Then came House of the Dragon. At first, it felt like a redemption. Season one was surprisingly strong, grounded, and mostly loyal to the story told in Fire and Blood. The source material was finished after all, which should've been foolproof! All these new showrunners had to do was follow along and condense what was already written for them by the great GRRM. But by season 2, the cracks started showing again with pacing issues, unnecessary detours, and changes to the characters that added nothing to the story. I tapped out after that.
Now, we have A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, based on Martin's Dunk and Egg novellas that tell a story set about a hundred years before Daenerys graced Westeros and roughly eighty years after House of the Dragon. It's smaller in scope, more about ordinary people than scheming lords, and it's a lot more lighthearted (at least by Westerosi standards). But still, Martin once said he wouldn't let the show go forward until he finished writing all the Dunk and Egg stories, and here we are. Another adaptation without an ending in sight.
That said, the trailer actually looks promising. It feels less like the grim spectacle we've gotten used to when HBO and Martin collab and more like a grounded medieval story about honor, friendship, and what it means to be a knight in a broken world. Still, I can't help but worry that this is just going the way of The Hobbit, where a short, contained story gets stretched out over hours of screen time because the IP is just too profitable to leave alone.
Who knows. Maybe this time, the smaller scale will help instead of hurt, or maybe we'll be right back to where we were in 2019, watching another adaptation outpace the books. I guess we'll find out in January!
