House Of The Dragon to actually end when it runs out of book

House Of The Dragon will officially end in its fourth season, showrunner Ryan Condal confirmed at a press conference on Monday. This news won’t come as much of a surprise to those in the know; author and executive producer George R.R. Martin wrote in 2022 that “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.” The second season concluded on Sunday with eight episodes, so HBO is cutting it a little close on Martin’s timeline, but it sounds like the production is going into the back half with a clear vision for how to execute the story outlined in Martin’s book Fire & Blood. 

Per Deadline, the third season is set to begin production in 2025. Condal said he hadn’t had discussions about the episode order with HBO, but “would just anticipate the cadence of the show, from a dramatic storytelling perspective, will continue to be the same from season two on.” Though some fans felt the finale was anticlimactic (In her recap for The A.V. Club, Kayleigh Dray called it “the televisual equivalent of cooking an epic 12-course banquet and then only letting people look at the showstopper dessert”), Condal stressed that the season was building up to major events like the highly anticipated Battle of the Gullet. That battle in particular would be “the biggest thing to date we have pulled off,” and the team wanted “to have the time and space to do that at a level that will excite the fans,” he explained. 

“There are so many great events that we are already writing in season 3 as it is,” Condal said (via Deadline). “This war really comes to a big head at this point in the storytelling. I mean, if you look at season two, it’s largely a metaphor for a nuclear conflict … There’s gonna be giant moments of spectacle but real moments of surprise and character nuance that we’re very much looking forward to. Some of my favorite moments [in] the book, as a reader, I’m excited to adapt as a dramatist.”

House Of The Dragon is still doing well for itself, with the finale “The Queen That Never Was” racking in a season-high audience of 8.9 million viewers across HBO and Max, per The Wrap. That’s up 14% from the second season premiere, but down a bit from the first season finale, which netted 9.3 million viewers. Overall, the second season reportedly averaged 25 million cross-platform viewers.

The drop off may be down to the fact that it’s a long time to wait in between seasons—as is the wont of late-stage Peak TV. Four may not be very many seasons in total, but at the rate that these episodes are written and produced, House Of The Dragon won’t conclude until at least 2028. “I know everybody wants this to come out every summer,” Condal acknowledged at the press conference (per Variety). “It’s just that the show is so complex that we’re really making multiple feature films every season. So I apologize for the wait, but I will just say if Rook’s Rest and the Red Sowing are any indication, we’re gonna pull off a hell of a win with the Battle the Gullet in the future.”