House of the Dragon Ends With Season 4; A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Gets First Look

Television

This Monday, August the 5th, showrunner Ryan Condal revealed that House of the Dragon will end with season 4 in a press conference concerning last night’s season 2 finale. Condal stated season 3 is currently being written, will be prepped this fall, and will go into production early in 2025. When asked if season 3 would consist of eight episodes, like season 2, Condal said, “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.” Season 1 was ten episodes long. Producer and author of the Game of Thrones series and Fire and Blood, George R.R. Martin, previously wrote on his blog that it would take four ten-episode seasons to tell Fire and Blood’s story effectively. However, the press conference is the first time HBO has said anything about how long House of the Dragon will run. HBO is currently in production on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, another spinoff of their hugely successful Game of Thrones. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms will take place 100 years before Game of Thrones or 77 years after House of the Dragon’s season 1 finale.  HBO describes the show as follows: “A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros… a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey), and his diminutive squire, Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell). Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes, and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.” You can see a few first-look images here: 

First look at the #GameOfThrones spinoff ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ ⚔️

Releasing on HBO in 2025 pic.twitter.com/zUyxHfoHQX

— Culture Crave (@CultureCrave) August 5, 2024

Later in the press conference, Condal explained the absence of the Battle of the Gullet in House of the Dragon’s season 2 finale (via Variety): 

“We 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.

“Based on what we know now, it should be the biggest thing to date that we’ve pulled off,” Condal continued. “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.”

“I know everybody wants this to come out every summer,” Condal said. “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 [of] the Gullet in the future.”

I’m not super thrilled with House of the Dragon season 2, particularly in retrospect. But I look forward to season 3 because I genuinely enjoy the show, and I’m disinclined to believe they’d do another season of mostly filler, especially not two times in a row, right? Right? I do wish House of the Dragon came on every year, but I don’t see any use in grousing about it. This is how media is now, especially huge TV shows like this one. I don’t know anything about the Ser Duncan novels, but I will watch the show, just like I watched Game of Thrones and now House of the Dragon. As long as these shows are entertaining and have such high production values, they will remain must-watch TV for me. The fact that I don’t know what to expect is almost more exciting for me as a viewer; it’s the opposite feeling of what modern Star Wars gives me with its predictability and tedium, animation and Andor aside. 

I don’t know what the Battle of the Gullet is, not having read Fire and Blood. But what I’m hearing is that this particularly uneventful season finale should have featured this battle, but the show’s creators wanted to build up to it. This season would have been enough buildup. Cut out some of Daemon’s visions, trim the Rhaena part and some other fat here and there, and make that the finale. I think the real reason is that they’re trying to stretch a story into too many seasons, like making The Hobbit into three movies. This isn’t quite as bad as that, turning a short kid’s book into three multi-hour blockbusters, but you get the gist. Although three or four episodes this season would still be filler, having a big battle in the finale would have salvaged a lot of goodwill.