House of the Dragon Will End Its Story Soon, But HBO Will Continue to Squeeze Out Game of Thrones Content for a Long Time

Season two of House of the Dragon ended this week. However, fans of the series and George R.R. Martin’s universe can relax because HBO plans to shoot many more chapters of Dance of the Dragons from other moments in time and with different characters.

HBO has announced that House of the Dragon will end with season four. After season three, which the production team will start shooting in early 2025, there will be a fourth and final season.

It was Martin’s wish, and Ryan Condal, showrunner and co-creator of House of the Dragon, has confirmed it. We don’t know how many episodes each season will have, but what’s certain is that the Targaryen series has two seasons left.

A guaranteed ratings machine. Although season two began disastrously, with 50% fewer viewers in the first episode, it has rebounded to finish in a very dignified way.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, season two ended with 8.9 million viewers for the final episode, up 14% from the first episode and up from the record-setting 8.1 million viewers for the fourth episode of season one.

In total, the second season attracted about 25 million viewers—slightly less than the 29 million for season one—but still among the most-watched series on HBO, confirming the appeal of this universe.

Next up: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Before the arrival of the next season of House of the Dragon, HBO will offer fans a spin-off. It’s about the adventures of Dunk and Egg, based on Martin’s short story Tales of Dunk and Egg. Specifically, according to the chosen title, it will narrate the events in the first book, The Hedge Knight.

The Hedge Knight an entertaining and chivalrous novel with two charismatic characters. Instead of focusing on dragons and great houses, the story shows the world of Westeros from a different point of view.

Many options are available, from The Sea Snake to Aegon’s Conquest. HBO has several shows planned to continue exploiting Game of Thrones. There are several styles, from some that revolve around characters we’ve met in House of the Dragon to more epic series based on key periods in Westeros’ history, such as Aegon Targaryen’s conquest of the Seven Kingdoms.

Aegon’s Conquest isn’t yet out of pre-production. Still, it would be one of the most ambitious, featuring Balerion the Black Dread, one of the great dragons of House Targaryen and bigger and more powerful than Vhagar.

In 2021, producers announced The Golden Empire, which would be set in the Further East of Essos. It's a show inspired by the Golden Empire of Yi Ti and would have quite a lot of creative freedom, as it’s an area not described much in Martin’s books. There’s also talk of Ten Thousand Ships, a spin-off that would tell the story of Princess Nymeria. These two projects were officially announced but didn’t receive approval.

Due to the success of House of the Dragon, a spin-off of Corlys Velaryon, the Sea Snake, and his great sea voyages has also been proposed.

Some ideas, such as the Jon Snow series, have already been scrapped. Another project was a spin-off of the iconic character Jon Snow, an idea that Kit Harington, the actor who plays Snow, brought to the producers. As confirmed by ScreenRant in April of this year, this project is no longer part of HBO’s plans.

Five years to turn Game of Thrones into the new Star Wars. Martin still has to finish A Song of Ice and Fire. In the meantime, he combines it with the production and supervision of the various Game of Thrones sequels and spin-offs. In 2021, he signed a five-year contract with HBO.

HBO’s goal seems to be to compete with Disney when it comes to TV shows that take place in the same universe. Disney+, despite the apparent erosion, has worked with Star Wars. HBO, with various spin-offs on the table, wants to do something similar. We’ll see if the audience responds in the same way.

This article was written by Enrique Pérez and originally published in Spanish on Xataka.

Images | HBO

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