‘Westworld’: Game of Thrones’ Author George R.R. Martin Explains Surprise Crossover

Westworld continues to dominate the world of prestige TV this spring, with a little help from fellow HBO hit Game of Thrones. Season 3, Episode 2 of Westworld featured a conspicuous Game of Thrones cameo, and now author George R.R. Martin is explaining how it came to be.

Westworld Season 3, Episode 2 — titled “The Winter Line” — finds Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) returning to what is left of Westworld. With the help of Ashley Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth), he infiltrates the park’s facilities. While exploring there, they see assets from many different kinds of AI-powered theme parks, including one medieval fantasy-style attraction. There, two men attempt to wrangle a familiar dragon.

The two guests were David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the writers and showrunners of Game of Thrones. The dragon, of course, was Drogon. In a recent blog post, Martin jokingly referred to them as “The Three Ds.”

Martin also explained how the surprise cameo came to pass. He wrote that it began with him getting a message from “my friend Jonah Nolan,” adding: “Jonah is one of the creators and showrunners of HBO’s Westworld, along with his wife Lisa Joy, and he told me told me to be sure to catch Sunday’s episode, there might be something that would amuse me.”

Of the cameo itself, Martin wrote: “I thought it was a fun moment, and it made me smile.” He then addressed the responses that the cameo elicited, ranging from love to hate.

“Everybody, it seems to me, is making way too much of it,” he wrote. “Hey, folks, c’mon. It was just a bit of fun. A sort of Easter Egg.”

Later, Martin pointed to some of his own famous Easter Eggs in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, including three characters named after the Three Stooges in the first book, or a mythical showdown between “Giants” and “Cowboys” in another. In Martin’s most recent book, Fire & Blood, he even named a small group of characters after Muppets.

“Had I been in Los Angeles at the time of the filming, I might well have been part of that,” Martin went on. “Jonah and Lisa have also stated that the whole thing was my idea. Which is true. Kinda sorta.”

Martin went on to explain that he had suggested the idea of a “Westeros World” adjacent to Delos’ Westworld, Warworld, Samurai World and so on. He said that he “never wanted a full crossover… but a brief scene or two could have been fun, and would have been in keeping with the Delos concept.” Martin even thought it would be a fun way to “bring back actors from GOT, characters we ahd killed. The hosts die almost weekly, after all.”

Still, Martin was not disappointed in the cameo that his creations did get on Westworld. He stated firmly that he is a big fan of the sci-fi series, and he is watching weekly like everyone else, regardless of whether his beloved dragons make an appearance.

Westworld airs on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.