The second season of House of the Dragon aired last year, and while we still don't have a firm bead on when we might see season 3, we are hearing more and more whispers. For a while, we've been hearing that production on third season of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series would start up in March; the most recent word is that it could continue through October, which would make for a long filming period indeed.
Now, star Rhys Ifans (Otto Hightower) has trickled a drop of gasoline onto those flames. He told ScreenRant that while he doesn't know exactly when season 3 will start filming, he knows something is coming. "I don't know, but I can smell the sulfur," he chuckles. "There's something brewing. I can say, yeah, they start shooting soon this year, so I'm sure you'll be able to watch it in about 25 years' time."
That crack about watching season 3 in 25 years' time is a shot at how long it takes for new seasons of these big-budget genre dramas to come out. The first season of House of the Dragon aired in 2022 and the second in 2024. The third will likely be along in 2026, keeping up that pattern. That's well short of 25 years, but still longer than a lot of fans would like, considering that we got new seasons of Game of Thrones at a rate of one per year for most of the show's life.
Just like the fans, Rhys Ifans has no idea what's happened to Otto Hightower
The reason shows take so long to make nowadays is a discussion for another time, although it basically boils down to how ambitious they are. Those dragons don't come cheap. As for Otto Hightower, he ended the second season as a prisoner in some mysterious jail cell. We have no idea where he is, and neither does Rhys Ifans. “I'm an actor, so we'll be the last people to know what's going on in our characters,” the actor said not long after the season 2 finale. “I haven't been told by anyone with any kind of conviction or authority where exactly he is at that point. All we know is that he’s still alive somewhere in that world, and that's as much as I know too. I know as much as the fans.”
In the source material for House of the Dragon, George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood, Otto Hightower remains in King's Landing for pretty much the entirety of this story. Throwing him into jail is one of the many ways the show has broken from the book. He's likely somewhere in the Reach, where there's fighting going on between supporters of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen and King Aegon Targaryen, but that's just a guess. The show is way off book now, so everyone at home is in the same boat.
You can also see Ifans in Inheritance, a new spy thriller coming out in theaters this weekend.
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