Nearly three years have passed since Game of Thrones came to its record-breaking, largely reviled conclusion. HBO’s powerhouse series didn’t have a clean landing, but the franchise is still charging forward with new stories, the first of which is finally set to debut later this year. House of the Dragon, set long before the events of Game of Thrones, is perhaps the most anticipated TV series of 2022. Even some of the original show’s stars are interested to see what the prequel has in store, even if watching it is a bittersweet experience.
John Bradley, who played Samwell Tarly throughout Game of Thrones, was asked for his thoughts on House of the Dragon while speaking to Variety about his new disaster film, Moonfall. Bradley compared the feeling of watching a Game of Thrones spinoff to seeing a new family move into your old house.
“There will be a certain bittersweet quality to it,” Bradley said. “I think it’s a bit like, do you know when you move house and you go back to your old house and other people have moved in and then they’ve redecorated and they’ve changed things and they’ve made it their own and you just don’t feel involved in it… It’s going to be like seeing somebody else living in your house.”
Bradley also opened up about the highly controversial final season of Game of Thrones. For a series that garnered so much love and acclaim over the years, the hatred came swiftly for Game of Thrones in its last few episodes. According to Bradley, there was never going to be an ending that made everyone happy.
“It is highly unlikely that we were ever going to please everybody,” the actor explained. “Chances are we were going to please a fraction of people… We almost couldn’t win. It almost meant too much to people for them to really ever be satisfied. And who knows, when the wounds have healed a little bit in a few years time, maybe people will reevaluate it and be able to see it as a complete thing.”
Bradley also takes issue with fans who believe that the creators and stars of the series didn’t care enough through the final season.
“If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t choose to be standing in a field in Belfast at 3 o’clocl in the morning for months on end,” he said. “They wanted to make it as good as possible, and it’s a shame if people didn’t like it because we did try our best to make something very special.”
Are you looking forward to House of the Dragon on HBO later this year? Let us know in the comments!
