House of the Dragon Isn’t Out To Redeem Game of Thrones’ Divisive Ending

Summary

House of the Dragon
Season 2 premieres June 16, 2024, aiming to deliver unexpected twists in Targaryen history.
Showrunner Ryan Condal isn’t seeking redemption for
Game of Thrones
; focused on internal challenges and satisfying storytelling.
Condal has a clear ending planned for
House of the Dragon
, aiming to conclude Targaryen saga on a satisfying note.

House of the Dragon Season 2 is set to premiere on June 16, 2024, and while the controversial ending to its predecessor, Game of Thrones, is still a sore subject for some fans, showrunner Ryan Condal says he isn’t looking for redemption. Debuting in 2022, House of the Dragon was a massive success for HBO, quickly becoming the largest debut in its history between linear viewers and those streaming on Max, with around 10 million people tuning in for the first episode. Nearly two years later, the series still holds a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

In a new interview with Total Film (via GamesRadar), House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal spoke about whether he faces any pressure when it comes to the series acting as redemption for the hotly-debated Game of Thrones ending that’s still talked about to this day. Condal quickly shut down that assumption that some fans might hold, saying that “we’re our own story” when it comes to his team’s vision for House of the Dragon. He says the real pressure “comes from within.”

“
We’re our own story
. Myself and all of the creative people that make the show, the team of writers around me, and HBO for that matter:
our challenge comes from within
. And we know that, now that we’ve made this series that people have really engaged with,
the expectation will just keep getting higher and higher
to keep topping ourselves and delivering more unexpected twists and turns as we go along, and also a very satisfying character story.”

House of the Dragon

Taking place about 172 years before the events of Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon tells the tale of the rise of the Targaryens, the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria. The popular HBO spinoff show first starred Milly Alcock and Emily Carey as Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower before they were replaced by Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, who play the older versions of the characters. Also starring in the series is Matt Smith (Prince Daemon Targaryen) and Paddy Considine as Rhaenyra’s father, King Viserys Targaryen.

Release Date: August 21, 2021
Seasons: 2

Condal would go on to say that all that pressure is enough for him, and that he’s focused on controlling what he can, and satisfying the internal expectations he has rather than the external ones that might come from die-hard fans.

“
All that pressure is quite enough, for me and for us
. And that’s also the thing that we can control to an extent, is
how well we do internally on delivering on expectations
and evolving the story and all the things that challenge us day in and day out on this. So,
that’s what I’m focused on
.”

Ryan Condal Has a Clear Ending in Mind for House of the Dragon

Based on the second half of the first volume of George R.R. Martin’s ‘Fire & Blood’ saga, which is already complete, House of the Dragon deals with the history of House Targaryen nearly 200 years before the events in Game of Thrones. But while the creators of that story had to go off-script for its final seasons because the source material had yet to be written, Ryan Condal says he has an ending in mind for House of the Dragon that will bring it to a satisfying conclusion.

Though David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who adapted Game of Thrones for HBO, relied on notes from George R.R. Martin and were left to interpret the ending however they saw fit, Condal said in an interview with Inverse earlier this month that he knows exactly where he’ll end his saga, and that it’s already planned.

“I do know now where we’re going to end this particular story. And when I say end it, I just mean drop the curtain on it. History moves on for another bunch of decades after this until the fall of the Targaryen Dynasty. But I think we do have a planned end.”