George R.R. Martin Reveals Title, Plot of ‘Game of Thrones’ Prequel

published 20 November 2018

We’ve already been grabbing at any and all hints for Game of Thrones Season 8, which apparently will be “bittersweet” and “brutal” all at the same time. Now, George R.R. Martin is delivering a few more details about the prequel—and they're pretty surprising.

Obviously, if you’d rather stay totally ignorant about anything GoT-related, stop reading now and just keep waiting until 2019 for the final season.

Martin just talked to Entertainment Weekly about the prequel, which might be called The Long Night. It’s set 5,000 years before the current series, which means no dragons.

Martin explained, “Westeros is a very different place. There’s no King’s Landing. There’s no Iron Throne. There are no Targaryens—Valyria has hardly begun to rise yet with its dragons and the great empire that it built. We’re dealing with a different and older world and hopefully that will be part of the fun of the series.”

We already know that the prequel will star Naomi Watts, but we don’t have many details beyond that. The showrunner is Jane Goldman, who recently wrote the screenplay for the two Kingsman movies.

According to Martin, the story generally “chronicles the world’s descent from the golden Age of Heroes into its darkest hour. And only one thing is for sure: From the horrifying secrets of Westeros’ history to the true origin of the white walkers, the mysteries of the East, to the Starks of legend...it’s not the story we think we know.”

I'm definitely watching it no matter what, but really hoping for more of the fantastical fun stuff we’ve seen in the main series.

In the meantime, we have just the thing for all the Game of Thrones fans in your life—apparently a new collection of GoT scotch whiskies was just released! Now you really can drink like a Lannister.

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