House Of The Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal is still surprised by the series' popularity—and Daemon Targaryen's

It certainly flew by, but HBO’s House Of The Dragon has been serving up new episodes for ten weeks now, wrapping up with last night’s finale, “The Black Queen.” As season one reaches a close, one of the series’ showrunners, Ryan Condal, has taken some time to reflect on the debut season.

“It’s so weird, after spending so long making the show, that the finale is airing already,” Condal tells New York Times. “It felt like it took years and years just to get that first episode aired. Then, very quickly, everything airs, and that’s it.”

Despite the overwhelming popularity of the original series Game Of Thrones, Condal says he wasn’t sure if fans would accept House Of The Dragon with open arms. But audiences tuned in, with an average of 29 million viewers for each episode in season one (compared to GOT’s 44 million viewers per episode in the final season). Not bad at all.

“I really thought it was going to be more of a hill to climb because we were following the Beatles, and how do you do that?” Condal says. “You don’t. You just try to do your own thing, and hope it connects with people. But I was shocked that people came right out the gate and accepted it, generally—this massive fandom, and tens of millions of people watching the show, and writing about it and talking about it.”

Something else that came as a shock to Condal was viewers’ adoption of Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) as the internet’s new evil daddy.

“I’m having trouble understanding it,” Condal says. “We established right out of the gate, in the pilot, that Daemon is a fascinating guy, but he’s not Ned Stark. So I didn’t see it coming.”

“To me, Daemon is the antihero of this story. He’s a character with a real darkness to him, who’s dangerous and charming in equal parts,” he continues. “I knew people would be fascinated by him and latch onto him, but I figured they’d do it in the way they did with Jaime Lannister or Bronn or the Red Viper. I did not think they would oddly apply this sort of super-fandom to him and try to justify every single thing he’s done as being intrinsically heroic. It simply isn’t. It’s not the case. Nor will it be in the future.”

Ah yes, the future. House Of The Dragon has already received season two renewal over at HBO. Even with fellow showrunner Miguel Sapochnik’s departure ahead of season two, Condal believes is optimistic about the upcoming season.

“We built a really strong kingdom here in London,” he says. “It’s a story about figuring out what worked and what didn’t and finding great people to carry on that legacy, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”