Why a Game of Thrones Prequel Series is Better Than a Spinoff

Game of Thrones will come to an end in 2018. HBO‘s acclaimed fantasy drama has its highly anticipated season 7 arriving in summer 2017, and a final season (of undetermined length) arriving in 2018. In the world of television, two seasons can go by in the blink of an eye; before you know it, we could be living in a world where Westeros isn’t on the airwaves!

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Of course, no one expects HBO to just let a mega-hot franchise like Game of Thrones disppear from the pop-culture zeitgeist. The question remains: how will the network continue the franchise?

The most persistent talk from HBO executives has been continuing Game of Thrones with a prequel series that transports fans back to an earlier time in the long, chronicled, history of The Seven Kingdoms (and beyond). As GoT fans ourselves, we think it’s the best idea – and here’s why.

There Are So Many Great Stories

Without going full geek on Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” books, let’s just say that GoT (in both novel and show forms) is filled with some great stories of legend. From the highlights of “Robert’s Rebellion,” to the end of the Targaryen dynasty and the “Fall of the Dragons.”

If we don’t want to stick to the immediate history of Westeros, there are great ancient stories that are even more fantastical than the one we’re in now. Ancient Westeros was a place where dragons, mystical forest entities and magic were all commonplace; toss in the catastrophic arrival of The First Men, and you once again have a high-fantasy series that’s grounded in timely soicio-political metaphor.

Game of Thrones Prequel - Children of the First Men

Fans Are Kind of Familiar… But Not Overly

The advantage of sticking to prequel series spun directly out of the major contributing events of Game of Thrones (aka, the stories told over and over during the show), is the level of fan familiarity. Like with most of GoT, the average viewer knows the major thrust of the history, but is probably not all that familiar with all the finer (though important) details. Even as a hardcore reader and watcher, it’s hard to keep it all straight…

For a GoT prequel series, that’s a good starting point: fans will have enough connection to characters, locations, and events to immediately want to invest; but will still be unfamiliar enough with the material that they can fully immerse themselves the world and characters again.

Even for hardcore fans, the inevitable process of streamlining the material for adaptation, making changes, and creating new connections, would add a layer of novelty to simply watching storied events play out in live-action. In other words: it’s a “Win” on almost every demographic level.

The Waters Have Already Been Tested

Game of Thrones took a big risk when it suddenly threw concepts like time travel and causality into the season 6 storyline in such a big way. And yet, so many of season 6’s most memorable moments had to do with Bran Stark’s visions of the past, as GoT made those moments exciting in and of themselves.

Two standout examples were seeing younger versions of Hodor and Ned Stark living out key moments of their respective lives, along with seeing legendary (but dead) characters like Sir Arthur Dayne for the first time. Having already tasted a bit of Westeros’ past, it’s no secret that fans are hungry to see more. In that sense, a prequel series is almost a no-brainer.

There’s Great Room for Surprise

The no. 1 problem most prequel movies and TV series face is that there is no dramatic tension, since there is no mystery about the outcome. Knowing where a story leads can quickly turn a prequel into a routine procedural of events, leading up to that iconic original start point we know and love.

However, Game of Thrones clearly demonstrated in two ways during season 6 that a prequel series can still have plenty of twists and surprises that keep viewers off balance:

Things like Ned Stark’s fabled duel with Arthur Dayne (and the ugly truth behind the story) show that the legends of Westeros are not concrete chronicles of what happened. In a lot of cases, they’re complete fabrications for political ends. Exploring the reality (and creation of false legends) would be a new experience.
With the reveal that Bran Stark’s oracle-like character can actually affect the past, we now know that events from the original GoT show can also affect moments of a prequel series. Used properly, that could be a show writer’s ace-in-sleeve.