Westeros

Here’s an interesting scoop from Entertaintment Weekly: Finn Jones, best known to Game of Thrones fans as Ser Loras Tyrell, has landed the lead role in the Marvel-Netflix series, Iron Fist. The role of Danny Rand has had a lot of debate surrounding it in various corners of the media, but it looks like the studio has pushed back against that.

For those who don’t know, the character of Iron Fist was created in the 1970s when there was a fad for martial arts in pop culture—Bruce Lee, Kung-Fu, and the like—and Marvel dutifully looked to provide what people wanted. In the comics, Iron Fist is Danny Rand, an American who ends up becoming the pupil of a mystical martial artist in the hidden city of K’un-L’un. There he learned martial arts and gained supernatural powers by placing his fists in the heart of a dragon. Born to a wealthy family, Rand is a businessman by day, hero by night, who has long associations with Luke Cage (recently seen in Jessica Jones, and soon appearing in his own series) and other heroes such as Daredevil (notably, the first season of Daredevil featured easter eggs pointing to K’un-L’un and Iron Fist), the heroic group The Defenders (the ultimate goal of Netflix being a series featuring this group), the Avengers, and more.

For fans of the show, the question naturally arises: what does this mean for his role on Game of Thrones? It’s worth noting that the schedule for filming of these new Marvel series has been a bit in flux, due to the unexpected successes that they’ve had with shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones. In December, reports were that the show was scheduled to begin filming in April, with a shoot through to October; this happens to overlap the traditional filming dates of Game of Thrones, but it’s not proof that the actor’s not going to be involved in season 7 of the show.

Only time will tell…