House of the Dragon will end with season 4; season 3 will film early next year

House of the Dragon has just wrapped up its second season. We already knew a third was coming. Today, showrunner Ryan Condal told Variety that it's due to start production in “earlyish 2025.”

But that's not all! He also revealed that there would be a fourth season after that, and that it would be the final season. Four seasons sounds about right for this show, which is based on chunks of George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood. The second season got us pretty deep into the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. There's quite a bit left, and we know the writers are thinking about it because characters keep making prophecies about it. But there's not so much left that it can't be wrapped up with two more seasons.

But what about the pace? The second season was dinged in many quarters for moving slowly, and the finale for teasing viewers with narrative advancement and then not delivering. Some chocked this up to the second season having only eight episodes, down from 10 in the first season. When asked if season 3 would have either episodes as well, Condal said this:

"I haven’t had discussions with HBO about it, I would just anticipate the cadence of the show, from a dramatic storytelling perspective, will continue to be the same from Season 2 on."

I assume he doesn't mean that seasons 3 and 4 will move at the glacial pace that season 2 did, but I can imagine them having only eight episodes. Personally, I don't think that's a problem so long as the cast and crew use those eight episodes wisely. And we all know that those big action set pieces are expensive and difficult to make, making it hard to have too many per season.

The Battle of the Gullet is finally coming in House of the Dragon season 3

That said, fans were really hoping for another set piece before the end of season 2. Those who have read Fire & Blood were looking out for the Battle of the Gullet, a battle fought at sea between the Triarchy fleet on the one hand and Rhaenyra's new air force of dragonriders on the other. We saw the Triarchy fleet set sail in the finale and we saw the dragonriders suit up...but then nothing.

We had heard that House of the Dragon intended to feature the Battle of the Gullet at the end of the second season but had to push it back for reasons unknown. Condal doesn't confirm or deny that, but does say that the battle will come near the start of the third season. “There is a tremendous amount of resources, construction, armor, costumes and visual affects needed to give the Gullet, which is arguably the second most anticipated action even to Fire and Blood, the time and the space it deserved," he said. "Obviously, as anybody that’s seen the finale, we’re building to that event. That event will happen very shortly in terms of the storytelling of House of the Dragon."

"Based on what we know now, it should be the biggest thing to date that we’ve pulled off. And we just wanted to have the time, the space to do that at a level that is going to excite and satisfy the fans and in the way it’s deserved."

Condal continued to say that they wanted to "build some anticipation" towards this event. “I know everybody wants this to come out every summer. It’s just that the show is so complex that we’re really making multiple feature films every season. So I apologize for the wait, but I will just say if Rook’s Rest and the Red Sowing are any indication, we’re gonna pull off a hell of a win with the Battle the Gullet in the future.”

I do sympathize with the cast and crew needing to give everything they have to pull off these kinds of epic action sequences. But not for a second to I believe that they pushed the Battle of the Gullet of season 3 on purpose to build "anticipation" for it. All they did was leave people hanging at the end of season 2. I can believe that they didn't have the bandwidth to pull it off in season 2 given how complicated it will be to mount. “As a showrunner you are always in a position of having to balance storytelling and resources you have available to tell that story,” Condal said, according to Deadline.

As when we're see all of this, we don't have a firm release date yet, but I'm betting season 3 will be out on HBO and Max sometime in 2026.

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