If there is one thing guaranteed to cause an argument, it is commenting on how Game of Thrones ended compared to how it could have ended. When it come to prequel series House of the Dragon, it appears that the ending is already written in stone according to the show’s creators. It is over a decade since Game of Thrones first hit screens, and now the first spin off from the epic fantasy series is here and will tell the story of the Targaryens centuries before the events of the original story.

The new series, as its predecessor, has its base firmly in the works of author George R. R. Martin, whose Fire & Blood novel was published in 2018 and details the Dance of Dragons civil war that tore the Targaryen’s apart, and the first season of the show will be focussing on the decades leading up to that war. Of course, there are plenty of references to Thones within the story, but being set so far in the past, don’t expect any characters from the original Targaryen family to appear.

In an interview with Comicbook.com, House of the Dragon executive producer Miguel Sapochnik explained that the series has a place in the middle of bigger story, which has a lot of scope, but they already know exactly what the end of the series will be. He said:

"We have a very, very precise idea of where we wanna go with it, but we can't tell you. I think that the important thing is that this is a... Think of this as an Episode IV, the Star Wars Episode IV. So it's kind of, we're in the middle of a history that is rich and full of stories to tell and it's a good place to start."

Related: House of the Dragon Showrunners Already Have Season 2 Mapped Out

House of the Dragon Will Want To Avoid The Controversy of GOT’s Ending

House of the Dragon Iron Throne
HBO

Even now, the subject of the ending of Game of Thrones is a still a hugely controversial subject. With Martin having still to release his last two volumes of the story and give fans his ending to the story, there are many who expect that ending, when it finally arrives, will give them a very different ending to the one the TV show provided. However, we will never really know whether that ending will be exactly as Martin always planned or if it will have been tweaked a little in response of public opinion of the show. One thing that seems certain though, is that House of the Dragon has its ending very much prepared well in advance and will hope to avoid the issues of its predecessor.

For now though, we are only in the very early stages of House of the Dragon’s story, and there has been no indications of exactly how many seasons we will get. Much will depend on how fans buy into this new addition of the franchise, and that could also impact the other prequel shows that are currently in various stages of development at HBO. The cast of the series includes Jefferson Hall, Paddy Considine, Eve Best, Gavin Spokes, Graham McTavish, Steve Toussaint, Olivia Cooke, Sonoya Mizuno, Bill Paterson, Matthew Needham, Emma D'Arcy, Rhys Ifans, David Horovitch, and Matt Smith. The first season premiere on August 21 will see new episodes releasing each Sunday.