Also pricey-looking? HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. It didn’t cost nearly as much as Rings, but—thanks largely to advances in CGI—looked pretty as hell. It had to, because this year, two of the biggest fantasy franchises of all time, the brainchildren of Tolkien and George R. R. Martin, went head-to-head, and one of them seemed destined to come out on top. Except, none did. Perhaps this isn’t the right take. As Ben Lindbergh wrote in a piece for the Ringer earlier this year, pitting these shows against one another is a little foolish. They are not in “a death match,” as Martin pointed out. Rings is far more fanciful, full of elves, dwarves, orcs, and the like. Dragon has none of those, but it does have a lot more bloody gruesome births and incest. Rings could almost be a family show; Dragon is not—unless you hate your kids. Still, viewers don’t have to pick one or the other, despite the discourse egging viewers on to do so. It could just be accepted that the end of 2022 was the golden age of fantasy, and that’s that. But that’s not really what’s at issue. The rub isn’t that no one victor came out on top; this isn’t Highlander. It’s that the two biggest fantasy franchises went head-to-head and conversation about both of them lasted about as long as a policy shift at Twitter. When Peter Jackson’s final Lord of the Rings movie, Return of the King, hit theaters in December 2003, people didn’t stop talking about it until 2005 (roughly). The Game of Thrones finale was god-awful, but at least people talked about how god-awful it was for months. It’s been less than two months since the House of the Dragon season finale aired, and it already feels forgotten. Perhaps, though, this is a sign of the times. Every other major fantasy release has come in a different world. Some before Facebook became Meta, others before Twitter was even born. A good TV show can stay in the discourse for a few weeks, but rarely for much longer. (Guys, Stranger Things season 4 was this year.) It would be incredible if one series was so mind-blowing that people couldn’t stop talking about it for weeks or months or even years. But maybe that’s just a fantasy.
