We are two months into life post-Game of Thrones, and we’re all surprisingly okay. Maybe it’s because it’s easier to move on because of the, ehem, questionable decisions made for the final season. It makes you wonder: What would the original Starks, one of the early Houses established in Westeros, think of the events that transpired in Game of Thrones?
We might be able to get into their heads soon. A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R.R. Martin has confirmed that the Starks will be making an appearance in the Game of Thrones prequel, which is currently in production in Northern Ireland. These Starks, though, will be Ned’s family’s ancestors, since the prequel happens thousands of years before the events of Game of Thrones.
They also won’t be alone. “Obviously the White Walkers are here—or as they’re called in my books, the Others—and that will be an aspect of it [along with] things like direwolves and mammoths,” Martin reveals. Maybe in this series, we can finally get the Walkers vs. humanity battle that we truly deserve.
House Lannister and House Targaryen, which, at this era, haven’t been established yet, won’t be present in the prequel though. There also won’t be an Iron Throne because the setting predates the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. “If you go back further [than the Seven Kingdoms during Aegon’s Conquest], then there are nine kingdoms, and 12 kingdoms, and eventually you get back to where there are 100 kingdoms—petty kingdoms—and that’s the era we’re talking about here,” Martin says.
If you’re scared that Dan Benioff and D.B. Weiss would make, uh, polarizing choices for this series again, you don’t have to worry—they’re not involved in this one. Jane Goldman will be taking the helm for the prequel, and she along with George R.R. Martin himself are the show’s creators. For now, in Martin and Goldman we trust.
Still from Game of Thrones (2019)