Game of Thrones cut A Song of Ice and Fire’s biggest Targaryen twist (so far) when it didn’t include Young Griff, aka Aegon Targaryen, but it was the right choice for the series. George R.R. Martin’s books are full of characters and plot lines that didn’t factor into the HBO TV show and, of course, his novels were infamously overtaken en route to Game of Thrones’ ending. All of these deviations had a ripple effect, including the choice not to include Aegon.
In the books, it’s revealed that Aegon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar, is still alive when Tyrion sails on a ship with him in A Dance with Dragons. In Game of Thrones, this story doesn’t happen and Aegon/Young Griff is never introduced, and the entire storyline is pretty much cut. That may have been a disappointment for some book readers but, given where the show was headed (and what the upcoming Game of Thrones spinoffs are doing), I think it was a smart choice.
A Song Of Ice & Fire’s Aegon Targaryen Twist Explained
The First Son Of Rhaegar Targaryen Is Still Alive (Maybe)
Both Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire tell the same initial story about Aegon Targaryen, son of Rhaegar and his first wife, Elia Martell. At the end of Robert’s Rebellion, following Jaime Lannister slaying the Mad King, Gregor “The Mountain” Clegane entered King’s Landing and killed Aegon, his sister Rhaenys, and their mother. That’s where Thrones ends things, but A Dance with Dragons adds a new twist to the story.
As Tyrion sails for Volantis alongside Young Griff and his ostensible father, Griff, it’s revealed they are actually Aegon Targaryen and Jon Connington (a close friend of Rhaegar, one-time Hand of the King to Aerys II, and an exile from Westeros). The story goes that Varys paid for an infant from a tanner of King’s Landing in exchange for wine, and swapped the babies before Gregor got his hands on Aegon. After the death, Varys smuggled the real Aegon across the Narrow Sea, where he was raised by Illyrio Mopatis and then Jon Connington.
There are doubts about whether Young Griff is really Aegon Targaryen, and theories he’s perhaps a Blackfyre pretender…
Heading into The Winds of Winter, Aegon has his eyes on the Iron Throne. He’s landed in Westeros, and has the sellsword group the Golden Company at his back. He’s been raised to be the perfect prince, and hopes to become the perfect Targaryen king, too. However, there are doubts about whether Young Griff is really Aegon Targaryen, and theories he’s perhaps a Blackfyre pretender (a thought-extinct house that was a branch of House Targaryen). Real or fake, he’ll be an important part of the story, but wasn’t needed for Game of Thrones.
Why Game Of Thrones Was Right To Cut Aegon Targaryen/Young Griff
Young Griff Would’ve Been Too Big A Distraction
The very fact that Aegon could well be fake (dubbed fAegon as the theories go) shows why Game of Thrones was right to cut him. It’s not impossible George R.R. Martin himself revealed this already to showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss when mapping out the future to them, which could have influenced their decision to cut him. Even if that didn’t happen, uncertainty over his true identity would make it harder to include him in the show and do it justice, because it could feel like a waste of time across a few hours of TV, rather than hundreds of book pages.
[Aegon is] a relatively late-in-the-day plot twist, coming in the fifth of Martin’s planned seven novels, and while there’ll be a serious impact from him, he’s unlikely to be someone around at the end of the show.
Even in the books, Young Griff feels like a bit of a distraction. He’s a relatively late-in-the-day plot twist, coming in the fifth of Martin’s planned seven novels, and while there’ll be a serious impact from him, he’s unlikely to be someone around at the end of the show. That’s fine for the books and something Martin could do very well, but also reflects how, even at this point, the books have continuously been expanding. For Game of Thrones, it would have been harder to successfully do that twist, for various reasons:
It relies on ensuring viewers are familiar with Aegon and Jon Connington enough to understand the twist in the first place and then care about the story after it, which itself isn’t straightforward when there’s so much going on.
If Aegon is indeed a fake, then it has to potentially trick viewers only for a rug-pull later on, all for a character introduced in season 5. Alternatively, it would need to be up front about it from the get-go, which then feels like a needless distraction and reduces the need to care about it.
Fake or real, it introduces a battle over Targaryen succession with Daenerys that then removes that same conflict from the Jon Snow story, and requires major changes to other storylines (such as Cersei Lannister’s, given she takes the Iron Throne, and that risks changing or cutting short one of the show’s best character arcs and performances).
It’s a major expansion of Game of Thrones’ cast, crew, and locations at a point when the show was already incredibly vast, production-wise, and there were already a lot of characters for viewers to keep track of and storylines for the writers to juggle.
It would add multiple seasons to the show. Game of Thrones had problems fitting everything in to its eight seasons as it was, so even if it stretched to, say, season 9 or 10 with Young Griff, those problems aren’t removed. Instead, it’s looking at more than 10 seasons, which seems impossible for a show of its scale.
This is a surprise reveal that a character is still alive, and while it’s technically not someone coming back from the dead, it could reduce the impact of something like Jon Snow’s resurrection. If not, it would certainly risk harming the impact of Jon Snow’s Targaryen parentage, since the reveal of him being called Aegon Targaryen and being the secret son of Rhaegar Targaryen wouldn’t be as unique if there had already been another Aegon Targaryen who is the secretly still-alive son of Rhaegar Targaryen in the story (which adds more fuel to the idea Young Griff is a fake).
Ultimately, while I am interested in where Martin takes the Aegon/Young Griff story, I just don’t see a way it realistically works on a TV show. It’s a lot easier in a book where there’s no real limit to pages, characters, or imagination, and where we can get inside the heads of characters to understand things a lot better. There are parts of this story that I love, too – Arianne Martell is one of my favorite book characters missing from the show, and is about to become wrapped-up in it – but I think including it would’ve hurt the show more than cutting it did.
Game Of Thrones’ Spinoffs Include A LOT Of Aegon Targaryens
It Risks Making Young Griff Even More Confusing
Young Griff, or Aegon Targaryen, in Game of Thrones would’ve caused confusion anyway, but he would also make looking at the broader franchise more difficult too. It’s an old complaint that too many characters have the same or similar names, and nothing exemplifies that like Aegon. Although Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow spinoff isn’t happening – meaning there’s one less Aegon Targaryen in the mix – the franchise’s future is still full of characters carrying that name to an almost absurd degree. Based on what HBO has planned, then there’ll be at least four Aegons with important roles going forward.
Two of those we’ve already met: King Aegon II Targaryen, and his cousin, Aegon the Younger (son of Rhaenyra and Daemon). Aegon II is well-established in House of the Dragon, but will continue to have a major role going forward. The other, meanwhile, should take on greater prominence as things progress, meaning more potential for confusion.
Before House of the Dragon returns, there’ll be another Aegon, appearing in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Based on George R.R. Martin’s The Tales of Dunk & Egg series, it follows a hedge knight, Ser Duncan the Tall (aka Dunk), and his squire, Egg. Except… Egg is actually the boy who will become King Aegon V Targaryen. Because of the show’s timeline and place in history, it will also likely need to make viewers familia with King Aegon IV Targaryen too, as his decisions to have consequences that last down to the story, though he won’t appear on-screen.
If all that weren’t enough, HBO is also developing an Aegon the Conqueror spinoff with The Batman co-writer Mattson Tomlin, though it has not been ordered to series (yet). Your favorite Aegon’s favorite Aegon, he’s the one who started all of this in the first place, after whom multiple subsequent Targaryen kings have been named, and that could be a major show for the network.
Add in Game of Thrones revealing Jon Snow is also named Aegon Targaryen, and I’m left feeling like there surely isn’t enough room left for Young Griff to factor in. It’s bad enough trying to get audiences to distinguish between Rhaenyra, Rhaena, and Rhaenys (another of whom will be introduced in the Conquest show), let alone 5-6 characters with the exact same name, most of them kings, several of them having the same crown and/or sword, in the span of three or four shows. It’s a lot, and just makes me more convinced cutting Young Griff was the right call.