House of the Dragon season 2: Meet the 'very powerful' Cregan Stark (Tom Taylor)

The first season of House of the Dragon introduced us to a whole new set of characters alive decades before the events of Game of Thrones. In season 2, they'll go to war with each other, which means they'll cast out far and wide for allies. In the season 1 finale, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) sent her son Jace (Harry Collett) out on a couple of diplomatic missions, including to the North, where he'll try to court the allegiance of the young Lord Cregan Stark.

Cregan is the son of the late Rickard Stark and the ancestor of characters like Ned and Robb Stark from Game of Thrones. "He's very powerful," House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal told Entertainment Weekly. "Everybody's vying for his army. He's quite a bit younger than Ned Stark was, so it's interesting to see the Young Wolf, the young Stark lord, and how he carries himself in the world, and the burden that's on his shoulders being the Warden of the North. I'm excited for the audience to see and experience that.”

If Cregan is anything like his ancestors, he's a guy who takes his oaths seriously. His late father Rickard swore an oath of allegiance to a young Rhaenyra way back in the House of the Dragon series premiere, where Rickard was played in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo by David Hounslow. If Cregan holds to his father's word, he'll align himself with Rhaenyra now that her throne is threatened by her half-brother Aegon Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney). But then again, this is a Game of Thrones show, and you never know what might happen. There's no guarantee that Condal and company have to stick to the letter of the source material: the book Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin.

A character from Fire & Blood will be cut from House of the Dragon

In fact, producer Sara Hess basically admitted to EW that one plotline from Fire & Blood was getting cut. In the book, it's whispered that Jace falls in love with a Stark bastard named Sara Snow while at Winterfell, even though Jace is already engaged to his cousin/step-sister Baela Targaryen (Bethany Antonia). True, that's just an unconfirmed rumor within the world of the book, but it could make for a fun subplot.

But it is not to be. “Expect very little [of Sara Snow],” producer Sara Hess said when asked about her. “Our POV is the Targaryens, and our POV is split between King’s Landing, Dragonstone, and then when Daemon [Matt Smith] goes to Harrenhal. We just don't have the eyes to really be everywhere at the same time.”

Sara Snow doesn't have a huge effect on the plot of Fire & Blood, and the rumor about her and Jace comes from an unreliable narrator, so I'm not too upset about her getting cut. Mostly, I'm just excited to see Winterfell again, and Condal agrees with me. “For me, seeing the North in this show and how it was built really got to me,” he said. “Those were the first characters that I read about 25 years ago when I found the books [Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire], and here I was now standing on set with them in a show that I co-created. It was mind blowing to me.”

Let's hope it has a similar affect on all of us when House of the Dragon season 2 premieres on HBO and Max on Sunday, June 16.

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