The first episode of HBO’s new series ‘House of the Dragon’ aired on 21 August 2022. Arriving three years after the much-maligned finale of ‘Game of Thrones,’ the prequel series has had its work cut out for it from the very beginning.
Toeing the line between trying incredibly hard not to appear like a blatant cash grab while also not falling into the shadows of attempting to recapture its predecessor’s magic and overcoming the poorly received way its predecessor ended has given the show a lot to prove.
The timing of the show doesn’t help either, with ‘House of the Dragon’ arriving amid a slew of projects released by networks in an attempt to recapture what once was, from ‘Stranger Things’ season four to ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ to ‘The Rings of Power,’ the latter of which is Amazon’s long-anticipated take on ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Prequels are everywhere and the ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel has a lot to live up to.
Considering that the storyline will be adapted from ‘Fire and Blood,’ the fictional history of House Targaryen published by author George R.R. Martin as a companion piece to ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ on which the original show was based, this new prequel show’s events and eventual conclusion are a matter of public record.
This prequel to ‘Game of Thrones’ will begin 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen and it will chronicle the fall of the Targaryen dynasty, with a focus on the lead-up to the civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons.
Between 2011 to 2019, starting from the very first season to the eighth, as well as the final episode, there is no doubt about the power that this show held over television audiences. Just as it had a meteoric rise to the top, its fall was equally catastrophic. Famously, the show began to go downhill with its creative decline setting in when showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss ran out of pages to adapt.
Fans will recall how the show chose to abandon the careful, comprehensive storytelling which made the show what it was, opting to accelerate carelessly into a spectacular disaster.
However, the second time around, HBO has been making a huge point of how involved Martin himself has been in ‘House of the Dragon,’ in contrast to the latter seasons of the original show. The author actually shares a creator credit with the show’s co-writer Ryan Condal, who was handpicked by Martin to adapt the show.
Despite all these lengths that HBO has gone to ensure that fans return to watch the show and the steps they’ve taken to ensure that it is not just a clear-cut cash grab, it is impossible to deny that ‘House of the Dragon’ is set to be the network’s main course for the duration of its run time. The network is absolutely banking on the success of this show.
It is even more evident how much the network is relying on the show’s success when you consider its almost ridiculous marketing budget valued at over $ 100 million in media spend. A theatrical level marketing budget by all accounts, and definitely not what the small screen is used to.
However, it would seem that the network’s gamble is already paying off, with the first episode of ‘House of the Dragon’ seen by nearly 10 million viewers across platforms and recorded as the largest audience of any new original series in the history of HBO.
What do the fans think?
There is no doubt that this show, even if it suffers the pitfalls of its predecessor, is still likely to shoot to the very top as one of the most viewed shows of 2022, if not for its story, maybe for the hype.
Considering the history of the show, the slow going with the books, and now this new prequel, The Sunday Morning Brunch reached out to a number of ‘Game of Thrones’ fans for their thoughts on the ‘House of the Dragon’ and also their thoughts on prequels of this nature; whether prequels are truly something that fans are on the lookout for or if they are simply something that studios bank on as reliable IP instead of actually trying to be creative.
Chiranthaka Palugaswewa shared: “Fans were clearly disappointed by the end of ‘Game of Thrones’. It was a really good show up until the last two or three episodes. In my opinion, until those last two-and-a-half hours, everybody loved the show. Those last few hours ruined a perfectly good show. Fans are disheartened and we have been licking our wounds for years. I believe this can be a saving grace, but we understandably don’t have high hopes now because things can always go sideways.
“So far, it has been a good show. It does capture the essence of the Dance of the Dragons in the novel, and the acting and casting appears to be pretty good as well. We know what happens in the story; there is only one way it could go and the storylines are already set. What the showrunners have to focus on is showing the story in its best light and all we can do as fans is hope that they succeed in doing so.”
Meanwhile, Uwin Lugoda said: “The show has potential. The characters are as they should be. The fact that we already have source material is good, because when ‘Game of Thrones’ surpassed the books after a certain season, the show’s writers started putting in their own ideas, which is when things started to go downhill.
“However, this is based on a finished story by George R.R. Martin, so we clearly have the blueprints for it. We have the story already and they just need to follow it,” he said, adding: “Having watched the first episode I can say that it is good so far, especially characters like Daemon Targaryen played by Matt Smith. It is near perfect casting and even King Viserys feels spot on.”
Pandula Paranagama, another fan, shared: “The reviews are raving and they did keep their promise on violence and sex. Can’t really judge the story yet but the actors are killing it. Matt Smith is very good as expected and there are many newcomers. The creators seem to be listening to George R.R. Martin – they didn’t in the last couple of seasons of ‘Game of Thrones,’ thereby getting the blame and actually ruining it. So I am hopeful, since they have plenty of source material to work with unlike the last seasons of ‘Game of Thrones’.”
The enduring attraction of ‘Game of Thrones’
In the past, casual viewers of the show have wondered how it is that a show like ‘Game of Thrones’ was able to hold the attention of such a diverse audience despite many of its most memorable scenes already being written and accessible decades prior to their airing on screen.
Moreover, one of the main points of such shows has always been the unspoken agreement between newcomers who benefit from book readers’ discretion and book readers who look forward to feeling the impact of their favourite scenes anew, as they are now able to see the highs and lows of their story play out on screen.
Similarly, many fans shared that they were absolutely not worried about the fact that the story was a prequel and there were no new story beats to hit.
Concerns about a faithful adaptation
However, a common concern was that the showrunners may feel the very unnecessary need to go off script for no real reason than to set their mark in the world of historic TV shows.
Even fans who aren’t as pumped for the show shared that their main concern was if the showrunners decided to deviate from the source material
Sithma Harindi said: “The new one definitely has potential, but it feels like they are trying for a cash grab. The CGI could get better; the shot of King’s Landing looked like it was something a beginner would draw. The storyline is definitely the most interesting part, so I hope that they stick to the original source material.”
Isuru Nanayakkara, a huge fan of the original show, shared that he was not all that excited for the prequel. “I was a huge fan of ‘Game of Thrones’ until they messed it up in the last few seasons. So much so that I could not be any less excited about this new show. I didn’t even bother watching trailers. Honestly, I only found that it was released when others started posting about it,” he said.
He also noted that personally, this was not the story he would have liked to see from a companion piece to the original show. However, he added that despite some of the contempt he was feeling at present, likely residual feelings from the messy ending fans were given with ‘Game of Thrones,’ he would still ultimately end up watching the prequel as well.