House of the Dragon brought the world of Westeros back to television for the first time since Game of Thrones ended in 2019, and it was no surprise that HBO quickly renewed the Targaryen-centric series for a second season. The bad news is that fans are in for a long wait before getting to see what's next for Rhaenyra, Daemon, and all the others, as the show isn't expected back until 2024. That hasn't stopped one network executive from sharing why fans may love the series even more in Season 2!
Planning for House of the Dragon Season 2 was already guaranteed to be different compared to Season 1 (which is available streaming via a Max subscription), and not just because of the first season's gargantuan task of getting a huge fantasy show off the ground with the Game of Thrones legacy to live up to in 2022. Original co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik left House of the Dragon while the first season was airing, leaving co-creator Ryan Condal as the sole showrunner. According to Francesca Orsi, the head of drama at HBO, Condal stepped up in a big way for Season 2, as she told Deadline:
With all eight scripts written by Ryan, despite pencils down, I can say that we’re really confident about what we’re doing and the team that we have in place for Season 2. To be honest, we think that the audience will be just as pleased if not more so.
Ryan Condal wrote a number of Season 1 episodes, including the series premiere the set up the beginnings of the Targaryen family tree's civil war and the Season 1 finale that guaranteed bloodshed is on the way with Season 2. Apparently, he wrote every episode of Season 2, which has been confirmed to have a shorter run than the ten-episode first season. I've felt that the shorter season could be what HBO needs to avoid an ending like Games of Thrones' that is controversial to this day, and Francesca Orsi certainly sounds optimistic about what's on the way.
Orsi's comment of "despite pencils down" is a reference to the current WGA writers strike that has more or less shut down any elements of showbiz that weren't fully written before the strike began in early May. House of the Dragon was able to continue production on Season 2 due to the scripts already being completed.
A Song of Ice and Fire and Fire & Blood author George R.R. Martin – who is also an executive producer on House of the Dragon – did confirm that the strike shut down writing for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, however. Francesca Orsi addressed how the strike is affected House of the Dragon, despite production beginning:
Ryan is following all the rules — and of course pencils down — rendering services as the non-writing producer. If there is anything that needs to be rewritten or reshot, we’ll handle that after the strike, and we’ll put the resources behind revising what we need to do and reshooting what we need to do if we’ve made any mistakes along the way.
Whether or not there will be a need for rewrites that could delay Season 2 remains to be seen, but the HBO drama exec has made it clear that fans have a lot to look forward to with the potential to be even more successful than the first batch of episodes. Plus, at least there's a plan in place to make sure that the new episodes will be the best they possibly can be despite the writers strike! For the time being, it seems safe to say that House of the Dragon is the only one of the upcoming Game of Thrones TV spinoffs that will make much progress until the strike is resolved.
