House of the Dragon Season 2 Is Not Releasing When You Think
With filming on House of the Dragon season 2 not set to begin until 2023, the wait for new episodes may take awhile.
The season finale of House of the Dragon features shocking deaths, soaring dragons, and the looming threat of civil war as Rhaenrya Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) is forced to deal not only with the news of her father’s death, but also the usurpation of the Iron Throne by the Hightowers and Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney). “The Black Queen” ends on a major cliffhanger as well with the queen having to weigh her responsibilities to the realm with her desire for vengeance.
One of the most frequently occurring complaints on social media after the finale is how long fans have to wait to see what happens next. Even though season 2 of House of the Dragon was officially announced shortly after the series premiere in August, there’s still some speculation as to when the series will return to our screens. According to an article by British Telecommunications, HBO has confirmed that production on season 2 has already begun.
In an interview with Variety about his post season 1 plans, showrunner Ryan Condal said that “because of the incredibly demanding production schedule of the show, facets of the show have to overlap with one another, which means that we were writing Season 2 long before they ever announced it, while we were in post in Season 1. So we really have to storm right into the making of Season 2 now in order to keep pace with our fans’ healthy appetites for material and HBO’s need and desire to release the show in a reasonable timeframe from season to season.”
Condal also told Variety that season 2 will “begin shooting in early 2023” and local Spanish newspaper Hoy has reported that filming in Cáceres, the stand-in for King’s Landing, is set to begin sometime between March and June 2023. When asked whether or not season 2 would also premiere next year in 2023, Condal said that that is “to be determined.”
Considering that season 1 took around ten months to film between April 2021 and February 2022, and the fact that Condal has confirmed that season 2 will be expanding its scope beyond Driftmark, Dragonstone, and King’s Landing (including a probably trip to see our old friends the Starks of Winterfell), it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll see new House of the Dragon episodes until 2024 at the earliest.
Even though the nearly two-year wait is going to be a long one, Condal told The Hollywood Reporter that he learned “ways to do things more efficiently” for season 2 and that the writing has been “so much easier [for season 2] because [we’re] now writing for this great cast [who we have now seen] embody these roles.” He has learned valuable lessons from the experience of creating season 1 that he hopes to bring into the production of season 2. Since it’s unclear how much these “lessons” will shave off of production time, or if they will save any time at all, we’ll be doing our best to patiently wait for news on when House of the Dragon will return.
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Brynna Arens (she/her) is a freelance writer who studies movies, TV, and pop culture through an intersectional feminist lens. She'll watch almost anything tbh, but it's…