How Game of Thrones Changed Television Forever

When Game of Thrones premiered in 2011, television was in a weird place. The Golden Age of Television was supposedly in full swing thanks to shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, and Breaking Bad, but most of what was actually on television was still pretty conventional. Prestige dramas with antihero protagonists were the vogue, sure, but fantasy on television was still mostly relegated to genre channels and treated as second-class compared to drama. And big-budget spectacle on television was almost unheard of.

Then Game of Thrones arrived and changed everything. It proved that television could be just as cinematic and ambitious as film. It showed that complex, character-driven storytelling could sustain a fantasy narrative. It demonstrated that audiences had an appetite for shows that weren’t afraid to kill major characters and subvert expectations. And it became such a massive cultural phenomenon that it essentially forced every network and streaming service to reconsider how they approached television.

The impact of Game of Thrones on television cannot be overstated. Even shows that came after it and explicitly tried to do something different were still responding to what Game of Thrones had done. The show raised the bar for production values, for narrative ambition, and for what audiences expected from prestige television. And while the show’s eventual decline might have damaged its legacy somewhat, its influence on the television landscape is permanent and profound.

The Spectacle Factor: Television Could Look Like Movies

Before Game of Thrones, if you wanted cinematic spectacle and large-scale action, you went to movies. Television was for intimate dramas and dialogue-heavy shows. There were action shows, sure, but they never had the budget or the technical sophistication to compete with what films could do. Television was inherently limited by its budget and its need to produce episodes on a weekly schedule.

Game of Thrones changed that equation. HBO gave the show an extraordinary budget for a television production—something like $10 million per episode by the later seasons. That was film-level budget for a television show. And the show used that money to create sequences that genuinely rivaled anything you’d see in a blockbuster film. The Battle of the Bastards cost more than some theatrical films and looked better than many of them.

This shifted the entire industry’s expectations. Networks and streaming services suddenly realized that viewers were willing to watch television that looked like cinema. The production values could be elevated. The action sequences could be elaborate. The sets could be massive and intricate. This opened the door for a new class of prestige television that competed with film in terms of visual ambition.

You can see this influence in shows like House of the Dragon, which inherited Game of Thrones’ budget and aesthetic. But you can also see it in shows across the industry that suddenly got bigger budgets and more cinematic cameras. The Rings of Power on Amazon, the Marvel TV shows on Disney+, even traditional dramas started investing more heavily in production values. Game of Thrones proved that viewers would reward television that looked as good as anything in cinemas.

Killing Major Characters: Subverting Expectations

In traditional television, the main character doesn’t die before the series ends. There are exceptions—shows like The Sopranos played with expectations—but the general rule is that your protagonist gets plot armor. You invest in them because you know they’ll be around for the journey. That’s part of the implicit contract between show and audience.

Game of Thrones broke that contract in season one by killing Ned Stark, one of the apparent protagonists, halfway through the first season. And not in some noble, climactic way—he gets his head chopped off because he was honorable and naive. It was shocking and upsetting and wrong, in the best possible way. Audiences weren’t sure if this was a genuine narrative choice or a mistake.

But the show kept doing it. Major characters died. Sometimes they were resurrected. Sometimes they just stayed dead. By the time the show ended, it had killed more major characters than most shows had main cast members. This unpredictability became core to the show’s appeal. You couldn’t assume anyone was safe. Any character could be taken at any time. That meant everything that happened to those characters mattered more because there was no guarantee of their survival.

This had a huge influence on television. Suddenly, other shows started killing characters who were more prominent or supposedly more important. Shows like The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, and others took the lesson that killing major characters could be narratively powerful. Television became less predictable. Audiences couldn’t rely on plot armor to keep their favorite characters alive. And while this led to some excess (some shows killed characters just to seem edgy), it also generally elevated television storytelling by making stakes feel genuine.

The Ensemble Cast as Narrative Device

Game of Thrones was one of the first shows to really prove that an enormous ensemble cast could work in dramatic television. The show had dozens of significant characters spread across multiple continents, with different storylines that sometimes intersected and sometimes didn’t. Most shows have one protagonist or maybe two, and the supporting cast is secondary.

Game of Thrones treated multiple characters as co-protagonists. Jon Snow, Daenerys, the Starks, Tyrion, Cersei—these are all central to the narrative in different ways. And the show trusted that audiences would follow these multiple storylines and care about all these different characters. The structure was more novelistic than traditional television, which tends to prefer singular protagonists and clearer narrative hierarchies.

This worked because the show was taking on a novelistic form adapted from books. But it also proved that television audiences were willing and able to follow complex, multi-threaded narratives with large ensemble casts. This opened the door for other shows that were less concerned with having a single protagonist and more interested in exploring a world from multiple perspectives.

You can see this influence in shows like The Crown, which shifts protagonists as different monarchs come to power. You can see it in Succession, which builds its narrative around multiple competing power centers rather than a single hero. You can see it in The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon, both of which use multiple viewpoint characters to tell their stories. Game of Thrones proved that audiences wanted this kind of structural complexity, and it became a model for prestige television going forward.

The Fantasy Renaissance: Fantasy Is Respectable Now

Before Game of Thrones, fantasy on television was either campy sword and sorcery shows or relegated to Syfy and the fantasy channel. Fantasy wasn’t considered prestigious. It wasn’t where the serious storytellers went. When prestige actors wanted to do television, they chose dramas about lawyers, cops, or complex antiheroes. Fantasy was for B-movies and cult shows.

Game of Thrones changed that permanently. It proved that fantasy could be sophisticated, that it could appeal to adults, that it could have the kind of prestige and cultural weight of a serious drama. Suddenly, fantasy wasn’t a ghetto—it was a genre that serious storytellers could work in. George R.R. Martin was considered a major author. The show won Emmys. Critics took it seriously. It became a prestige television property.

This opened the floodgates. After Game of Thrones’ success, networks and streaming services suddenly wanted fantasy shows. Amazon invested billions in The Rings of Power. HBO created House of the Dragon. Netflix produced The Witcher and other fantasy properties. Shows like Sandman, The Dark Tower, American Gods, and countless others got greenlit because Game of Thrones proved there was an audience for prestige fantasy television.

The fantasy genre itself has been elevated by this. Serious actors want to be in fantasy shows now. Serious directors want to work on them. Major budgets are allocated to them. This has resulted in some genuinely excellent television, but it’s all downstream from Game of Thrones proving that fantasy could be prestigious.

The Streaming Wars: Where Everyone Wanted Their Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones’ unprecedented success demonstrated the value of prestige television as a draw for networks and streaming services. When Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and others started competing for dominance in streaming, they all wanted their own Game of Thrones—their flagship prestige drama that would attract subscribers and keep them engaged.

This led to massive investments in prestige television content. Amazon paid billions for rights to Tolkien’s Middle-earth universe to create The Rings of Power. Apple invested heavily in shows like Severance. Netflix built out massive budgets for shows like Stranger Things and The Crown. The prestige drama became a calling card for streaming services, and they were willing to spend extraordinary amounts of money to compete.

Game of Thrones proved that viewers would subscribe to a service and stay loyal to it for one great show. That lesson echoed through the industry as executives tried to replicate that success. Every network wanted the show that everyone would talk about, that would drive subscriptions, that would have that kind of cultural impact.

Whether Game of Thrones’ later seasons delivered on the prestige aspect is debatable, but the show had already changed the game by the time it started declining. The industry had learned the lesson and the infrastructure was in place. Prestige television budgets had been permanently elevated.

The Water Cooler Effect: Television as Cultural Event

Game of Thrones made television feel like an event again. After each episode, people would gather and discuss what happened. Fan theories proliferated. Think pieces were written. Social media exploded. Each season was an occasion for massive cultural conversation.

This wasn’t entirely new—shows like Breaking Bad had done this—but Game of Thrones did it on a scale and with a consistency that was remarkable. The show remained culturally dominant for nearly a decade. Every Sunday night (or whatever night a new episode aired) was a television event. People who didn’t normally watch television found themselves following Game of Thrones because it was simply impossible to avoid the cultural conversation about it.

This demonstrated to networks the value of must-see television in a world of on-demand streaming. It proved that people still wanted to watch television together, to experience it at the same time, to discuss it immediately afterward. This influenced how networks and streamers approached releases—some shows moved toward weekly episode releases rather than dumping entire seasons at once, specifically to try to recreate that water cooler effect that Game of Thrones enjoyed.

The show’s presence in popular culture was so dominant that it essentially defined the 2010s in television. When people think about television from that decade, they think about Game of Thrones. And that cultural dominance had a massive ripple effect on how the industry approached television—there was suddenly a premium on shows that could be events, that could drive conversation, that could dominate the cultural zeitgeist.

The Budget Escalation: Television Got Expensive

Game of Thrones had an enormous budget, especially by television standards. As the show progressed, the budget grew larger. Final season episodes reportedly cost between $15 and $20 million each, making it arguably the most expensive television show ever produced.

Before Game of Thrones, television budgets were typically much lower. A prestige drama might have a budget of $3-5 million per episode. Game of Thrones tripled or quadrupled that. And it was successful enough that networks and streamers started allocating much larger budgets to prestige television.

The result is that prestige television is now dramatically more expensive than it was in the pre-Game of Thrones era. The Rings of Power reportedly costs about $10 million per episode. House of the Dragon has a similar budget. The budget expectations for prestige television have been permanently raised. This is good for production quality but also means that there’s less room for risk-taking or experimental television. Only the most expensive, most “safe” properties get made now because the budgets are so high.

Game of Thrones essentially broke the television budget glass ceiling, and the industry responded by treating these budgets as normal for prestige television. Whether that’s ultimately good or bad for television is debatable, but there’s no question that Game of Thrones had a permanent effect on how much money gets spent on prestige television.

The Author’s Authority: Creative Control in Adaptation

Game of Thrones is based on George R.R. Martin’s books, and Martin’s involvement in the show, particularly in the early seasons, gave the show credibility and authenticity. The show had the author’s blessing and some of his creative input, which elevated it above typical book-to-television adaptations.

However, as the show progressed beyond the books and Martin was involved in multiple other projects, his involvement diminished. The show’s creators, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, took over complete creative control. This raised the question: should television adaptations of literary works be primarily guided by the author, or should television writers have creative autonomy?

The answer that the industry seemed to reach, at least partially, is that television can accommodate both. Authors can be involved for credibility and guidance, but television writers need freedom to make decisions that work for the medium. But Game of Thrones also demonstrated the downside of the author stepping back—the show’s final seasons were criticized for losing some of the complexity and depth that made the books special.

This has influenced how the industry approaches literary adaptations. There’s more awareness now that authors and television writers might have different priorities, and more thoughtful negotiation about the author’s role in adaptations. Some shows (like The Dark Tower) have struggled when the author’s vision didn’t translate to television. Others have succeeded by giving the television writers substantial creative freedom while keeping the author involved in an advisory capacity.

The International Television Market

Game of Thrones wasn’t the first international television sensation, but it was one of the biggest. The show was watched around the world, discussed globally, and became a cultural phenomenon across multiple continents. It proved that television could have truly global reach and appeal.

This influenced how the industry thought about international markets. Suddenly, it wasn’t just about creating shows for American audiences. Television could be made with international audiences in mind from the start. Streaming services, in particular, saw the value in making prestige television that would appeal globally, which led to investments in diverse storytelling and international productions.

Shows like Money Heist, Squid Game, and others came later, but they were only possible because Game of Thrones had proven that television audiences around the world were willing to invest in the same shows simultaneously. The globalization of television that we see now is partly a legacy of Game of Thrones’ international success.

The Endgame Problem: How Do You End Television Properly?

Perhaps one of Game of Thrones’ most important legacies, ironically, is the lesson that a show can stumble in its ending. The final season of Game of Thrones was widely criticized for rushing its conclusions, for character decisions that felt unmotivated, for spending eight seasons building to a payoff that didn’t satisfy audiences.

This had an effect on the industry. Showrunners became more aware of the importance of nailing endings. Networks became more cautious about giving creators unlimited time. There was increased emphasis on planning endings carefully and making sure that the payoff was worth the buildup. The phrase “Game of Thrones ending” became a shorthand for a disappointing conclusion to a beloved show.

Subsequent shows became more careful about their structures and endings. There was more planning for how long shows should run and what their conclusions should be. Some shows deliberately decided to end on their own terms while still popular rather than stretching out until audiences turned against them. Game of Thrones essentially gave the industry a master class in how NOT to end a show, and that’s had a real influence on subsequent television.

The Legacy: Complicated but Profound

Game of Thrones’ legacy is complicated by its disappointing final seasons. If the show had maintained its quality throughout all eight seasons, it would be unambiguously celebrated as one of the greatest television achievements. But even with the rocky ending, Game of Thrones fundamentally changed television. It proved that television could be cinematic, ambitious, and culturally dominant. It showed that complex storytelling could work on the small screen. It elevated fantasy as a respectable genre. It changed budget expectations and creative ambitions across the industry.

Shows made after Game of Thrones exist in a different landscape than shows made before it. The expectations are higher. The budgets are bigger. The ambition is greater. And while not every show that followed learned the right lessons from Game of Thrones—some tried to replicate its darkness and moral ambiguity without its character depth, for example—the fact remains that Game of Thrones transformed what television could be.

Whether that transformation is entirely positive is something the industry is still grappling with. The emphasis on prestige and budget has sometimes come at the expense of experimentation and risk-taking. The need for every show to be a potential Game of Thrones has led to some overcomplicated narratives and shows that bite off more than they can chew. But these are problems that exist because Game of Thrones raised the bar so high.

In the end, Game of Thrones changed television by proving what was possible. It showed that television could compete with film in terms of production value. It showed that audiences wanted complex, character-driven narratives even in fantasy settings. It showed that television could be a cultural event that brought people together. And it showed that when you swing for the fences, you might strike out spectacularly—but at least you’ll change the game for everyone who comes after you.