4 indicators Game of Thrones could be facing a Walking Dead-style decline

HBO is betting big on Westeros. It’s easy to understand why — Game of Thrones was the network’s most viewed series of all time, until its spin-off, House of the Dragon , premiered in 2022. There are currently seven Game of Thrones spin-offs in the works, with the next series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms , set to premiere in the summer of 2025.

While all of this suggests that we’re in store for never-ending Game of Thrones content, there are some troubling signs that remind me of the early struggles of The Walking Dead, another TV universe that never reached the potential it showed early on. House of the Dragon is still one of the most-viewed shows in the history of TV, but those numbers began to dip during a disappointing second season. That second season has been the most recent source of discontent among fans online, while also stirring up older frustrations about the final seasons of Game of Thrones.

House of the Dragon’s second season averaged 25 million viewers per episode, down from season one’s 29 million, but still one of the highest numbers in television history. As long as people keep tuning in, HBO will keep making Game of Thrones content. But there are more reasons to be worried.

George R.R. Martin seems to be growing more unhappy with HBO, and both shows have suffered when they’ve lost his input. It’ll also be another two years before we see more House of the Dragon, which is long enough for people to check out and not return to the series. If the second season is the start of a trend that sees A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms debut to lower viewership, followed by another disappointing season three of House of the Dragon, it’s easy to imagine the series’ massive fanbase beginning to lose interest, and HBO tightening the purse strings on what are some of the most expensive television shows running.

It all adds up to a situation where the Game of Thrones universe could end up on a similar path to AMC’s Walking Dead. The Walking Dead was a smash hit and one of the most watched shows on TV during its early seasons, but slowly degrading quality and a decade’s worth of spin-offs have seen the show fade from relevancy. Game of Thrones has achieved higher heights than The Walking Dead ever did, but that would just make this show’s fall from grace sting HBO even more.

1 HBO is continuing Game of Thrones without George R.R. Martin

Can HBO make GoT without him? The results so far say no

There have been rumors swirling as the second season of House of the Dragon aired that the creator of the entire universe, George R.R. Martin, was growing frustrated with the series. First, he was critical of the show using the wrong dragon on a Targaryen sigil. Then, he was unhappy with the changes the show made to the Blood and Cheese storyline in the books. Next, he revealed in a blog post that he won’t be participating in the writer’s room for House of the Dragon’s third season. And in a published, deleted, and then edited blog post, Martin panned many of the changes made for House of the Dragon, and insinuated that he was unhappy with some of the proposals for future seasons.

While this might not seem like a big deal — plenty of authors have been frustrated by the adaptations of their work, Robert Kirkman eventully left The Walking Dead after all — Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon have both suffered the less they have of George RR Martin. He worked in the writer’s room for the first four seasons of Game of Thrones, which coincides with the highest points in the series. He left amid rumors that he was frustrated by changes the show was making to the source material, though he said at the time he was leaving to focus on finishing Winds of Winter, the still-unfinished next book in the series.

At the same time Martin left Game of Thrones, the series also moved past the source material of Martin’s books. So, without Martin’s ideas in the writer’s room or his books to follow, Game of Thrones’ showrunners were left to figure out the final four seasons on their own. We remember how that went.

2 Game of Thrones had the worst finale in TV history

How many prequels can HBO make before addressing that awful ending?

HBO

One of the reasons I was originally excited about House of the Dragon is that I thought it wouldn’t have too much to do with the original show. That was until the second season, which featured twice as many callbacks to Game of Thrones as it did action sequences. While the newest season of the spin-off was frustrating on its own, it also helped remind everyone how dumb the ending of the Song of Ice and Fire story turned out to be. Never forget — when the actor who played Bran, Isaac Wright-Hempstead, received the script for the final season, he thought someone was playing a joke on him.

Season two went out of its way to confirm that Daenerys Targaryen is the oft-prophesied Prince(ess) who was Promised. That’s great, but she ended up dying after destroying the largest city in Westeros. What exactly was the point of this prophecy? Jon Snow ends up exiled, and Bran is King of Westeros.

These are things I don’t like to think about, but it seems like HBO might make them a point of emphasis in every Game of Thrones spin-off. If this is the actual end of the story, why should any fans of the series care about prequels, especially when they spend more time bringing up meaningless prophecy than they do fighting dragons?

The Walking`Dead had a slightly similar issue until recently. The show’s main character, Rick Grimes, left the show with the promise he’d eventually return to for Walking Dead movies. Those movies never happened, but he did return for a new spin-off show, The Ones Who Live, that wrapped up his story. His departure helped lay the groundwork for The Walking Dead to end though, as even more fans left the show behind. It’s similar to Game of Thrones fans, who need a little bit more closure than Jon Snow walking into the wilderness, and Bran suddenly being proclaimed king.

3 HOTD has a price tag that might be hard to justify

It’s easy to see why HBO would slow down on Game of Thrones content

HBO

House of the Dragon is in rare air when it comes to how much it costs to make. At over $20 million per episode, the show’s second season doesn’t have many comparable shows. Stranger Things and The Rings of Power both cost more, but that’s because Stranger Things has been paying its cast top dollar to return for more seasons, and Amazon is paying the Tolkien estate a small fortune to make The Rings of Power. The Walking Dead’s final season cost $12 million per episode.

The money HBO spends on House of the Dragon ends up on the screen, but that’s a troubling fact following a wildly expensive second season that was met with critiques that it was boring and lacked action. The series’ showrunner, Ryan Condal, even revealed that budget concerns played a role in season two lacking action. But it turns out it’s just very expensive to shoot Game of Thrones series. Between filming at European castles, story-accurate costumes for massive casts, and a huge VFX budget just for the dragons, it’s not hard to see how these shows get so expensive.

HBO may already be trying to cut some costs with the next series. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will only have six episodes in its debut season, which should help keep costs lower. It’s also set in a timeframe where there are no dragons in Westeros, which should help to drastically lower the CGI budget. That’s important because the next season of House of the Dragon, currently expected in summer 2026, will likely need quite a bit of money to film the multiple battles that were set up in season two. Any drop in quality though would be immediately noticed by the series’ eagled-eyed fans. You can check out the first look at the series in the trailer below.

4 HBO can’t afford more Game of Thrones universe failures

What happens if massive audiences turn into just big ones?

HBO

HBO is beginning to line up Game of Thrones spin-offs, so we’ll eventually have one or two seasons of new content every year. There are currently two more planned live-action spin-offs in the works — one with no announced details and another about the Targaryens’ original conquest of Westeros. That’s to go along with a slew of animated prequels.

Here’s the problem — HBO hasn’t shown an ability to make this world compelling without a highly detailed blueprint from George R.R. Martin, which is going to have to change. Once they left the books behind in Game of Thrones, the series fell apart. House of the Dragon’s first season was able to focus on sparse details from the books about the Dance of the Dragons by covering two decades in its first ten episodes. When the second season slowed down to only cover a few months of the Targaryen war, the show needed to fill in backstory that didn’t exist in the books, and they struggled as badly as Game of Thrones did without Martin.

If they can figure out that problem, then maybe HBO can address the terrible ending that’s hanging over every one of those prequels currently in the works. Until they do, though, it’s easy to be pessimistic about the future of HBO’s signature IP. We all want the series to return to the heights of the first seasons of Game of Thrones, but it might just be on its way to becoming HBO’s version of The Walking Dead — a series that peaked in quality and viewership in its early seasons and never saw those heights again while steadily declining in quality and pop culture relevancy over a decade of spin-offs.