George R.R. Martin deletes blog post critical of House of the Dragon, HBO issues statement

Earlier today, Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin made good on a promise to tell fans "everything that’s gone wrong with House of the Dragon," HBO's Game of Thrones prequel show. House of the Dragon is based on Martin's book Fire & Blood, and Martin was particularly concerned with how changes made to the first episode of the second season, "A Son for a Son," might affect the story down the road.

Martin's blog post wasn't hateful, and he complimented the episodes of House of the Dragon season 2 as well as showrunner Ryan Condal, but he was also pretty salty. It was unusual for the creator of a show currently on the air to criticize it so blatantly, and HBO noticed. It released this statement to Variety:

"There are few greater fans of George R.R. Martin and his book ‘Fire & Blood’ than the creative team on ‘House of the Dragon,’ both in production and at HBO. Commonly, when adapting a book for the screen, with its own format and limitations, the showrunner ultimately is required to make difficult choices about the characters and stories the audience will follow. We believe that Ryan Condal and his team have done an extraordinary job and the millions of fans the series has amassed over the first two seasons will continue to enjoy it."

Around the same time that statement dropped, the original post disappeared from Martin's Not a Blog (although you can still read our write-up here). Maybe HBO asked Martin to take it down and he acquiesced. Maybe he reconsidered his position and took it down himself. We don't know the details.

We do know that in the original blog post, Martin mentioned at least one major plot twist from Fire & Blood that the showrunners are considering including in season 3, saying that it was "[i]n Ryan’s outline" at one point, although it's hard to say how or whether that's changed since. Of everything in the post, this seems to me the most likely to upset people at HBO. Yes, this particular plot twist is already described in Fire & Blood, but House of the Dragon has made a lot of changes to the source material, so maybe it still constituted a spoiler in HBO's eyes and the network asked Martin to take the post down?

Again, that's me speculating; we don't know the details, and I have to imagine that Martin will think twice about sharing any after this little drama. As for House of the Dragon season 3, it's still in the works; expect it to come out on HBO and Max sometime in 2026.

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