HBO has released a new video clip detailing the themes and flavor of the upcoming season third season.
I’m not the only fan eagerly waiting the return of what has become perhaps the best modern fantasy television serial, Game of Thrones. The upcoming third season will cover the events of roughly the first half of the third book in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin, upon which the series is based.
Those of us who have already read the books know what’s coming. This time in the epic tale is very much about reversals of power and great sacrifices. Lots of new faces join the cast to replace those who have perished (or who will soon) and to complicate the plots already in place. This promo offers us a brief behind-the-scenes look at the show interspersed with some snippets of interviews with the cast and crew, including showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. It’s free from spoilers however, unless you count some very broad strokes that I’ve already mentioned here.
This isn’t the first time that Benioff has mentioned that this season is the one that they’ve really been looking forward to doing. He’s stated in previous interviews that the actions of the third book in the series were what made him think that the story would make a truly revolutionary television show. It likely means that this will be the most intense season so far, but hopefully it doesn’t mean that the show will drop in quality after this season is over. I doubt it, but if Benioff and Weiss decided that they got in the bits they wanted, and decide to move on to something else, the show will surely suffer.
Really, I just wish I didn’t have to pin all my hopes for fantasy television on this one show. There is no reason that there couldn’t be more shows just as good as Game of Thrones, with the same level of writing and the same sweet production values, either based on other book series (I wouldn’t mind a Wheel of Time series) or original stories. Now that Game of Thrones has shown that good serialized fantasy drama can be done of television, there is no excuse for it still being the only show of its kind nearly three years later.
Season three of Game of Thrones begins Sunday March 30, 2013 on HBO.
