Now that the Season 2 finale of House of the Dragon has aired, fans are buzzing with their thoughts, opinions, and theories of what to expect in Season 3. Today HBO hosted a press conference featuring showrunner Ryan Condal and moderated by Joanna Robinson. Condal was certain to keep it close to the chest about storylines that could lead to potential Season 3 spoilers but did expand on creative decisions made for specific character and story arcs made for Season 2. Here’s what we learned from today’s press conference.
Rhaena Adopting Nettles’ Storyline
Here at Black Girl Nerds, we interviewed Ryan Condal and asked him specifically before the premiere of Season 2 if Nettles would even show up this season. In today’s press conference his answer was the same today as it was then: “Stay tuned.”
“Given where we are in the storytelling, I think that’s a please stay tuned and keep watching the story. I will say that we love Rhaena as a character, and we’ve really done a lot of legwork to set her up from the beginning as somebody in this Targaryen household. How powerful an idea it is how somebody that grows up in this family even in the time of peace when you don’t have a dragon it changes how you’re identified, even within the family. And how desperate Rhaena is for that sort of self-identification as a dragon rider and is willing to go to fairly dangerous lengths to try to see that realized.
“I think part of the fun of adapting Fire & Blood is how we interpret the accepted history that these three different historians sometimes argue about and wrote down. We’re not trying to tell the objective truth. We’re providing the television version of one objective truth of this history. Anybody who reads the book is free to interpret it however they want to, but there is a there are a lot of paths to interpretation through this. I think the reign of story as we’re seeing it unfold is potentially one of those interesting interpretations that that we have to offer. I would just say that we don’t do any of this stuff lightly or without thought and many of these things we’ve planned many seasons in advance. So I would just say buckle up and take the ride with us and hopefully you like the destination that’s going to.”
Having Shorter Seasons and Longer Waits Between
“One of the challenges of making TV at any scale, even this scale, is that you’re always in the position of having to balance storytelling and the resources that you have available to tell that story. And you’re also starting to think about and one of the things that really came into play in Season 2 is, what is the final destination of this series and where are we going? And we knew how those things kind of break up and break out. And you’re trying to mount this show, which requires a tremendous amount of resources, construction, armor, costumes, visual effects.
“We were trying to give the gauntlet, which is arguably the second most anticipated action event of Fire & Blood, trying to give it the time and the space that it deserves. And as obviously as anybody that’s seen the finale, we are building to that, that event will happen very shortly. In terms of the storytelling of House of the Dragon, based on what we know now, it should be the biggest thing to date that we’ve pulled off and we just wanted to have the time and the space to do that at a level that is going to excite and satisfy the fans and the way it’s deserved. And we also wanted to build some anticipation toward it. I know everybody wants this to come out every summer. It’s just that the show is so complex that we’re really making multiple feature films every season. So I apologize for the wait but we’re going to pull off a hell of a win with the Battle of the Gullet in the future.”
Helaena Targaryen’s Character Expansion
In Fire & Blood, Helaena Targaryen’s character has changed in the TV adaptation. In fact, her story should have ended at this point. In today’s press conference it was brought up about the power of her clairvoyance and the significance of it.
According to Ryan Condal:
“I will say that the decision to expand Helaena’s character was that we were fascinated by Alicent’s family and kind of Aegon and Aemond and certainly at some point in the story, even Daeron, get a lot of the screen time and and the storytelling time because they’re the males, they’re the dragon riding warriors. But Helaena was always fascinating to us because she was a bit of a tabula rasa as described in the book. We cast this fantastic actor Phia Saban. And we just loved her performance, and we became fascinated with who this person is. And we love this idea that Viserys, who saw the dragons as this dangerous thing that the Targaryens had to contend with, this nuclear power that we possess and we need to be careful with. We wield it to hold power and to keep things united, but we have to take care not to take it too far, because that could lead to doom the way it did in Valyria. And the real powers he saw in the family was this power that Daenys the Dreamer had the power of prophecy and Targaryen foresight. Arguably the thing that made them special.
“She was the one that had his dream that preserved them from the fate that fell from every other Dragonlord family. And the idea that Helaena, his daughter, right under his very nose, had this power that everybody ignored because they view her as different or odd. But now people are starting to take a little bit more care and notice of her. I think she herself is evolving, and she’s learning to wield this ability that she has and pay more heed to it, and she’s learning how to interpret it better. And now Aemond as powerful as he is literally the Prince Regent with the biggest dragon in the world has been challenged by Rhaenyra and her new army of bastards and then told these things by Helaena that have forced him to look inward, and we were interested in seeing how a spooked Aemond is going to react from this point forward in the story.”
Daemon’s Visions of Bloodraven and Connecting the Game of Thrones Universe
“We were always looking for this interconnectivity between the two, and I think this story, the Targaryen dynasty and its evolution from the flight from old Valeria to its growth and retaking of power in the form of Aegon and the sisters and the conquest to this period, which is the height of its power and its self destruction, in terms of this Shakespearean tragedy that we’re experiencing the Dance of the Dragons, the dying of the dragons, as we know from Fire & Blood.
“And we don’t know how exactly the events play out in this history, but we do know at the end of it, there are no dragons left in the world until they’re reborn to Daenerys in the end. I think that is the interconnectivity and the thing that I will just say on a larger sort of literary storytelling level, the thing that we are very interested in as storytellers is the idea of how prophecy and these ideas of these messianic ideals that we always see interpreted in stories like this and Harry Potter in Star Wars, the chosen one, the one who’s going to save us from everything, the Lightbringer, the prince who was promised or Azor Ahai. How those ideas are interpreted in George’s world, which is, as we know from all of the storytelling that he has taken us through to date, that these things are very rarely black and white, and one thing or the other, and often can be cautionary tales for how ideas like this are interpreted by people in power.
“Remember that Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire, House of the Dragon in many ways, or Fire & Blood in many ways, are warnings about the perils of power and people in power, and particularly, I think, in this world, absolute power. So I will just say that we’re very interested in how those things play out in this world and how once somebody has given as we’ve seen Rhaenyra be given this football to run with that, ‘My father chose me. I was the one, there is a prince who was promised it must be me. This dragon rider was delivered to me and how that is going to see itself manifested.’ Over the course of the rest of this war.”
Jon Snow was never intended to be a part of this vision, and was always meant to be tailored to be around Dany and the timeline of the evolution of the dragons.
And speaking of dragons, will there be more dragons in Season 3? Ryan Condal says, “Stay tuned.” While we wait for Season 3, we look forward to the upcoming series A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight premiering next year on MAX. You can see a quick snippet in MAX’s preview aired last night below:
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
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