Game of Thrones was always destined to have a finite number of episodes, so any fans desperate to stave off the inevitable withdrawals from the harrowing bloodbath will be thrilled to hear that HBO has given the green light on a prequel to the most brutal goddamn saga that ever hit the mainstream.
News of the new season is super fresh so we don’t even have a name it yet, let alone a start date, but the basic premise is confirmed. Set thousands of years before the events of Game of Thrones, the prequel will take us way back to the ‘Age of Heroes’; a bygone epoch in Westerosian history in which First Men and Children of the Forest resolved to play nicely and the first war against the White Walkers was waged. For the casual watchers, this is the same era in which the founding fathers of House Stark and House Lannister laid the groundwork for 8000 years of blood feuding.
Any hardcore purists fearing for the sanctity of the saga REMAIN CALM. Author and sadist George R. R. Martin himself is on board to write the screenplay, so this apocryphum is authorised, and he has promised that nothing in the new season will affect the ‘The Winds of Winter’.
Will there be blood? I hope so.
Image credit: HBO