Game of Thrones is gearing up for its seventh season, which is set to debut in just a matter of days. With the new season comes the knowledge that the show is swiftly coming to an end — and that HBO is hard at work on follow-ups that capture its spirit. There are a handful of projects that are being worked on, but we don’t know which one(s) will see the light of day. However, a fan-made pilot set 400 years before the series is where the network should really consider taking things.
A series about Daenerys Targaryen’s ancestors
“Doom of Valyria” is an animated pilot specifically created to get HBO’s attention. It follows characters in the Freehold of Valyria, the ancient civilization where Daenerys Targaryen’s ancestors hail from, right before its collapse. Taking place centuries before Game of Thrones, we get to see what life among the dragonlords was like. (It turns out, it was just as dramatic and incestuous as anything in the TV show!)
The pilot is the work of YouTube’s Patrick McCarthy, the animator behind the Family Guy parody series “Stewie Potter.” “Doom of Valyria” took two years to complete, and it shows, from the style to the research pulled from A Song of Ice and Fire and The World of Ice and Fire. It’s hard to imagine HBO going out of its way to buy this effort, but it’s pretty clear that the period around the Doom is rich and full of potential stories. It would honestly be great to see something like this adapted into a live-action series.
