After a disappointing second-season conclusion, the joint director and showrunner of House of the Dragon fielded queries from the media on Monday.
Showrunner Ryan Condal fielded questions regarding the eight-episode second season terminating immediately before an intensely envisioned combat scene, the choice of featuring an unforeseen cameo from Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, and more during a live press conference regulated by journalist Joanna Robinson.
Condal revealed that the fourth season of the mythological drama will probably be its last. When asked if the show would span five seasons, he responded, “No, I think it’s four.” And after the first season, he pointed out, the plot for the remainder of the story was set out. He added that the third season will start filming early in 2019. Furthermore, the upcoming season will probably have eight episodes as well.
Condal responded in detail regarding the season three finale and the choice to move The Battle of the Gullet to a later season, but it ultimately came down to resource administration.
“One of the challenges of making television at any scale [is] nobody has infinite time and resources,” he said. “When you’re as a showrunner, you’re always in the position of having to balance storytelling and the resources that you have available to tell that story. One of the things that came into play in season two is: What is the final destination of the series and where are we going? It was a combination of factors that led us to rebalance the season knowing now where we’re going. We wanted to rebalance the story in such a way that we had three great seasons of television [after season one] to round out and tell this story. When you’re trying to mount the show, which requires a tremendous amount of resources, construction, armor, costumes, visual effects … we are trying to give The Gullet — which is arguably the second most anticipated action event of Fire & Blood — trying to give it the time and the space that it deserves.”
He added, “We are building to that event that will happen very shortly in terms of the storytelling, and it should be the biggest thing to date that we’ve we’ve pulled off. We just wanted to have the time and the space to do that at a level that is going to excite and satisfy the fans in the way it’s deserved. We also wanted to build some anticipation toward it. So I apologize for the wait, but … with the team that we have together, we’re going to pull off a hell of a win with The Battle of the Gullet.”
Another concern was why Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) saw a vision of Daenerys Targaryen at the climax rather than Jon Snow (Kit Harington) in Game of Thrones. Does this prove that the legendary “Prince That Was Promised” was Daenerys? And why is Game of Thrones mentioned so frequently?
“House of the Dragon is a prequel to a famous story, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, television story of all time,” he said. “There needs to be some interconnectivity. And because so many years have passed, there are really no characters that would be alive from from our time period that exists in the the subsequent series. So we were always looking for this interconnectivity between the two. And the story of the Targaryen dynasty … which is the height of Targaryen power, in terms of this Shakespearean tragedy we’re experiencing in the Dance of the Dragons, the dying of the dragons, we don’t know how exactly the events will play out in this history. But we do know at the end it, there are no dragons left in the world until they’re reborn to Daenerys … The thing we are very interested in as storytellers is the idea of how prophecy and these messianic ideals that we always see in stories like this — in Harry Potter, in Star Wars — [there is a] ‘Chosen One’ who is going to save us from everything. The Light Bringer, the Prince Who Was Promise, how those ideas are interpreted in George’s world — which we all know from his storytelling that he has taken us through to date — that these things are very rarely black and white, and one thing or the other, and often can be cautionary tales for how ideas like this are interpreted by people in power.”
He added, “Remember that Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire, House of the Dragon in many ways, are warnings about the perils of power and people in power and absolute power … [and the reason there was no Jon Snow was] the connectivity for us is specifically in and around the dragons … The connectedness between this family and the family to come … We know who Daenerys is watching that image, but Daemon has no idea — that could be his future daughter with Rhaenyra … So for that reason, I think it was important that it was Daenerys the image. We are not trying to make any kind of specific interpretation of a prophecy that has yet to be revealed by its author. That is George’s space to tell that story.”