George R. R. Martin Misses the Bigger Picture with House of the Dragon Complaints

This article contains details that will likely spoil upcoming seasons of House of the Dragon (though George R. R. Martin did admittedly just spoil them on his blog first).

After George R. R. Martin announced over the weekend that he was going to write a blog post in the coming days sharing his thoughts on House of the Dragon, fans of both the series and Martin’s work have been waiting with bated breath to see what issues with the series the author was planning to address. When it finally arrived, rather than taking a nuanced approach to his criticism and considering all of the factors that went into play during the production of season 2, Martin’s blog post essentially throws House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal under the bus in a very public, and arguably petty way.

Martin’s post has since been deleted from his blog, almost as quickly as it went up, but you can find the archived version here. Instead of acknowledging the fact that season 2 was made under unique and challenging circumstances, Martin instead decided to double down on opining that the character Maelor was missing from season 2. Between the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) strike and the rumors circulating that the season’s planned 10 episodes were cut down by two mere months before filming (and the strike) were set to begin, the writers likely didn’t have much time to rework their planned arcs nor the ability to make changes to scenes on set.

Martin has every right to be frustrated with how the show is handling his work. And the points he makes about the exclusion of Maelor are fair and valid. But there are so many better ways to go about handling these frustrations than writing a public blog post that reads more like an adolescent calling out a classmate for wearing the same dress to prom than an adult, professional, public figure dealing with what is essentially a workplace conflict.

This intense focus on Maelor being included is a little baffling though. He mentions in the blog post that Maelor survives Blood & Cheese only to be brutally torn apart by a mob later on. I certainly don’t fault House of the Dragon writers for not necessarily wanting to include that, though I do understand where Martin is coming from. He argues that Maelor’s exclusion will likely cause a Butterfly Effect, if it hasn’t already, that could mean other characters and events from the book aren’t included in the series at all. According to Martin, events like the Bitterbridge scene and Helaena’s death by suicide wouldn’t have the same impact or narrative power without Maelor. It’s not so much that Maelor is uniquely important as it is that the people connected to him are likely to be affected by his exclusion from the series.

And yet, Martin’s arguments would be much stronger if he also acknowledged the limitations that House of the Dragon faces, especially when compared to Game of Thrones. HBO’s parent company isn’t under the same leadership it was back in the Thrones days. Under Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s tenure, the company is a lot less interested in creating art for art’s sake than it is making as much money as possible off of existing IP, as evidenced by how much of their own content they’ve essentially erased off of the internet. WBD is also struggling financially under the new regime, leaving less money to spare for epic (and expensive) fantasy series like House of the Dragon. Stock is tanking and the company is 38 billion dollars in debt according to their most recent earnings report.

Martin’s argument’s may be valid, but they are missing the point of the greater conversation happening around House of the Dragon. He doesn’t take into account the bigger picture of what’s happening behind the scenes, missing the point entirely. 

The entire post seems eager to point the blame at Ryan Condal and the writers, with the last line of his post the most cutting of all. He says “And there are larger and more toxic butterflies to come, if House of the Dragon goes ahead with some of the changes being contemplated for seasons 3 and 4…” This directly calls out the changes being made in the series in an inflammatory way, and sets up hardcore fans of Martin on a potential warpath for any changes made in House of the Dragon moving forward. 

It’s hard to take Martin’s complaints as more than just the petty grievances when he displays them as such. Martin is an executive producer for the show, it’s not like he couldn’t grab lunch or coffee with Ryan Condal to air his grievances if he truly wanted to. The blog post does mention that he’s had conversations with Condal about the show, but Martin doesn’t say how extensive those conversations were. He acts like Condal has simply blown off his concerns, which could very well be true, but this still doesn’t feel like the right way to handle this situation.

It’ll be interesting to see if this affects season 3 of House of the Dragon in both writing and how fans perceive it. But considering we still have a couple of years at least before it’s likely to grace our screens, this could all be water under the (Bitter)bridge by then. We’ll just have to wait and see if Martin has any other tidbits to offer and if Condal or Warner Bros. offer any kind of response.