What tv writers think the next Game of Thrones will be

Something that makes television amazing is how it can build stories across hours, months, and years, grow full worlds into deep and intense narratives, and beam it right into our homes, our brains. Something else incredible about tv is how sometimes the only thing people remember is the ending.

The whiplash of possibilities has never been clearer than on Game of Thrones. For all the record-breaking ratings, awards, and dramatic highs, the HBO series is inactive the modern shorthand for “didn’t stick the landing.” After all those ambitious battles on horseback, 5 years after the finale, Game of Thrones’ lasting legacy can feel like that half-drawn horse — but viewers saddled up for a reason

In period 1, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ drew in fans of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series — and millions of newcomers — with meticulously sprawling political plots, complicated characters, and even a whodunnit. Abruptly axing Ned Stark in the penultimate episode made the game of Game of Thrones clearer than ever: You win. Or you die.

Into period 2, Benioff and Weiss wielded the bombastic stakes set down by the books. In Martin’s world, no fantasy trope was always neat, and it was seldom simple. The beautiful girl noticed by the prince found herself in a horror story; the boy king was either malevolent or misguided, with no Merlin to bail him out. Game of Thrones’ inversions grew like vines, constantly spreading and weaving together to more and more complicated patterns. Success was debatable — even fans questioned the nuance of the Lannisters, or the fraught sexposition that the show frequently employed for exposition-heavy scenes — but the tendrils of the HBO show made it flush and sturdy, even if things in Meereen floundered a bit.

Still, it’s no wonder that the second the roots of Game of Thrones felt besides overgrown, people turned on it. Frustrated fans waited years (or decades, for book stans) for a fitting conclusion to what felt like the modern epic. After all the unflinching gambles, with so many threads to pull at, a truncated period 8 was never going to tie everything together with a neat bow. Viewers issued all kind of complaint after the finale aired on May 19, 2019, including a petition to reshoot the full final season all together. Then culture just kind of shuffled along. Game of Thrones became another major tentpole that, in its best days, felt like a actual matrimony of culture and commerce, and abruptly no 1 really wanted to talk about anymore.

But the manufacture did; before the show was even over, producers were already looking for “the next Game of Thrones.” The folly of that search for monoculture in the streaming era isn’t even the actual legacy of the series; whether you liked it or not, Thrones is the skeleton key to the next era of TV, according to those surviving it. 5 years after the finale, Polygon reached out to a fistful of showrunners and directors to realize the Game of Thrones ripple effect, and how they feel the manufacture might inactive be learning from it.

[Ed. note: These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity, and make mention to peculiarly notable Game of Thrones game points; if you want to stay unbowed, unbent, and unspoiled, take heed.]

Image: HBO

Image: Warner Media

Image: Warner Media

Image: HBO

What drew us in

Matt Shakman (director on Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, WandaVision, The Great)

That show changed everyone’s thought of what tv could do.

Before I went to work on that show, I sat down with David Nutter — who is simply a wonderful filmmaker who had done the Red Wedding and many episodes — and he said, “You’re about to get the keys to the best Porsche that’s always been built. And all they want you to do is put your pedal to the metal.” And it was this sense of: you have a immense playground, go have fun, and dream large and they’ll be there to support you. And that surely had not been the experience in tv before, where things were done quickly, where you were kind of cutting corners, and that movie scope of what Game of Thrones was bringing hadn’t been done before. And now I think there’s an chance at so many places.

Naren Shankar (co-showrunner of The Expanse, Almost Human)

I came to Game of Thrones only through the show, I’d never read the book. And so virtually all step of the way, all minute of the show, the shocks hit me like large shocks. virtually up to the minute erstwhile the ax fell on Ned Stark’s neck, I was like, There’s no way he can die. And then the Red Wedding — that most likely fucked me up for, like, weeks; “The Mountain and the Viper,” same thing. I was so disturbed by it. And that’s the real power of the show. I had never seen anything like that. Shows had kind of walked up to it a small bit, but I don’t think anything hit or had the impact of that.

Halley Feiffer (showrunner of American Horror Story: Delicate)

I think I didn’t trust Game of Thrones at first without watching it due to the fact that it was so universally beloved. I frequently feel like specified an outlier that I presume I will not fall in love with the thing that everyone else does — and then almost always I find that I do, only now I’m just behind the 8 ball. And my experience with Game of Thrones was: I kept meaning to get around to it. [But] I was in LA with my friend Pedro Pascal, and he said, “I gotta tell you something. I just booked a function on Game of Thrones,” and I was like, “Shit now I gotta start watching Game of Thrones!”

Image: HBO

And then, of course, fell in love with it, for all the reasons I didn’t think I would. I loved fantasy as a kid (because humanity’s unbearable). And what I loved about Game of Thrones was, how amidst the fantasy, how real these characters were, and how amazingly relatable their emotional arcs were, even in a fantastical atmosphere. And how incredibly moving the performances were.

Ronald D. Moore (creator of Battlestar Galactica, Outlander, For All Mankind)

At the end of the first season, it was clear that it was going to be a major tv show. Whether it was successful or not, I just kind of knew this was something truly different, and something that was going to change the way that, in particular, fantasy was done on tv — which, up until that point, had not had quite a few success in television. The Lord of the Rings films had broken box office records and were huge. But there hadn’t been quite a few fantasy on tv that had actually gotten any traction. And so I knew kind of right away, this was something that was going to change that genre, beautiful much permanently, for tv going forward.

Rafe Judkins (showrunner of The Wheel of Time)

I have a peculiar experience with Game of Thrones, due to the fact that 1 of my dearest friends in the planet was a author on it from period 1 — Bryan Cogman. And I besides was a huge, immense fan of the books before the series was always made. So it was interesting to see the moments in the show where even I was like, Oh my God, this I want it was the same as it was in the books. due to the fact that you begin to realize that I think that there’s a part of you, if you do love a book series, that no substance how it’s being adapted, and no substance who it’s being adapted by, there is simply a tiny death involved, the death of how you read it and how you saw it in your mind, and how you experienced it and who was the star of the books erstwhile you read it.

Rachel Kondo (co-creator of Shōgun)

[Thrones] was my first experience with reasoning outside the planet of a show, and just being abundantly curious — I hadn’t read the book. And I didn’t know much about adaptation erstwhile it came to book-to-screen. So this is the first 1 that I had always watched, like, behind-the-scenes things afterwards, and listened to the creators, and it was just many firsts for me. I hadn’t thought about those things before.

We looked forward to our Sunday nights religiously; we were faithful for years and years to watch in that way. And I feel like Shōgun — I kind of took it for granted they were releasing it on a weekly basis in that old style. But the fact that so many people have told me — from all walk of life — We’re going to miss our Tuesday nights with Shōgun; it reminded me of why we so miss Game of Thrones. It just felt like it had kind of worked its way, wormed its way into our hearts and lives. It worked into the logistics of our lives; we planned around it.

Justin Marks (co-creator of Shōgun)

I think that it created for itself an event; we didn’t want to miss it. Any movie or show that I was working on erstwhile Game of Thrones was out, that was Monday’s discussion. We would sit there and talk about that episode and what had come out, and you best not miss it. And I think that it was so primed for that, and it made it so rich, to have that excitement to feel like it was an enduring planet that we were witnessing in real time. And nothing does that anymore.

I don’t think there’s anything rather like the feeling I got during the “Hardhome” sequence of Game of Thrones. It wasn’t the action — I mean, sure, that was wonderful and scary and interesting, and the score so endured in my head, too. It was the minute at the end where the Night King where he stands up as they’re as they’re riding out, and he looks back at Jon Snow after they’ve just endured specified dense losses to even last what they were able to do, and he stares indifferently. I’ll never forget this: Watching as he gestures with his arms out, and the full army is reanimated again. And it’s just, This is what you’re up against erstwhile you’re coming up against death itself. That has haunted me forever. It’s so silent, and so beautiful, and meditative. Show me something else on tv that’s come since that will equal that. I think it’s iconic. I watch it again, sometimes just to feel something the way that I felt that night erstwhile I watched it.

David Goyer (creator of Foundation, co-creator of The Sandman)

I’m friends with those guys, and putting aside whatever anyone thinks about period 8, I inactive think Game of Thrones is 1 of the top shows that’s always been made. I think it completely changed the scenery of television. And it completely blew open the barn doors of what was possible — that you could tell a communicative over 8 seasons, that you could tell a communicative that had 30 or 40 different characters, that it would be novelistic in its approach, that it would be a slow burn. And that’s the kind of show I like, those are the kinds of novels I like; so this adaptation of Foundation would not have been possible had that not happened.

Karyn Kusama (director and executive maker on Yellowjackets, manager on Dead Ringers)

It active people in long-term conversations about the nature of power, and what that does to us. There have been another shows, completely unlike it, that besides examine these themes, but for as much intrigue and kind of medieval soap as there was in Game of Thrones, there was besides a long, slow burn toward truly unpacking what I would call the derangement of power, like what becomes the derangement of oneself if you decide to claim power.

What kept us in the game

Halley Feiffer

It’s kind of the thing that I love in anything, whether it’s Game of Thrones, or this production of Uncle Vanya I saw last night, which is these moments between characters that feel both amazing and inevitable somehow, and the ways in which — especially in those first fewer seasons — these characters kept you on this tightrope between loving and loathing them. In 1 moment, you’re condemning their actions. And in the next moment, you’re hoping they commit more atrocities, if only to make this incredibly dynamic push pull within you, as it were, the way that it truly kept you on your toes morally. That was something that I found incredibly breathtaking and complicated, and made me as a viewer feel implicated in the carnage in ways that felt very challenging, and almost impossible to recreate. But that means we want to keep coming back for more as a viewer, and I want to effort to find my own version of that dramatic tension in my own work.

Rafe Judkins

I truly loved Oberyn Martell in the show, and bringing that character in, and the way they adapted him and the way they brought him to the forefront even more so than he was in the books, let him truly shine on the show and then exit in specified a large moment. I felt like it was a truly superb part of adaptation due to the fact that they contained the character truly to 1 period where he could make the most impact, they devoted more screen time to him than you should to a character that’s going to die that season, and the devotion of that screen time truly paid off. And I think it’s 1 of the most successful communicative arcs they had on the show. And I think that was in large part due to how they adapted it, and it was 1 that like you could see truly lifted the communicative from the books into something even better for television.

[And] the Red Wedding — I remember throwing the book to the floor, screaming, texting my mom, due to the fact that I knew she was right around the same part of the book being like What page are you on right now? I remember that as being just this iconic minute in reading of the visceral, emotional reaction you had to it as a reader. And I think there was this interesting thing that happened with the show and an excellent work on the part of the adaptation, where the full planet had that consequence to the show. It’s a large part of why I think the show truly took off, was that moment, and the creation of this visceral emotional consequence that kind of transcends the experience of watching television.

Justin Marks

There was a real feeling of assurance to the Game of Thrones communicative that was always at odds, in any sense, with what the audience expected and wanted, and I think that was truly bold. The fact that all of us feel so free to loudly agree or disagree with the direction that the communicative would go at various times speaks to the quality of the narrative. After you’re out of Game of Thrones, I think you gotta go back to The Sopranos to find a show that was as good at what Game of Thrones was. It never felt like erstwhile it got you addicted to 1 pace that it was going to stay on that pace. It was always willing to kind of flash us the mediate finger and usage that anticipation against us sometimes. I feel like Game of Thrones did a wonderful occupation of saying: You don’t deserve anything another than what we offer you. You’re just kind of putty in our hands. And I think that’s what was so great, it was taking from the David pursuit school of I’m in control that made a difference for me.

The horizontality of the storytelling was truly powerful to me. It went backwards to events that the show never deigned to always show us. And whatever you want to call it — sexposition, horse-position, there was quite a few different versions of it in the show — it was handled in this way that ran at odds with what our expectations were sometimes for how stories should be told, and shown and not told. But it gave it a richness that made me feel like all of it was alive and rewarded multiple viewings. I remember with the Hound and the Mountain, how much they were kind of spoken about long before they’re always together. And it’s like: look, you can engage that or not engage it, but it’s there, and it’s waiting for you. It becomes like any Dickens-like scale to the communicative and the planet that just felt so alive.

Ronald D. Moore

It was the scope of it and the size of the production, how many characters and storylines there were, how well mounted it was in a production sense. It was visually arresting, and you truly felt the world, right. It wasn’t just over in this 1 small kingdom over here doing a story, it had a very broad scope to the world. And it was a sweep, an epic sweep to the communicative that was truly astonishing.

I’m certain everybody talks about this, but: the minute they killed Ned… it was jaw dropping. I tend to watch tv with part of my brain reasoning about the writing of it, the structure, and how they did this and that — and I didn’t see that coming in at all. due to the fact that you walk into the show, believing Sean Bean is the lead. If he’s gonna die, it’s gonna be the end of the period at best. But in the mediate of the period like that, and the way they played that out it truly was — I couldn’t truly believe. And I was truly impressed with just how bold that was in terms of storytelling.

It reminded me quite a few Sopranos, where there was quite a few things that the Sopranos characters did, the way they acted and the way the stories turned, that you just kind of went, Well this is not how tv is expected to be, I can’t believe you’re gonna do that. I can’t believe you’re getting distant with that. And they both had a similar, just, kind of, bold quality, like: Yeah, we’re gonna do it. And you know what, you’re gonna come back next week, and then watch it again.

David Goyer

Obviously, initially, for the first 5 seasons or so they had the books they were drafting off, but those characters just felt so much more three-dimensional to me than so many of the fantasy depictions I’d seen. My wife does not consider herself a fan of fantasy, but absolutely loved Game of Thrones. And so I think what’s crucial for us [as we work on Foundation] is that we truly effort to flesh out the interior lives of these characters. And as much as possible have the conflicts that they’re wrestling with feel universal, even though we’re dealing with the tropes of discipline fiction, and have the emotions and the dialog not be laden down with besides much kind of discipline fiction jargon.

Photo: Helen Sloan/HBO

I remember I had not read the Game of Thrones books, and a large discipline fiction/fantasy friend of mine; we would have dinner erstwhile a month, and he’d read all the books, and I think [I had] just finished the first period of Game of Thrones watching it. And he said, “You won’t think it now. But you will love Jaime Lannister.” And I said, That’s just not possible! They just pushed this kid out of a window at the end of the first episode! there’s just no way that’s always going to happen. And he said, “I’m telling you, you’re wrong.” And I did love him; the guy’s active in this incestuous relationship, and he, as far as he’s concerned, kills a child. And yet, by period 3, you fucking love the guy. And that was the best thing about Game of Thrones for me; you could take a character who you felt 1 way about, and slow over the course of time, change the audience view.

Rachel Kondo

It’s not outside of genre, it just transcends genre, right? It utilizes the best of what genre has and then finds a way to be anew within it. How do you have spectacle but how do you sustain the care? It’s about surprise and inevitability, which the best stories really, really, truly tried to strike that balance, or to accomplish both at the same time.

You remember how you felt after [Battle of the Bastards], or Red Wedding — [Shōgun] didn’t rather have those moments. So for us, I would frequently think about those very very quiet interpersonal things on Game of Thrones. Like the minute Khaleesi gets Drogo to fall in love with her and look at her anew. You remember these things! And these very, very tiny moments. That’s what I was hoping we could someway manufacture were these relation moments you can’t forget just like you wouldn’t forget the conflict scenes.

Matt Shakman

The thing that Game of Thrones did do, and that we’re trying to do on Monarch, and I think all these shows that are succeeding on doing epic storytelling, is rooting it in character. It’s all about rooting for these characters, hoping they’ll survive, being curious where they’ll go.

Naren Shankar

I think more than anything — both as a viewer and as a writer, and individual who makes these shows — what Game of Thrones does so well is it blew up these tried and actual dramatic concepts, where your protagonist fundamentally had game armor; no substance how bad it was, you kind of knew they were going to get out of it, you kind of knew that, you know, good would triumph in the end. All of that kind of stuff that had, I think, just woven itself in the fabric of so many shows, the good guys win. And that was not always the case with Game of Thrones. I think shows talk about being the next Game of Thrones, but they don’t seem to want to rather embrace that same idea. And that, I think, is what inactive distinguishes the show. It has a reasonably ruthless and remorseless harshness in any ways, but it’s all in the service of staying actual to character and communicative reality that very fewer things truly pull off. You’re taken into it with an understandable lens. And so you’re drawn into it gradually, and things expand.

Image: Warner Media

HBO

Now, the show gets incredibly complex rather quickly. But due to the fact that you’re grounded that way, in the first season, you’re truly with it, and so you’ve earned the right to kind of spread out. A common problem in quite a few large fantasy is you introduce so many characters, so many different locations, so many different storylines simultaneously, it’s hard to get grounded in these realities. And I don’t think Game of Thrones had that problem at all. I think you’re just so with the Starks and Winterfell and their journey out into the planet it was very easy to engage, even for people who, you know, aren’t like real, hardcore fantasy people.

How Game of Thrones influenced another shows (including their own)

Matt Shakman

The scope grew over the seasons of Game of Thrones. I think it’s easy to forget, but they did full battles without showing you anything. [In] 1 episode, Peter Dinklage gets knocked unconscious before the conflict starts, so that he wakes up erstwhile the battle’s over; they didn’t have the money to do the battle. But you cared about Peter Dinklage, and that’s how you figured out what had happened, from Tyrion’s point of view. And sometimes we do that, erstwhile we have to. But if you have characters you believe in and you love, then you’re excited to figure out the information with them.

Randall Einhorn (director and maker of Abbott Elementary, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Office)

The scope and the breadth of that story, taking place all over this huge geography and all these different civilizations, it’s just like, wow. It’s truly good erstwhile you find something like that movie; and each 1 of those is simply a movie — incredible! It’s truly encouraging to think about the size of the stories you can tell, where you can go. It surely made me look at things that are larger, [and] bigger concept, due to the fact that they can be on TV.

Halley Feiffer

It never felt like spectacle for spectacle sake. Everything felt very rooted in character in a way that did make it feel timeless and universal. And that was something that whetted my appetite for that kind of storytelling as a viewer. And as a creator — I abruptly felt like I could, possibly in my own way, dip my toe into spectacle, and force and gore. And usage that kind of visual storytelling to research age old and systemic issues like misogyny, like oppression, like gaslighting in ways that I never had considered before.

Rafe Judkins

There’s this character woman Stoneheart, erstwhile Catelyn Stark comes back from the dead. And I was obsessed with this character, couldn’t wait to see her on TV, just live and die, step on my throat woman Stoneheart. And then erstwhile she wasn’t in the show I was like, Bryan!! How could you not do woman Stoneheart? And he explained it, and it is the correct decision that they made to not do it — due to the fact that if they’re going to bring back 1 character from the dead it should be the 1 that matters the most to the overall communicative of the series. And for me there was inactive like a tiny death in it, and sadness in it, and anger in it due to the fact that I — even though I know it’s the right choice for the show — I’m inactive upset about it. So, watching the show was a very good experience for me, and knowing the fundamentals of how people who love the origin material are going to respond to it. And the fact that no substance what you do, you can’t actually make everyone happy. So what you gotta do the most is treat the communicative with respect and do everything you can to bring it to the screen in the best way possible that honors what was there.

Photo: Helen Sloan/HBO

If we’re going to spend quite a few money on these large tv shows, 1 of the large things we can do is take audiences to fresh places. I actually thought the way they did King’s Landing on Thrones was truly special, due to the fact that it has — even more so than anyplace else in the show — this very unique usage of color, and tone, and hair is different erstwhile you’re in King’s Landing than anywhere else. The costumes are different. The colour grade of the scenes are different; everything feels kind of like Tuscan and Croatian, and sunkissed. And I think kind of utilizing Dubrovnik as a jumping off point for what they built in the city overall was a truly smart way to do it. I truly usage that as a touchpoint for worldbuilding in Wheel of Time.

I think 1 of the reasons Wheel of Time has been able to stick around and win where quite a few fantasy shows that follow Game of Thrones haven’t is due to the fact that we were never chasing Game of Thrones. The Wheel of Time [books] came out before the Game of Thrones books, and it’s a very different kind of show. I’m super thrilled that people were curious in making a fantasy show due to Game of Thrones. But it never had an intention of being the “next Game of Thrones.” I always said, even erstwhile pitching it, Game of Thrones was something that appealed to the full world, and broke across genre lines. And the next show that does that won’t be another large fantasy show, necessarily. It’ll be something else that generates that visceral, emotional reaction in people. And that’s the thing that kind of lets you cross these lines and become more of an global pop cultural phenomenon, than just a tv show.

Naren Shankar

The thing that I definitely remember taking as a very distinct lesson from Game of Thrones was: in the first season, Ned’s execution is episode 9. And in the conventional tv framework, that’s your period finale. And what I truly took from that was the importance of letting the audience mourn, and feel for specified an incredibly crucial character. I don’t callback seeing that. It’s like, the ability to process that loss, and let your audience do that, I think was a truly large deal. And I can’t remember many shows or any shows truly off the top of my head that approached it that way. But I thought that was an incredibly smart choice.

HBO

Ronald D. Moore

I was intrigued by quite a few the maneuvering at King’s Landing and what was happening there and the kind of inside the castle politics of it all, and I liked that. I like the way that it played out, and that you were never certain who’s up and who’s down, that they were always willing to kind of do a reversal of luck on your favourite character. And I just liked that, as a storyteller. It made me go, Yeah, you know, that’s something to keep your eye on and think about erstwhile you’re constructing these kinds of shows. And there were things, to be frank, that I didn’t want to do. I thought sometimes, it was cruel, and I didn’t like the cruelty of it as a storyteller. That’s just a individual preference; that’s not a comment on George, or the world. But there were times that I just, I kind of was put back by it’s just a small besides cruel in terms of its treatment of its characters and the treatment of the audience. Sometimes, I love this character. And there seemed to be a ellipse of delight in making you endure with him.

It definitely raised the bar in terms of audience anticipation of what you could produce on television. And unfortunately, I think the remainder of us have suffered since their budget was so big, and they had so many days to shoot these gigantic — I mean, the conflict of the Bastards, I can’t remember how much money they spent on it, and how many days, but it was like a period or something crazy to spend on that 1 episode. So, and the remainder of us specified mortals can’t come close to that kind of money. But the audience doesn’t have those distinctions, right? They just go, Well, I think it should look truly great. And so there’s an anticipation that whatever you’re doing, should look as good and be as large as what they did on that show. So that’s kind of the downside of what they did to the remainder of us.

Justin Marks

I think that the scale of a production carries with it quite a few legacy in the culture of our business. I think that, rightly or wrongly — most likely both to be honest — erstwhile they say “Game of Thrones-esque” what they truly mean is “expensive.” And any of that is true, you know, like dragons come by, but not at the beginning. slow they build to it in the way that a liable show ought to. So that held a lot and then created a bit of an arms race, probably; minds who are not as engaged to the creative of our business might see it as a simple thing like that. I think the directors I talk to, the showrunners, the writers I talk to erstwhile we talk about how much we love Game of Thrones, we’re truly talking about that sprawling scale of the communicative erstwhile you’re doing something Game of Thrones-esque.

Karyn Kusama

David and Dan are friends, and I just so appreciate what they accomplished with it. I felt like they were learning as they went, too. And they had any big, immense communicative reversals that, in a way, predicted now, or created almost an unreasonable force to make so much communicative happen over period to season. (Goddamn them.) So, you know, I really, I think it’s a very, you know, very potent legacy that show. Just even the force to have large communicative events happen, that besides managed to inactive be amazing — that’s an incredibly hard thing to do. I think tv only gets 1 or 2 or 3 Ned Stark’s, and then you’re kinda like, OK we see it coming. So you truly gotta find fresh ways to be surprising.

The lasting legacy on TV

Image: HBO

Naren Shankar

I think tv business frequently seems to take the incorrect lessons. due to the fact that the show got so gigantic and so tremendous in terms of its spectacle. For a while [there was] just this internalized lesson, Oh, we’ve got to make everything that costs $25 million an episode — do we? We don’t really, due to the fact that the years of the show where people just kind of went crazy for it were not those years. You’re forced into these things, and people think that’s the answer. So you had all of these shows that were truly ridiculous, big, crazy, high-budget things, due to the fact that people think that’s the way to get people into the season. And it’s like: it truly isn’t. The things that people mostly remember about Game of Thrones are — there’s quite a few two-handers in that show. There’s quite a few scenes where people just talk to each other; they’re incredibly riveting and amazing.

Halley Feiffer

It’s gone in 2 directions that I can see. The more apparent direction, as we’ve all kind of famously heard of what is possibly an apocryphal communicative of Jeff Bezos rebranding Prime Video and kind of demanding, “Bring me Game of Thrones.” I fell in love with Amazon as a streaming service by watching Transparent and Red Oaks and these tiny character-driven gritty, grainy, darkly funny, very human stories. Now, of course, the tentpole show on Prime Video is Lord of the Rings. And so I think Bezos was incredibly successful in that regard. And I miss those shows; we have a show like Fleabag, for instance, that wins all single Emmy. And now Phoebe Waller-Bridge is doing Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and I’m certain she’ll do an amazing occupation with that. And I would love to see more shows like Fleabag, personally, from a head like that.

At the same time, there’s besides been this very breathtaking improvement of these smaller in scope, more character-driven shows that know they’ll never be the kind of spectacle like Game of Thrones and aren’t trying to be — shows like Severance, like Baby Reindeer, these shows that can have actually a very akin cultural footprint and impact and feel unmissable in terms of the cultural zeitgeist without leaning on extravagant set part battles. We request both in our culture, but I think sometimes we can forget that we request both.

Something I truly admire about the creators is they’ve been very open about what they want they had done differently, and what they are aiming to do differently going forward. So they’ve been very open about the deficiency of representation in their writers area the first couple of seasons. And we’re inactive truly pushing this ball up the hill in terms of letting more diverse leaders truly have their shot at holding the reins of a show. And especially a show like Game of Thrones, which is so rooted in grand spectacle. That’s something I’m excited by, the steps that we’re taking, and besides feel we have a long way to go in terms of inclusivity not only for its own sake but in terms of truly uncovering diverse and dynamic storytelling that continues to surprise and satisfy us.

Rafe Judkins

I definitely think audiences are receiving this kind of complicated world-building truly differently, post-Game of Thrones. Especially now that Wheel has been on for a fewer seasons, you have more conversations with your dental hygienist or my boyfriend’s mom — people who you wouldn’t anticipate would be getting into an unbelievably complicated planet of advanced fantasy who are just like, Yeah, I’ll give that a try — and oh, I truly like it! And that’s very different than the planet before Game of Thrones, where quite a few people would just be like, That’s not the kind of show I watch, or the kind of movie I watch. I think now, people are willing to show up at Dune and give it a try. People are willing to show up to Wheel of Time and give it a try, even if they don’t know the property. Even if they aren’t immense fantasy people, they know that there might be a anticipation that they’d like something like this. And I think that’s a real gift Game of Thrones gave to all the remainder of the sci fi and fantasy and genre projects out there.

I think what’s interesting about Game of Thrones is that it changed what people were chasing in tv for a minute; it changed the aspiration of tv to something that is more cinematic in quite a few ways. And that doesn’t just affect shows like Wheel of Time, The Witcher, or Shadow and Bone and all the fantasy series that followed Game of Thrones. I think it besides affects how we look at all series on tv right now — like, if you open up any show now, it’s much harder to tell from 10 seconds of screen time whether it’s a tv show or a movie than it was 10 years ago. And I think quite a few that is due to Game of Thrones, due to the fact that the aspiration to make tv shows look cinematic — whether that’s Euphoria or Elite, a Spanish series that’s on Netflix and at a very low budget point — the aspiration is inactive to make those things all look the same as you would if you were filming them for the cinema. That’s a large change that’s been wrought in tv across the last 10 years. And it’s evidently not just from Game of Thrones. It’s besides a lot about the availability of cameras, and how to build things that do look more cinematic, and higher budgets for tv shows, and little episodes per season. But: I think quite a few that is due to Game of Thrones, and it changed the aspiration of tv shows to be more cinematic than they had been previously — all tv shows.

Justin Marks

It just never felt like it was prepackaged. It’s just this feeling of something that felt like a work of art, you know, despite all of the commercial trappings that evidently you carried with it. And man, that comes along erstwhile in a lifetime. The way so much of it has bled into our culture, like large movie moments or things. Everyone knows what I’m talking about erstwhile I make that joke, due to the fact that that’s how much it’s just bled into our culture and changed our culture. And I don’t mean our storytelling culture. I mean, just the culture at large — and that’s a legacy that Seinfeld carries, and Friends, and Cheers, and shows completely outside of genre. Those are the things that Game of Thrones latches onto. It’s not ‘cause of dragons or fantasies or all that.

Ronald D. Moore

I think in terms of story, they definitely said, you can do a truly intricate plots with multiple characters, and the audience will follow along. If it’s compelling, the audience will hang in there. Then the trick becomes: Can you get them to take that first step? I think that gives comfort to those of us — especially those who work in the genre field. erstwhile you’re pitching shows, erstwhile you’re developing shows, there’s always quite a few skepticism on the part of executives who are saying, Well, but the audience will be confused, or they won’t follow along, and they don’t realize this world, and you request to explain it more. Well, Game of Thrones didn’t truly explain a lot. You just kind of had to go with it, and the audience was definitely willing to go with it.

It’s inactive the 1 everybody inactive talks about. People inactive go into networks, and rapidly as a shorthand they’ll say: You know, we’re inactive looking for our Game of Thrones. It’s inactive kind of the advanced watermark of not just fantasy, but how large a show can truly be where it had penetrated pop culture, it was a worldwide success, it was the water cooler show erstwhile we inactive had water coolers to hang around. Just in terms of commercial and critical success — it won the Emmy how many times — everybody inactive looks to it as: we want something as large as that.

I was 1 of the number that liked the finale. I thought it worked, and I thought it was for the logical extension of our various things that they had set up. It does get that wrap.

But I don’t hear quite a few talk about the finale, to be honest. In my conversations — in writer’s rooms, or with executives, or just socially — they talk about how I utilized to love this, or hated that, or sounds cool or whatever. There’s not besides much talk about the actual phenomenon whether people liked it or didn’t like it, at least in my experience. The show is bigger than that. And whenever people thought of the finale, for good or for bad, they talk about the show.