The season 2 premiere for House of the Dragon is over an hour long

We're only a few weeks out now from the second season premiere of House of the Dragon, HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series. At the end of season 1, war was about to break out between Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) and her younger half-brother Aegon Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney). Both of them want the Iron Throne, and neither is willing to give it up for the other, especially not after the season 1 finale where Aegon's brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) killed Rhaenyra's son Luke (Elliot Grihault). This means war. Prepare for plenty of it when season 2 kicks off on Sunday, June 16.

We've heard that the title of the premiere episode is "A Son for a Son," a phrase pulled directly from George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood. It refers to a plot hatched by Rhaenyra's husband Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) to get revenge for Luke's death. If that scene doesn't send people screaming from their living rooms, the cast and crew haven't done their job.

We don't know if Daemon's revenge plot will come to full fruition in the first episode, but it'll be early on in the season. Thanks to HBO's schedule, we also know how long the premiere episode will be: one hour and four minutes.

That's a nice chunk of time, and is more or less in line with the lengths of the episodes in season 1, which ran as short as 54 minutes and as long as 67. The average came out to 62 minutes, so we're two minutes ahead!

The caveat there is that the first season had 10 episodes while this second season only has eight; producer Sara Hess has said that the reduction from 10 to eight "wasn't really our choice." What exactly that means, we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, here's the release schedule for all eight episodes:

• Episode 201: June 16 (1 hour 4 minutes)
• Episode 202: June 23
• Episode 203: June 30
• Episode 204: July 07
• Episode 205: July 14
• Episode 206: July 21
• Episode 207: July 28
• Episode 208: August 04

See you soon.

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