‘House Of The Dragon’ Season 2? George RR Martin Says It Needs Four Seasons, 40 Episodes

While no one is particularly thrilled that we have to wait at least until early to mid 2024 for House of the Dragon season 2, which was greenlit before episode 2 of the series even aired, it turns out we do have a larger picture of how long this show should run. At least according to the main himself, George RR Martin.

I missed this when he talked about it two weeks ago, but Martin has a very specific vision of how long it will take in order to full tell the story of House of the Dragon, adapted from his work. Here’s what he said in a blog post in a long musing about how they used to have more episodes to work with per seasons of shows, but how adding more to House of the Dragon would have attracted criticism about its pace:

“If HOUSE OF THE DRAGON had 13 episodes per season, maybe we could have shown all the things we had to “time jump” over… though that would have risked having some viewers complain that the show was too “slow,” that “nothing happened.” As it is, I am thrilled that we still have 10 hours every season to tell our tale. (RINGS OF POWER has only 8, as you may have noticed, and my AMC show DARK WINDS is doing 6 episode seasons). I hope that will continue to be true. It is going to take four full seasons of 10 episodes each to do justice to the Dance of the Dragons, from start to finish.”

So, that would be 40 episodes in total, which is really not that hard to see happening, given the numbers that House of the Dragon has done for HBO, which have been the best on the channel since Game of Thrones itself. Thrones ran for 73 episodes in total, and both HBO and George RR Martin have said they wished it had run for more, especially with the condensed final seasons that were because the showrunners wanted to be done and move on. And we all know how that went.

Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything HBO would love more than 40 episodes of House of the Dragon covering the entire Dance saga. There was some idea the show could theoretically exist past even that, and become a Targaryen anthology series with different eras back and forward in time. In this case, showrunner Ryan Condal has said that for this current story, they are done with massive time jumps and recasting of characters due to aging. Season 1 raced through about 15+ years, replaced its two lead actresses and many members of its supporting cast. But now, for the next season or three, it appears it will no longer need to do that.

Keep in mind there are 3-4 other Game of Thrones spin-off series in the works, so it’s very possible that we could soon enter an era where we have multiple shows per years set in the universe. George RR Martin has indeed referenced the Star Wars or Marvel “model” for expanding the universe in the past, and that appears to be where we’re headed with House of the Dragon being such a success here.

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