The Ringer's Mallory Rubin: George R.R. Martin needs to stop writing Winds of Winter

If you're a Game of Thrones fan who listens to podcasts, you can probably conjure Mallory Rubin's voice in your head right now. For the past decade, Rubin has been analyzing and discussing George R.R. Martin's fantasy franchise and its TV adaptations across various feeds for The Ringer, where she also serves as director of content and co-hosts House of R with Joanna Robinson. Very few people on Earth have spent more time talking into a microphone about the world of Westeros.

So in our world, where seemingly everyone has an opinion about Game of Thrones, there was only one person I wanted to hear deliver a truly spicy take on the franchise for Polygon's Spicy Takes Cookout. Thankfully, Rubin was up for the challenge, and when we connected on a video call, she didn't hold back, unleashing an opinion that flies in the face of 15 years of Thrones fandom.

"George R.R. Martin should put down the pen and close the Winds of Winter document and not think about it again," Rubin tells Polygon.

Sacrilege? Maybe. Martin has been working on The Winds of Winter, the sixth entry in his planned seven-book saga known as "A Song of Ice and Fire" for the past 15 years. In that time, the show those books inspired, Game of Thrones, raced past the source material to an unsatisfying ending. As the years go on, the status of Winds of Winter has become both a meme among fans and a pesky question hurled at Martin pretty much any time he shows his face in public.

"I don't like to make George feel bad about this," Rubin says. "I think it really sucks that every time he does an interview it's like, George, what if you die or get grievously ill or wounded before you get to finish your book? Do you have contingency plans? What’s that about!? George has given us so many gifts. Let's stop asking him those questions. I think he should give himself a reprieve from that concern."

Image: Nick Briggs/HBO

So what should GRRM be doing instead?

"He should focus on writing the Dunk and Egg novellas," Rubin says.

Tales of Dunk and Egg is a series of novellas set about 100 years before A Song of Ice and Fire. It's also the source material for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which premiered on HBO earlier this year to critical acclaim with plans to drop a new season each year for the foreseeable future. But there's a catch.

"How many Dunk and Egg novellas currently exist, you might be asking? Three," Rubin explains with a hint of panic in her voice. "They're currently filming the second and that means there's only one piece of source material left. However, George R.R. Martin has said that he has, depending on the interview you check out, somewhere between 12 to 14 ideas for those novellas. We cannot, in good conscience and good faith, immediately within the span of three years, go back to, We're not working off source material anymore."

So while abandoning Winds of Winter might come as a shock to many, it would actually be a carefully calculated decision meant to keep A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms from venturing down the same dark path as Game of Thrones.

"You can imagine the headlines — it would be a scandal,” Rubin says. “It would be a crime. But I think it would be a bold and admirable decision for himself and for the fandom."

Image: Steffan Hill/HBO

At this point in our conversation, to play Devil's advocate and maybe coax a bit more spice out of what's clearly a very well thought out and logical argument, I point out that comparing Game of Thrones and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms in this way isn't exactly fair. Nobody knew how Game of Thrones would end, which made it easy for fan theories and speculation to set impossibly high expectations. To find out how the story of Dunk and Egg ends, all you have to do is Google it. That takes a lot of the pressure of both Seven Kingdoms showrunner Ira Parker and Martin himself.

But maybe not. Rubin counters that aside from a couple of lines in the illustrated companion guide The World of Ice & Fire and a few stray mentions in other books, we know almost nothing about how Dunk and Egg's story ends. (If you want spoilers, look up "Summerhall." If not, keep reading.)

"Just knowing that happens isn't enough," Rubin declares. "We have to know how. We have to know what leads Egg to that point. The question of how is one of the things I am most excited as a Thrones fan to find out and understand in full. And I would just frankly love the gift of George R.R. Martin helping me travel that road. And I think he would really love to give that to us. So I want George to be happy, and I want Thrones readers and viewers to be happy."

One last argument in favor of Mallory Rubin's very spicy but also totally coherent Game of Thrones take: writing novellas is a lot easier than writing a 1000-page tome.

*"*As badly and desperately as I want Winds of Winter, and as much as I believe that George will finish Winds of Winter and that it will have been worth the wait, however long the wait winds up being, the Dunk and Egg novellas are a couple hundred pages," Rubin says. "If you boot one up on an e-reader or an audiobook app, it's like a three-hour read. I'm not saying it's easy. I think it's probably super hard. But I'd like to think that if George banged out a couple Dunk and Egg novellas, he might be right back at it. Maybe it really helps him find the groove, rediscover a little bit of that rhythm and that pace."

Focusing on Dunk and Egg for a bit instead might even knock loose whatever obstacle is giving Martin writer's block and help him finally finish The Winds of Winter.

"This is how we get back on track," Rubin says. "This is how we get to the end that we, and George, deserve."

And even if not, would that be such a bad thing? Maybe not.

"Will people forget about Winds of Winter? Probably not, but it buys everybody time, it buys everybody happiness, and it gives us a wonderful world to inhabit with characters who we are now incredibly attached to. I think it's a win. Let's put The Winds of Winter away."