How HBO's Latest Game Of Thrones Prequel Can Rescue The Franchise From Itself
This week, HBO announced the main cast members for "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight," which is an upcoming TV adaptation of author George R.R. Martin's Dunk and Egg stories. While "Game of Thrones" and "House of the Dragon" are about ancient families vying for power, with lots of dragons and palace intrigue and backstabbing (both metaphorical and literal!), this show will take place about a hundred years before the events of "Game of Thrones" and be a much smaller stakes tale about a good-intentioned but somewhat bumbling knight named Ser Duncan the Tall and his very young squire nicknamed Egg as they wander around Westeros getting into adventures.
I don't know about you, but part of me is dreading "House of the Dragon" season 2. I simply did not think it was as captivating as "Game of Thrones," and the latest "House of the Dragon" trailers have this weight to them, as if every little thing that happened in season 1 is of massive importance. I was so excited about "Game of Thrones" and was so invested in that series that, when it was between seasons, I could rattle off several questions I hoped would be answered in the next season or regale you with lists of things I was desperate to see. But for "House of the Dragon," I can barely recount the broadest possible strokes of what happened in season 1. I was honestly thinking that I might just be done with all things Westeros, that HBO might never again be able to capture that special "Game of Thrones" magic. But the fact that they're moving forward with this show indicates that they realize they don't actually have to recapture it — they can do something different instead.
Westeros is more than just dragons and palace intrigue
For me, this new show sounds like it could be an antidote to the uber-serious approach to telling stories in this universe. "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight" sounds like a very welcome left turn into a different corner of the world and a way to engage with different types of characters and social strata in Westeros than what the previous two shows prioritized. By shifting the focus away to the ground-level stories of citizens in the realm, this show might be able to save this franchise from becoming a self-important parody of itself and, like "Andor" did for the "Star Wars" universe, prove that there are plenty of other stories worth telling here — even if they don't involve some of the iconography fans might expect from a story set in this world.
I spoke about this on today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:
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