Fall is coming

Here we go again.

The world of Westaros is back as the "Game of Thrones" prequel series, "House of the Dragon," finally premiered this weekend.

Taking place nearly 200 years before the events of the first show, "House of the Dragon" promises another round of fantasy-themed political drama, this time with even more dragons running around.

It's hard to believe that it's already been more than a decade since the first episode of "Game of Thrones" aired on HBO.

So much has changed since then.

During the original show's prime, it was the most pirated show on the internet, largely due to a lack of legitimate online availability. It wouldn't be until the final seasons that HBO wised up and offered a streaming option.

In contrast, Sunday's premier of "House of the Dragon" simultaneously aired on both HBO and HBO Max, with the latter reportedly crashing for some viewers as the streaming service struggled to keep up with demand.

The successful start must be welcome news for the showrunners. It's been difficult to properly gauge interest in this project. Though "Game of Thrones" was a pop culture juggernaut at its peak, the last couple seasons of the show didn't exactly leave all its viewers with positive feelings and the franchise seemed to abruptly fall out of the public consciousness shortly after the credits rolled.

There was no guarantee that people would come back for more, but here we are.

I confess I wasn't particularly looking forward to this show. If I didn't already have HBO Max I wouldn't have re-subscribed just to watch it. But since I do have a subscription running, I may as well give it a watch if only to join in on the inevitable fan discussion.

Will "House of the Dragon" reach the same heights that its predecessor reached? Probably not, but who can say?

More importantly though, how much spotlight will the show retain when in direct competition with "Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" premiering in just a few days?

That's right. We're going to have not one, but two high profile fantasy dramas running concurrently across September and October. And both are, oddly enough, prequel series to immensely popular book adaptations.

It's a good time to be a fan of the classic fantasy genre.

Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and hopes he'll be able to keep track of both shows without getting confused about who is doing what.