HBO’s House of the Dragon will wrap for good after four seasons.
Ryan Condal, showrunner for the Game of Thrones prequel, announced the news during a press conference on Monday, August 5, confirming that the show would officially end after two more seasons, Variety reported.
Condal said that season 3 is currently being written and will be filmed sometime in “earlyish 2025.” Season 2, which had its finale on Sunday, August 4, consisted of eight episodes. When asked if the next installment would match that number, Condal replied, “I haven’t had discussions with HBO about it. I would just anticipate the cadence of the show, from a dramatic storytelling perspective, will continue to be the same from Season 2 on.”
House of the Dragon takes inspiration from George R. R. Martin’s 2018 novel Fire & Blood. The ongoing series is set hundreds of years before the events of Game of Thrones and focuses on the ancestors of Daenerys Targaryen.
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Emma D’Arcy plays Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, while Matt Smith brings the role of her uncle Prince Daemon Targaryen to life. The show also stars Paddy Considine, Olivia Cooke, Fabien Frankel, Rhys Ifans, Sonoya Mizuno and Steve Toussaint.
Martin, who created the show with Condal, wrote on his blog in 2022 that he envisioned a TV adaptation of Fire & Blood’s “Dance of the Dragons” story would play out over four seasons, with 10 episodes each. Game of Thrones, based on Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books, ran from 2011 to 2019; another HBO prequel to that series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, is in the works.
While speaking with journalists Monday, Condal clarified why the Battle of the Gullet — a pivotal sequence in Fire & Blood — was not depicted in House of the Dragon’s season 2 conclusion.
“We were trying to give the Gullet, which is arguably the most anticipated — well, I would say maybe the second-most-anticipated — action event of Fire & Blood, trying to give it the time and the space that it deserves,” Condal said. “Obviously, as anybody that’s seen the finale, we’re building to that event. That event will happen very shortly in terms of the storytelling of House of the Dragon.”
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He teased, “Based on what we know now, it should be the biggest thing to date that we’ve pulled off. And we just wanted to have the time, the space to do that at a level that is going to excite and satisfy the fans and in the way it’s deserved.”
Condal “also wanted to build some anticipation toward” the battle, adding, “I know everybody wants this to come out every summer. It’s just that the show is so complex that we’re really making multiple feature films every season. So I apologize for the wait, but I will just say if Rook’s Rest and the Red Sowing are any indication, we’re gonna pull off a hell of a win with the Battle the Gullet in the future.”
As for the fleeting appearance of Ifans’ Otto Hightower, shown apparently as a prisoner, Condal said cryptically: “We were delighted to have Rhys reenter the story, and I will just say that the Otto Hightower tale has not yet come to an end.”
Seasons 1 and 2 of House of the Dragon are available to stream on Max.
