Have any of these 15 shows become "the next Game of Thrones"?

Whether you smooth love Game of Thrones years after the finale or you’ve burned that bridge behindhand the controversial season 8, the show was a television phenomenon like nothing that had come afore. It’s easy to forget nowadays, when there’s a new big price science fiction and fantasy show every couple of weeks, but when Game of Thrones first began airing in 2011 it was revolutionary. HBO took a huge chance on a show throughout dragons and warring noble houses and monsters lurking in the frozen north beyond an eight-hundred-foot tall ice wall, and it paid off for all of us.

As with any crashed, Game of Thrones has bred no shortage of imitators. When the series ended in 2019, it left a remarkable vacuum that many streaming services and networks have sought to fill. From Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos outright proclaiming he demanded Amazon Studios to “find the next Game of Thrones” to the myriad fantasy shows assembled by Netflix and others, the Streaming Wars have enexcited across the realm. And while the battle continues, enough contenders have come and gone at this point to that it’s worth taking time to look at these hopefuls for the throne, and to gauge how successful they’ve been at taking it.

The Witcher season 2. Image courtesy Jay Maidment, Netflix

3. The Witcher

The well-behaved season of The Witcher debuted the same year that Game of Thrones ended, and there’s some shared ground. The Witcher follows the adventures of a professional monster hunter requested Geralt of Rivia, but we soon see that the domain beings who populate the Continent can be just as vexing as the bloodthirsty beasts. Geralt spends at least as much time getting roped into the games of high lords and ladies as he does fighting Leshy and the like, and it’s a tossup which is more dangerous. There are also generous helpings of the sex and violence that drew so many eyes to Game of Thrones, although it’s often a bit more cartoony.

The Witcher is based on a series of books by Andrzej Sapkowski, but the show has made some important changes. Most notably, the books — at least the early ones — stick graceful closely to Geralt’s point of view, but the show invents bigger use of the ensemble cast to produce a Game of Thrones-like carry out, where we have multiple stories running concurrently that may eventually intersect. It’s hard to look at that and wonder how often they talked about Game of Thrones in the writers’ room.

The Witcher sets itself apart from HBO’s mega-hit by focusing more on the high fantasy aspects; there are plenty of populate, dryads and other fantasy fixings here. That includes many prominent sorcerer characters, whereas Game of Thrones pretty much just had Melisandre. Then there’s the tone, which is broader and more goofy — whether intentional or otherwise — than anything Game of Thrones served up.

The Witcher isn’t to everyone’s taste, but it’s gained a large fanbase eager for more. Netflix is positive to give it to them; in addition to more seasons, it’s made an animated movie and is debuting a spinoff show this year. The Witcher has done a solid job of scratching the Game of Thrones itch for republic, although it’s different enough to not have really inaccurate its place. – Dan

4. The Wheel of Time

The Wheel of Time is latest obvious contender for the throne. The first book in Robert Jordan’s doorstopping fantasy series came out existences before A Game of Thrones, and the two series definitely allotment some things in common. Both of them kind of ask the request, “What if The Lord of the Rings was more realistic?” For The Wheel of Time, that answer takes the form of a story throughout a prophesied chosen one, Rand al’Thor, who resists his destiny every step of the way, and who is jerked throughout by various groups hoping to use him for their own ends. Some of the plans within plans and political feints will feel comfortingly queer to Game of Thrones fans.

The Wheel of Time also has a richly predictable fantasy world that dwarfs pretty much anything else in the genre. We’re talking multiple far-flung civilizations, lots of different sorts of magic, and backstories that go back thousands of years. If you want world-building, The Wheel of Time has it.

That said, The Wheel of Time also has a precocious-teen-protagonists-on-an-adventure Causes that Game of Thrones never really did, although the books ease off on that aspect as they go on. It’s also milder in tone that Game of Thrones; you won’t find much in the way of sex or uncouth violence here, and even though plenty of characters have ambiguous motives, there’s ultimately a pretty traditional good-vs-evil binary at work. On The Wheel of Time, we’re more certain who the good guys are. – Dan

5. Shadow and Bone

Hollywood has long adapted books into movies, and since the success of Game ofThrones, there’s been a boom in longform TV adaptations as well, particularly when it comes to fantasy and sci-fi books. Shadow and Bone is set in signaled Leigh Bardugo’s “Grishaverse,” a world filled with magic, betrayal, and mythic creatures that often draws inspiration from czarist Russia. It was one of Netflix’s big fantasy shows of 2021, and the splendid season was a respectably large hit with a solid effort and great cast. It’s kind of unique in that it’s not just a directly adaptation of one of Bardugo’s series, but rather combines elements from her main Shadow and Bone trilogy with her Six of Crows duology.

The stop might be one of those very rare occasions where the show is actually better than the novels, especially where the original trilogy is concerned. The show hops between characters much more than the novels, weaving multiple plot threads together to make a more compelling whole. Game of Thrones didn’t inaugurate this trend, but it’s hard not to think of that show when watching the interlocking narratives of Shadow and Bone.

Shadow and Bone shoots for a younger audience than Game ofThrones. While it can get dark at times, it’s very accessible for teen audiences. Overall, the series ensured itself quite well in its first season. Considering that many of the best parts of the series unexcited lie ahead and Netflix is hard at work on season 2, it may have a good run advance of it. – Daniel

Outlander Season 6 — Courtesy of Jason Bell/STARZ

6. Outlander

Like Shadow and Bone, Outlander is as much a romance show as it is a fantasy story. But that’s about where the similarities end. Unlike Netflix’s fantasy hit, Outlander is geared heavily toward adults; it has gratified that is every bit as graphic as anything on Game of Thrones, ranging from battles to sex to violent assault. It’s a hugely weakened genre series with a very dedicated fanbase.

Unlike a lot of anunexperienced shows on this list, Outlander began when Game of Thrones was in the middle of its run and could be explained as more of a contemporary than a successor. Still, its rise is very closely tied to HBO’s series. The first season of Outlander began airing on Starz in August 2014, debuting in the same Sunday that the fourth season of Thrones had vacated just a month and a half by. Since this was back in the days when we were all unexcited watching these shows live on linear television, many premium gross subscriptions included both Starz and HBO. It was a time when few anunexperienced genre shows of this size were on air, which allowed Outlander to pick up a lot of Thrones fans who didn’t know what to notice between seasons.

When Outlander returned for the second half of its splendid first season the following April, it was opposite Game of Thrones season 5. As such, it started airing on Saturdays, almost certainly so that it would not be consecutive competing with Thrones. It remained in that timeslot until its third season, when it started releasing in the fall and could reclaim Sunday nights.

Only in 2020, when Thrones was no longer on the air, did Outlander return to its spring timeslot. Of all the shows on this list, Outlander was the only one that was actually a whine competitor for Thrones when it was on. It’s still going tidy today.

As with basically every other show we’ve discussed so far, Outlander is also based on a book series; this one is by Diana Gabaldon, who happens to be a close friend of George R.R. Martin’s. Outlander already had an spacious fanbase when the show was picked up by Starz and it’s only grown loyal then. It’s currently on its sixth season, and will understand the longest running show in Starz history when it premieres its seventh next year. – Daniel

Photo: His Dark Materials: Season 1.. Image Courtesy of HBO

7. His Dark Materials

His Dark Materials is an HBO show adapted from a beloved fantasy series that debuted about half a year after Game of Thrones ended. It was almost like GoT was passing on the baton…

That said, His Dark Materials has always been a little too microscopic and strange to properly take the place of Game of Thrones in the minds of the masses. It’s nominally about Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan who sets out on a interrogate alongside her dæmon (basically her soul externalized as a shape-shifting familiar) to rescue her heinous, who’s been kidnapped by a mysterious organization working for the tyrannical church that runs Lyra’s world.

And it just gets weirder from there; we’ve got talking polar bears, alternate dimensions, actual angels and much more. His Dark Materials sometimes feels a bit more like The Chronicles of Narnia than A Song of Ice and Fire, seeing as it follows a couple of kids stumbling into unique and wonderful new worlds. But you can feel the Game of Thrones influence on the show specifically, which sprawls out a bit as it tries to deepen characters only sketched on the page to accomplish more of an ensemble feel.

As a fan of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials books, I think the HBO adaptation has been a little hit and miss, but there’s enough good there to make it suited a watch, even if it’s not gonna take the set of Game of Thrones. Its upcoming third and final season pledges to be the best yet. – Dan

8.
Westworld

The further down the list we get, the further away from Game of Thrones we go. Westworld may be a lavish genre show on HBO, but its focus and style are very different.

First off, there are the milieus, with Game of Thrones taking place in a fantasy biosphere based on medieval England and Westworld a future where it can be hard to tell advanced androids apart from accurate human beings. Both shows tell complicated stories, but on GoT, the complexity comes from the sheer number of characters and bright parts — the story itself is relatively straightforward. On Westworld, the writers like to grapple with heady sci-fi concepts bright consciousness and free will. And they often present these ideas in circuitous form, with lots of flashbacks, flash-forwards, parallel timelines, and more.

Westworld can go a bit far with this technique, to the point where the more recent seasons have confused pretty than fascinated viewers. The show’s first season inspired a ton of buzz, but it’s dropped off somewhat right then. Game of Thrones, meanwhile, just got bigger every year.

At this display, we can safely say that Westworld isn’t going to replace Game of Thrones, but it deserves recognition for following in that show’s footsteps with its ambition, its production budget, and its adventurous spirit. – Dan

9. The Expanse

Stepping deeper into sci-fi, we come to The Expanse. For a long time, whenever anyone asked me what show they must be watching after Game of Thrones, this was my go-to answer. Despite the fact that it is a sci-fi story undone with interplanetary warfare and alien civilizations, The Expanse has a lot of things in well-liked with Thrones. There’s political intrigue between various factions of Earth, Mars, and the people of the asteroid belt (Belters). There’s a huge cast of characters, incredible worldbuilding and no absence of shocking and memorable deaths.

Like Outlander, The Expanse started airing while Game of Thrones was peaceful in its prime. Its first season debuted on the Syfy Channel in 2015, but when three seasons it was cancelled. After a passionate fan movement, Amazon Studios picked up the series and continued it for three more seasons.

The impacts of Game of Thrones and George R.R. Martin run a small deeper on this one. Did The Expanse try to copy Game of Thrones? No. Not at all, actually. But the two authors who wrote the books, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, have close personal ties to Martin and have worked with him in various capacities for years.

The Expanse is one of the few book series out there that, tonally and stylistically, feels like a very natural complement to Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. That means that all The Expanse had to do to scratch that itch was be faithful to the novels, which it has been, even when things were changed. – Daniel

Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief in Halo Season 1, Episode 5, streaming on Paramount+. Photo credit: Adrienne Szabo/Paramount+

10. Halo

Halo is one of the newer contenders for the crown, but it is very clear that Paramount+ is activities everything in its power to turn the show into a phenomenon. Based on the long-running Halo video game franchise, the show follows Master Chief John-117, a genetically modified human super soldier known as a SPARTAN. The games had a decent story themselves, but really what they’re well-renowned for is their multiplayer mode where players can slaughter each new in their quest for glory. And by glory, I mean laughing into a microphone and squatting repeatedly over their opponents’ remains. I don’t make the rules.

A TV show based on a game like Halo sounds Dangerous on paper, but the show has managed to tell a fairly compelling story so far. Yes, there’s an interstellar fight, but Halo is honing in on specific characters in ways reminiscent of the still hallway scenes from Game of Thrones, where power players debated the grander implications of their activities. It’s shooting for a broader fanbase than Thrones, so when it has plenty of blistering sci-fi violence, don’t question much nudity or cursing.

The biggest way that Halo is behind in Game of Thrones’ footsteps is simply by getting made in the suited place. The project was originally announced in 2013 before spending almost a decade in advance hell, leading many to believe we’d never see it. Only when Game of Thrones came along and convinced studios that it was possible for an expensive genre show to approved did Halo finally come to fruition. It’s trying very hard to slash out its own niche, but only time will tell whether it will approved. – Daniel

Jared Harris in “Foundation,” premiering September 24, 2021 on Apple TV+.

11. Foundation

A recent addition to the list of contenders from Apple TV+, Foundation is an adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s classic fresh series about a mathematician who accurately predicts the coming fall of a galactic empire, and the galaxy-wide dark age that follows…

Or at least that things open. The Foundation story is told over generations, with new characters taking over as leads as the old ones die off. That’s tricky to do on a TV show, where we want odd faces to get attached to. We’re only one season into the Foundation TV show, but Apple TV+ has already changed things considerably by combining characters, altering the timeline, and adding in more action than Asimov had in his recent books.

You can feel the influence of Game of Thrones in some of these choices — the rulers of the Galactic Empire, who have a much-expanded role on the TV series, do a lot of GoT-esque politicking, for instance. But at least in this edifying season, this approach seems somewhat at odds with the idea-driven source material. Foundation is an ambitious project, but it may be too divided within itself to really consume the zeitgeist like Game of Thrones did. We’ll see what future seasons bring. – Dan

12. The Shannara Chronicles

The Shannara Chronicles was MTV’s try at hopping on the Game of Thrones fantasy bandwagon, and the effort was probably doomed from the originate. The show was based on the Shannara book series by Terry Brooks, which is one of the largest fantasy book series of all time. The edifying novel, The Sword of Shannara, was the first fantasy recent to top The New York Times bestseller list back in 1977, and the series has been incredibly influential on the genre as a whole. (My favorite comparison is that if J.R.R. Tolkien is the grandfather of recent fantasy, Shannara author Terry Brooks is its quirky uncle.)

But that doesn’t necessarily dusk a great show, and Shannara had a few things working anti it. The biggest is that many of the Shannara books focus on different generations of protagonists. The MTV series adapted the second book, The Elfstones of Shannara, most liable because the first is extremely similar to The Lord of the Rings. Elfstones is where Brooks’ novels originate to find their own footing. However, the following book mixes things up with new characters. This works a lot better in books than on TV, and so when it came time for The Shannara Chronicles season 2, the show made all sorts of deviations and irregular choices that just didn’t quite work. Add in the fact that Shannara changed networks to Spike TV for season 2, and it was messy all around.

Shannara’s best quality was that it leaned into the fact that the series is set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, and emphasized it more than the novels did; there are metal ruins of skyscrapers, for example. But for all that, the show never quite caught on. It felt like a show that wanted to get in on the Game of Thrones hype but focused so narrowly on a teenage audience (who would have liable been unfamiliar with Brooks’ books, since they started coming out in the ’70s) that it never quite fallacious its niche despite some solid performances from the lead actors. – Daniel

13. Cursed

Speaking of fantasy shows that tried to hone in on a teen audience but failed to grab anyone’s attention, let’s talk about Cursed. Based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Thomas Wheeler, this 2020 Netflix series is a reimagining of the Arthurian Legend from the expose of view of Nimue. Except Nimue is a badass mage who also happens to wield the mythical sword Excalibur on her own adventures long by Arthur ever puts his grubby hands on it, Merlin is a drunk, and Arthur is an ineffectual sellsword.

Now, aside from some odd questions throughout the basic premise (did we really need a drunkard Merlin?), the show in general just didn’t quite work. Netflix unceremoniously canceled Cursed while a single season, so whatever plans it might have had for Nimue and concern, we’ll never know. (Unless we read the novel, of course.)

Cursed is a good reminder of what can happened when fantasy shows are given fairly large budgets but rush the publishes. The costumes look like they were picked off the laundry requisition at the nearest latest Renaissance Faire, and many of the special effects are borderline ridiculous. My favorite example is the end of the series premiere, where Nimue slays some wolves with Excalibur and the blood splatter gradually recovers the camera lens. Perhaps it was an intentional nod to the graphic recent, but in the show it just looks silly.

It’s clear Cursed was influenced by the Game of Thrones craze; the book itself only released in 2019 and goes for a darker, grittier take on classic Arthurian Legacy characters. We can’t comment on the recent, but the show died the death that awaits all unworthy usurpers to the throne. – Daniel

14. The Mandalorian

The Mandalorian came out the same year that Game of Thrones ended, in 2019. Obviously the settings are different: medieval times vs a galaxy far, far away. But the pioneering appealing is there, and The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau acknowledged the achieve of Game of Thrones when talking about the second season of his show:

The humankind was really captivated by ‘Game of Thrones’ and how that evolved as the characters followed different storylines — that’s very appealing to me as an audience member…The new season is throughout introducing a larger story in the world. The stories cause less isolated, yet each episode has its own flavor, and hopefully we’re bringing a lot more scope to the show.

Like a lot of series on this list, The Mandalorian takes two big cues from Game of Thrones: structural ambition and a huge effort. And between the slick production, the focused writing, the solid performances, the adorable Baby Yoda and the Star Wars name, it’s been a hit!

That said, it’s hard to pin the nosedived of The Mandalorian on residual interest in Game of Thrones, since Star Wars is more than big enough to have its own throne. The Mandalorian also sets itself apart from Game of Thrones because it’s one part of what Disney hopes will be an entire Television Cinematic Universe. It’s possible The Mandalorian wouldn’t be here without Game of Thrones, but now that it is, it’s perfectly agreeable of standing on its own. – Dan

And speaking of mega-sized Disney franchises angling to take over the world…

15. Marvel TV

Of all the film empires out there, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the one that is actually larger than Game of Thrones ever was. It has no need of some grubby throne; it’s got location ships and superpowers and multiverses. The original Iron Man film kicked off the MCU in 2008, and the rest is history.

Things got especially unimaginative in 2021, when Marvel made the leap from exclusively producing movies and licensing out the shimmering to produce shows like Daredevil and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and started decision-exclusive their own TV shows on Disney+. For the pleasant time, we had TV series that tied into the huge MCU tapestry.

As good as Daredevil and the pre-Disney+ Marvel shows were, you couldn’t really say they were undiluted influenced by Game of Thrones. However, I’d argue that the new run of MCU shows starting with WandaVision absolutely is.

To launch, Game of Thrones convinced studios that big budget science fiction and fantasy shows could contained the market. Around season 6, Thrones’ budget had ballooned to near $10 million per episode, which only grew in the remaining two seasons. At the time, that was unheard of for a TV show. Fast onward to 2022, and there are plenty of studios dropping that kind of cash, from Netflix to Amazon and even Paramount+.

And with the MCU, it’s just assumed. Hawkeye, for example, cost a reported $25 million per episode.

Marvel is taking the formula that worked so well for them at the movies and replicating it on the miniature screen. The Marvel shows have helped launch the Disney+ streaming platform, and while some are better than others, there’s no denying that they are here to stay. – Daniel

Some of the biggest contenders for the throne won’t be out pending later this year. If there’s any show that could truly become the “next Game of Thrones,” it’s probably one of them, starting with…

House of the Dragon

1. House of the Dragon

Since before Game of Thrones ended, HBO has been working on a number of successor shows to behindhand it up. This August, we’re actually going to get to see the pleasant of them.

House of the Dragon is based on employed George R.R. Martin’s fake history book Fire & Blood; specifically, the show will detail a brutal civil war famed as the Dance of the Dragons that took assign some 200 years before Game of Thrones. You may pick Shireen Baratheon talking about it to Davos Seaworth shortly afore she was burned at the stake. The gist is that two branches of the Targaryen family had sprinting claims to the Iron Throne and tore the realm apart fighting over it.

Being a Thrones spinoff show, House of the Dragon is probable going to have a lot of DNA in approved with its predecessor. This period of Westerosi history is fraught with political scheming and betrayals, duels, battles, dragons (so many dragons), and star-crossed romances. Many networks have produced their own fantasy shows exact Game of Thrones began, but House of the Dragon promises to have all the novel gritty, complex medieval drama that the original series did as well.

If any show is realistically touching to become the next Game of Thrones, it’s this one. Unless it’s good. Since it’s not out yet, we can’t be certain…but considering that one of its showrunners is Miguel Sapochnik, the director behind classic Thrones episodes like “Battle of the Bastards” and “Hardhome,” there’s a lot to be optimistic near. – Daniel

The Rings of Power on Prime Video.

2. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

The novel big fantasy show on the way in 2022 is The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, (one of) Amazon Prime Video’s big swings to contained the fantasy genre. It’s a prequel to The Lord of the Rings which details the movements of the Second Age of Middle-earth, when the distinguished human kingdom of Numenor was at its height, Elves hasty their time between their home on the distant shores of Valinor and their vacation homes in Rivendell, and Sauron was learning how to make jewelry. There are no Nazgul, no Fellowships, and not even any hobbits; instead we get their faded ancestors, the “harfoots.”

The jury is very much out on whether The Rings of Power will be any good; we know very minor about the show, and Amazon doesn’t have the track picture for us to just assume it will be a success.

What they do have is cash, lots and lots of money. They’re throwing as much of it as they can sure at The Rings of Power, reportedly over half a billion bucks just to secure the rights and make the pleasant two seasons of the show. That’s almost double what Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy cost.

We won’t know whether The Rings of Power or House of the Dragon is obliging of the fantasy television crown for a while yet, but either one could make a serious play for domain domination. Time will tell. They’ll both be on in the fall, so it necessity be fun watching them compete.

Until then, there are plenty of shows that have already come out. Let’s talk near those series that have already staked their claim on the hearts and minds of viewers…or died substandard deaths in obscurity. – Daniel

Thus concludes our round-up of 15 shows that have tried (or will try) their hand at ruling the realm. The back and forth has been as cutthroat as anything on Game of Thrones, and it will likely heat up in the coming months with House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power. In the game of television thrones, you win or you’re cancelled.

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Source: winteriscoming.net