House of the Dragon season two is on the way, though it may be a little diminished compared to the previous season. By diminished we simply mean that there will be fewer episodes in the second season, but we hope the quality of storytelling, action, and acting is just as good. This is apparently all part of the plan as HBO eyes up a third season already.
The next season of the hit prequel to Game of Thrones will only be eight episodes long, two fewer than season one. This is due to the plans for the show going forward which include a third and even possibly a fourth season as reported in Deadline. This news comes ahead of the start of production for season two, which will take place this summer in the U.K. with the goal of having the second season released sometime in the summer of 2024.
Given that there has been a lot of change over at Warner Bros. and HBO, especially when it comes to cost-cutting measures, some believed that the reduction in episodes was also a part of these measures, but Deadline’s sources at HBO state that the cutting down from 10 to eight episodes is purely story-driven. It would seem that the creative team has envisioned the show running for three or even four seasons, finding a way to wrap it up there.
It has also been suggested that the series showrunner, Ryan Condal, who has been working with George R.R Martin ,has taken a step back from season two in order to see the bigger picture as they follow the books Fire & Blood. This then means that they have to decide how to break up the stories for the upcoming seasons, and where to place the battles and twists in order to see the story flow smoothly from the page to screen. It has been reported that season two is already facing rewrites to this effect to reduce the episodes from 10 to eight keeping in mind this long-term view.
This rewrite could see an important battle getting moved from season two to season three, though apparently, this is still under discussion with Martin and Condal continuing to go back and forth on how many seasons overall there should be. In a previous blog post, Martin lamented how HBO series used to run for longer per season, writing,
“The Sopranos had 13 episodes per season, but just a few years later, Game of Thrones had only 10 (and not even that, those last two seasons). If House of the Dragon had 13 episodes per season, maybe we could have shown all the things we had to ‘time jump’ over… though that would have risked having some viewers complain that the show was too ‘slow,’ that ‘nothing happened.'”
He did also add, “As it is, I am thrilled that we still have 10 hours every season to tell our tale.” This could of course not be the case then if season two only has eight episodes, though we are unaware of how long each episode will be at this moment in time. He predicts the show will need four full episodes to tell the story, but whether or not he gets what he wants is undetermined.