Let’s overanalyze George R.R. Martin’s cryptic message about frogs

Being a fan of George R.R. Martin can be…interesting. The man has written a book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, that has delighted millions of people around the globe. It’s the best high fantasy series I’ve read in years, and it inspired the worldwide phenomenon that is HBO’s Game of Thrones. Martin is a very talented storyteller, no doubt.

He’s also gained a reputation for…let’s say quality over quantity. People have been waiting for him to finish the latest book in his series, The Winds of Winter, for over a decade now. And while Martin acknowledges that Winds is by far the project people are most interested in, he has an industrious mind and loves being involved in lots of other stuff.

And he spends time online, mostly on his Not a Blog, where he likes to drop cryptic clues about his projects. And because idiots like us are so invested in his work, we’ll overanalyze whatever he writes because we can’t help ourselves.

Like I said, interesting.

George R.R. Martin drops hints about HBO’s Game of Thrones spinoff shows?

That brings us to Martin’s newest post, entitled “Things Are Hoppin’.” It’s an image of nine plastic frogs. That’s it.

It reminds me of a post he made last year, when he simply uploaded an image of an eight-fingered hand. He posted that right after HBO dropped a teaser trailer for House of the Dragon, its upcoming Game of Thrones prequel show. The going theory then was that the nine fingers was Martin’s way of telling us that HBO had nine Game of Thrones spinoff ideas in various forms of development.

I think the same is true of the nine plastic frogs. This post comes mere days after Martin shared a lot of info about all the potential spinoffs in development. (Also the post is tagged with the words “HBO” and “television.”) He admitted that not all of them will make it to air — so far the only one we know for sure is coming is House of the Dragon — but is hoping for the best.

How many Game of Thrones spinoff shows are there?

So if Martin is telling us there are nine Game of Thrones spinoff shows in development, what are they? Here are the ones we know about:

1. House of the Dragon, about a Targaryen civil war that tore Westeros apart some 200 years before the story we know
2. The Sea Snake, about the younger days of Corlys Velaryon, a character on House of the Dragon
3. Ten Thousand Ships, about the journey of Princess Nymeria from Essos to Dorne
4. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, an adaptation of Martin’s Dunk & Egg novellas
5. The Golden Empire, an animated show about the empire of Yi Ti

We’ve heard about other shows, too, like Flea Bottom, about the poorest section of King’s Landing. But we heard that one was cancelled. Might Martin be counting it anyway? And are there other shows that we don’t know about?

Or are we just so desperate for news that we’re looking at a picture of nine frogs and reading way too deeply into it?

…nah, it’s probably one of those first two things.

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