For Jon Snow, winter is no longer coming.
HBO has officially canceled its Jon Snow sequel project. Good news for fans of the Stark bastard? No. Good news for Game of Thrones fans? Yes.
Hear us out.
It Would Have Been A Hit
It’s pretty much guaranteed that viewers would have tuned in to a Jon Snow sequel. Because the show would have taken place directly after the events of GoT season 8, it had all of the fan-bait that usually draws viewers: the comfort of well-known characters, the promise of cameos from old favorites, and a backstory we’re all familiar with.
Heck, I hated the GoT finale as much as anyone else, and I still know I would have tuned in for at least the pilot of a Jon Snow series. I mean, does he stay in the North? How does he get over the death of his aunt/lover? Does he still know nothing?
But after two years of development, the Jon Snow project has officially been canceled. And if HBO was willing to drop what would have been pretty much a guaranteed ratings bonanza, it signals a commitment to quality that can only bode well for the rest of the GoT projects in the works.
Why Was It Dropped?
According to star Kit Harington, HBO’s writing team wasn’t able to nail down a compelling storyline for Jon Snow after the events of GoT. It didn’t help that there are no clues in George R.R. Martin’s books, and given the author’s long dry spell it seems unlikely that we’ll ever know the author’s opinion.
That won’t be a problem for other GoT projects in the works. The upcoming 2025 series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight is based on Martin’s novellas The Tales of Dunk and Egg. These shorter stories take place about 90 years before the events of Game of Thrones, and follows Ser Duncan the Tall (‘Dunk’) and his squire Egg – who will eventually become King Aegon V Targaryen.
If HBO was willing to say goodbye to the guaranteed ratings of a Jon Snow sequel, it gives us high hopes that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – which got a straight-to-series order – must have a lot of confidence from its creative team.
Quality over Quantity
This theory seems to be strengthened if you consider that HBO also canceled the Westeros series Bloodmoon even after filming a $30 million pilot episode. Likewise, Dance of the Dragons went through several failed development stages before eventually becoming the successful House of the Dragon.
It seems that after the disappointment of GoT’s eighth season, HBO is more concerned with putting out quality GoT content than they are in pumping out as many series as possible. Take a note, Star Wars!
More To Come
That’s not to say that there aren’t still a lot of Westeros projects in the pipeline:
- House of the Dragon will release its much-anticipated second season this upcoming summer, hopefully keeping up the quality of season one (which still holds a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and was watched by over 10 million viewers).
- The animated spinoffs Nine Voyages and The Golden Empire are in development.
In spite of early cancellation rumours, the Nymeria story Ten Thousand Ships is still in the works as a live-action series. - So is Aegon’s Conquest, about Aegon I Targaryen’s conquest of Westeros
You can watch Game of Thrones and the rest of the Westeros series on HBO and Max. House of the Dragon season 2 will become available on June 16, and A Knight of Seven Kingdoms is expected to drop in 2025.
