Everything We Know About ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2

The battles will continue in Season 2 of House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel brought to fans by creator George R.R. Martin.

In the Season 1 finale, Rhaenyra Targaryen was seen contemplating allegiance to her half-brother, King Aegon II, despite having a claim to the Iron Throne. However, Rhaenyra’s son, Lucerys, was killed by Aegon’s brother, Aemond, which caused colossal conflict and destruction. The battle will reportedly take place over multiple seasons.

But Season 2 is coming, at least, albeit with a shorter season of 8 episodes rather than the ten we got for the first season. It was revealed by Deadline via an HBO spokesperson, who said the move was “story-driven” and part of a “long-term plan” for the series. This change will see various story elements, including a big battle sequence initially planned for Season 2, shifted to the third season, which HBO is said to be mulling over a renewal.

HBO renewed House of the Dragon in August 2022, just days after the series premiere’s ratings broke records for the premium cable channel.

The show follows the events of Martin’s book “Fire & Blood.”

When will ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 premiere?

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House of the Dragon Season 2 will premiere sometime in the summer of 2024. Due to a UK-based contract, the show was able to film this past summer during the strikes.

What will be the plot of ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2?

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While the showrunners are pretty tight-lipped about the new storyline, the showrunner Ryan Condal said that fans can expect a lot of new characters this season. He said, “We are thrilled to be shooting again with members of our original family as well as new talents on both sides of the camera. All your favorite characters will soon be conspiring at the council tables, marching with their armies and riding their dragons into battle. We can’t wait to share what we have in store.” Season 2 will also finally see some dragons, five new ones, to be exact.

There will reportedly be eight episodes this season.

Who is the cast of ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2?

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Season 2 will feature Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Eve Best, Steve Toussaint, Fabien Frankel, Ewan Mitchell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sonoya Mizuno, and Rhys Ifans. Harry Collett, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Phia Saban, Jefferson Hall, and Matthew Needham are also slated to return.

The new cast for Season 2 so far is Gayle Rankin as Alys Rivers, Freddie Fox as Ser Gwayne Hightower, Abubakar Salim as Alyn of Hull, and Simon Russell Beale as Ser Simon Strong.

Who is the showrunner for Season 2?

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In August 2022, Miguel Sapochnik announced that he would remain executive producer of House of the Dragon but was stepping down as the show’s co-showrunner, leaving Ryan Condal to oversee the series solo. “It was incredibly tough to decide to move on, but I know that it is the right choice for me, personally and professionally,” he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, veteran Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor joined the production to serve as executive producer and to helm episodes of Season 2. “It’s a pleasure and an honor to be back at HBO, immersing myself in the world of the Targaryens,” Taylor said in his statement. “Returning to Westeros will be a huge undertaking, and I’m looking forward to the challenge.”

Co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik has stepped down to work on other projects with HBO. He will still be credited as an executive producer.

He shared in a statement, “Working within the GOT universe for the past few years has been an honor and a privilege, especially spending the last two with the amazing cast and crew of House of the Dragon. I am so proud of what we accomplished with Season One and overjoyed by the enthusiastic reaction of our viewers. It was incredibly tough to decide to move on, but I know that it is the right choice for me, personally and professionally.”

Is there a trailer for ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2?

The first teaser trailer for the new season has officially arrived. The battle between Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) remains, and in the trailer, Rhaenys (Eve Best) says, “There is no war more hateful to the gods than a war between kin. And no war so bloody as a war between dragons.”

How long has Season 2 been planned?

“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-production] in Season 1,” Ryan Condal told Variety in October 2023. “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.”

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What will Season 2 be about?

After the events of House of the Dragon’s first-season finale, the Targaryen civil war known as the “Dance of the Dragons” has begun in earnest, and Condal told The Sunday Times that fans could expect more action and less character-building in Season 2. “We will get to the spectacle,” he said (per IndieWire). “But you have to understand these people’s complexities before they’re thrown into war.”

He added that Season 2 “will hit the rhythms people came to expect from the middle run of Game of Thrones, but it will have been earned, and viewers will feel the tragedies because we put the work in.”

Where will Season 2 take place?

“The show definitely has to expand its scope in the second season,” Condal added in his Variety interview. “We’ve lived a good bit in three different worlds through this show: King’s Landing, Dragonstone, and Driftmark. I think those will continue to be the home bases for the show. But a war is coming that requires allegiances from different kingdoms and armies all over the map of Westeros. I don’t think we’re going to get quite as vast as the original Game of Thrones did in its final analysis. But there are definitely many more new worlds to come, and new worlds that you haven’t necessarily seen in the original show, either.”

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Will the book’s infamous “Blood and Cheese” plotline show up on-screen?

In November 2022, House of the Dragon writer Sara Hess indicated to Variety that the book’s infamous “Blood and Cheese” plot line — a revenge scheme against Alicent (Olivia Cooke) for the death of Rhaenyra’s son Lucerys (Elliot Grihault) — would play out on screen. “We are currently writing the finale of Season 2,” Hess said. “I don’t think you will be disappointed.”

What sort of new characters will we see?

In the season finale, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) sends her son Jacaerys (Harry Collett) away on dragon back to ask Cregan Stark, head of House Stark and Lord of Winterfell, to join her side in the war to come. “We will cast Cregan Stark at some point, but no comment otherwise,” Condal told Variety.

The showrunner was also cagey about whether and when we’ll see Daeron Targaryen, Alicent’s fourth child. “He does exist,” Condal said. “No worries, everybody. … It’s not our modern day, where if you had a 6-year-old, you would FaceTime them every day and see how they’re doing and write letters. He’s there. That’s the fact. When he is relevant to be mentioned — and he will be — he will be mentioned.”

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Will the dragons be back?

Condal gave a small spoiler for Season 2 at a For Your Consideration event in Los Angeles this month. “You’re going to meet five new dragons,” he said, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Will there be a Season 3?

With ratings for House of the Dragon such as they are, HBO would be more foolish than Vaemond Velaryon not to renew the show for Season 3. And that’s a good thing, considering Martin says there’s much more story to cover. “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,” he wrote on his blog in October.