My Christmas Wish for George R.R. Martin: Let It Go.

Fantasy Aisle is a monthly column from Jackie Jennings about everything related to horny dragon books. 

There’s been big news for Game of Thrones fans in recent weeks: In mid-November, HBO CEO Casey Bloys confirmed that there is a GoT movie in development, followed quickly by news that George R.R. Martin will be heavily involved in it. If you’re not steeped in Westeros lore, you might think fans would welcome the news, but many expressed frustration, taking it as confirmation that GRRM is never going to finish Winds of Winter (the final book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, which the show was based on). I too am annoyed and frustrated — not because of any book delays, but because we don’t need any more Game of Thrones anything. 

This is my Christmas wish for George R.R. Martin: We have enough, you have enough, let it go. 

But of course, that’s not going to happen. Warner Bros., the studio that owns HBO and Game of Thrones, will always want more. They’ve wanted more since before the original series ended in 2019; Bloys said the studio was already thinking about spinoffs in 2016. 

It took some time, but everyone got their wish: After a Hunger Games-style development project wherein several spinoffs were commissioned (resulting in the expensive and unaired prequel pilot Blood Moon), we got House of the Dragon. People watch — and mostly like — House of the Dragon (guilty!), nevermind that it’s a middling deviation from the original text, more interested in a contrived “complicated female friendship” storyline than simply making sense. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is due next year, and there’s always more on the way. More is good, right?

Except that it almost never is. Look at Harry Potter and the Fantastic Beasts films; Rings of Power; nearly everything Star Wars (with Andor being the outlier); most of the DC extended universe and a lot of the Marvel (rewatch Civil War, I dare you). None of these juggernauts has benefitted from the entertainment executive law of “just keep making more.” That’s not to say all of the resulting sequels, prequels, reimaginings, and retellings have been terrible — just that the vast majority of them are creatively uninspired, hastily made, unloved little things.

And yet, they keep making money because people do in fact keep watching them; I haven’t missed an episode of House of the Dragon, despite wanting to. It’s hard to explain why, though boredom, nostalgia, hope, and peer pressure are all serious motivators. My husband once asked me, “If House of the Dragon is so bad, why do you keep watching?” I retorted something like, “For the same reason you keep watching the Mets — I’m sick in the head.” (Things improved for the Mets; not so much for House Targaryen.)

That’s because there’s no sabermetrics (that is, objective analytics) for art; no one goal when it comes to making something meaningful, if not excellent. You actually can’t just increase your payroll the way you can in sports (and as any Mets fan will tell you, that doesn’t even work a lot of the time). But if your goal isn’t to make art but to make money, then quality matters a whole lot less than quantity — and whatever perverse art-sabermetrics you’ve invented actually works pretty well. You don’t need shows that hit home runs, just ones that get on base. 

The machine keeps creating characters which lead to merch, video games, maybe theme park tie-ins. Because, despite the diminishing returns in quality, people keep watching their favorite franchises.

So you make more. That’s the nature of commercial art in capitalism. You find a successful formula, inject it into various other forms, sit back and let it multiply — which, incidentally, is the same way viruses reproduce. When the current studio system works the way it is designed, our favorite content basically functions like an infection. That’s why I’m begging GRRM to wash his hands of the whole thing.

When something as actually good as the original Game of Thrones series gets made, it is an accident. It is the exception to the rule, lightning striking, a perfect storm, and the odds of it happening again (to the same set of people with the same IP) are so small that it’s literally never happened. So: I’m asking GRRM to do what no one else can and break the wheel. 

I understand why CEOs and marketing executives want a Game of Thrones movie. And I can even see why show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss might want to come back, even after fans uniformly roasted their storytelling abilities in the final season. But why, why does someone with as much respect and creative capital as GRRM want this? Every new, mediocre entry into the GoT pantheon diminishes what stands as the best fantasy television show ever made. The surest way to actually protect his work and legacy would be to publicly remove himself from the process and sail off into the sunset, Arya Stark style. 

There’s so much else he can do. Go make more Elden Rings, start a new series, retire! Become a professional blogger, start flame wars in other fandoms, hit the con circuit and soak up a well-deserved, lifetime’s worth of adoration and praise. Anything but help HBO in its never-ending quest to replicate Game of Thrones until we all get sick of it. 

All men must die; all franchises should too.