House Of The Dragon’s second season might be shorter than the first
Pulling a page out of the Game Of Thrones playbook, the next season of House Of The Dragon will be two episodes shorter
Aux News Ryan Condal
In a move that should give Game Of Thrones fans flashbacks, the next season of House Of The Dragon will be a few episodes shorter than the first. Deadline reports season two will drop the episode count from 10 to eight. However, this is a little different from Game Of Thrones, which ended its six seasons by slowly decreasing the episode count and levels of enjoyment. House Of The Dragon’s decision was reportedly “story-driven” and “part of a long-term plan for the show” as it awaits a season-three pickup. Though, when phrased like that, it sounds like the show’s writers are holding the last two episodes of the season hostage, and we won’t get to see them unless there’s a third season, which, per Deadline’s reporting, is sort of the point. The production is punting season two plotlines to season three.
With “a portion of the plot” and a “major battle” moving to season three, Dragon is expected to run for four seasons; though, there’s lingering uncertainty. Unlike House Of The Dragon’s sworn enemy in the war for streaming fantasy series supremacy, Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power and its planned 50 hours of television, HBO, George R.R. Martin, and showrunner Ryan Condal are still unsure how long the show will be, with Martin and Condal going “back-and-forth on the number of seasons (three or four).” Likewise, there was never an official plan for the spin-off, with HBO hoping to wing it so it could wrap as successfully as Game Of Thrones. The network never explicitly stated in its renewal that there would be a 10-episode second season, either. Nevertheless, HBO is starting to consider a longer-term plan for House Of The Dragon and is considering moving forward with scripts for season three.
Earlier this year, HBO and HBO Max content CEO Casey Bloys expressed confidence surrounding the show’s production, stating that they’re not turning cameras on before they have a solid foundation. “My philosophy is a good script is number one priority,” Bloys said. “I am not doing it based on wanting to have one a year, two a year. I want to do it based on the scripts that we’re excited about.” As such, production hasn’t begun on season two yet—though it seems likely the show will return in 2024.
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Ok.
One adaptation issue I’m really interested in is that the Starks’ big role in the Dance of Dragons only comes after every single major character currently on the show is dead. The people behind the show will definitely want to include them thanks to their popularity from Game of Thrones, but they also have to know it’ll be disappointing to never see them interact with this bunch of actors, so will they be moving any of that up?
My guess is that the coming season will spend more time than usual with Jace in Winterfell to set up who the Northern characters are, since he’s the only one that has any significant interaction with them (with the exception of certain characters that are currently too young). As for the battle they’re carrying over, maybe Rook’s Rest, but my guess is probably the Butcher’s Ball. It seems unlikely that we’d go eight episodes into the story and not get to Rook’s Rest in S2. Which kind of sucks, because Butcher’s Ball and the immediate aftermath would be a great place to end a season.
We’ll know if there’s a future casting for “Young Nan.”
Theyll probably flesh out Jace’s meeting with Cregan at the least, and the fact that Cregan was held back by his over bearing uncle
They’ll probably have Cregan be a part of the Winter Wolves and interacting with the Tully Muppets throughout the war. Instead of sending them first and only joining in himself later.
Cregan should show up next season. Jace? maybe flew north to get him to join their cause. They’d be nuts not to do scenes set at Winterfell and touch on some of the interesting stuff that’s dismissed as rumor in the source material.
Am I the only one that hates these shorter “seasons” of shows? Like a season used to be 26 episodes, then it was 13 and now most streaming shows are like 10. And with an almost 2 year gap between seasons you have to rewatch the previous season to remember what was going on before you can watch the new season. I would be curious to see the numbers on the spike in viewing of a previous season of a show when a new season drops specifically by people who have already watched the previous season.
13 was a decent compromise because 26 or 22 was just too many from a production standpoint and often the creators would end up spinning their wheels as story ideas dried up and budgets dwindled (tho on the other hand that’s how “Bottle” episodes came about.) But 10 eps usually just not quite enough – every season of Game of Thrones needed at least one to three more episodes. And the 6 or 8 episode Star Wars, Marvel and Netflix shows really seem like two hour movies that were needlessly padded. They’re basically the old primetime miniseries but with one night too many.
The Expanse final season was basically an over-glorified miniseries: six episodes to tie everything up, yet throw a bunch of “if you’ve read the book you’ll go ‘SQUEEEE!’” fan service eating up precious time. They introduced whole new concepts, turned on of the characters dreadful, and then it just sort of…ends.
You might not be the only one, but I think you’re in the minority. Shows that were over 20 episodes per season were a different kind of show. You’re talking about sitcoms and procedurals like Law and Order and such. Those kinds of shows are meant to just keep going. They don’t lose appeal with longer seasons, because their appeal is just interesting/funny standalone episodes that you don’t have to think too hard about. With shows like that it’s OK to have meh episodes.House of the Dragon and other such “prestige” shows should not be 20+ episodes. They’re essentially like longer serialized movies giving you a full story over the course of a season. 20 episodes would be way too much. It’s good that shows have begun to use just the number of episodes they feel necessary, rather than trying to conform to some general standard.The Marvel Netflix shows are perfect examples of how that can make great shows lesser. All of the early seasons of those shows were 13 episodes, because that was the standard at the time. And all of those seasons were criticized for being too long and dragging in the middle. They were still mostly well received, but a lot of people thought they could have been tightened up and shortened to more like 10 episodes.The bottom line is most shows don’t need 20+ episodes in a season, and shows like HotD generally benefit from shorter seasons.
Fair enough and it’s not like my tiny opinion is going to change anything lol. It’s just with the now longer pandemic gap between seasons, or what appears to be, like I don’t want to wait 2 years for 8 episodes, it reminds me of Venture Bros. whos creators were notorious for huge gaps between seasons way before the pandemic made it “popular” I think what bugs me is when they change the number of episodes from season to season, which is primarily or only a streaming thing. But on the other hand it lets the creators choose exactly how many episodes they need to tell that season story.
All of the early seasons of those shows were 13 episodes, because that was the standard at the time. And all of those seasons were criticized for being too long and dragging in the middle. They were still mostly well received, but a lot of people thought they could have been tightened up and shortened to more like 10 episodes.I mean sure, but they also could have written better episodes. Or broken the season up into two arcs like they did with Daredevil season 2. (the problem there was that the second arc, the Hand one, sucked.)
Excitement level for a 10 episode series that starts up a year after it airs? HighExcitement level for a 6 episode run that will start sometime in the future and the season after that sometime in the far future? Low
Yeah I think it’s the multi year gap that bugs me more than episode count. Like by the time the next season airs I forgot everything that happened in the previous season so I have to rewatch the prior season to know whats going on since a 3 minute “previously on” doesn’t cut it LOL
British shows have always been 6-10 episodes long per season. Length has no bearing on quality.
Oh I agree, and sometimes a longer season just adds filler to pad it out, but how about some consistency between seasons then lol.
Everyone knows that the best season length is three 1-hour episodes shown back to back with no breaks, preferably in some sort of large auditorium with a large screen and lots of seats.
This all started with Moonlighting.
But how many birthing scenes will there be?
The real question is how many unbirthing scenes will there be?
Oh man, now *that* would be a notable GoT death; shoving a newborn right back into that vagina.
“Put that thing back where it came from or so help me…”
Gonna be a real short season for me, ‘cause I don’t plan on watching it. The first season was a miserable disappointment with only short bursts of excitement or enjoyment and all of the characters were sour and cruel and I didn’t really care about any of them. Frankly if they’d made the first half of the first season one 8 episode season, followed by a second 8 episode season with the adult actors after the time jump, and let those two or three extra episodes inform the characters instead of ticking off boxes on a timeline, I’d me more interested.
Like the Red Wedding, the Dragonpit is destined for Season Three, Zaslav willing.
The reaction is going to be even worse. At least if they do their job right.
Frankly if they’d made the first half of the first season one 8 episode season, followed by a second 8 episode season with the adult actors after the time jump, and let those two or three extra episodes inform the characters instead of ticking off boxes on a timeline, I’d me more interested.
With you there. But from what they did, I think its clear they were struggling with staying true to the source material and coming up with new content. From the source material, there isn’t really a lot of details. It’s basically just a glorified timeline of “this happened…large gaps of time… then this happened”. I wish they would have taken the time to come up with more content to fill in those large gaps. Yeah, its “filler”. But filler is often necessary in TV adaptions.
100% agreement, with an added soupcon of “please make it visually interesting to look at.” The utterly desaturated grays and browns that made up 99% of the visual palette were just ugh.
“However, this is a little different from Game Of Thrones, which ended its six seasons…”wat? or wish fulfillment?
How many episodes depends on how much story ground they plan to cover. Maybe it’s the right amount, maybe it isn’t. Season 1 was not enough episodes for the ground the covered, but lots of other shows cover too little (see basically all of Marvel Netflix).
Sounds fine to me. You can easily divide the story into four parts that easily fit into four seasons, I suppose. And if Kinja wasn’t so shit and had a spoiler feature I’d be able to write which parts I’m referring to here, but alas.Anyway, with this news I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what the show will be like going forward.
Why is it not already renewed for a season 3? This was one of their biggest hit shows of the year. Just very weird. I liked the first season, but the relentless time-skipping got tiring. Hopefully we’re done with that now.