House Of The Dragon Season 2 Will Feel A Lot Like Game Of Thrones In One Major Way

For some fans of "House of the Dragon," they might not want this prequel and spin-off to feel too similar to "Game of Thrones." Though the show certainly enjoyed its fair share of successes during its first several seasons, by the time it ended in the spring of 2019, fans largely lost patience with the show's massive plot holes, rushed writing, and unsatisfying climaxes. There aren't many instances of such an enormous pop culture juggernaut losing cultural capital seemingly overnight, but "Game of Thrones" is definitely one of them; after being all anybody talked about for a decade, the show's unceremonious ending made it almost irrelevant.

In August of 2022, however, "House of the Dragon" premiered, reopening the book on "Game of Thrones" and getting audiences totally hooked on its portrayal of the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons. Immediately renewed for a second season after stunning premiere numbers, "House of the Dragon" was an undeniable hit, despite its relation to "Game of Thrones," or perhaps in spite of it — the creators, Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik, were very clear that they didn't want to repeat the original show's mistakes. (They still did anyway, some of the time.)

With all that said, Condal has now revealed that, whenever the second season of "House of the Dragon" drops, it'll feel a little familiar. Here's why Ryan Condal says "House of the Dragon" Season 2 will feel more like classic "Game of Thrones."

"Season 1 was setting the table for a very bloody feast to come," Condal told Entertainment Weekly. "The reason that I wanted to really spend our time doing this is because I wanted everybody to understand who all of these characters were and the long history they had behind them — behind their fathers and their grandfathers — that led us to this point where they end up fighting a civil war against each other."

"I'm really interested in picking up with all of those characters that we spent all of this time introducing, particularly Rhaenyra and Alicent's families, and seeing what happens now that we've flipped the chessboard over and spilled the pieces on the ground. How do all those react? That's the story that we tell in season 2 and beyond." That said, Season 1 definitely focused on just a few locations and really tightly on the Targaryen family... and Condal says that'll change.

According to Condal, Season 2 has a much bigger scope... and the show could really change.

"I don't know if the Dance of the Dragons will ever have the sprawl that the original 'Game of Thrones' did, simply because of North of the Wall and [Essos] and all these other places that it went," Condal continued. "But certainly the season that we're writing, the rhythms of this show are going to feel much more like a middle season — seasons 3-6 of 'Game of Thrones' — in terms of its scope and breadth and the number of characters. They're not all in the same place, but this is still very much a story of Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) and their families pitted against each other. We're not gonna suddenly pull away from telling their stories. It's just the nature of this thing, in season 2, it really opens up the world in a big way and the sprawl grows quite a bit."

Famously, in the later seasons of "Game of Thrones," the sprawling nature of Westeros led to some pretty puzzling situations, as if the show's characters could simply fast-travel across the giant map whenever the plot called for it — so let's just hope that, though Condal's remarks are exciting, "House of the Dragon" won't commit that same sin. That said, a wider world will be welcome; the only problem now is that we all have to wait for Season 2.