House of the Dragon Should End After Season Three

And now, our watch of the second season of House of the Dragon—HBO’s mega-budget Game of Thrones prequel—has ended. The show has been popular, but not nearly as buzzy as its predecessor; perhaps that’s due to audience burnout, dissatisfaction with how GoT concluded, and HotD’s difficult first season, which spanned over a decade of Westeros time and featured a major cast swap about halfway through.

Season two has been a narrative improvement. The world of the show has expanded without diluting the storytelling, while the acting and writing have grown more thoughtful and textured. House of the Dragon has found its footing. Even so, I think it should end next season.

Unlike Game of Thrones, which was based on five extant books and the promise of two more (that have still not been published, and at this point probably never will be), House of the Dragon is an adaptation of one slim supplementary text that has a very fixed endpoint. It is about a dynastic power struggle that leads to war and the end of the era of dragons. House of the Dragon co-creator Ryan Condal thus had to figure out how to stretch that story out across many hours, which explains much of the throat clearing and table setting that frustrated viewers in season one.

Season two kept things moving more swiftly, getting its cast of characters into position for the big war—and giving viewers a few gnarly battle sequences to tide us over. The buildup to the final two episodes of the season promised a looming explosion. Watching the season, I began wondering just how epic and violent its conclusion would be.

As it turns out, not very much at all. Season two ends on another prelude-to-war cliffhanger, suggesting that next season is when things will really get cooking. It could easily be another two years before we get to that payoff, which is a lot to ask of audiences even after an otherwise rewarding run of episodes. It’s time for House of the Dragon to get to the main event, then reach its natural end. If the third season ultimately pulls the same trick as season two, I suspect most people will abandon the show.

Condal has said that the the show will go for four seasons, a plan agreed upon by his co-creator George R.R. Martin, author of the source material. But you’ll forgive me if I don’t quite defer to Martin’s expertise in the tempo of serialized storytelling.

It’s hard to imagine how there could be another sixteen hours of narrative here. We now fully (and exhaustingly) grasp that Aemond, brother of the contested king of Westeros, is wicked. We understand that his rival, Raenyra, is steadfast in her claim to the throne. Her former friend turned enemy Alicent ends season two having made a terrible sacrifice for peace. (Or, at least, having promised to make that sacrifice.) There’s certainly more to mine there, but the same cannot be said about many of the other characters she shares the screen with.

Daemon, the vain and scheming husband-uncle of Raenyra, was a fan favorite in season one (partly because he’s played by Matt Smith, a former Doctor Who). But he was largely put to waste in the second season, sent to brood around a ruined castle as he decided just how loyal he wanted to be to his wife-niece, a storyline that concluded with a prophetic vision of the events of Game of Thrones. That suggests that the writers were already straining to come up with more plot for the character. Where does he go from here? I’d imagine we’ll see the results of his pledge of devotion to Raenyra and then . . . well, he probably needs to die.

Pretty much all of these royals and strivers are likely to meet their demise in grisly fashion, and the goodbye is starting to feel too long. A third House of the Dragon season that is ruthless in its carnage might mean that we lose out on the softer stuff—the Machiavellian conniving, the slights and betrayals—that come in less battle-focused episodes. But we’ve already had enough of that stuff. The show has, quite purposefully, stoked a bloodlust within us, and now it has to deliver.

There may be an added benefit to cutting House of the Dragon off after three seasons. Maybe a shift to shorter form is how HBO could really make a viable, enduring franchise of Martin’s world: one- or two-season stories that neatly end, making room for the next novella. Taking a firm approach to HotD’s plotting would be a fine test of those waters. If such anthologizing works for the miserable rich people of White Lotus, why couldn’t it do the same for the miserable rich people of Westeros?