Warning: The below story contains some spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, including last night’s finale.
House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal is aware some fans are disappointed with the largely lacking-in-action Season 2 finale, but he has a message of assurance: the Battle of the Gullet is coming, and it’ll be huge.
During a virtual Q&A with press on Monday, the day after Season 2’s highly anticipated finale aired, moderator Joanna Robinson asked Condal a multi-part question about the Battle of the Gullet, why it wasn’t included this season, and fantasy battles in general. While the finale clearly set up the massive naval battle from George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood (as IGN breaks down here), the finale is largely devoid of action, especially when compared to Season 1’s capper that saw Aemond’s dragon Vhagar kill Lucerys and his dragon Arrax. It led to many fans and critics calling the episode “anticlimactic,” and IGN’s own review said it was “all setup and no payoff.”
Condal gave a long response to the question, which both touched on the challenges of making a big-budget production like House of the Dragon and what fans can expect for Season 3.
“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, it’s just never the case. Nobody has infinite time and resources,” Condal began. “As a showrunner, you’re always in the position of having to balance storytelling and the resources you have available to tell that story, and you’re also starting to think about — and one of the things that came into play in Season 2 — is, what is the final destination of this series and where are we going? And I think it was a combination of factors that led us to rebalance the story, knowing where we’re going and where that endpoint is, to rebalance the story in such a way that we had three great seasons of television [after Season 1]… to round out and tell this story.”
He went on to point how that the show takes a “tremendous amount of resources,” and called the Battle of the Gullet one of the most anticipated action events of anything in Fire and Blood. He added that the team is “trying to give it the time and the space that it deserves. And obviously, as anyone who has seen the finale [knows], we are building to that.”
“That event (the Battle of the Gullet) will happen very shortly in terms of the storytelling in House of the Dragon. And it should be, based on what we know now, it should be the biggest thing to date that we’ve pulled off,” he said. “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 deserves. And we also wanted to build some anticipation towards it.”
“The show is so complex that we’re really making multiple feature films every season, so I apologize for the wait,” he concluded. “But I will just say, if Rook’s Rest and the Red Sowing are any indication, the team that we have together, we’re gunna pull off a hell of a win with the Battle of the Gullet in the future.”
Condal is, of course, referring to two of House of the Dragon’s most-lauded events in Season 2, with Rook’s Rest being the massive dragon battle in Episode 4, and the Red Sowing being the penultimate episode that saw the emergence of three new dragon riders.
At least, for fans disappointed not to see the Battle of the Gullet in Season 2, Condal’s quotes seem to confirm it’ll likely be the first thing we see in Season 3. Elsewhere in the virtual press conference, Condal also confirmed that House of the Dragon is currently on track to last four seasons, with the third season set to start production early next year.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.