This is kind of a rhetorical question because the answer is obviously the legwork that was done long before GoT was on HBO, but the comparisons between Stranger Things and Game of Thrones really got me thinking about it. Well that and the premier of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms on the horizon.

Game of Thrones completely botched its ending and spent the better part of two years disappointing the majority of its fan base, whereas Stranger Things had a pretty bad final season that concluded what many consider a pretty great finale. Yet here I sit, feeling the opposite about the two franchises overall. Despite that awful ending, I have still clung to everything GoT has thrown at me since. House of the Dragon is excellent and I can't wait for Knight. When I think about Stranger Things, though, I'm not sure I can find a single give-a-damn in my body for a spinoff show.

Maybe there's not any other answer here to dig into, but I'm curious what others think about it. What has made Game of Thrones so lasting for so many of us? How did the franchise manage to keep us locked in despite being known for the most disappointing ending in TV?

GoT ... has it all - fantasy, romance, action, politics, scandal, family, hope, fear ... everyone can find something about it that they can relate to ... or in program vernacular - "bend a knee" to.

Edited January 6Jan 6 by MAG
miss-type

Because the Game of Thrones finale was good and one day everyone will finally accept that!

But more seriously... certainly in comparison to Stranger Things, there's a much richer world here. ST had a more limited scope and mythology - the Upside Down (and later The Abyss) was directly tied to the core characters we care about. There's maybe more it can explore with things like The Philadelphia Experiment from the stage play, or other gates in other countries or something, but it's hard to care because what really mattered were those kids in that specific place at that specific time. When it tried to expand beyond Hawkins, like with the Russia story in S4 or El finding Kali in S2, we got some of the weakest parts of the entire series.

Thrones' characters were obviously crucial too, but it was much more expansive with so many different houses and locations, each with their own histories, and there's thousands of years of lore to draw upon in a world that people loved spending time in. They played it smart with HOTD because it's "you like Targaryens? you like dragons? you like the Iron Throne and all the politics and scheming that come with it? Here's all of that in one story, that actually has an ending!" (and while S2 received some backlash, I don't think it was enough to significantly damage things).

It'll be very interesting to see how A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is received by viewers (I've no doubt reviews will be strong), because it is something different in terms of the scale and scope of it. That for me will be the greater proof of how much life there is to the franchise, or if we'll just get a dragon show every few years, like the plan for Aegon's Conquest.

I also think HBO has been quite admirably restrained in its approach, because it would've been easy to do the MCU or Star Wars approach we saw when Disney+ kicked off by quickly throwing a bunch of different shows out there. Sure, we're getting two this year for the first time, but that's after nothing in 2025, and nothing else has officially been ordered, even if they've developing a lot of ideas.