Five years later, what is the legacy of 'Game of Thrones'?
Plus: Reading between the lines of Netflix's strange "renewal" of "3 Body Problem."
Early last year, before the deluge of Emmy-wannabe TV programming suffocated the airwaves (or streamwaves?), I went back a bit in time and binged “Game of Thrones.”
HBO’s prequel “House of the Dragon” the summer prior had reignited my interest in one of my favorite shows after a disappointing series finale in 2019. We all remember it (even if we’d rather forget) so I won’t elaborate on just how polarizing it was, except to say that it still stung years later — perhaps more so; after watching the entire series in such a short timeframe, the final season’s head scratching rush job is even more glaring.
Sunday marks five years since that divisive finale, and “Game of Thrones” lives on, still as HBO’s crown jewel. “House of the Dragon” — which comes back for its second season next month — was a hit, premiering in August 2022 with the biggest audience for the debut of an HBO original series, ever. And there is more from this world on the way: the network is developing more prequels, including “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight” and, reportedly, a show about the Targaryen conquest of Westeros.
HBO wouldn’t be investing so heavily in the Thrones-verse if it didn’t sense demand. In fact, there’s a data company, Parrot Analytics, that tracks just that. When I reported on the entertainment industry for Business Insider, they were helpful in understanding what was popular, especially with streaming platforms being so vague about viewership numbers. According to Parrot, “Game of Thrones” is currently 75 times more “in demand” than the average TV show in the US, which only .2% of shows can boast having that level of. For comparison, HBO’s more recent hit, “The Last of Us,” is 33 times more in demand than the average series.
If those numbers are confusing, all you need to know is that “Game of Thrones” is still popular. That’s why it’s not just HBO that’s been trying to replicate its success; a bevy of fantasy TV shows seemed to come out of the woodwork in its aftermath, from Netflix’s “The Witcher” to Amazon’s “The Wheel of Time” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” the latter of which The Wall Street Journal called “the most expensive show of all time” (Amazon paid $250 million just for the rights).
None of those have seemed to capture the zeitgeist in quite the same way as “Game of Thrones.” That was apparent last year when “House of the Dragon” and “Rings of Power” were airing weekly at the exact same time. I extensively reported then how the latter was facing headwinds that the former didn’t appear to be facing, and it didn’t help that “Rings of Power” wasn’t connecting with the younger audiences (at least in the US) that drive social-media conversation.
That doesn’t mean “Rings of Power” is a total failure. Amazon still contests that it’s the company’s biggest show globally of all time. But when season two premieres in August, it will be more than two weeks after “House of the Dragon” has already aired its season two finale. “Thrones” bows to no one.
Instead, another recent Amazon series has shown that the best way to find a “Game of Thrones”-like genre hit probably isn’t another big fantasy drama. “Fallout,” based on the game franchise of the same name, scored nearly 3 billion viewing minutes in the US in its first five days, according to Nielsen, an impressive number and Amazon’s biggest show since, well, “Rings of Power” (For what it’s worth, I predict “Fallout” will only get bigger, while “Rings of Power” might stagnate. Anecdotally, I feel like the first season exhausted people. Then again, it won’t be competing with “House of the Dragon” this time).
Overall, “Fallout” reflects a greater trend happening in TV (aside from the larger crossover of gaming and Hollywood): tons of IP, something that has more so been a hallmark of the movie industry over the last decade-plus.
That’s probably a big part of “Thrones’” legacy. It’s also just a massive cultural sensation that still resonates to this day despite leaving a bad taste in people’s mouths. While there have been plenty of hit shows since “Thrones” ended, few have come close to replicating that water-cooler feeling of everyone watching the same thing at the same time every week — probably because the biggest, like “Squid Game” and “Stranger Things,” have been binge-released on Netflix.
Even “House of the Dragon,” and the “Thrones” spinoffs to come, may never replicate that feeling either, at least not in the same way. “Thrones” seems like a product of a bygone era; its end correlated with the rise of the “streaming wars” and the beginning of the end of peak TV. You either win or you die, and “Game of Thrones” won.
RELATED: ‘3 Body’ Problems
Netflix announced this week that its sci-fi series “3 Body Problem,” from the “Thrones” creators David Benioff and DB Weiss, will return — but there’s a catch. Instead of saying that it was renewed for a second season, the streamer said the show will return with all-new episodes and that further details, like the number of seasons and episodes (which seems important for a renewal announcement), are under wraps.
The creators said in a statement that they are thrilled to see the story through to its “conclusion,” and Netflix execs said that the full saga will be told through its end.
Reading between the lines, my guess is that Netflix renewed the show for a final season — maybe one that will be broken up into two “parts” — that will wrap up the next two books in the trilogy it’s based on (it’s not the first time that Netflix has been shady about a supposed renewal). The fact that the company is being coy about its return (“new episodes” language instead of calling it a season renewal) makes me suspect that the show did not quite live up to expectations.
According to Netflix, it peaked with 15 million views globally in its first full week on the platform; for comparison, “Baby Reindeer” — a show that is half the length of “3 Body Problem” and didn’t get nearly as much publicity — has hit 22 million views in a week.
So it seems that “3 Body Probelm” is basically getting a courtesy wrap-up; it would look pretty bad to cancel the series now after shelling out a reported $200 million to Benioff and Weiss for an overall deal. Is it the duo’s fault? Probably not. Sometimes a show is just a big swing that doesn’t connect with enough people. But boy, after the “Thrones” finale, ditching a “Star Wars” movie, and now this, it hasn’t been a great few years for them.
Beyond the Traverse
In other, more concrete TV renewal news: FX and Hulu are bringing “Shogun” back for seasons two and three. Remember when this was a limited series?
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