The future of Westeros is heading in a brand new direction as HBO explores what happens after the original show ended. For a long time fans were expecting a sequel series centered on Jon Snow but that project has officially been cancelled. Kit Harington recently shared that the creative team simply could not find a story that felt right. Recent reports suggest that his vision for the show was a very dark character study about a man struggling with trauma. HBO executives ultimately decided the idea was a bit too depressing for a mainstream audience.
With the Jon Snow project on the shelf HBO is now putting its energy into a sequel starring Arya Stark. This new series would follow Arya as she sails west of Westeros to discover lands that aren’t on any maps. Unlike the stationary and somber plans for Jon Snow this project is being envisioned as a high-stakes adventure. It would give the franchise a chance to show entirely new continents and cultures that have never been seen on screen before. While it is still in the very early stages of development writer Quoc Dang Tran has reportedly been hired to lead the story.
The decision to focus on Arya makes sense for a few reasons. Her ending in the final season was one of the few that left a door wide open for a grand new journey. A show about her travels would allow HBO to expand the world without having to worry about the messy politics left behind in King’s Landing. It also provides a way to look at the legacy of the original show through the eyes of a fan-favorite character who survived against all odds. Maisie Williams has not been officially confirmed yet but many expect her to return to the role that made her famous.
While these sequels are being planned HBO is also busy with more prequel stories. A brand new show called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to premiere on January 18. This series follows the adventures of a knight named Dunk and his young squire Egg about a hundred years before the original show. Fans can also look forward to the third season of House of the Dragon which is scheduled to arrive in the summer of 2026. This means there will be plenty of stories from Westeros to watch while the Arya sequel continues to move through development.
Author George R.R. Martin is still a major part of all these projects even as he works on his long-awaited book The Winds of Winter. He recently shared that he has finished about eleven hundred pages of the novel but still has more work to do. Martin has hinted that his version of the ending will be significantly different from what happened on television. He even suggested that some characters who survived the show might not be so lucky in his books. Between the upcoming prequels and the potential for a new sequel the Game of Thrones universe is only getting bigger.