When Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon debuts, there is one thing the people behind the show want the audience to know about the series' characters. There isn't going to be an Arya Stark-type character who is universally loved.
House of the Dragon is set about 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones, though the prequel does have several things in common with the show that inspired it. Right at the top of the list of similarities is that it appears that the main characters are all going to be vying to sit on the Iron Throne. There are also families that fans will be familiar with, including House Targaryen. However, it appears that this particular show may not have a real protagonist but rather it will have quite a few antagonists, and the audience will have to decide who to root for in the battle for the ruler of Westeros.
Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin recently sat down for an interview with The Hollywood Reporter where he made it clear that House of the Dragon isn't going to have a beloved character that the audience can get behind like Arya. "They're all flawed. They're all human. They do good things. They do bad things," he explained in the interview. The author added that the characters in the new HBO Max series are all going to be driven by a lust for power and a sense of jealousy. He also said that he believes this makes them both extremely human and exactly like the characters he wrote about in his books.
That of course, means they are as similar to regular humans as one can be in a world where magic and dragons are real. It should be pointed out that in the original Game of Thrones there were certainly characters like Arya who were well-loved, but they also weren't perfect people. Arya herself killed more than her fair share of people in her quest to get revenge on those who harmed her family.
It could be that even Martin has idealized Arya Stark in his own mind and thinks of her as a better person than her character really was. It could also be that the people who will star in House of the Dragon are just that much worse when it comes to what they'll do in order to try and capture the Iron Throne.
House of the Dragon premieres on HBO Max on August 21st, 2022.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter