House of the Dragon season 2 will have a pace more similar to Game of Thrones, says showrunner

News
By published

"Viewers will feel the tragedies because we put the work in"

Emma D'Arcy and Matt Smith in House of the Dragon
(Image credit: HBO)

House of the Dragon season 1 may have only just come to an end, but showrunner Ryan Condal is already looking ahead to House of the Dragon season 2, promising a faster-paced second season of the Game of Thrones prequel. "We will get to the spectacle," Condal told The Sunday Times. "But you have to understand these people’s complexities before they’re thrown into war."

He added: "Series 2 will hit the rhythms people came to expect from the middle run of Game of Thrones, but it will have been earned, and viewers will feel the tragedies because we put the work in."

The "middle run of Game of Thrones" could refer to seasons 3 and 4, which included events like the War of the Five Kings, the Red Wedding, the death of Joffrey Baratheon, and Daenerys' conquest of Slavers' Bay – there certainly wasn't a dull moment. 

While you could argue that season 1 was fast-paced, seeing as it spanned a period of 20 years, each episode focused on the more intimate and slower-paced personal and political clashes between Rhaenyra and the blacks and Alicent and the greens, starting when the two women were teenagers, that led to the eventual Targaryen civil war, known as the Dance of the Dragons. With tensions between House Targaryen and House Hightower at breaking point after the events of episode 10, we can expect out-and-out conflict to kick things off in season 2. 

Emily Garbutt
Entertainment Writer

I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.