Fans will not be going west of Westeros alongside Maisie Williams’ Arya Stark in a potential Game of Thrones spinoff.
Warning: spoilers ahead for Game of Thrones Season 8, Episode 6, “The Iron Throne.”
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In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter following the long running series’ finale on Sunday night, HBO programming president Casey Bloys shot down hope that the series would live on in a potential spinoff focused on Arya Stark.
“Nope, nope, nope. No,” he told the outlet. “Part of it is, I do want this show — this Game of Thrones, Dan and David’s show — to be its own thing,’ Bloys said. ‘I don’t want to take characters from this world that they did beautifully and put them off into another world with someone else creating it.”
“I want to let it be the artistic piece they’ve got. That’s one of the reasons why I’m not trying to do the same show over,” he added. “George has a massive, massive world; there are so many ways in. That’s why we’re trying to do things that feel distinct — and to not try and redo the same show. That’s probably one of the reasons why, right now, a sequel or picking up any of the other characters doesn’t make sense for us.”
Fans of the series had been rooting for an Arya centered spinoff after the young Stark embarked on yet another journey to discover what lies where the maps end. Other fans thought the finale offered hope that HBO would return to Westeros with spinoffs depicting what happened after Drogon fled King’s Landing with Daenerys Targeryan’s body and headed towards Essos, a land teaming with Red Priestesses who could potentially have the power to bring her back to life.
I need an Arya spin-off! pic.twitter.com/eHAiXT377m
— Javier Ríos Enrique (@JaviRiosEnrique) May 21, 2019
I think they would be idiots not to do a sequel set 10-30 years into the future.
— Corey (@Thecolours) May 21, 2019
The fact that HBO isn’t planning any direct Game of Thrones spinoffs centered on the characters fans know and love doesn’t mean that the network isn’t tossing around the idea of keeping the world of Westeros alive. Currently, HBO has three separate Game of Thrones spinoffs in the works, with one such series, unofficially titled The Long Night, set to begin filming in June.
“We have had five different GAME OF THRONES successor shows in development (I mislike the term “spinoffs”) at HBO, and three of them are still moving forward nicely,” George R.R. Martin, creator and author of A Song of Ice and Fire, wrote in his recent blog post. “The one I am not supposed to call THE LONG NIGHT will be shooting later this year, and two other shows remain in the script stage, but are edging closer. What are they about? I cannot say. But maybe some of you should pick up a copy of FIRE & BLOOD and come up with your own theories.”
As of this writing, none of the spinoff series have premiere dates.
