Editing A Song of Ice and Fire (section)

==House of the Dragon: The ''other'' TV show==

{{Topquote|If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.|Benjamin Franklin [[Star Wars:Rebels|(and also Maul when trying to kill Kanan)]]}}

Deciding that there was still a market for Game of Thrones stuff even after the last season turned the 2010s biggest pop-culture phenomenon into a laughingstock*, HBO bet the bank on some spin-offs, the first of which is now upon us. House of the Dragon is a prequel dealing with the Dance of Dragons, a civil war between two Targaryen factions that ends up consuming Westeros and everyone in it World-War style, and featuring lots of dragons fighting dragons and the standard Westeros fare of fairly bad people doing extremely bad things. Like Game of Thrones before it, it boasts a star-studded cast, a big budget, and a lot of hype. Time will tell if it redeems the failures of the original show or repeats them. If there's a reason to be optimistic (aside from Dumb and Dumber being absent), it would be that the whole story of the Dance of Dragons is written and mapped out, meaning the writers don't have to come up with their own shit to make an ending that George hasn't yet written. Has gotten off to a strong start, so there's the hope that it will be able to redeem the legacy GoT's last two seasons absolutely ruined.

*Given that the premiere was apparently so widely watched it crashed the streaming for many people, they might actually be right. 

Ultimately, with Martin having more oversight over the writing of this series, and director Miguel Sapochnik actually having a passion for the setting and genre rather than just answering a mystery question to GRRM's satisfaction, the current 6 episodes have seen sky high bumps in both HBO viewership and rave reviews. The slow burn over years as the characters inch closer towards disaster has left the majority of viewers on a palpable knife's edge so far. By the time the 1st season wrapped up, the show had garnered enough praise and profit to warrant the green light by HBO for work on the next season, with out of the park critical and commercial praise, in most cases surpassing its Amazon LOTR contemporary ''Rings of Power'' with just a third of the budget per episode. In fact, George Martin was so moved by the performance of Paddy Considine as King Viserys Targaryen, that he stated that he wished he could tear out all that he wrote about the character in his books and rewrite it to match the show version.