Game of Thrones will premiere its seventh season on HBO in a few days, but the future of the smash hit series will extend beyond these final two seasons. The network confirmed back in May that as many as five spinoff series are in the works from various film/TV veterans and A Song of Ice & Fire author George R.R. Martin is involved with all the “successor shows.” It’s unclear how many of these shows will actually see the light of day at this time.
HBO’s president of programming Casey Bloys is saying less than Ser Ilyn Payne about these potential spinoffs, but he did drop an interesting tidbit in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter recently. After clarifying that all spinoffs are in the earliest stages of development, Bloys revealed that “all of them are prequels that will be populated with entirely new characters.”
Yeah, so he isn’t exactly dropping spoilers, but that is a helpful update. Fans have been wondering if a young Ned Stark could be the central character in a spinoff set during Robert’s Rebellion, but that no longer looks like a possibility. Other popular (hopeful?) guesses revolved around the Children of the Forest and an origin story for Melisandre. Alas, if the prequels will feature all new characters, it doesn’t look like these stories are in the cards.
Bloys’ is deliberately vague in his comments, so it’s not 100% clear whether “new characters” means ones not currently in Thrones lore via Martin or simply characters that have never appeared on-screen. Does that mean viewers can still hold out hope for a potential Doom of Valyria storyline?
We’ll have to wait to find out.
'Game of Thrones' Spinoffs Will Not Feature Existing Characters, So No Robert's Rebellion Show Unfortunately
