SDCC 2019: ‘Game of Thrones’ Cast Admits What It Would Take to Return for Spinoff Series

While there are no immediate plans for a Game of Thrones spin-off involving the characters we already know and love, the cast will be asked what it would take for them to return to those characters for as long as they keep appearing at San Diego Comic Con. Maisie Williams has an interesting requirement to make her return to Arya Stark possible, while Jacob Anderson just hopes a new series would be set in a tropical locale.

“If they invent zips and not have leather costumes that are laced up, that would be cool,” Williams told Entertainment Weekly when asked what it would take for her to play Arya again.

“That’s all it would take?” a shocked Liam Cunningham, who played Ser Davos, asked, to which Williams simply replied, “Yeah.”

For Anderson, who played Grey Worm, there was one simple requirement: “If Grey Worm stays in Naath and we’re shooting in, like, Barbados, I’m down.”

“I couldn’t possibly consider that until I read the check,” Cunningham bluntly said of the spin-off idea.

Game of Thrones ended with Arya still needing to check off some names from her kill list, although some were killed without her involvement, like Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey). Arya was also last seen heading off on a journey to see what the world is like beyond the Westeros map, providing the perfect launching point for an Arya spin-off.

However, HBO programming president Casey Bloys told The Hollywood Reporter in late May that there is zero chance of that happening.

“Part of it is, I do want this show — this Game of Thrones, [showrunner David Benioff and D.B. Weiss]’ show — to be its own thing,” Bloys told THR. “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.”

Bloys continued, “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. [Author George R.R. Martin] 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.”

One of those other ways into Martin’s expansive world is to go back thousands of years before the events of Game of Thrones. The only GoT project HBO is moving forward with is a prequel series starring Naomi Watts set more than 5,000 years before Arya was born. Martin is expected to take a more active role in the new series than he did in the final seasons of Game of Thrones, working with showrunner Jane Goldman.

There is no air date set for the new show, should it move beyond the pilot stage.

Stay tuned to PopCulture.com for more from the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con International.

Photo credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO