The second season of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel show House of the Dragon ran for eight episodes, although it was originally planned to be 10. You can tell. The second season ends with a montage of armies about to meet, of clashes about to happen. The whole thing has the feel of an anticlimax, a let-down reflected in the episode's reception; it's among the worst-rated episodes of the series on IMDb. Fan ratings on IMDb aren't the gospel truth, but surely no one behind the show wanted the season finale to go over this lukewarm.
I have some sympathy, because the reduced episode count was likely out of the producers' hands; blame it on the 2023 Hollywood strikes, blame it on budgets, blame it on whatever. It happened, and afterwards fans were looking down the barrel of a two-year wait for the third season, which we've heard will open with a major battle scene that was originally supposed to close the second season: the Battle of the Gullet.
Without giving away spoilers, the Battle of the Gullet should be a good time. There are dragons, there are ships, a bunch of characters we know are involved and not all of them make it out unscathed, at least if the show sticks to the source material, from which it's increasingly been straying. My hope is that it won't be too little, too late.
I was meeting someone for a drink recently, and because I'm me, talk inevitably tilted towards TV. Game of Thrones came up, and the person I was with mentioned that they'd loved the show and watched the first season of House of the Dragon, but didn't tune in for the second, not because they didn't enjoy the first season, but because it didn't hold their interest quite enough to compel them to tune into season 2, which aired two years later.
Obviously a conversation with a rando isn't the same thing as a peer-reviewed study, but ratings for season 2 were down from season 1. If HBO wants House of the Dragon to achieve the same kind of cultural penetration that Game of Thrones had, if they want to continue making "very big budget" shows set within this universe, it wants to compel as many people as possible. And if it wants to do that, it needs to create events like the Red Wedding, like the death of Jon Snow, like the exploding of the Sept of Baelor, TV moments that will get people talking, and sustain them as they wait for the next season. If it had aired at the end of House of the Dragon season 2, the Battle of the Gullet might have been that kind of event. A montage where the Battle of the Gullet is about to happen was not.
Again, I know HBO was in a tricky place; they didn't want the second season to take an inordinately long amount of time to come out, so they moved a major set piece from the end of season 2 to the beginning of the season 3. It was a high-stakes gamble that didn't pay off. If my friend wasn't compelled to tune into season 2 after season 1, which ended on one of the highest-rated episodes of the series so far, I imagine there will be a good chunk of people who won't bother tuning into season 3 after the end of season 2. In retrospect, it would have been better to keep fans waiting longer and release a full, 10-episode second season a bit later.
But that's all in the past. I have every hope the actual Battle of the Gullet will be spectacular, and hopefully set up a season full of juicy conflict. But when TV shows cost this much, and when fans are waiting so much longer between new seasons than they used to, every choice matters. House of the Dragon remains the most popular fantasy show on TV, and one of the most popular shows in general. I hope the producers make smart decisions to keep it that way.
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