Release Date and Estimations
Starting off with the most pressing question: we do not know when House of the Dragon Season 3 will premiere. Neither HBO nor any of the cast or producers have hinted at even an estimated release date. However, it feels safe to say it will not come out in 2025 – both because there wouldn’t be enough time to film it, and because HBO wouldn’t want this show to compete with its new spinoff, The Hedge Knight.
At the same time, it seems reasonable to guess that House of the Dragon Season 2 will be back in 2026. There was a two-year gap between Season 1 and Season 2, and between several seasons of Game of Thrones. On top of that, showrunner Ryan Condal told Inverse: “Knowing where we’re going with Season 3… we have a good plan and we know the road map and how to get there.” That sounds promising for the momentum of the work, which is already underway.
Production Progress
Accounts vary on how far along the writers and producers are on preparing House of the Dragon Season 3. HBO did not officially order the season until June of 2024, but back in December of 2023, author George R.R. Martin wrote on his blog that the writers had already begun work on Seasons 3 and 4. In another post in July, Martin indicated that the writers’ room was in session at the time. Finally, in a now-deleted post in early September, Martin wrote that he had seen an outline for Season 3 written by Condal.
Battle of the Gullet
If the Season 2 finale wasn’t a strong enough hint, Condal himself has confirmed that Season 3 will open with “The Battle of the Gullet” – an infamous part of Westeros’ history. Fans of Martin’s book Fire & Blood were surprised that the season didn’t end with this climax, and Condal explained to The Hollywood Reporter that he and the other producers decided to save it for Season 3 to give it as much screen time as possible.
“When you’re a showrunner, you’re always in the position of having to balance storytelling and the resources that you have available to tell that story,” he explained. “We wanted to rebalance the story in such a way that we had three great seasons of television [after season 1] to round out and tell this story. When you’re trying to mount the show, which requires a tremendous amount of resources, construction, armor, costumes, visual effects… we are trying to give the Gullet – which is arguably the second most anticipated action event of Fire & Blood – the time and the space that it deserves.”
“We are building to that event that will happen very shortly in terms of the storytelling, and it should be the biggest thing to date that we’ve pulled off,” he went on. “We just wanted to have the time and the space to do that at a level that is going to excite and satisfy the fans in the way it’s deserved. We also wanted to build some anticipation toward it. So I apologize for the wait.”
How Many Seasons Are Left?
When House of the Dragon first premiered, Condal mentioned that he hoped to tell this story in its entirety within three or four seasons, but that was before HBO cut Season 2 from 10 episodes down to 8. Condal has since estimated four seasons more often than three, and when asked if there was a possibility of five season by THR, he balked.
“No, I think it’s four,” he said at the time. He also said that he believed Season 3 would have just eight episodes once again, which really upset commenters on fan forums and social media. Many wondered how the show could reach a satisfactory conclusion with just 16 episodes left – especially as it has to catch up with the material cut from the end of Season 2.
Behind-The-Scenes Drama
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – MARCH 07: George R. R. Martin attends the FYC special screening for HBO Max’s “House Of The Dragon” at DGA Theater Complex on March 07, 2023 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images)
– Amy Sussman/GA)
That leads us to the drama and speculation gripping the fandom this week, mostly thanks to Martin. As noted above, the author made a post about Season 2 on his blog last week, but deleted it within two hours. In it, he criticized the season for making small changes with huge implications for the broader story, taking one change as an example: the absence of Prince Maelor Targaryen. This character seems to have been cut entirely from the show, and Martin argued that this will blunt the impact of important plot points down the line.
At first glance, Martin seemed to criticize Condal for this change, which struck many fans as odd. Condal is a huge fan of Martin’s books, and the two have indicated that they are friendly in the past. On top of that, there’s a strong case to be made that the problems with Season 2 mostly trace back to executives at HBO – or even higher up at Warner Bros. Discovery, where it was decided that Season 2 would be shortened. Some fans wanted Martin to call out the companies for this, not focus on the screenwriters. However, some pointed out that Martin likely has a non-disparagement clause in his contract, so he may have been writing his post carefully to avoid issues there.
On a simpler level, many commenters were frustrated to see Martin openly criticizing Condal and his team when he was never that critical of Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, whom fans generally did hold responsible for the ending of their show. There are a lot of other factors to consider here and the fandom is still processing this blowback in forums, podcasts and YouTube videos, but it’s clear that a sense of unease has taken hold and it’s not clear when it might dissipate.