House Of The Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal is still surprised by the series’ popularity—and Daemon Targaryen’s
Showrunner Ryan Condal was surprised at the series' welcome, and Daemon's reputation amongst viewers
Aux News Ryan Condal
It certainly flew by, but HBO’s House Of The Dragon has been serving up new episodes for ten weeks now, wrapping up with last night’s finale, “The Black Queen.” As season one reaches a close, one of the series’ showrunners, Ryan Condal, has taken some time to reflect on the debut season.
“It’s so weird, after spending so long making the show, that the finale is airing already,” Condal tells New York Times. “It felt like it took years and years just to get that first episode aired. Then, very quickly, everything airs, and that’s it.”
Despite the overwhelming popularity of the original series Game Of Thrones, Condal says he wasn’t sure if fans would accept House Of The Dragon with open arms. But audiences tuned in, with an average of 29 million viewers for each episode in season one (compared to GOT’s 44 million viewers per episode in the final season). Not bad at all.
“I really thought it was going to be more of a hill to climb because we were following the Beatles, and how do you do that?” Condal says. “You don’t. You just try to do your own thing, and hope it connects with people. But I was shocked that people came right out the gate and accepted it, generally—this massive fandom, and tens of millions of people watching the show, and writing about it and talking about it.”
Something else that came as a shock to Condal was viewers’ adoption of Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) as the internet’s new evil daddy.
“I’m having trouble understanding it,” Condal says. “We established right out of the gate, in the pilot, that Daemon is a fascinating guy, but he’s not Ned Stark. So I didn’t see it coming.”
“To me, Daemon is the antihero of this story. He’s a character with a real darkness to him, who’s dangerous and charming in equal parts,” he continues. “I knew people would be fascinated by him and latch onto him, but I figured they’d do it in the way they did with Jaime Lannister or Bronn or the Red Viper. I did not think they would oddly apply this sort of super-fandom to him and try to justify every single thing he’s done as being intrinsically heroic. It simply isn’t. It’s not the case. Nor will it be in the future.”
Ah yes, the future. House Of The Dragon has already received season two renewal over at HBO. Even with fellow showrunner Miguel Sapochnik’s departure ahead of season two, Condal believes is optimistic about the upcoming season.
“We built a really strong kingdom here in London,” he says. “It’s a story about figuring out what worked and what didn’t and finding great people to carry on that legacy, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
11 Comments
I don’t understand the love for Daemon either. He’s not interesting or charming (I’m not sure where they’re getting that from). He is unfortunate looking, which is somewhat interesting I suppose, but that’s true for all of the Targaryens.
Every time Matt Smith pops up, I’m like “Oh yeah, these people are inbred.”
I’ve been saying for years that he looks like a caveman. I guess now I’ll say he looks like an inbred caveman.
I don’t understand how a writer doesn’t get people liking the bad guy. It really wasn’t until recently that certain people in the Breaking Bad fandom will admit Walt is the villain, this is an incredibly common thing.
“I knew people would be fascinated by him and latch onto him, but I
figured they’d do it in the way they did with Jaime Lannister or Bronn
or the Red Viper.”That doesn’t sound nearly as dopey as “doesn’t get people liking the bad guy”
I don’t know. The Red Viper never actually did anything except want to avenge his family and have sexual exploits. He isn’t even a “bad guy.” And Bronn I never viewed as a bad guy. His loyalty shifted because he was a person without family or support and understands he is replaceable to most the people around him so he did what he needed to survive. Jamie well…you can blame childhood trauma and father issues for some of his behavior and he had a redemption arch fairly early in the series.
Those comparisons don’t work for me. It’s like the writer doesn’t understand those characters at all. Daemon just comes across as villainous like Scar does in The Lion King. That is just fun.
This dude’s probably like “And what’s the deal with people hating Skyler??? Walt sold meth!”
Why do the people involved with the show keep on pretending they don’t know why one of the main characters is popular? Martin himself said that Daemon was one of his favorite characters. Fictional characters don’t and should not have to be saints to be popular, yet people involved with the show continue to feign confusion as to why he is popular. What is their endgame, what are they really getting at, because it makes no sense to me.
Like, he’s a guy that genuinely chafed at having to be married for political position. But on the other hand he genuinely loved Laena and loves Rhaenyra. Like, I can’t imagine cutting out the duel for Laena and not understanding how it would have made him seem all the much cooler. He’s a cad, but his big first scene in the series is castrating rapists. He’s not even a “bad guy” anymore, he’s straight antihero, especially as the show’s taken a (correct) pro-Black/anti-Green tilt.
He murdered in cold blood his first lawful wife. He was also regularly cheating on said wife. Lets not give Daemon a total pass or minimize how dark it is to kill your own wife.
Also, he straight up choked Rhaenerya… he’s definitely got some sadism in him that the upcoming war will indulge!
Oh, c’mon. It’s straight out of the General Hospital Luke & Laura playbook. It’s Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who got to soliloquy at length about his attempting to rape the show’s actual hero was her fault, actually. And that was 20 years ago. As long as he’s a he, and is white, you’ll have lots of women slobbering for his knob. And men, but in a no-homo way.