On a starry night during an episode of Star Wars Rebels, the show’s hero, Ezra Bridger, came face to face with a Loth wolf, a mythical creature that could do things that most wolves couldn’t, like talk and run at the speed of light. We’d seen wolves like these once before. Not on Hoth, Tatooine, or Alderaan. But in Winterfell.
Just look at the resemblance. The Albino coat. The penetrating stare. The complete indifference to the human struggle taking place before it.
As it turns out though, these galactic direwolves aren’t the only similarity the world in Game of Thrones has with that galaxy far, far away.
Much like George Lucas’ space epic, the story of Thrones starts somewhere in the middle, with wars already having been fought, a backstory from a previous generation and a history dating back thousands of years. There are endless worlds and characters, betrayals and alliances, and despite the vast distance between the seven kingdoms that mirrors the reach of an entire galaxy, everyone just happens to be related.
So, when it was announced that Game of Thrones creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff were going to write and produce a new Star Wars trilogy, it felt like a prophecy had been fulfilled. Not by Yoda or the Three-eyed Raven, but an astute fan on Reddit.
It made a lot of sense. The Skywalker legacy is coming to an end in 2019, and that’s bad for Star Wars. Most of the success of the prequels, and to a lesser extent the new trilogy, came from a curiosity to find out what happened before and after the original films. And with all the added spinoffs and TV shows, the franchise was inevitably going to experience some fatigue. In fact, it already has, considering how much fans hated The Last Jedi and didn’t even bother watching Solo.
Change was needed, and it came from the same minds that brought us white walkers and ice dragons.