“House of the Dragon” fans are going to have to be patient to see how the story of the “Game of Thrones” prequel continues in Season 2.
While the HBO series, set 200 years before the events of “Thrones,” wrapped up its first season in October, it’s highly unlikely “House of the Dragon” Season 2 will be released next year, according to HBO and HBO Max chief Casey Bloys.
“Don’t expect it in 2023, but I think sometime in 2024,” Bloys told Vulture, declining to get more specific about when “House of the Dragon” Season 2 will be released. “We’re just starting to put the plan together, and just like last time, there are so many unknowns. It’s not to be coy or secretive, but you don’t want to say it’s going to be ready on this date, and then you have to move it.”
Like “Game of Thrones” before it, HBO no doubt wants “House of the Dragon” to be a consistent presence in the Emmy race, which means the network likely will push to have Season 2 debut before the 2023-24 eligibility window closes at the end of May 2024 if they can. The show’s first season will certainly be a force in the 2022-23 awards season when the next Emmys ceremony – dated for September 2023 – rolls around.
“House of the Dragon” tells the story of the beginning of the end of House Targaryen, and the show’s first season chronicled the lengthy backstory for characters key to the reign of King Viserys and the civil war that resulted from his murky succession plans. Season 1 ended with battle lines drawn between Viserys’ daughter Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and her younger half-brother Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) steered by his mother (and Rhaenyra’s childhood friend) Queen Alicent (Olivia Cooke).
While “Game of Thrones” was on a yearly release schedule for its first seven seasons, the eighth and final season didn’t debut until two years after Season 7 wrapped up owing to the increased scale of the last season. That show, of course, began on a much smaller production scale than “House of the Dragon.”
Showrunner Ryan Condal previously told TheWrap that “House of the Dragon” is a shorter story, all-told, than “Game of Thrones” and likely won’t run as long as the flagship series did, so while the wait between seasons could be longer, the story may wrap up within a few seasons.
“This particular story, the one that I’m telling right now, the Dance of the Dragons as the original series, it doesn’t have that breadth to it,” Condal said. “Not to say it’s any less interesting. It’s a really great series. But I think also part of making a series is knowing when to drop the curtain on it and call an end.”
That said, Condal teased that there’s a rich Targaryen history to be mined before and after the events of “House of the Dragon” that could be continued in another HBO series.
“But I’ve always said the show is called ‘House of the Dragon.’ It’s not called ‘The Dance of the Dragons.’ And I think there is a very rich 300-year Targaryen dynasty to mine many stories out of, and that is the thing that I think is the most promising for the future for fans of Westeros is that George [R.R. Martin] has written some deeply complex history. That’s three centuries long that begins with Aegon’s Conquest – actually it begins before Aegon’s Conquest with the story of the Targaryens leaving old Valeria because of the dream of one little girl. There are so many stories to be mined out of there. I think as long as there’s a willing audience, there is plenty of Targaryen to come.”
