A (Completed) Song of Fire and… more Fire

It’s only natural if a flame-spewing dragon doesn’t appeal to someone who has been badly burned.

The ending of Game of Thrones was indisputably a disappointment. Reasonable minds may differ as to whether the final seasons of the show had any redeeming qualities — I for one still think “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” was one of the show’s best episodes. But with a bit of distance, it’s clear that once the showrunners fell off the end of George RR Martin’s literary map, the show’s plot was at best inconsistent in terms of quality.

Whether you feel betrayed by Daenerys’ abrupt descent into madness, befuddled at Bran’s coronation on the merits of “his story”, or simply enraged by the plot crafting laziness of the words “forgot about the Iron Fleet”, I get it. Yet despite the sour taste left by the ending of Thrones, I am incredibly optimistic about House of the Dragon.

“Of course you are” might be your natural response. And I get it. I’m undeniably a fantasy nerd who wrote blog posts after every episode of Game of Thrones dating back to season four. But it’s my familiarity with the source material which convinces me that the House of the Dragon will be worth a return to Westeros.

Most significantly, the entire story the series is adapting has been completed. House of the Dragon tells the story of the Targaryen succession struggle and ensuing civil war also known as the “Dance of Dragons” — which exists from start to finish in Martin’s fictional history tome Fire and Blood.

The obvious upside is that the showrunners will never be in position to try and improvise an ending to an unfinished story — ostensibly eliminating the possibility of such nonsensical plot as the utterly pointless quest to capture a wight at the end of season 7. That’s not to say there isn’t room for the writers to flesh out the details. But while a small detail, the tweaked appearance of the Iron Throne in Tuesday’s teaser trailer feels like a show of good faith that showrunner Ryan Condal cares about remaining faithful to Martin’s vision.

Just as the showrunners won’t be tasked with figuring out the ending, neither will the internet. There is no doubt that social media, reddit, and blogs helped elevate Game of Thrones to the monocultural phenomenon that it became. But it came with a cost. Particularly on reddit, wild theories and speculation gave birth to a pleathora of possible endings, many of which ultimately felt more satisfying (even if impractically convoluted) than what the show delivered.

Part of the fault certainly still lies with the showrunners, but such rampant speculation and theorizing more often than not sets stories up to fall impossibly short of what the internet hivemind imagined they could be. Certainly the diminished opportunity for speculation could temper House of the Dragon’s potential to sit atop the pop culture Iron Throne the way its predecessor did. But narratively I believe it will ultimately result in a more satisfying story from start to finish.

I could spend hundreds more words analyzing frames from the teaser trailer, but at this point you likely know what the show will deliver — palace intrigue, swords clashing, and lots of dragons. And if despite all that it seems impossible to revive the part of you that cared about Westeros, just remember…

What is dead may never die.