House of the Dragon Showrunner Addresses the Lack of Big Battles in Season 2

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of House of the Dragon, "The Queen Who Ever Was."]

The House of the Dragon Season 2 finale ended with less of a bang and more of the lighting of a fuse. Or, maybe more accurately, the continuation of the lighting of a very long fuse that began at the end of Season 1. Fans used to seeing Game of Thrones — and House of the Dragon Season 1 — end with a huge battle or a major development in its penultimate or finale episodes were left a little on edge after Sunday's episode was merely more moving pieces across the board, particularly in the end montage of armies marching across Westeros and glimpses of characters in their current state. (Where were you, Otto Hightower?) The feeling across online forums was one of frustration over the lack of action or a big moment to be in awe of, despite the abundance of dragons in Episodes 7 and 8 (Vermithor's dragonrider choosing in "The Red Sowing" was impressive, but doesn't quite meet the definition of a "battle"). It certainly was nothing like "Blackwater," "The Battle of the Bastards," or "Hardhome," just three of the massive war sequences delivered by Game of Thrones toward the end of its seasons.

House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal held a virtual press conference the day after the finale aired, and when moderator Joanna Robinson of The Ringer asked him about the lack of battles in Season 2, the possible postponement of one anticipated scene, and how the finale only seemed to set up the war we were all looking forward to this season, Condal chalked it up to storytelling and resources. 

"I mean, one of the challenges of making television at any scale, even this scale, which seems to be one of infinite time and resources, which is — it's just never the case. I mean, nobody has infinite time and resources. As a showrunner, 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 one of the things that really came into play in Season 2, [which] is, what is the final destination of the series, and where are we going? And I think it was a combination of factors that led us to rebalance the story — knowing now where we're going, and we know what that end point is."

ALSO READ: House of the Dragon Season 2: Everything we know

Apparently, that meant the confrontation that was most anticipated — the Battle of the Gullet, one of the biggest and baddest battles in all of Game of Thrones lore — was moved to Season 3. Condal wants to make sure it gets its due.

"We we were trying to give the [the Battle of the] Gullet — which is arguably the most anticipated, well, maybe the second most anticipated, action event of [House of the Dragon source material] Fire and Blood — trying to give it the time and the space that it deserved."

Condal continued, "It should be the biggest thing to date that we've 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 in the way it's deserved. And we also wanted to build some anticipation. 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 I will just say if 'Rook's Rest' [Episode 4] and 'The Red Sowing' [Episode 7] are any indication [of] the team that we have together, we're gonna pull off a hell of a win with with the Battle the Gullet in the future."

While the next season isn't expected to premiere for another two years, the good news is that when it does air, Season 3 likely won't take long to unsheath its swords and unleash its dragons. Condal, who is currently in the middle of writing Season 3 with his team, says the battle will happen "very shortly in the time, in terms of the storytelling of House of the Dragon." 

ALSO READ: House of the Dragon's Tom Bennett talks Ulf's upgrade: 'He's going to be a bit of a maverick'

Moving the Battle of the Gullet to Season 3 shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the production of the series. Season 1 of House of the Dragon consisted of 10 episodes, and HBO trimmed the episode count for Season 2 to eight episodes after Season 2 was being developed, leading to some script rewrites. In March 2023, Deadline reported that Condal took a big-picture look at the series, mapping out where the major battles would take place for the flow of a potential three- or four-season series. (HBO hasn't officially confirmed House of the Dragon's fourth season renewal yet, but Condal said he thinks the series will end with Season 4.) One of those decisions included pushing "a major battle" — almost certainly the Battle of the Gullet — to Season 3. 

That said, in pitching this season to fans, Condal may have oversold. Speaking to Den of Geek in March 2024, Condal said, "We have two of the largest sequences that we've ever filmed on House of the Dragon. Both of them outstrip anything that we did in Season 1. They are episodes within episodes." 

Condal was likely referring to the big dragon battle at Rook's Rest that saw Rhaenys (Eve Best) and her dragon Meleys die at the claws of Vhagar and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) in Episode 4 and Vermithor's dragon den barbecue of potential dragonriders at the end of Episode 7. While those are both arguably bigger than anything that happened in Season 1, and, true to Condal's word, visually impressive and memorable, the unfortunate consequence of being a spin-off of Game of Thrones is that House of the Dragon will forever be compared to Game of Thrones, which famously changed the way we thought television could deliver feature-film action sequences for an entire episode. House of the Dragon has yet to have any extended, eye-popping moments that compare, but here's hoping the Battle of the Gullet is its first.

Seasons 1 and 2 of House of the Dragon are streaming on Max.