Before the second episode of the series had aired, HBO ordered a second season of House of the Dragon because it was the kind of smash hit they were looking for to continue the Game of Thrones saga after the main show ended. And it’s doing a wonderful job of making us forget about Game of Thrones’ last season.

So, we are aware that season 2 will likely premiere in at least a year and will have an additional 10 episodes. Here is what we currently know about season 2 of House of the Dragon, according to an new interview with showrunner Ryan Condal, without going into specific Fire and Blood book spoilers:

Condal claims that the first season’s story was purposefully drawn out so that we could become invested in the characters and get to know them. With all the time jumps, I’d argue that the show felt like it progressed too quickly, but I’ll get off topic. We’ll get to the show, says Condal. But before you send these people into battle, you have to comprehend their complexity. Condal also predicts that the second season of the show will take viewers back to the middle of Game of Thrones, which many consider to be the best run of the show: “Series two will hit the rhythms people came to expect from the middle run of Game of Thrones, but it will have been earned, and viewers will feel the tragedies because we put the work in.” Condal concludes by stating that they would make an effort to provide “natural paths into moments of comedy” in the extremely somber and grim program, but that it will be challenging without a Tyrion-like character. However, he asserts that Daemon might someday serve as the vehicle for some light humor and that he finds Matt Smith to be hilarious. Can tearing a man’s skull in half make you laugh? That has some really good comedy timing (“he can retain his tongue”).

Whether House of the Dragon intends to finish the source material in one more season or if there are larger-scale intentions to continue is still unclear. There was once talk of turning this into a Targaryen anthology series that would go beyond Fire and Blood and the Dance of Dragons and visit various points in the house’s past and future. But of course, that would mean completely recasting and essentially beginning over. To finish the present tale with the existing cast, I would say that at least three seasons would be necessary, but we’ll have to wait and see. Of course, there are currently close to a half-dozen additional Game of Thrones prequels and spin-offs in development, and more of those will be released in the upcoming years.

Once more, there is no release date for season 2. We are…pretty much in late 2022, which is when filming is meant to begin, so that should be shortly. The best estimate for a new season is probably one to one and a half years, which seems to be the standard for this kind of event. More information on precise dates will be provided later.

Update (10/24): More information on the time of the actual release date. We can perform some calculations as filming is about to start at the end of this year. Season 1 of the show was first put into production in April 2021, and it was released 15 months later.

So, if we assume that filming doesn’t start until December 2022, it won’t start before the end of this year. 15 months from then, which would be around March 2024, would mean that there would be no House of the Dragon in 2023. Instead, depending on how long it takes to film and produce, we might be looking at spring or even summer 2024. It may take much longer because, according to some sources, filming won’t actually start until the following year.

Due to last night’s show, we now know exactly where the seasons’ transition point is (spoilers follow). When Rhaenyra finds out that Aemond has killed her son and his dragon, whether intentionally or not (those dragons, so unpredictable! ), we have essentially witnessed the birth of the Black Queen. She was trying to avert war, but now we know that following that provocation, the war is set to start. Even though the Targaryens have a larger number of dragons overall, the Hightower clan owns the largest individual dragon in the world, which is large enough to eat other dragons for supper. Regardless of whether Daemon is able to subdue the other dragons, I have to assume the issue will come back again.

Given that we have been promised material more akin to the middle season of Game of Thrones, this implies larger battles—there haven’t really been any yet—and undoubtedly more significant deaths in the future. But at this rate, I wouldn’t anticipate seeing the second season until the spring of 2023.

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