HBO's 6-Episode House Of The Dragon Replacement Is The Best Fantasy Show Of The Last 12 Years
Angel Shaw is a Lead Writer and Critic on ScreenRant's TV team, covering new-release and classic TV shows across all major streaming platforms. She has been a writer with ScreenRant since 2022 and specializes in Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and fantasy.
Angel holds a bachelor's degree in language interpreting and is passionate about all things culture and communication—especially in how it relates to popular media throughout history (from Shakespeare to Friends to Game of Thrones).
HBO's House of the Dragon is coming to a close, but its successor is all set up to be far superior. This is no small thing, since, much like Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon has been a significant hit. The show has its problems, especially with how it adapts the canon from George R.R. Martin's works, but it has performed well overall, and it will be sad to see it go. The primary consolation is that HBO already premiered its second Game of Thrones prequel series earlier this year, and it's actually just so much better.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms aired its six-episode first season through January and February of 2026, and it's no stretch to say this is something really special. Though set in the world of Game of Thrones and adapted straight from Martin's Dunk & Egg novellas, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is different in nearly every way from its parent series or House of the Dragon. Episodes are short, the soundtrack is quaint, and the central character is as simple as they come. All the same, this is easily one of the best fantasy TV shows we've seen in over a decade.
There's no denying that Game of Thrones is great, but it really peaked at about season 4. This installment aired 12 years ago in 2014, and earned a series-high of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. It wasn't a drastic drop in quality thereafter, but no subsequent seasons of Game of Thrones managed to achieve that level of success. The same is true for House of the Dragon, which, though good, never inspired that same sort of emotional high among audiences. This isn't a challenge faced exclusively by the Game of Thrones franchise, either. No offerings quite hit the spot.
It's interesting, therefore, that it would be A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms that would finally effectively follow up on Game of Thrones season 4. House of the Dragon matches the intensity of those early Game of Thrones seasons, while A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms heads in an entirely different direction. There's drama and thrills, certainly, but this series proves that things don't need to be delivered in rapid succession like Game of Thrones had us believe. Really, it's an important lesson for the genre as a whole.
A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms Brings a Much-Needed Change To The Fantasy Genre
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms effectively broke the wheel, as it were. The phenomenon that was Game of Thrones naturally inspired the wider fantasy genre to try to do the same, and the following years saw several intense, violent, shocking political fantasy offerings. Many were good, but none were truly great. Still, every network and streamer did all they could to duplicate exactly what Game of Thrones had gotten right, and the cycle continued.
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If anything came close to doing things exactly like Game of Thrones, it was House of the Dragon, but the thrill still didn't hit quite the same way. The fantasy genre went through a similar thing to the Superhero entertainment world—we were all just a bit fatigued. HBO came about with the absolutely perfect answer. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms proved that fantasy doesn't have to be painfully winding and complex. We don't need 1.5 hour-long episodes packed every second with dark (in fact, barely visible) fantasy violence.
Now that the Game of Thrones franchise, of all things, has demonstrated that there is more than one way to make an excellent fantasy TV show, the rest of the entertainment industry should follow suit. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' quaint, cozy aesthetic is sure to pop up left and right now, but the best outcome would be for networks to realize the value of being different. Perhaps the green light will be more easily given to projects that fall outside the norm, and another new best fantasy show of the decade can be declared before too long.
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A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms
- Release Date
- January 18, 2026
- Network
- HBO
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Peter Claffey
Ser Duncan 'Dunk' the Tall
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Dexter Sol Ansell
Egg
A new prequel entry in the sprawling Game of Thrones franchise, centered on a humble wandering knight and his clever young squire. The pair travel across a Westeros still ruled by a Targaryen dynasty, but far removed from dragonfire and dynastic war.
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House of the Dragon
8/10
- Release Date
- August 21, 2022
- Network
- HBO
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Prince Daemon Targaryen
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Fabien Frankel
Ser Criston Cole
Taking place about 172 years before the events of Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon tells the tale of the rise of the Targaryens, the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria.
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Game Of Thrones
10/10
- Release Date
- 2011 - 2019-00-00
- Showrunner
- David Benioff, D.B. Weiss
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Jon Snow
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Isaac Hempstead Wright
Brandon Bran Stark
Based on George R. R. Martin's ongoing A Song of Ice and Fire novel series, Game of Thrones is a fantasy drama set in the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos. It follows noble families like the Starks, Lannisters, and Targaryen vying for control of the Iron Throne while a rising threat from the undead looms in the North.
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