically make sense because it means that Westeros is ruled by a foreign body of government. This concept is literally why Americans were freaking out over Trump’s connections to Russia and Putin during his administration.
And why would the other six kingdoms just acquiesce to this? They wouldn’t! This would be the start of a whole slew of political revolts and coups. Also, why Tyrion thinks Bran, with the power he knows Bran possesses, would be the ideal ruler is beyond me.
Yeah, and Yara Greyjoy was promised autonomy by Dany. But now she’s fine with her kingdom being ruled by someone else? Especially when that someone else let his sister take the North away to be independent?
Dany should have killed Tyrion long ago. His advice was, at best, garbage. And at worst, actively sabotaging her. It made no sense for Dany to trust him. And Sansa was an idiot despite how many characters tell the audience that she’s really smart now. And in the end, Brienne and Yara became weak dummies too. The showrunners must hate women.
Basically, after all that focus on Daenerys they settled for status quo again and it was infuriating.
Yeah. The last good advice he gave was in Mereen. Once they got on the boats and he saw her hook up with Jon Snow, I think that was when he started to sabotage her, but I guess it would have taken one to many additional episodes to make that any more obvious.
I just, like have never seen a series finale that managed to be so disappointing in almost every respect. The “Dany goes crazy” scene was just wonky. Cersei dying by a pile of rubble off-screen was just … ugh. The Jamie character motivation was all over the place. It all was just shit. I can’t think of anything I liked other than the scene of Arya on that ship.
I would totally watch a post GOT show that was about the North only and had real character development for Sansa and Arya.
Yeah, I don’t trust the show runners, writers to handle this well without making character turns for the sake of so-called “drama”
If you’ve got a complex story with interesting, interwoven characters, storylines, white walkers and actual dragons, and millions of people tuning in, there’s no need to toss a character or two, and the entire wrap-up plot in a dumpster, pour lighter fluid on it and hit it with a flamethrower. The GOT ptb managed to top the Lost and HIMYM folks it taking a good thing and ending it so atrociously that it retroactively ruined the good thing.
I’ll watch the pilot out of curiosity, but I’m one of those fans who felt super burned by the last season of Game of Thrones. Doubt this will ever be mandatory viewing for me.
HBO did us dirty on the last season of GOT. The trust is gone!
@Mac ain’t this the truth….
They did me dirty, so I’m not hyped and I love the books and the GOT world 😭
I’m the same and, TBH, that trailer isn’t compelling
I’m with you. I’ll watch the pilot at least but my expectations are LOW.
Hmm paddy considine is in it which is a big plus, but Matt smith is a big nope he is just terrible. Funnily enough matt smith lived where I do in London (or did this is 2 summers ago now I think) and I’ve never seen someone make such a loud, desperate attempt for attention from buying avacados in the local shop, clearly trying to get everyone looking at him.
Maybe the dragons will balance it out and make it a must watch! Not sure it can cancel out the total dumpster fire of the last series of GoT though. Makes me laugh to think they cancelled the Stark series because it was bad/lack of interest?! But green lit the Targaryen one 🙂
I really hate that he was casted for this. I wish they went with well seasoned actors who aren’t well known/mainstream like they did for GOT. I can’t stop thinking of Matt the actor rather the character he’s supposed to portray. I literally think of Kit Harington whenever I see/read Jon Snow think pieces and fanfiction. I can’t do it for this character.
Totally agree Jessica- made me cringe listening to his voiceover. I don’t actually know the story they’ll tell- hopefully they’ll kill
Him Off early in the series?
loud, desperate attempt for attention buying avocados!!! lololol
it’s funny how little moments like that can put you off a person
long before Kevin spacey was justly cancelled, my whole family was put off him because a friend told us a story about attending a dinner where spacey pulled increasingly annoying stunts whenever he felt attention was turning away from him, including jumping on the table where everyone was eating because a more famous person walked into the room
OMG Ellev that’s exactly the type of behaviour I saw in that shop! Lots of weird almost shouting about avacados and looking around to check people were looking at him, which they weren’t lol. It did really put me off him! Urgh Kevin spacey, I guess some people just can’t help
Showing their ass!
When Spacey was filming here in Ireland (I think the film was called Ordinary Decent Criminal) he would wear a baseball cap out to “hide” his identity, then when in a crowded area pull the hat off, all ta-da it is me, only to be met with blank states and then ignored. My friend was a barman in the pub the crew hung out in and saw this performance several times, each time people shrugged and went back to their pints.
The last season(s) of GOT left such a bad taste in my mouth, that …..I just can’t bring myself to care.
This is coming from an avid fan of the books and the show too.
If HBO could go and promise me they would refrain from murdering women in disgusting ways for the sin of being ambitious and overstepping the men in their way…and to clean the series from rapist apologist crap…I would consider it.
As the story literaly ends like GoT did- NO
1000% agree, that show was creepy trash.
Oh god yes wasn’t there some weird ‘Sansa needed to be raped to make her a strong woman’ or some nonsense?! Disgusting.
That and Cersei being raped by Jamie next to the body of her deceased son. They had no real explanation for that one whatsoever.
Without it, “I would have stayed a little bird all my life.”
FUCK that. Sexual assault is not character development.
Yeah. Just think about every other innocence shattering thing that happened to her. I mean damn, she was almost raped by two men before being saved by the Hound, she saw her father beheaded, her mother and brother were murdered, she was then tortured by Joffrey, she was married off to Tyrion, she then saw Joffrey poisoned and escaped with Littlefinger and then helped him cover up murdering her aunt….that was all BEFORE that scene. But I guess that wasn’t enough character development??? Complete nonsense, they just wanted to hurt women on screen and call it prestige drama.
Exactly this. TV was full of similar misogynistic crap for decades, let’s just stop with that already. No one asked for this prequel
Unless this gets rave reviews across the board I doubt any but the most hardcore fans will care — are there any left, though?
I feel like most hardcore fans are now just waiting for Martin to finish the book to be honest.
Unfortunately I think he never will finish even Winds of Winter.
Co-signing everyone who was too disappointed by the Game of Thrones finale to watch this. I’ll never rewatch it either, and didn’t hear about anyone watching it during the first stage of lockdown/quarantine when everyone was binge-watching stuff.
I don’t know if I’m going to watch this or not. In some ways I don’t really care – we know what happens to the Targareyns, do I need to see what happened 20 years before? I would rather a prequel about maybe the 20 years before Robert’s Rebellion, and even through the rebellion, and end with Robert being crowned or something, since we know what comes next.
I loved Game of Thrones when it was on and I didn’t hate the last season ( I felt the last two episodes were a little rushed, but I still enjoyed it). I just don’t really feel like re-watching it, especially with some of the really violent scenes involving women or the torture scenes with Theo. I only read the first two books, because we moved and I couldn’t find the third one (that I had bought) and so its been 8 years and I’ve never picked them up again because I still can’t find the third one and I refuse to buy a new one AND there are some things that I don’t want to read about happening. IDK.
Anyway, I think doing a prequel 200 years before the “original” series is always going to be a tough sell. And given that the ending left a bad taste on many mouths, this may not be the hit that HBO is expecting.
I agree, it was rushed but overall I didn’t hate it. I just re-watched all eight series this summer and the last series actually made more sense this time around. I think the long wait for series eight made people think up their own endings and when that didn’t match the reality they ended up hating it. Daenerys really is a much more ambiguous character all through, for example, if you pay attention and don’t get sucked into the whole “mhysa” myth. And the last few episodes are visually stunning.
The only thing I’m still not convinced about is King Bran; the whole storyline really revolves around troubled royal succession, so to pick a monarch who will never father children seems a recipe for future trouble.
Eh, I’ll watch because B&W have nothing to do with it. But this trailer reminds me how bitter I am still about GOT.
I’m 100% here for this show. I will give anything ASOIAF related a shot.
i just think it’s weird they’re referencing tudor fashion in a prequel to a series that was much more medieval in influence – i get that this is all fantasy etc. but it’s a minor mind f*ck and makes it seem like a bad cw drama lol
I am in!! As long as those jerks from GOT have nothing to do with it.
I think a prequel about the Targs conquering The 7 kingdoms would have been more interesting.
I thinj this series will have lots of dragons and some sad dragon deaths because this civil war is when a lot of them die.
I AM!!!
But I can’t afford HBO Max or whatever they call it now.
No. This doesn’t deserve my attention span after colossally f-ing up Dany.
Hell yeah! Me not watch a large production fantasy series? Impossible. As much as GOT’s last season was fast-tracked, I still loved it. Danny broke the wheel. Night King was defeated. Sure I wish the army of the dead would’ve gotten more coverage and that Cersei’s death receive more attention than a rock tumble lol. She and her brother needed much more. But I love who ended on the counsel, and who had a new throne… Bring it on.
The way people continue to stan for the colonizer queen who used brown bodies for labor and little more…
But anyway, yup, I’m interested.
Oh God, those earlier episodes still make me cringe. Especially the one where she’s carried on shoulders? Omg barf barf barf.
I’m still ripshit pissed that she says with her own mouth that after years of service, the only thing Missandei owns at the time of her death is a slave collar.
YES! That was abominable.
Danny was ALWAYS going to be mad. Had to.
Oh here are my people. LOL. @Mabs I remember we saw pretty eye to eye on this during the last season.
Lol I remember that Becks. We need to make HBO produce The Number of the Beast by Heinlein. From Dark Age sensibilities to Gay Deceiver. 😁
@frodoorodo THIS!!! Thank you! Dany was never the hero, she was always the villain from the first moment she yelled her house words in Season 1. People just didn’t want to see it cuz she was capable of good…so is Putin, doesn’t make them a hero.
I’m not satisfied with the entire end…Jon Snow saved the realm over and over and he gets a big FU send off into exile! The fuck?! The last two seasons were rushed, we didn’t get enough time with the Starks reunited, the shomance between Jon and Dany was unbelievable…he had waaaay more chemistry with Sansa whom I believe he was actually in love with and she him but the show runners were too invested in the Dany show and servicing her fans to delve into it.
While it was still a beautiful show, gorgeously shot, directed and superbly acted. D&D really botched the shows legacy but it won’t stop
me from watching other shows this massive world may create.
YES! And how (in the books at least) she refused to find out about her father’s crimes and denied how horrible her family had been to the 7 kingdoms, insisting on calling Ned “Robert’s dog” or something similar, when the Starks were victims of the Targaryens! Ugh.
And don’t get me started on how she had sex slaves after Drogo died? What wheel was she supposed to break?
Forgive my ancestors then bend the knee or die. Lmao.
I knew everything I needed to know about Dany after everything that happened with Mirri Maz Duur in the first novel… White Savior Barbie from Hell. It floors me how many people read that part and think Mirri is evil. Seriously, wtf?
Precisely. And if you want to simplify things to the greatest degree, it’s in the title.
I’m gonna watch the sh*t out of it. People forget that a lot of the problems in the last season of Game of Thrones, which I despised with the undying passion of a thousand burning suns (after the Night King plot was done), were created by Benioff and Weiss. (Those two are dead to me. “Who has a better story than Bran?” LITERALLY EVERYONE!! GAH! I will never get over that and how they handled Dany’s storyline and made it horrendously misogynistic.) This new show has different showrunners with new material about crazy Targaryens and their fun dragons. I’m into it. Even though what I really want is a show about the Doom of Valyria or about the times before the Ice Wall and how that came to be.
I think a lot of people are more interested in the storyline of robert’s rebellion
I don’t get the Targ love. By all accounts they were inbred genocidal autocratic rulers. Are we supposed to root for any of them?
As a huge book fan (I picked up the first trilogy 16 years ago and never realised it was going to be 7 books and we would have to finish on Jon’s death), I also saw the Targs as unlikeable and the Starks as the good guys of the story.
Incidentally I wasn’t as outraged by the last season as Dany’s downfall is written through all the books- the story emphasises nature over nurture throughout, and as Dany’s power grows so does her ruthlessness.
I’m still smarting from the clusterf**k that Benioff and Weiss presented in the rush to finish the series and move on to Star Wars plus the arrogance to change the plot and character arcs to “subvert expectations” . That being said, I will watch this as I love the dragons lol.
Only to get fired from Star Wars because they effed up GOT finale so badly. LOL.
No. They ruined GOT and I didn’t even watch the penultimate episode. F*** those writers.
I’m interested because I’ve always wondered what a Targaryen adaptation would look on screen. But I was hoping it would focus on Aegon the Conqueror and his sisters, this sounds like it’s a show set midway through the Targaryen dynasty. I know a lot of us are turned off GOT due to the huge mess the last season was, I hated it so much. But I do enjoy rewatching the earlier seasons before they went off script past the books. Plus dragons are always an added plus.
I’ll watch it and give it a chance. I miss having a big ass show to get immersed (?) in. I still watch The Walking Dead but there aren’t many that still watch it to discuss it with..
GOT
Downton Abbey
House of Cards
Lost, (way back when) what else? ……
Sopranos!
Sex in the City..
GOT is dead to me. The ending of the last season proved that Martin is a misogynist. Like many others, I was rooting for Dany and Jon to succeed. I geeked out on each season episode before watching a new one. The last one was so off that I deleted anything GOT from my memory. I can’t even listen to any of the music that I used to love working to.
The D’s did an awful job. I think they knew that Martin’s ending was so bad that they just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. If this was the case, I don’t blame them.
Nope don’t care about this series or any other. Martin took a dump on the bed and I don’t want to help him clean his sheets.
The writers thought they were gods and their hubris brought that show down. I’m thankful they were so scared of the fans they wouldn’t speak at comicon and got kicked off the new Star Wars project. That’s what you get for absolutely messing with fans and the work for so long. F em and f that new show.
-still mad
I’ll just stick to watching the reviews on Youtube & read what others say about it lol