The renewal announcement came rather shortly following the release of the series on August 21, 2022, which accumulated ten million viewers in just a night. A record-breaking in the history of HBO for a debut series approximately on par with the launch of Game of Thrones 6th season. Reportedly, the first episode of the show’s viewers has now gone up to 20 million viewers in the United States across linear, on-demand, and HBO Max services.
“We are beyond proud of what the entire House of the Dragon team has accomplished with season one,” declares Francesca Orsi, EVP at HBO programming. “Our phenomenal cast and crew undertook a massive challenge and exceeded all expectations, delivering a show that has already established itself as must-see-TV. A huge thank you [to co-creator and executive producer George R.R. Martin and co-creator and showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik] for leading us on this journey. We couldn’t be more excited to continue bringing to life the epic saga of House Targaryen with season two.”
With the renewal announcement, the House of Dragon could likely go on for a couple more seasons. HBO launched at least seven Game of Thrones. This includes spinoffs series in preparation. House of Dragon’s debut success was enough proof for HBO to quickly order a second season.
“Palace intrigue, and questions of succession and legitimacy, were, of course, a huge part of Game of Thrones, but far from the only part. And they were only sometimes even close to the most fun part of a given stretch of that series,” Rolling Stone jotted down in a critique of the first episode of the newly launched House of the Dragon.
Further adding: “Building a whole show around this subject, and filling it all with a gang of mostly dour Targaryens, gives the whole project the air of the Star Wars prequels, which vastly expanded the role of the self-serious Jedi knights without also making room for the humanity and humor of a Han Solo type. Game of Thrones had a rueful sense of humor to go along with its violence and mind games, and highly quotable characters like Tyrion and Cersei. None of that wit or energy is present here.”
Nevertheless, HBO did not reveal the number of episodes for the second season, but most probably it will consist of ten episodes.
When it comes to the release date, it remains a mystery. The first season of House of the Dragon took about ten months of filming and an enormous quantity of post-production visual effects jobs, which commenced this January and is reported to be still ongoing. So with this, we assume that it will be hard for the production to shoot and VFX the new season by the end of 2023, so it’s most likely for season 2 to arrive sometime in 2024.
The series will again stars Paddy Considine as King Viserys Targaryen, Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower, Emma D’Arcy as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, and Matt Smith as Prince Daemon Targaryen.
