The case for (and against) including Mushroom in House of the Dragon

House of the Dragon, HBO’s hotly anticipated Game of Thrones prequel show, arrives soon. Based on George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, House of the Dragon is set some 200 years before the original show and is about a civil war called the Dance of the Dragons, fought between rival factions of the Targaryen dynasty back when it was at the height of its power. Like its mother show, House of the Dragon has a ton of characters. There’s Viserys Targaryen, the ineffective king on the Iron Throne. There’s Rhaenrya Targaryen his daughter, first in line to succeed him. There’s Alicent Hightower, the king’s second wife, who has very different ideas about who should take her husband’s place, and on and on. There are a lot of new names to learn.

But not every character from Fire & Blood made it into this show. Unless the trailers have deceived us, there’s no sign of Mushroom. The character hasn’t been cast, the producers haven’t mentioned him, and people who have seen the premiere have confirmed that he doesn’t appear. Unless the show has some huge surprise waiting, Mushroom is not showing up in House of the Dragon.

Why might the show have cut this character? Let’s get into it.

Who is Mushroom in Fire & Blood?

Mushroom is an illiterate, foul-mouthed fool in the service of first King Viserys Targaryen. Later, he serves the king’s daughter Rhaenyra, who vies for the Iron Throne after her dad’s death. And when I call Mushroom a “fool,” I don’t mean “idiot”; actually, Mushroom is pretty sharp, if given to lascivious flights of fancy. I mean he’s a court jester; his job is literally to tell jokes, dance around and goof off. And according to his own testimony, he was pretty good at it. He claims he was the only person who was able to make King Viserys laugh towards the end of his life, and the only one who could make Rhaenyra Targaryen happy after the loss of her son.

And Mushroom’s testimony is what we have to go on. You see, Fire & Blood is a “fake history” book. It was “written” by Archmaester Gyldayn, who wanted to write a history of House Targaryen. When he got to the sections about the Dance of the Dragons, he had a number of primary sources to work with. One came from Grand Maester Orwyle, who served King Aegon II Targaryen, the other main claimant to the Iron Throne besides Rhaenyra. Another came from Septon Eustace, who also favored Aegon. Both of their accounts are biased in his favor.

Then there’s Mushroom, who was loyal to Rhaenrya. Throughout the war, the people around Mushroom assumed he was stupid and spoke freely in front of him about their plots and schemes. He listened, he remembered, and he gave his testimony about what he heard to an unknown writer later in his life.

Part of the fun of the book is how these sources conflict. Some paint events one way and some another, although they do coincide on certain points. Mushroom can always be counted on to give the most salacious, overblown version of any given event, so it’s hard to always take him seriously…then again, are not the Targaryens very dramatic people? Who’s to say he wasn’t completely correct?

In any case, Mushroom was around for a lot of important stuff, so the question remains: why isn’t he in the show? We don’t know for sure, but my guess is that is has something to do with representation.

Tyrion Lannister is a hard act to follow

One thing we haven’t mentioned about Mushroom is that he is a dwarf. There aren’t a ton of prominent dwarf characters in popular TV and movies. In fact, the last big one was probably Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones, played wonderfully by Peter Dinklage. Tyrion was a great character: flawed, complex, funny and intelligent. But he was also a risky character, because having a dwarf in a fantasy show comes with some baggage; people immediately think of the sprite-like hobbits from The Hobbit or the long-bearded, self-serious dwarves from The Lord of the Rings. One of the reasons Dinklage signed on to play Tyrion in the first place is because the character cut against such stereotypes. “Dwarves in these genres always have this look. My guard was up,” Dinklage once told The New York Times. “Not even my guard—my metal fence, my barbed wire was up. Even The Lord of the Rings had dwarf-tossing jokes in it.”

He elaborated during a Reddit AMA:

"I had one hesitation, because of the fantasy genre, I told [showrunner David Benioff] I didn’t want a really long beard and pointy shoes. [Benioff and D.B. Weiss] assured me this character and this world wasn’t that. They told me about his complexity, the fact that he wasn’t a hero or a villain, that he was a womanizer and a drinker, and they painted a flawed and beautiful portrait of him, so I signed on."

Tyrion became one of the breakout characters of Game of Thrones and Dinklage became the only cast member to take home an Emmy award for acting from the show. (He took home four in all.)

So on Game of Thrones we had a complex character played by a decorated actor who broke new boundaries for the depiction of dwarfs in fantasy and on TV in general. Fairly or not, House of the Dragon has the responsibility of following that up. And Mushroom is…a lewd court jester everyone assumes is simple-minded whose job it is to make a fool of himself and who literally wears pointy shoes; here’s an illustration of him farting out a cloud of glitter if you want to see him in his fool’s motley.

Mushroom does have some dimension, but this is definitely a step down from Tyrion. If Dinklage had been approached for this show rather than Game of Thrones, I’m guessing he would have refused to play Mushroom.

The case for including Mushroom in House of the Dragon

House of the Dragon is a show that cares about representation; for instance, it’s made a point to include prominent characters of color in this story even though there aren’t many in the source text. Looking at it from that angle, here’s the dilemma with Mushroom: is it better to include this dwarf character in your story knowing that dwarfs often don’t feature in high-profile TV shows like this; or do you cut him because this particular drawf character plays into pernicious stereotypes? I don’t blame the producers for choosing Option B, particularly given how unfavorably Mushroom would compare with Tyrion Lannister should they include him.

And yet, there are some arguments on the other side. To start, Mushroom has a fairly big presence in Fire & Blood, and if House of the Dragon is an adaptation of Fire & Blood, it should include him, right? I think that’s a decent enough argument, particularly as House of the Dragon seems to be trying to stick very close to the text.

Then again, Mushroom’s function in the book is mostly to give us an (often exaggerated) perspective on the events of the story; he doesn’t play much of a role in those events himself. The show is doing away with the multiple perspectives conceit and giving us one cohesive narrative, so Mushroom will lift right out. And again, given how much flak the show would doubtlessly get for including him, that may be for the best.

Honestly, I think the best argument for including Mushroom is that he’s funny. House of the Dragon looks like a grim show. Many people have described it as “dark.” It’s a family tragedy on an epic scale; many characters meet with grisly ends, and even the ones who survive are haunted by the horrors they have seen. In a tale this gruesome, some comic relief would be very welcome, and Mushroom could definitely provide that. Nothing lightens the mood after a massacre like a glitter fart.

And I’m not trying to be glib. As heavy as Game of Thrones was, I thought it did a good job of giving us enough light moments that we weren’t overwhelmed by the brutality of it all; Tyrion was pretty good at that, actually, always making witty asides and clever observations. A story needs to occasionally relieve the tension so we remember how pressing it is. But I look at the cast of House of the Dragon and I don’t see many comedians.

Whither Mushroom?

So instead of cutting Mushroom, might it have been possible for House of the Dragon to rehabilitate him? Maybe they could have turned him into a complex character and worthy follow-up to Tyrion Lannister? It’s possible, it would basically require a rebuild of the character. Remember, as it stands, Mushroom is literally a fool in pointy shoes.

Another option would be to rewrite the character so that he no longer has dwarfism. That gets around the problem of bad representation, but it raises a new issue: that House of the Dragon had a chance to include a character from an underrepresented group but opted to change him instead.

Really, there’s no great option when it comes to Mushroom, and even though I think I’ll miss him, I’m okay with the producers’ decision to cut him loose. And who knows? He may still show up in some capacity, even in cameo form. And there’s always season 2.

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