If you watched Game of Thrones because you loved to hate Ramsay Bolton, ABC and Marvel are hoping you’ll tune in for similar reasons to their upcoming Inhumans series. Knowing a good villain when they see one, Iwan Rheon — utterly despisable as Ramsey on the HBO blockbuster — has been cast in a leading role for the eight-episode series. According to The Hollywood Reporter‘s Lesley Goldberg, Rheon will play Maximus, who Marvel Comics fans know as the insane, evil brother of Black Bolt, ruler of the extraordinary mutated Inhumans and their kingdom of Attilan.

With a royal hierarchy being a foundational aspect of the mythology, a quick comparison many observers made for Inhumans was to Game of Thrones. So it’s presumably just as well that the series cast a prominent figure from the show that may provide a guiding influence.

Rheon being cast as Maximus would also seem to confirm that plenty of other familiar characters from the Inhumans comic books will be a part of the series. Black Bolt will presumably be part of the ensemble, as he was mentioned in the official release announcing the series last November, though it’s possible he won’t play a prominent role depending on story and budget concerns. His wife and queen of the Inhumans, Medusa, would likely be in the cast. Other characters associated with the Inhumans since their 1965 Marvel Comics debut are Gorgon, Karnak and Triton, all of whom have developed unusual and superhuman abilities as a result of their mutation. (Medusa, for example, has tensile hair, while Gorgon has hoofed feet and Triton is an amphibian.)

How much we’ll see of these characters and their abilities will likely depend on how far ABC and Marvel can stretch a broadcast television budget. (A personal favorite is Lockjaw, a giant bulldog type of creature who has the ability to teleport.)

The official Marvel Universe Wiki’s entry on Maximus may provide some idea as to what the storyline of Inhumans might be.

“Maximus was briefly the leader of the Inhumans while his brother, Black Bolt, went into exile, daring not to use his dangerous voice. Maximus believed that the Inhumans were the greater form of life on Earth and he set out to rule them and to destroy humankind to retake the planet. As their leader, he sent his fellow Inhuman Gorgon after Medusa, who was suffering with amnesia and working with the Frightful Four. She ran from Gorgon, but was soon captured when he and the rest of her Inhuman family caught up with her. Together, they returned to Attilan and faced the crowned Maximus.”

The report of Rheon’s casting seemed to imply that Maximus would be a lead character in the series. So if he took over Attilan while Black Bolt was in exile, that could keep some of the more extraordinary characters in the background initially, while also establishing the central conflict of Maximus wanting the Inhumans to overtake humanity as the dominant life form on the planet. However, the THR story indicates that Maximus may be working behind his brother’s back to sabotage his rule.

Inhumans is set for a fall premiere on ABC, but the first two episodes will first be shown in IMAX theaters for a two-week run. Filmed entirely with IMAX cameras, the series will be the first TV show to debut in that format and shown in commercial movie theaters. That could certainly be a sign that the budget for this series will be rather large for broadcast television and that ABC and Marvel have big ambitions in mind.

Making Inhumans as a TV series is seemingly a step down from Marvel’s original plans to make a feature film based on the premise. The movie was originally intended to be part of the studio’s “Phase Three” slate of films which began with last year’s Captain America: Civil War. The project was announced more than two years ago and scheduled for a Nov. 2, 2018 release. That date put Inhumans toward the end of Phase Three, shortly before the fourth Avengers film. But the production kept getting pushed back and was eventually taken off its schedule altogether, leading to speculation it had been canceled.

Instead, Inhumans has been refashioned as a TV series. Scott Buck is the show’s executive producer and showrunner. Previously, he held those same roles for Showtime’s Dexter and Marvel’s upcoming Iron Fist Netflix series. With Rheon’s casting, the show already looks more intriguing than it did a day ago.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

About Ian Casselberry

Ian is a writer, editor, and podcaster. You can find his work at Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He's written for Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation.