Game of Thrones was a big spectacle at its height, being everything anyone could talk about when it came to pop culture. With its thrilling story structure, which focused on cliffhangers and twists to move the narrative forward, spoilers became a major part of the plot.
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, in an interview for the show, revealed that they are happy to engage with the fandom, but what really pisses them off is the fact that there are some fans that would go out of their way to spoil the show, usually while sneaking pictures from the set.
David Benioff does not ‘get’ people who like to spoil stuff
Spoilers have become an important part of the culture around prestige shows and TV. While there are some people in various fandoms that avoid them like the plague, there are others that indulge in them, excited about getting the scoop on things before the rest of the fandom. David Benioff talked about how he enjoyed fans engaging with the show, but did not understand the hype around spoilers. He said:
The criticism, I get. I might not agree with it, but I get it. The spoiler thing, I just don’t get. That’s to me, is like, not only looking at the last page of a book and learning what happened, but it’s then ripping out that page, putting it on the library wall, so that you can ruin it for everybody. So, those are the people I don’t like.
Game of Thrones as a show thrived on its shock value. While there were characters and storylines that were interesting enough for fans to invest almost a decade’s worth of time in the show, the characters’ deaths (or guessing them, anyway) became a major part of the show’s fandom. Given how much the show, when it comes to characters, deviated from the books, it was also a treat for people who had also read them, keeping them guessing till the very end.
House of the Dragon has failed to chase the clout that Game of Thrones was able to cultivate
With nowhere near the shocking amounts of deaths as Game of Thrones had, it is safe to assume that House of the Dragon, 2 seasons in, is building itself off of the inertia that Game of Thrones injected into the mainstream. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the next show in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, is set during peacetime, which throes into question how the show is going to sustain the audience that it built off of the back of an offering like Game of Thrones and then House of the Dragon.
House of the Dragon might make good on the promises and expectations that were set up by the initial seasons of its predecessor when the story kicks into the actual Dance of the Dragons. Fans would be excited to see how the Starks dominate this civil war while having been sidelined in the one that fans saw in Game of Thrones.
Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are streaming on Max.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
