House of the Dragon will not block Robert’s Rebellion or other Game of Thrones spin-offs
Game of Thrones had a profound effect on the television industry – especially for the people who work at HBO. In the years since the show’s 2019 finale, the cable channel became a linchpin in Warner Bros. plans. Discovery for the Max streaming service with instructions to expand not just the Thrones IP, but everything in the Warner vault, from DC to Dune. The Well of Thrones seems particularly deep thanks to the direct involvement of writer George RR Martin; on top of House of the Dragon, which returns for Season 2 on Sunday, June 16, a number of spin-off series, live action and animated, remain in active development. Clearly there is a lot of Westerosian history to discuss.
House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal is well aware of it, but isn’t too concerned about continuity. At a recent press day for Season 2, the writer said that from the beginning, the team had “pretty good narrative freedom to tell the story (they) wanted to tell.” It doesn’t hurt that Martin was present early in development, after a period where HBO hatched some ideas for an offshoot of the franchise and even shot a pilot with actor Naomi Watts that failed to progress. Condal is grateful that, unlike most prequels, Martin’s source material, Fire & Blood, gives it enough distance from the flagship series. “The nice thing about the Targaryen dynasty is that they’ve been ruling for almost 300 years, so there’s a lot of wiggle room. Not everything is wrapped up in a dense period,” he said.
But Condal is still tied to Game of Thrones’ larger development pipeline. He said he is in regular contact with writer Ira Parker, who wrote the Dunk and Egg series The Hedge Knightwhich has a cast, has conducted table readingsand filming will begin later in 2024. Chronologically, Martin’s Dunk and Egg stories take place about 70 years ago House of the Dragon and 90 years earlier Game of Thrones. But Condal is adamant about not creating canon that “requires a lot of folding and tucking to be done in the future” like other franchises that are a little less, uh,. designed.
“Even (The Hedge Knight) is not a Targaryen story, it happens while the Targaryens are still in power,” Condal said. “So there’s kind of a generational interconnection between our show and his show. Again, there’s no direct crossover because it happens many years in the future, but we’re very aware of all these things and trying to keep the expanded universe alive.
House of the Dragon can take place in its bubbles, but don’t expect any character deaths for characters who could become king later in history. No butterflies are caught just because it’s a splashy moment, Condal said. “We’re going to adapt the story as we adapt it and make the inventions that we need to make, but we don’t want to cause any major ripple effects that will stop anyone from, you know, telling the Blackfyre Rebellion story, or whatever they do in the future also want to do, or ultimately tell the story of Robert’s Rebellion if that’s a place HBO wants to go dramatically,” he said. “So we’re thinking about that.”
So what would Condal like to delve into and iterate on? In season 2 it’s Daemon.
(Ed. remark: He talked about spoilers for the book, which will be plot points in season 2. Only read on if you want to know some mild plot spoilers.)
‘We know from the book that he goes to Harrenhal and raises a large number of rivermen. But that statement in itself does not necessarily lead to a fully realized story,” says Condal. “Daemon is on a set course and mood as he embarks on the next part of his mission. I’m excited – I’m very proud of the story we told for Daemon this year and the steps we made him take as a character. And Matt Smith’s incredible performance and dramatization of that.”
House of the Dragon season 2 begins on June 16 with the first of eight episodes.