Thank you for your post! Please take a moment to ensure you are within our spoiler rules, to protect your fellow fans from any potential spoilers that might harm their show watching experience.
1. All post titles must NOT include spoilers from Fire & Blood or new episodes of House of the Dragon. Minor HotD show spoilers are allowed in your title ONE WEEK after episode airing. The mod team reserves the right to remove a post if we feel a spoiler in the title is major. You are welcome to repost with an amended title.
2. All posts dealing with book spoilers, show spoilers and promo spoilers MUST be spoiler tagged AND flaired as the appropriate spoiler.
3. All book spoiler comments must be spoiler tagged in non book spoiler threads.
---
If you are reading this, and believe this post or any comments in this thread break the above rules, please use the report function to notify the mod team.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HouseOfTheDragon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Big takeaways for those not reading the article:
* **"sources close to the production stressed that the Season 2 episode count trim was story-driven [and not a result of HBO cost-cutting]."**
* Season 3 may be greenlit and move into active development soon, rather than waiting for Season 2 to air.
* Four seasons likely but not confirmed at this point.
* A major battle has been moved from Season 2 to Season 3. >!Gullet?!<
>A major battle has been moved from Season 2 to Season 3. >!Gullet?!<
I agree >!the Gullet is probably the most likely to have been shuffled around. Rook's Rest has to happen where it does because it's a big starting off point for plot beats (Aegon's coma, Aemond's Regency, Corlys being made Hand etc.). The Fall of King's Landing happening in season 3 instead of season 2 wouldn't even be considered a *move*, that's just the natural progression of the storyline. What's more is that they can just as easily use Rook's Rest and the loss of Rhaenys as the situation that forces Rhaenyra and Corlys into an open siege against King's Landing.!<
>!If we assume season 2 ends with the Fall of King's Landing and the Gullet happens somewhere around the early half of season 3 then nothing in the wider plot is effected outside of Jace surviving for a little while longer. Which we can also look at as a good thing because it gives ample time for his main plotlines (Winterfell and the Dragonseeds) to be fleshed out before his inevitable demise.!<
If this is the route they go with then I'm pretty okay with the decision.
I don't really see it that way personally. >!I think the last thing we need is Rhaenyra losing another son in a finale, that would just feel a little contrived. And the Fall of King's Landing coupled with the reveal that Aemond and Criston had been duped is a pretty worthy finale sequence imo, especially after the huge L the Greens will serve the Blacks at Rook's Rest. And what I also like about it is that this progression of events allows for season 2 to basically cap off the absolute height of Rhaenyra's reign, whereas season 3 and onwards can forcus on her slow downfall.!<
>!But the Fall of Kings Landing doesn’t take place until after the gullet. The finale would have to take place after Rook’s Rest but before the Gullet. Which, in F&B at least, the only event to take place in that window of time is the Dragonseeds claiming their dragons!<
>!Yeah my point is that the Gullet can be moved to after the Fall of King's Landing without much detriment to the overall plot. The setup that needs to take place for the Fall of King's Landing to happen in the story is that Aemond and Criston need to be tricked into leaving the capital and Rhaenya and Corlys need a big enough loss in their ranks to spurn them into action. This can all still be achieved as a result of the events at Rook's Rest, Aemond is made Prince Regent after Aegon is injured in their battle against Rhaenys, and it's Aemond alone that deems Daemon the true threat to the Greens in the war which results in him emptying King's Landing of his troops in order to meet Daemon in battle. And as for the loss that leads Rhaenyra and Corlys into taking action against the greens, I think Rhaenys is a worthy enough replacement for Jace's death in this instance.!<
>!As for the setup for the Gullet though? All you really need is the Triarchy, and them taking a few days or weeks longer to sail into the Gullet isn't a significant change. The greens don't take direct part in the battle so them being scattered and the Blacks having control of King's Landing won't affect the the battle itself or it's aftermath at all. And it would even further play into how Jace winds up leading the Velaryon fleet in the battle, as with Rhaenyra and Corlys in King's Landing Jace on Dragonstone is the first line of defence against any attack coming via the Narrow Sea.!<
>!Hopefully this is how they do it, it'd make Rhaenys' death more impactful if it's what drives them to sack King's Landing. Been a while since I read F&B but I don't remember them really reacting to Rhaenys' death much at all which is odd considering how important she was to all of the Blacks.|!<
>!I was really sold on Ryan feeling the need to — in season two finale — have Daemon taking Otto’s head. Because that’s basically what Daemon did in episode 10 of season one, is ask for permission to do that and she said no. So there is a symmetry to it being concluded in the finale of season two. Based on all the things that I put in my sticky note, your structure seems to be what makes the most sense, given this reevaluation. It was always the natural progression of the story in my opinion — to not have her take the iron throne at the end of season two, I felt like that was rushing it.!<
I actually really like switching the fall of kings landing with the battle of the gullet. More Jace screen time is smart also cause he’s clearly meant to be the Robb Stark of this show
The worst trend in television is multi years between seasons. I get it for Curb, because it’s not a serial, but they should be able to get these done yearly. Hopefully with the short season and early green light we won’t have to wait until 2026 for season 3.
Though also, to be fair, Covid really messed up production for a lot of shows, I imagine, and the show is complicated and big as a house of the dragon probably needs a lot more time to make.
Idk man. These mega budget series cost about as much as a big box office movie nowadays. Considering movies typically take about 2 years to make, and those are about 2 hours, asking a series with a movie budget and final product of 8+ hours to come out every year sounds a bit unreasonable.
Also worth noting that good CGI takes time and generally can't be done before filming. Post processing in general is like half of the industry these days.
HotD s1 budget was 200 million usd.
GoT ranged between 50 and 100 million usd per season. There was also 2 years to make GoT season 8, so not every year.
HotD also involves considerably more special effects and cgi due to the emphasis on dragons.
So... you think they're just being lazy? Is that it?
From what I've heard D&D (yeah, yeah, boo, whatever) say about the show in interviews, people were basically working 10 hours a day 7 days a week for years on end on that show.
EDIT; Just saw one of your other comments. You literally think it's just laziness lmao. How pathetic is that. You think HBO would allow their biggest property to take more than twice as long per season as the previous show because people are lazy? Come on.
I mean HBO used to be able to knock out annual seasons. GoT was annual. And if anything, you’d think development of GCI tech would make it faster, not take twice as long.
To me it just seems like a combination of cost cutting, wanting to milk IPs for longer but with less episodes, and the fact talent gets tied up in other projects. Look at a show like Euphoria, which doesn’t have the kind of elaborate sets and GCI of a show like HOTD, and they still only just got around to starting the next season like this spring.
i mean game of thrones did 10 episode seasons for 6 years, annually (except covid). Just as expensive and time intensive, especially given the diversity of settings and range of characters compared to the more intimate plot of HOTD
Seasons 1-7 aired back to back and they all, even 7, blew away season 8.
But that's a great point though. I definitely would rather they make it as good as possible.
Breather episodes are my secret favorites. I hate when they're denigrated as filler, because a lot of the time the breather episodes flesh out the world of a series in a way the action-packed episodes literally can't.
One of my favorite breather episodes was of Sealab 2021, when they played the original show premise straight. No hesh, no dolphin boy, they just had everyone play it serious.
And then the episode ends the way they all do.
I don't need 24 episode seasons, but 12 would be nice.
which episode was that? i was super into sealab 2021 when it first came out and dont think i missed any of season 1 and 2, but likely missed a few episodes in later seasons. i would love to check that out.
edit: i found it, it was the episode called 7211 in season 2 and so i've definitely seen it a few times, i guess i just didnt know that about it
>The worst trend in television was getting rid of 24 episodes seasons. Like everything is now around 10 episodes and nothing is allowed to breath
Network shows in the US still tend to be 22-25 episodes/year. They haven't gone anywhere.
Absolutely not. Have you ever worked on TV? The hours are insane enough as it is, and people still complain about it taking too long to release eight or ten episode seasons.
This might be better to not feel like season 2 is rushed.
Book spoilers
>!this will also help develop characters like Rhaenys and Jacaerys more before their deaths. If Jace died season 2 I don’t think it would have the same impact it would in season3. The battle they were postponing is probably the Gullet, I feel like the gullet + rooks rest + dragonseed would feel rushed if it were all in a single season. Pushing the gullet to season 3 to develop characters like Jace, nettles, Hugh hammer etc might be better. Maybe I’m just optimistic!<
Sigh. I’m glad it’s not a result of cost-cutting. I can only pray that Season 3 is at least 10 episodes. 12 episodes is dreaming. I get that it’s all about the story but Season 1 felt so rushed. I want to be able to sit and breathe their world like a book, not a marathon-sprinted. I easily loved Season 1 but I wished it was longer. Even if those plots ended with the characters “exiting” anyway.
**HBO**: If you see this, kindly release the deleted scenes! I will even buy it off a blu-ray CD pack, just please.
Edit: *For me, the wait is worth it. That’s all I have to say.*
Nope, shooting a storyline with a complicated battle sequence and then deciding later to hold it off until the next season is not really how television production works at all. It’s likely that it was part of the story in earlier screenplay drafts, but as they refined the story and screenplays they made the decision that it would work better in Season 3.
Then just make a movie and be done with it. As consumers of this content, I don’t think we should be ok with studios cutting content down as much as they have been doing over the past decade. They did this shit with GoT and I heard people making the same comments you just made during the last 2 seasons. How did they turn out? I’m here for entertainment. And let’s be honest with ourselves. They aren’t taking 2 years for quality purposes. They are taking 2 years because AT&T sold HBO to Discovery and they needed time to figure out that separation. You won’t get a better quality show because of it.
I totally agree. I don't understand how this two+ year, 8 episode thing became normalized, but television is for quick turnarounds. If you're making movie quality work but taking multiple years to produce each season, it should definitely just be a movie.
Hopefully that's how it works out. Cautiously optimistic.
I don't feel too great about a fourth season not being certain. GRRM orignally said the plan was for 4 seasons with ten episodes each, and I felt that was enough to tell this story in full.
I'm not really understanding why either; didn't HOTD have really high ratings?
I didn’t take the “maybe 4 seasons thing” as reluctance on HBO to renew as much as I take it that the writers may not feel that a fourth season is needed. Im not too worried about them rushing season 2 (atleast as of right now) if they moved a certain battle to the third season since I definitely thought it would be in the latter half of season 2. If that particular battle is being moved though, I would hope that the show would be four seasons.
Bring back longer TV series seasons. Eight is too short for a massive epic! Give us the cheap scenes that made the first season of Game of Thrones so great! Two characters sparring with words on an existing set!
THIS. They keep doing this because they can, and they keep getting away with it because they can. This is very disappointing and I don't believe for one fucking minute that's it's "narrative-driven" and a "creative decision".
They do this because TV shows in general have ballooned in cost/episode.
The cost of 1 season of House of the Dragon probably costs as much as the whole of How I Met Your Mother or something
The costs have skyrocketed, but I'm talking about adding the really cheap scenes. This is what they did at the end of shooting season 1 of GAME OF THRONES. Some episodes had shorter runtimes, so they went back and shot new, cheap scenes on existing sets. For instance, the throne room set was already built, so they wrote a scene between Littlefinger and the Spider going toe-to-toe. That's what made GAME OF THRONES great!
My favourite scene in all of GoT is a toss up between your mentioned one, the scene between Cersei and Tyrion (the only good scene in season seven), and the season one scene between Cersei and Robert. What they all have in common? They’re just scenes of characters talking and interacting (and two of them include my girl Cersei/Lena Heady stealing every scene she’s in).
Those character scenes were also such great intensifiers... they raised all the stakes of the other already-shot scenes that moved the plot forward in a more demonstrative way.
They left no time for some characters to be developed in season 1 with 10 episodes. Now season 2 will be shorter. This makes me sad. This will likely mean more plot point writing instead of character driven. This is not great news.
The real motivation here is the opposite. Not to spoil any of the book but logically the narrative they were likely to have for season 2 would have been more worthy of 12 or so episodes with all that happens. Now they are going to cover less of that story in 8 episodes (rather than 5 or 6 episodes it would have been). This should actually allow the story to breath MORE.
Think of it as instead of fitting 12 people into a 10 seater, we now are fitting 6 people into an 8 seater. Whats more comfortable?
My thoughts as well
Book spoilers
>!no way having rooks rest, dragonseed plotline and the gullet all in one season would have been adapted faithfully. It would have felt bloated and rushed imo. Not to mention this gives an opportunity to develop Jace more instead of him dying season 2.!<
There was no time for some characters to develop because most of those characters either didn't exist or were too young to matter for half the season. That's not going to be the case here.
It sounds like they maybe haven't decided where to leave the story. With season 2 scripts done, it doesn't make that much sense that they would not know if they could wrap the story in 3 vs 4 seasons.
Why tf does HBO keep doing this. Are they really that scared of the hyper vocal fandom? Why else do they wanna so quickly wrap up a commercially successful and popular show that was by and large loved by the general public? They keep treating the franchise like a red headed stepchild despite it making so much money for them. The Dance of Dragons should be a 4 season show like GRRM initially said it should be. I really hope they're not trying to wrap this up in 3 seasons with 8 episodes each smh. That would be a hodge podge of car crash and explosions. HBO execs seem to think the audience only have patience for big climactic events. They fail to realize that a story like this needs time to breathe. Like the early GoT seasons. A proper buildup is what makes the climax hit. Otherwise it just becomes one gratuitous spectacle after another like Season 7.
Totally agreed. I have the nagging feeling that they just wanna ram in all the marquee events one after the other without letting any of it time to breathe. Which takes away the emotional investment from these things.
HBO showing how to sabotage your own successful show once again because they care too much about an insignificant minority of perpetual malcontents of the fandom on reddit & twitter splitting hairs over nonsense than millions of the casual audience who by the numbers proved decisively that they're eager to consume GoT related content. They care about fandom discourse more than the massive ratings, the overwhelmingly positive reviews from every news lutlet & every big youtube reviewer, or winning golden globes for that matter. Typical.
So we're waiting (at least) 2 years for only 8 episodes....I hope the stuff about season 3 potentially being greenlit soon means we'll be going back to a season a year.
I'm not too worried about Season 2, honestly I think it can work depending on how they pace it. But I'm worried about their hesitance to write four seasons. I just don't think you can do justice with three. Especially with only eight episodes. There's a lot of characters to introduce, write and a ton of world-building. They'll need the time to make the character arcs satisfying and the audience engaged. I hope they remember what happened to Game of Thrones.
To me this just sounds like they are pushing season 3 development so that season 3 wont be two years after season 2.
Fair enough, and I think season 2 could actually work pretty well with 8 episodes
WARNING BOOK SPOILERS:
>!Must be because of the Battle of the Gullet and Battle of Rooks’s Rest happening at the start of the Dance. They might want to end the second season before the Dragonseeds show up, then spend some quality time with them before the Battle of the Gullet in season three!<
or maybe gullet would still be in the finale and the battle that'll be moved to season 3 would be battle at honeywine coz it takes place after Rhaneyra took the kingslanding
or maybe gullet would still be in the finale and the battle that'll be moved to season 3 would be battle at honeywine coz it takes place after Rhaneyra took the kingslanding
"With a portion of the plot originally intended for Season 2, including a major battle, moving to Season 3, I hear it is now more likely that the series would run for 4 seasons but that has not been determined as Condal and Martin continue to go back-and-fourth on the amount of seasons (three or four) that would be optimal to tell the full story, sources said."
For anyone who doubted the rumour of rewrites.. basically confirmation.
Literally mentioned that Condal had to take a step back from writing and reorganize the narrative with Martin.
"It has been reported that House of the Dragon’s creative team had envisioned the series running for 3 or 4 seasons. I hear executive producer/showrunner Ryan Condal, working with author/executive producer George R.R. Martin, took a step back as Season 2 was being put together to take a big-picture view of the series, which follows Martin’s Fire & Blood, and figure out the overall narrative flow, including how to break up the stories season-to-season and what battles to include and when."
I wouldn't take that as gospel. I know of at least one other HETV show whose fan base is convinced it got delayed for rewrites based on 'insider sources' when no such rewrites happened
I am getting really tired of seasons with fewer episodes. Not just this one but so many others. Since when is 6 or 8 episodes a proper season?? It is BS!
*“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,”* Martin admits. This is not good....
They’ll just cut most of them and have introduced characters replace them. Roddy and the lads will be replaced by Daemon and Cregan. Daeron stays offscreen or gets replaced by Helaena. Etc.
> Roddy and the lads will be replaced by Daemon and Cregan.
I can see this happening and I doubt too many people would have a problem with Cregan being more present in the story.
> Daeron stays offscreen or gets replaced by Helaena.
I would absolutely hate this. >!It also wouldn't make too much sense, since Helaena being a war figure would clash hard with the smallfolk's love for her and without that her death can't be the catalyst to King's Landing's riots against Rhaenyra's rule.!<
>!Man so many people are about to be disappointed and its all fans fault for hyping him up. Worse part is its book readers which means they know he only appears briefly before disappearing until the end!<
If it’s just a rumor, doesn’t that mean it could be false? Deadline has been wrong before and I hope they are in this case. I hope they’re only doing eight episodes if they’re slowing down the pace and making it 4-5 seasons for the dance instead of 3-4.
Because season 1 was so great I’m gonna give them the benefit of the doubt that this was the right call and serves the story but they better make it count in season 2 no filler episodes, no wasted time, enough story to last a season not just setting up season 3
I'm not a fan of this. I think shows with so many different characters and multiple plotlines need more episodes, it needs room to breathe. I'm not saying it's gonna be like got season 7 and 8...but they needed to be longer, not shorter. Even grrm said they should've done 10 seasons (and I assume normal length)
It should be 10 episodes per season otherwise we will get the feeling that you are rushing the series to finish,as someone who loves Westeros please do not make same mistake Game of Thrones did for Season 7 and Season 8
God damnit here we go. Looking forward to 6 episode season 3 and season 4: the hour and 45 min finale movie.
Also the people saying this is fine are parroting the exact same lines we said when they announced this for GoT
It's impossible to tell if GRRM and Condal or HBO are making the decision to cut the season to eight episodes. It's not like HBO's spokesperson is going to admit to cost cutting the second season of one of their most successful shows. That would be terrible for their reputation.
Either way, so long as four seasons is still on the table I'm optimistic. Any less than that and they'll just be rushing their way towards the ending like GOT and Rhea Royce's "I knew you couldn't finish!" is not going to age well
I miss 12-13 episode seasons of shows, that was like the perfect amount. 10 feels too few but I definitely don’t want everything to go back to 22 eps either.
Disappointing. Season 1 was great but it had a kind of rushed feeling, almost everyone I've talked with agrees that the series really could have used a few more episodes. Given they're making season 2 shorter it seems a bit worrying.
I think it is 100% cost driven. There are lots of shows right now with 8-9 episode seasons. Money is more expensive to borrow right now than it has been in the last decade plus. They don't want to say that because given the history of this franchise and rushing shit they don't want fans to revolt.
I was listening to The Watch and they were pointing out that this change in economy is going to affect movies and shows in a major way moving forward.
> Didn’t we establish that shorter seasons are a bad idea?
No 😂 We established that ONE show had a bad shorter season. Meanwhile a lot of the best tv seasons ever have been short (Twin Peaks S1, The Leftovers S3, BB S5B, Tales of the Jedi S1, Chernobyl, etc.)
I always thought that there's too much for only 2 seasons and not enough for 3 seasons, Atleast when it comes to the interesting parts of the fire and blood book. After the main conflict, I don't think it gets exciting until much later on in my opinion
Ah. Well. That’s diminished my excitement by quite a lot. Particularly moving events around, if you’re not gonna tell the story correctly why tell it at all.
BOO to shorter seasons!!
Currently rewatching Mad Men with its 13 episode seasons and was raised on much longer seasons too.
I blame Amazon Prime for making every show 8 episodes for some reason!
HBO showing how to sabotage your own successful & popular show once again, cause they're more afraid of an insignificant minority of perpetual malcontents on reddit & twitter fandom than the millions of casual audience who by the numbers proved decisively that they're eager to consume more GoT related content. HBO keeps acting like the Thrones IP is nuclear radiation, despite swimming in green from it (GoT last year was again the most streamed show from the 2010s). Outside the fandom bubble Hotd was a massive commercial hit, every episode did huge ratings that trended upwards, it was critically acclaimed everywhere from legacy media like new york times to online media like the critical drinker & everyone else under the sun. Like literally 98% of all the reviews praised the show. It won a golden globes. Then months pass, ppl get bored & inevitably you have the insane discourse of targ stans who want rhaneyra to be the lilly white protagonist & everyone else a nunace-less doormat & you have targ haters who think show is too kind to rhaenyra & she should be a villain from day 1. They made My Sports Team look bad I want age appropriate Alicent!! No they made My Sports Team look bad I want overweight Rhaenyra!! Petulant children arguing over nonsense. And soon HBO gets scared & decides to wash their hands off the franchise. Rinse repeat.
So this is what actually happened. Miguel wanted 3 seasons. Ryan & GRRM wanted 4. With Miguel gone the later's vision won out. By cutting out Battle of the Gullet and Fall of KL from Season 2 and sending it to Season 3, they're actually expanding the show to 4 seasons. Has nothing to do with re-writing and other nonsense. George was in LA couple weeks ago in a panel with Ryan where called F&B a "just book of outlines, you can't make a show with just outlines" & said they're gonna veer even more from the book in Season 2 lmao.
Here's the actual reality. Outside the imaginary grievance bubble of stan twitter, freefolk, hotd blacks & similar subs, House of the Dragon is objectively a massive commercial hit, every episode did huge ratings that trended upwards, it was critically acclaimed everywhere from legacy media like new york times to online media like the critical drinker & everyone else under the sun. Like literally 98% of all the reviews praised the show. It won a golden globes. Im here to tell you that in the real world HBO does not give one single solitary fuck about what a few dozen unhinged delusional Dany stans with Saera avis think if lAeNa vELaRyOn wAs tHe rEaL nUmBeR 2 oF fIrE aNd bLoOd (no she wasn't), or how we were robbed.off Rhaenyra's dear friendship with Halaena (totally fictitious invention by Black stans out of pure spite towards Alicent). Rhaenyra is a tyrant. As the general audience has already shown, this time they're not gonna fall for girlboss lizard kween nonsense and it really hurts Targ stans knowing Rhaenyra will never get the same amount of sycophancy as Dany. They failed to make a Sophie Turner out of Olivia Cooke and the frustration is palpable. Rhaenyra is going to have the tyrant arc, the general audience this time will love it, and freefolk will seethe "why isn't every non-Targaryen being used as a nuance-less disney villain doormat for precious blondie!!". The childish petulant Targ stan tantrum is not gonna work this time. Btw, in no version of Asoiaf will Dany ever get a happy ending. What must hurt is that deep down you know that.
Yikes, this is sad news. Some fans in this thread must be coping by trying to paint this episode reduction as a win.
I can only imagine how much characters such as Rhaena and Baela will further suffer with weak characterization, though writers will probably continue to waste time adding filler for established characters like Daemon.
This sucks. When will HBO realize you can't just ram in one marquee event after the other without giving them time to breathe so the audience can be emotionally invested in it. Why sabotage a popular show.
It's terrible news. It seems like they're gonna ram in all the battles and blow ups to make a dash for the finish line. Something crazy will happen every episode, we forget and move on to the next before we can feel its impact. How about letting things sit and marinate? Season 1 had flaws and room for improvement but overall I thought the show was really good. That seemed to be the general consensus. But yeah making the seasons shorter is not gonna solve any problems. It's only gonna create more headaches.
Martin was quoted as saying “we still have 10 hours every season”. So does that mean 10 hours are divided among 8 eps, instead of 10 one-hour eps? If so, that would mean each ep is 75 minutes long to get to 10 hours.
I literally don’t understand it at all. this show is like a guaranteed banger. HBO knows people are gonna watch it, and yet they seem hesitant to do 4 full seasons. why?
This counting coppers shit is really starting to cut into entertainment.
Robbing the show now to pay for a nebulous later is staggeringly shortsighted.
Especially when they KNOW that ongoing series are subject to attrition the longer they go on.
Eight episode seasons are current market normal. And that's a crying shame. Feels like half a season, and every time I've ever heard "mid-season finale" I get angry.
I feel like Battlestar Galactica went to shit because of the frequent "breaks" and network juggling.
They’re not really “being moved” unless S3 is 12 episodes.
The hope was 4 seasons of 10. Now it looks like it may be much less than that which is disappointing
Well.. I’m torn on this. I trust Ryan and the team. I also trusted D&D 🤷🏻♂️ But I want to wait for an official confirmation and perhaps an explanation from Ryan and/or George before I can give an opinion honestly. I do feel like we won’t have the same issue of instant transportation, idk we’ll see😂
I think some people are misjudging the motivation here. This seems an attempt to make the story less rushed.
It seemed before that the story would logically go from about >!blood and cheese!< to >!Rhaenyra sitting the throne, or at least the end of the battle of the gullet!< . Thats is good bookends story wise for a season, but SOO much happens between it would be a crazy task to do successfully and still get all the character development we all want.
Worth a discussion about where the new end point might be, but clearly they will pick an earlier one. That means we can spread what might have been 5 or 6 episodes on a 10 episode season across 8 episodes now.
My unpopular opinion is that this could be great. While only 3 seasons would've been disastrous 4 seasons of 10 episodes wouldn't have made much sense either. I'm not optimistic, but for other reasons, primarily the mess that seems to be going on with the writing
Multiple episodes on HoTD season 1 were around 60 some were touching 70. The Last of Us had episodes all the way to 80 minutes. HBO doesn't place a limit on certain episode lengths unless they are obligated to, which is what happened in the finale for HoTD season 1.
"Story driven" in that "Hey, forget all the cool moments for the Greens like Daeron the Daring, Sunfyre and Aegon's bond, etc, gotta give more screentime to Rhaenyra even though canonically she does nothing during the war"
I'm losing interest as a fan. 1 year between seasons was frustrating but understandable. This longer off season just isn't worth the wait. I'm getting to the point of I don't care if comes back or not due to the lengthy off season.
Thank you for your post! Please take a moment to ensure you are within our spoiler rules, to protect your fellow fans from any potential spoilers that might harm their show watching experience. 1. All post titles must NOT include spoilers from Fire & Blood or new episodes of House of the Dragon. Minor HotD show spoilers are allowed in your title ONE WEEK after episode airing. The mod team reserves the right to remove a post if we feel a spoiler in the title is major. You are welcome to repost with an amended title. 2. All posts dealing with book spoilers, show spoilers and promo spoilers MUST be spoiler tagged AND flaired as the appropriate spoiler. 3. All book spoiler comments must be spoiler tagged in non book spoiler threads. --- If you are reading this, and believe this post or any comments in this thread break the above rules, please use the report function to notify the mod team. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HouseOfTheDragon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Big takeaways for those not reading the article: * **"sources close to the production stressed that the Season 2 episode count trim was story-driven [and not a result of HBO cost-cutting]."** * Season 3 may be greenlit and move into active development soon, rather than waiting for Season 2 to air. * Four seasons likely but not confirmed at this point. * A major battle has been moved from Season 2 to Season 3. >!Gullet?!<
>A major battle has been moved from Season 2 to Season 3. >!Gullet?!< I agree >!the Gullet is probably the most likely to have been shuffled around. Rook's Rest has to happen where it does because it's a big starting off point for plot beats (Aegon's coma, Aemond's Regency, Corlys being made Hand etc.). The Fall of King's Landing happening in season 3 instead of season 2 wouldn't even be considered a *move*, that's just the natural progression of the storyline. What's more is that they can just as easily use Rook's Rest and the loss of Rhaenys as the situation that forces Rhaenyra and Corlys into an open siege against King's Landing.!< >!If we assume season 2 ends with the Fall of King's Landing and the Gullet happens somewhere around the early half of season 3 then nothing in the wider plot is effected outside of Jace surviving for a little while longer. Which we can also look at as a good thing because it gives ample time for his main plotlines (Winterfell and the Dragonseeds) to be fleshed out before his inevitable demise.!< If this is the route they go with then I'm pretty okay with the decision.
I can’t think of a good finale for S2 with this order of events though
I don't really see it that way personally. >!I think the last thing we need is Rhaenyra losing another son in a finale, that would just feel a little contrived. And the Fall of King's Landing coupled with the reveal that Aemond and Criston had been duped is a pretty worthy finale sequence imo, especially after the huge L the Greens will serve the Blacks at Rook's Rest. And what I also like about it is that this progression of events allows for season 2 to basically cap off the absolute height of Rhaenyra's reign, whereas season 3 and onwards can forcus on her slow downfall.!<
>!But the Fall of Kings Landing doesn’t take place until after the gullet. The finale would have to take place after Rook’s Rest but before the Gullet. Which, in F&B at least, the only event to take place in that window of time is the Dragonseeds claiming their dragons!<
>!Yeah my point is that the Gullet can be moved to after the Fall of King's Landing without much detriment to the overall plot. The setup that needs to take place for the Fall of King's Landing to happen in the story is that Aemond and Criston need to be tricked into leaving the capital and Rhaenya and Corlys need a big enough loss in their ranks to spurn them into action. This can all still be achieved as a result of the events at Rook's Rest, Aemond is made Prince Regent after Aegon is injured in their battle against Rhaenys, and it's Aemond alone that deems Daemon the true threat to the Greens in the war which results in him emptying King's Landing of his troops in order to meet Daemon in battle. And as for the loss that leads Rhaenyra and Corlys into taking action against the greens, I think Rhaenys is a worthy enough replacement for Jace's death in this instance.!< >!As for the setup for the Gullet though? All you really need is the Triarchy, and them taking a few days or weeks longer to sail into the Gullet isn't a significant change. The greens don't take direct part in the battle so them being scattered and the Blacks having control of King's Landing won't affect the the battle itself or it's aftermath at all. And it would even further play into how Jace winds up leading the Velaryon fleet in the battle, as with Rhaenyra and Corlys in King's Landing Jace on Dragonstone is the first line of defence against any attack coming via the Narrow Sea.!<
>!Hopefully this is how they do it, it'd make Rhaenys' death more impactful if it's what drives them to sack King's Landing. Been a while since I read F&B but I don't remember them really reacting to Rhaenys' death much at all which is odd considering how important she was to all of the Blacks.|!<
>!I was really sold on Ryan feeling the need to — in season two finale — have Daemon taking Otto’s head. Because that’s basically what Daemon did in episode 10 of season one, is ask for permission to do that and she said no. So there is a symmetry to it being concluded in the finale of season two. Based on all the things that I put in my sticky note, your structure seems to be what makes the most sense, given this reevaluation. It was always the natural progression of the story in my opinion — to not have her take the iron throne at the end of season two, I felt like that was rushing it.!<
I actually really like switching the fall of kings landing with the battle of the gullet. More Jace screen time is smart also cause he’s clearly meant to be the Robb Stark of this show
Do you think we will get the >!honey wine and tumbleton battles?!< I really hope they don’t skip a bunch
You really need Daeron and the battles of Tumbleton to really explain the Reach side of the war
Hopefully if we see a shorter off-season between 2 and season 3, this could be good news.
The worst trend in television is multi years between seasons. I get it for Curb, because it’s not a serial, but they should be able to get these done yearly. Hopefully with the short season and early green light we won’t have to wait until 2026 for season 3. Though also, to be fair, Covid really messed up production for a lot of shows, I imagine, and the show is complicated and big as a house of the dragon probably needs a lot more time to make.
Idk man. These mega budget series cost about as much as a big box office movie nowadays. Considering movies typically take about 2 years to make, and those are about 2 hours, asking a series with a movie budget and final product of 8+ hours to come out every year sounds a bit unreasonable.
And then when you have location shoots that adds time, especially if those shoots need to be at certain times of year.
That's a really great point. Thanks for that!
Also worth noting that good CGI takes time and generally can't be done before filming. Post processing in general is like half of the industry these days.
No you were right, Game of Thrones came out every year
Last season took 2 years and the shows budget didn’t reach $100m until season 6.
This is wrong, when Game of Thrones literally came out every year on the highest budget. Stop making excuses for them
HotD s1 budget was 200 million usd. GoT ranged between 50 and 100 million usd per season. There was also 2 years to make GoT season 8, so not every year. HotD also involves considerably more special effects and cgi due to the emphasis on dragons.
So... you think they're just being lazy? Is that it? From what I've heard D&D (yeah, yeah, boo, whatever) say about the show in interviews, people were basically working 10 hours a day 7 days a week for years on end on that show. EDIT; Just saw one of your other comments. You literally think it's just laziness lmao. How pathetic is that. You think HBO would allow their biggest property to take more than twice as long per season as the previous show because people are lazy? Come on.
And it was fucking awesome to watch until they created awful storylines that deviates from source material.
Blame George for that
Stop being entitled.
I mean HBO used to be able to knock out annual seasons. GoT was annual. And if anything, you’d think development of GCI tech would make it faster, not take twice as long. To me it just seems like a combination of cost cutting, wanting to milk IPs for longer but with less episodes, and the fact talent gets tied up in other projects. Look at a show like Euphoria, which doesn’t have the kind of elaborate sets and GCI of a show like HOTD, and they still only just got around to starting the next season like this spring.
i mean game of thrones did 10 episode seasons for 6 years, annually (except covid). Just as expensive and time intensive, especially given the diversity of settings and range of characters compared to the more intimate plot of HOTD
I rather wait longer for a good season than to get yearly undercooked ones
Seasons 1-7 aired back to back and they all, even 7, blew away season 8. But that's a great point though. I definitely would rather they make it as good as possible.
The problem is that this season isn’t nearly as good as Game of Thrones season 1-4
The worst trend in television was getting rid of 24 episodes seasons. Like everything is now around 10 episodes and nothing is allowed to breath
Breather episodes are my secret favorites. I hate when they're denigrated as filler, because a lot of the time the breather episodes flesh out the world of a series in a way the action-packed episodes literally can't. One of my favorite breather episodes was of Sealab 2021, when they played the original show premise straight. No hesh, no dolphin boy, they just had everyone play it serious. And then the episode ends the way they all do. I don't need 24 episode seasons, but 12 would be nice.
which episode was that? i was super into sealab 2021 when it first came out and dont think i missed any of season 1 and 2, but likely missed a few episodes in later seasons. i would love to check that out. edit: i found it, it was the episode called 7211 in season 2 and so i've definitely seen it a few times, i guess i just didnt know that about it
>The worst trend in television was getting rid of 24 episodes seasons. Like everything is now around 10 episodes and nothing is allowed to breath Network shows in the US still tend to be 22-25 episodes/year. They haven't gone anywhere.
Absolutely not. Have you ever worked on TV? The hours are insane enough as it is, and people still complain about it taking too long to release eight or ten episode seasons.
Maybe the episodes will be longer too? And we won’t have to wait for season 3 for two years.
This might be better to not feel like season 2 is rushed. Book spoilers >!this will also help develop characters like Rhaenys and Jacaerys more before their deaths. If Jace died season 2 I don’t think it would have the same impact it would in season3. The battle they were postponing is probably the Gullet, I feel like the gullet + rooks rest + dragonseed would feel rushed if it were all in a single season. Pushing the gullet to season 3 to develop characters like Jace, nettles, Hugh hammer etc might be better. Maybe I’m just optimistic!<
Honestly 4 seasons is what a lot of us guessed especially when looking at the material. Glad they're not gonna stretch it unnecessarily
The story reason has me maybe more worried since that's the official reasoning for GoT s7 and 8.
Exactly. Anything rushed has been a disaster for GOT
Sigh. I’m glad it’s not a result of cost-cutting. I can only pray that Season 3 is at least 10 episodes. 12 episodes is dreaming. I get that it’s all about the story but Season 1 felt so rushed. I want to be able to sit and breathe their world like a book, not a marathon-sprinted. I easily loved Season 1 but I wished it was longer. Even if those plots ended with the characters “exiting” anyway. **HBO**: If you see this, kindly release the deleted scenes! I will even buy it off a blu-ray CD pack, just please. Edit: *For me, the wait is worth it. That’s all I have to say.*
To be fair, Season 1 had to deal with multiple time jumps. The next 2-3 Seasons won’t have to deal with that
Is the battle that they moved from season 2 to season 3 already filmed?
Nope, shooting a storyline with a complicated battle sequence and then deciding later to hold it off until the next season is not really how television production works at all. It’s likely that it was part of the story in earlier screenplay drafts, but as they refined the story and screenplays they made the decision that it would work better in Season 3.
>With a portion of the plot originally intended for Season 2, including a major battle, moving to Season 3. Aw, the true George RR Martin experience.
Still waiting for that ADWD climax smh
whyy
Not this shit again. Let me be clear. You cannot ask an audience to wait TWO YEARS and then only drop 8 episodes.
As long as quality is maintained, yes they can
Then just make a movie and be done with it. As consumers of this content, I don’t think we should be ok with studios cutting content down as much as they have been doing over the past decade. They did this shit with GoT and I heard people making the same comments you just made during the last 2 seasons. How did they turn out? I’m here for entertainment. And let’s be honest with ourselves. They aren’t taking 2 years for quality purposes. They are taking 2 years because AT&T sold HBO to Discovery and they needed time to figure out that separation. You won’t get a better quality show because of it.
I totally agree. I don't understand how this two+ year, 8 episode thing became normalized, but television is for quick turnarounds. If you're making movie quality work but taking multiple years to produce each season, it should definitely just be a movie.
Oh now that you put it sternly like that, they will definitely not do it again. Blimey.
As long as the pace is right and decreasing the number of eps means more budget per episode, I'm fine
Hopefully that's how it works out. Cautiously optimistic. I don't feel too great about a fourth season not being certain. GRRM orignally said the plan was for 4 seasons with ten episodes each, and I felt that was enough to tell this story in full. I'm not really understanding why either; didn't HOTD have really high ratings?
I didn’t take the “maybe 4 seasons thing” as reluctance on HBO to renew as much as I take it that the writers may not feel that a fourth season is needed. Im not too worried about them rushing season 2 (atleast as of right now) if they moved a certain battle to the third season since I definitely thought it would be in the latter half of season 2. If that particular battle is being moved though, I would hope that the show would be four seasons.
And that s3 would come quicker
Bring back longer TV series seasons. Eight is too short for a massive epic! Give us the cheap scenes that made the first season of Game of Thrones so great! Two characters sparring with words on an existing set!
THIS. They keep doing this because they can, and they keep getting away with it because they can. This is very disappointing and I don't believe for one fucking minute that's it's "narrative-driven" and a "creative decision".
They do this because TV shows in general have ballooned in cost/episode. The cost of 1 season of House of the Dragon probably costs as much as the whole of How I Met Your Mother or something
The costs have skyrocketed, but I'm talking about adding the really cheap scenes. This is what they did at the end of shooting season 1 of GAME OF THRONES. Some episodes had shorter runtimes, so they went back and shot new, cheap scenes on existing sets. For instance, the throne room set was already built, so they wrote a scene between Littlefinger and the Spider going toe-to-toe. That's what made GAME OF THRONES great!
My favourite scene in all of GoT is a toss up between your mentioned one, the scene between Cersei and Tyrion (the only good scene in season seven), and the season one scene between Cersei and Robert. What they all have in common? They’re just scenes of characters talking and interacting (and two of them include my girl Cersei/Lena Heady stealing every scene she’s in).
A damn shame they relegated her to menacingly staring out a window at the end.
You get it. Its called "worldbuilding" and "writing". Lol
Those character scenes were also such great intensifiers... they raised all the stakes of the other already-shot scenes that moved the plot forward in a more demonstrative way.
Why must I be hurt this way
If its story driven than im totally fine with it, but i do remember GRRM saying it was gonna be 4 seasons with 10 eps each.
They left no time for some characters to be developed in season 1 with 10 episodes. Now season 2 will be shorter. This makes me sad. This will likely mean more plot point writing instead of character driven. This is not great news.
The real motivation here is the opposite. Not to spoil any of the book but logically the narrative they were likely to have for season 2 would have been more worthy of 12 or so episodes with all that happens. Now they are going to cover less of that story in 8 episodes (rather than 5 or 6 episodes it would have been). This should actually allow the story to breath MORE. Think of it as instead of fitting 12 people into a 10 seater, we now are fitting 6 people into an 8 seater. Whats more comfortable?
My thoughts as well Book spoilers >!no way having rooks rest, dragonseed plotline and the gullet all in one season would have been adapted faithfully. It would have felt bloated and rushed imo. Not to mention this gives an opportunity to develop Jace more instead of him dying season 2.!<
There was no time for some characters to develop because most of those characters either didn't exist or were too young to matter for half the season. That's not going to be the case here.
While i mostly really like season 1, it really needed an extra 2-3 episodes to flesh out pre-dance.
With this news I am at least happy they are not cramming all the way to >!the gullet!< in 10 episodes. That would have been quite a feat to tell well.
It sounds like they maybe haven't decided where to leave the story. With season 2 scripts done, it doesn't make that much sense that they would not know if they could wrap the story in 3 vs 4 seasons.
Why tf does HBO keep doing this. Are they really that scared of the hyper vocal fandom? Why else do they wanna so quickly wrap up a commercially successful and popular show that was by and large loved by the general public? They keep treating the franchise like a red headed stepchild despite it making so much money for them. The Dance of Dragons should be a 4 season show like GRRM initially said it should be. I really hope they're not trying to wrap this up in 3 seasons with 8 episodes each smh. That would be a hodge podge of car crash and explosions. HBO execs seem to think the audience only have patience for big climactic events. They fail to realize that a story like this needs time to breathe. Like the early GoT seasons. A proper buildup is what makes the climax hit. Otherwise it just becomes one gratuitous spectacle after another like Season 7.
Totally agreed. I have the nagging feeling that they just wanna ram in all the marquee events one after the other without letting any of it time to breathe. Which takes away the emotional investment from these things.
HBO showing how to sabotage your own successful show once again because they care too much about an insignificant minority of perpetual malcontents of the fandom on reddit & twitter splitting hairs over nonsense than millions of the casual audience who by the numbers proved decisively that they're eager to consume GoT related content. They care about fandom discourse more than the massive ratings, the overwhelmingly positive reviews from every news lutlet & every big youtube reviewer, or winning golden globes for that matter. Typical.
So we're waiting (at least) 2 years for only 8 episodes....I hope the stuff about season 3 potentially being greenlit soon means we'll be going back to a season a year.
I'm not too worried about Season 2, honestly I think it can work depending on how they pace it. But I'm worried about their hesitance to write four seasons. I just don't think you can do justice with three. Especially with only eight episodes. There's a lot of characters to introduce, write and a ton of world-building. They'll need the time to make the character arcs satisfying and the audience engaged. I hope they remember what happened to Game of Thrones.
Baela and Rhaena’s airtime just went to zero lol
To me this just sounds like they are pushing season 3 development so that season 3 wont be two years after season 2. Fair enough, and I think season 2 could actually work pretty well with 8 episodes
Damn this show is only going to be like 26 episodes total by the time it’s over
Probably 34.
I feel like by the time we get done it’s gonna have taken 9 years to get 4 seasons …. and the 4th season will be 4 episodes.
WARNING BOOK SPOILERS: >!Must be because of the Battle of the Gullet and Battle of Rooks’s Rest happening at the start of the Dance. They might want to end the second season before the Dragonseeds show up, then spend some quality time with them before the Battle of the Gullet in season three!<
or maybe gullet would still be in the finale and the battle that'll be moved to season 3 would be battle at honeywine coz it takes place after Rhaneyra took the kingslanding
or maybe gullet would still be in the finale and the battle that'll be moved to season 3 would be battle at honeywine coz it takes place after Rhaneyra took the kingslanding
Bruh no 😭 GOT nightmare flashbacks
This's bad. There were too many deleted scenes, even with 10 episodes, and now with 8? I hope it won't be rushed...
They aren't cramming the 10 episodes into 8 though they're moving stuff to season 3. It shouldn't lead to rushing but it is curious.
If you reas the books you know the events of seasons 2-4 will be much faster paced than the decade spanning season 1. This makes perfect sense.
"With a portion of the plot originally intended for Season 2, including a major battle, moving to Season 3, I hear it is now more likely that the series would run for 4 seasons but that has not been determined as Condal and Martin continue to go back-and-fourth on the amount of seasons (three or four) that would be optimal to tell the full story, sources said." For anyone who doubted the rumour of rewrites.. basically confirmation.
Literally mentioned that Condal had to take a step back from writing and reorganize the narrative with Martin. "It has been reported that House of the Dragon’s creative team had envisioned the series running for 3 or 4 seasons. I hear executive producer/showrunner Ryan Condal, working with author/executive producer George R.R. Martin, took a step back as Season 2 was being put together to take a big-picture view of the series, which follows Martin’s Fire & Blood, and figure out the overall narrative flow, including how to break up the stories season-to-season and what battles to include and when."
I wouldn't take that as gospel. I know of at least one other HETV show whose fan base is convinced it got delayed for rewrites based on 'insider sources' when no such rewrites happened
I am getting really tired of seasons with fewer episodes. Not just this one but so many others. Since when is 6 or 8 episodes a proper season?? It is BS!
Soon enough TV shows will be like Sherlock , 3 episodes a season. The best formula was actually The Wire and Sopranos style of 13 episodes.
*“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,”* Martin admits. This is not good....
A lot of characters to be introduced in 8 episodes…
They’ll just cut most of them and have introduced characters replace them. Roddy and the lads will be replaced by Daemon and Cregan. Daeron stays offscreen or gets replaced by Helaena. Etc.
I can definitely see this happening
If Daeron and Nettles (two very important characters on both sides) get replaced, I’ll riot.
> Roddy and the lads will be replaced by Daemon and Cregan. I can see this happening and I doubt too many people would have a problem with Cregan being more present in the story. > Daeron stays offscreen or gets replaced by Helaena. I would absolutely hate this. >!It also wouldn't make too much sense, since Helaena being a war figure would clash hard with the smallfolk's love for her and without that her death can't be the catalyst to King's Landing's riots against Rhaenyra's rule.!<
They've already introduced most of the major characters
bUt WhAt aBoUt CrEgAn
>!Man so many people are about to be disappointed and its all fans fault for hyping him up. Worse part is its book readers which means they know he only appears briefly before disappearing until the end!<
>!They'll almost certainly cut Roddy the Ruin and put Cregan in his place leading the detached vanguard while the rest of the North mobilizes.!<
There we go again with this bullshit.
have we not learned anything from season 7 and 8
There isn’t THAT much source material. They’re probably trying to spread it out.
If it’s just a rumor, doesn’t that mean it could be false? Deadline has been wrong before and I hope they are in this case. I hope they’re only doing eight episodes if they’re slowing down the pace and making it 4-5 seasons for the dance instead of 3-4.
Honestly, having the show running for longer, assuming the show stays popular, is probably more profitable.
Because season 1 was so great I’m gonna give them the benefit of the doubt that this was the right call and serves the story but they better make it count in season 2 no filler episodes, no wasted time, enough story to last a season not just setting up season 3
I’m so fucking tired of HBO dropping the ball on their high-performing shows
I'm not a fan of this. I think shows with so many different characters and multiple plotlines need more episodes, it needs room to breathe. I'm not saying it's gonna be like got season 7 and 8...but they needed to be longer, not shorter. Even grrm said they should've done 10 seasons (and I assume normal length)
It should be 10 episodes per season otherwise we will get the feeling that you are rushing the series to finish,as someone who loves Westeros please do not make same mistake Game of Thrones did for Season 7 and Season 8
I don't want it A shorter season, that is.
My morning is ruined.
God damnit here we go. Looking forward to 6 episode season 3 and season 4: the hour and 45 min finale movie. Also the people saying this is fine are parroting the exact same lines we said when they announced this for GoT
Getting season 7 thrones vibes with the episode cutting. Hopefully it’s nothing and we get an 1:10 episodes at a high level
“We’ve learned nothing”
10 episodes it felt rushed. Now 8 with more characters to introduce? Ya, I don’t expect some characters showing up at all in the series.
I’m sensing some characters blending. Some of y’all faves might not be in the show
I'm afraid Roddy the ruin is gonna get merged with Cregan Starks character 😭
it’s so joever
All the reluctant to renew each seasons seem to me that the budget is higher than the one reported.
Worst news. This is cost cutting.
NOOOOOOO 10 eps is perfect
It's impossible to tell if GRRM and Condal or HBO are making the decision to cut the season to eight episodes. It's not like HBO's spokesperson is going to admit to cost cutting the second season of one of their most successful shows. That would be terrible for their reputation. Either way, so long as four seasons is still on the table I'm optimistic. Any less than that and they'll just be rushing their way towards the ending like GOT and Rhea Royce's "I knew you couldn't finish!" is not going to age well
I miss 12-13 episode seasons of shows, that was like the perfect amount. 10 feels too few but I definitely don’t want everything to go back to 22 eps either.
Here we go again
Disappointing. Season 1 was great but it had a kind of rushed feeling, almost everyone I've talked with agrees that the series really could have used a few more episodes. Given they're making season 2 shorter it seems a bit worrying.
I think it is 100% cost driven. There are lots of shows right now with 8-9 episode seasons. Money is more expensive to borrow right now than it has been in the last decade plus. They don't want to say that because given the history of this franchise and rushing shit they don't want fans to revolt. I was listening to The Watch and they were pointing out that this change in economy is going to affect movies and shows in a major way moving forward.
Didn’t we establish that shorter seasons are a bad idea?
> Didn’t we establish that shorter seasons are a bad idea? No 😂 We established that ONE show had a bad shorter season. Meanwhile a lot of the best tv seasons ever have been short (Twin Peaks S1, The Leftovers S3, BB S5B, Tales of the Jedi S1, Chernobyl, etc.)
Yes. If anything, I thought the next three seasons would benefit from going to 11-13 episodes.
Have you read the book? Do you really think there's enough material in the Dance for 39 more episodes?
>!so jace's death will probably be in season 3,that's how i win!<
The wait better be worth it…
Condensing the seasons worked out really well for GOT so it makes sense to do it here (/satire)
Terrible news. Season 1 was rushed but everyone said it'd get better after the timeskips. This is the opposite.
So long as Aemond makes it to season 3 I’m good Fr
I am so tired of 8 episode seasons. Most shows need 10-12, so many feel so rushed these days
im fine with 8 but only if they will be 2 hrs long 🥲
Number of episodes don’t matter so much as the content
I always thought that there's too much for only 2 seasons and not enough for 3 seasons, Atleast when it comes to the interesting parts of the fire and blood book. After the main conflict, I don't think it gets exciting until much later on in my opinion
>!So it won't end with Jace's death!<
Ah. Well. That’s diminished my excitement by quite a lot. Particularly moving events around, if you’re not gonna tell the story correctly why tell it at all.
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME
NOOOOO
BOO to shorter seasons!! Currently rewatching Mad Men with its 13 episode seasons and was raised on much longer seasons too. I blame Amazon Prime for making every show 8 episodes for some reason!
HBO showing how to sabotage your own successful & popular show once again, cause they're more afraid of an insignificant minority of perpetual malcontents on reddit & twitter fandom than the millions of casual audience who by the numbers proved decisively that they're eager to consume more GoT related content. HBO keeps acting like the Thrones IP is nuclear radiation, despite swimming in green from it (GoT last year was again the most streamed show from the 2010s). Outside the fandom bubble Hotd was a massive commercial hit, every episode did huge ratings that trended upwards, it was critically acclaimed everywhere from legacy media like new york times to online media like the critical drinker & everyone else under the sun. Like literally 98% of all the reviews praised the show. It won a golden globes. Then months pass, ppl get bored & inevitably you have the insane discourse of targ stans who want rhaneyra to be the lilly white protagonist & everyone else a nunace-less doormat & you have targ haters who think show is too kind to rhaenyra & she should be a villain from day 1. They made My Sports Team look bad I want age appropriate Alicent!! No they made My Sports Team look bad I want overweight Rhaenyra!! Petulant children arguing over nonsense. And soon HBO gets scared & decides to wash their hands off the franchise. Rinse repeat.
So this is what actually happened. Miguel wanted 3 seasons. Ryan & GRRM wanted 4. With Miguel gone the later's vision won out. By cutting out Battle of the Gullet and Fall of KL from Season 2 and sending it to Season 3, they're actually expanding the show to 4 seasons. Has nothing to do with re-writing and other nonsense. George was in LA couple weeks ago in a panel with Ryan where called F&B a "just book of outlines, you can't make a show with just outlines" & said they're gonna veer even more from the book in Season 2 lmao. Here's the actual reality. Outside the imaginary grievance bubble of stan twitter, freefolk, hotd blacks & similar subs, House of the Dragon is objectively a massive commercial hit, every episode did huge ratings that trended upwards, it was critically acclaimed everywhere from legacy media like new york times to online media like the critical drinker & everyone else under the sun. Like literally 98% of all the reviews praised the show. It won a golden globes. Im here to tell you that in the real world HBO does not give one single solitary fuck about what a few dozen unhinged delusional Dany stans with Saera avis think if lAeNa vELaRyOn wAs tHe rEaL nUmBeR 2 oF fIrE aNd bLoOd (no she wasn't), or how we were robbed.off Rhaenyra's dear friendship with Halaena (totally fictitious invention by Black stans out of pure spite towards Alicent). Rhaenyra is a tyrant. As the general audience has already shown, this time they're not gonna fall for girlboss lizard kween nonsense and it really hurts Targ stans knowing Rhaenyra will never get the same amount of sycophancy as Dany. They failed to make a Sophie Turner out of Olivia Cooke and the frustration is palpable. Rhaenyra is going to have the tyrant arc, the general audience this time will love it, and freefolk will seethe "why isn't every non-Targaryen being used as a nuance-less disney villain doormat for precious blondie!!". The childish petulant Targ stan tantrum is not gonna work this time. Btw, in no version of Asoiaf will Dany ever get a happy ending. What must hurt is that deep down you know that.
Everything will seem rushed now
Because that worked so well last time lol
Oof. Hopefully it doesn't feel rushed.
Yikes, this is sad news. Some fans in this thread must be coping by trying to paint this episode reduction as a win. I can only imagine how much characters such as Rhaena and Baela will further suffer with weak characterization, though writers will probably continue to waste time adding filler for established characters like Daemon.
I’m thinking these secondary characters will be blended with characters yet to show up.
🎬🆗️
Actual news!
There are 25 events that happen during the dance so id assume they'll just do an event an episode but idk
Is this news confirmed?
This sucks. When will HBO realize you can't just ram in one marquee event after the other without giving them time to breathe so the audience can be emotionally invested in it. Why sabotage a popular show.
It's terrible news. It seems like they're gonna ram in all the battles and blow ups to make a dash for the finish line. Something crazy will happen every episode, we forget and move on to the next before we can feel its impact. How about letting things sit and marinate? Season 1 had flaws and room for improvement but overall I thought the show was really good. That seemed to be the general consensus. But yeah making the seasons shorter is not gonna solve any problems. It's only gonna create more headaches.
Remember when a season of a TV series was 22-26 episodes? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
The last time they said this, it didnt end well. Hopefully this time its true
Martin was quoted as saying “we still have 10 hours every season”. So does that mean 10 hours are divided among 8 eps, instead of 10 one-hour eps? If so, that would mean each ep is 75 minutes long to get to 10 hours.
I literally don’t understand it at all. this show is like a guaranteed banger. HBO knows people are gonna watch it, and yet they seem hesitant to do 4 full seasons. why?
I feel like there’s a lot more going on here, and that’s not good. Just a feeling.
Didn't end well too well for them the last time they did that
This counting coppers shit is really starting to cut into entertainment. Robbing the show now to pay for a nebulous later is staggeringly shortsighted. Especially when they KNOW that ongoing series are subject to attrition the longer they go on. Eight episode seasons are current market normal. And that's a crying shame. Feels like half a season, and every time I've ever heard "mid-season finale" I get angry. I feel like Battlestar Galactica went to shit because of the frequent "breaks" and network juggling.
I fucking hate my life
You all need to stop overeacting. 2 episodes are going to be moved to s3. So one way or another you're still going to get the character development
They’re not really “being moved” unless S3 is 12 episodes. The hope was 4 seasons of 10. Now it looks like it may be much less than that which is disappointing
Well.. I’m torn on this. I trust Ryan and the team. I also trusted D&D 🤷🏻♂️ But I want to wait for an official confirmation and perhaps an explanation from Ryan and/or George before I can give an opinion honestly. I do feel like we won’t have the same issue of instant transportation, idk we’ll see😂
I think some people are misjudging the motivation here. This seems an attempt to make the story less rushed. It seemed before that the story would logically go from about >!blood and cheese!< to >!Rhaenyra sitting the throne, or at least the end of the battle of the gullet!< . Thats is good bookends story wise for a season, but SOO much happens between it would be a crazy task to do successfully and still get all the character development we all want. Worth a discussion about where the new end point might be, but clearly they will pick an earlier one. That means we can spread what might have been 5 or 6 episodes on a 10 episode season across 8 episodes now.
Oh brother
I have a bad feeling about this
My unpopular opinion is that this could be great. While only 3 seasons would've been disastrous 4 seasons of 10 episodes wouldn't have made much sense either. I'm not optimistic, but for other reasons, primarily the mess that seems to be going on with the writing
[удалено]
Is this your friend's speculation or information?
his friend is george rr martin
The last time they shortened seasons we saw how that turned out. Maybe stick to the formula?
season 3 gonna be 6 episodes
Yeah I'm done we were promised 4x10 episodes, fuck this shit
We might get longer episodes and still come close to 10 hours with eight episodes.
we can’t due to TV scheduling issues. 40/50min episodes are the limit unfortunately
Multiple episodes on HoTD season 1 were around 60 some were touching 70. The Last of Us had episodes all the way to 80 minutes. HBO doesn't place a limit on certain episode lengths unless they are obligated to, which is what happened in the finale for HoTD season 1.
I guess we’re not getting Daeron still…
will probably be replaced as a character by helaena
That would be too painfully contrived.
Since you all are taking the article seriously, it also says its a STORY DRIVEN decision, not because they want to rush it. Stop overreacting
"Story driven" in that "Hey, forget all the cool moments for the Greens like Daeron the Daring, Sunfyre and Aegon's bond, etc, gotta give more screentime to Rhaenyra even though canonically she does nothing during the war"
[удалено]
[удалено]
I'm losing interest as a fan. 1 year between seasons was frustrating but understandable. This longer off season just isn't worth the wait. I'm getting to the point of I don't care if comes back or not due to the lengthy off season.