House of the Dragon boss knows how the show will end

Game of Thrones ended in 2019 in a firestorm of backlash, with fans upset over what they saw as a rushed ending out of step with the rest of the story. The Game of Thrones prequel show House of the Dragon is about to air its second season, so it's still in relatively early days, but showrunner Ryan Condal is already thinking about how he's going to end things, perhaps in an attempt to avoid the drubbing that the Game of Thrones ending took.

“We do know now where where we’re going to end this particular story,” Condal recently told a group of journalists, including Io9. “When I say ended, I just mean drop the curtain on it—because of course, history moves on for another bunch of decades until the fall of the Targaryen dynasty, which is really kind of the end of the story, when the Mad King falls and Robert Baratheon overthrows the Iron Throne.”

"I’m not yet ready to talk about how many episodes or seasons we need. You know, we need to get there. But I know now—having gone through the process of writing and breaking season two and knowing where we’re going in season three—that we have a good plan, and we know the roadmap and how to get there."

For a while now, it's sounded like House of the Dragon was going to run for about four seasons, which sounds about right. This story, which is based on large chunks of George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood, isn't going to be nearly as long as Game of Thrones, which was based on Martin's ongoing series A Song of Ice and Fire. Fire & Blood covers the entirety of the Dance of the Dragons civil war, so we know how the stories of characters like Rhaenyra Targaryen, her husband Daemon Targaryen, and her half-brother Aegon Targaryen wrap up, although Condal is correct that history continues afterward.

The question is: where exactly do you stop? In trying to answer that, please beware massive SPOILERS below.

How will House of the Dragon end?

So House of the Dragon is about the war between Rhaenyra and Aegon over the Iron Throne. There's a few natural endpoints for this story. Let's talk about a few of them. And again, beware huge honkings spoilers:

1. Rhaenyra and Aegon die

In Fire & Blood, both Rhaenyra and Aegon die. Rhaenyra goes first — Aegon feeds her to his dragon Sunfyre — and Aegon dies not long after under mysterious circumstances.

These two are at the center of the war, so it would make some sense to end on this note. But the story is bigger than them, and I think Condal and company will want to give some sense of the aftermath. So let's keep going.

2. Rhaenyra's son Aegon III is made king

With Rhaenyra and Aegon II both dead, the realm needs a new ruler. Aegon III, Rhaenyra's son by Daemon, is chosen. So you could say that Rhaenyra ultimately wins the war, since her blood ends up on the Iron Throne. He marries Aegon II's daughter Jaehaera, symbolically tying together the two rival branches of the Targaryen dynasty.

There are complications. Aegon III and Jaehaera are both kids when they get married, and their marriage is one of political convenience; neither have much of a say in it. Plus, although Aegon III is king, because he's so young, the realm is really ruled by his councilers, namely his Hand Lord Unwin Peake, who's a bit of a power-mad jackass. So there's one more place that could be a good spot to stop:

3. King Aegon III comes of age

At the age of 16, King Aegon III comes of age and comes into his rule, dismissing the corrupt Unwin Peake and naming his brother Viserys II — another of Rhaenyra and Daemon's sons — as his Hand. This seems like a hopeful note to end on, which we could probably use after the end of the bloody slog that is the Dance of the Dragons war.

Although again, there are complications. In season 2, both Aegon III and Viserys II are both very small children, so the show would have to jump ahead in time to have an ending like this. Then again, House of the Dragon already proved that it was comfortable with time jumps in season 1, so why not return to that for the finale?

It's hard to predict what kind of ending Condal has in mind for House of the Dragon. Likely they'll nip and tuck and combine some of these events. In the meantime, season 2 premieres on HBO and Max on Sunday, June 16, and Condal is promising an expanding story we're really gonna like.

“I think that the world of the show naturally expands as we move out of the world of season one into season two,” Condal said. “It’s still very much about this very complicated family, and all the multiple POVs in it. But as you’ll see, there’s a particular reason that we’re starting to bring in these other characters from out of court life into the story as the season develops; so stay tuned, there’s a good reason for it. But on a dramatic level, it’s always interesting to me to humanize the smallfolk—because they’re the ones that suffer the most when the nobles in their high castles go off to war. They live a very hardscrabble life that’s sort of hand-to-mouth in the best of times. And certainly once the pressures of war come, that changes and does put pressure on on the people who live in the foothills of King’s Landing.”

Not long now...

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