House Of The Dragon is apparently half over. Fans have been speculating since the launch of the series about how many seasons it might go, and we finally got a definitive answer from showrunner Ryan Condal. The prequel, which chronicles The Dance Of Dragons, will run for four seasons, which feels about right given the scope of the story but also is giving me flashbacks to Game Of Thrones and making me really worried about the show making the same mistake as its predecessor.
Now, I love Game Of Thrones, and to be honest, I’m a bit more defensive of the later seasons than most fans. There are a lot of terrific moments to be found even in Season 8 (like Arya and The Hound’s goodbye), but it’s obviously not as good as the rest of the show. Some of that is because of absolutely idiotic decisions like which character was put on the Iron Throne, but I’d argue the single biggest problem was the pacing. And that’s what has me the most concerned with this announcement.
For its first six seasons, the ones an overwhelming percentage of fans all love, Game Of Thrones really took its time moving the pieces around the board. There were, of course, a steady stream of OMG moments throughout, but they all came one step at a time. More often than not, you can point to a little moment that happened five episodes ago, which caused a character to do something four episodes ago, which led to a confrontation three episodes ago, which alerted another character two episodes ago, which led to a fork in the road choice last episode, which all conspired to create the OMG moment.
But the later seasons were different. In an effort to devote its gigantic budget to large battles, dragon CGI and bigger moments, the show condensed down to its total episodes. Season 7 only had seven, and Season 8 only had six. In fairness, that allowed for some absolutely stunning extended sequences, most prominently the battle between the Lannister and Targaryen armies in 7x4, the battle between the living and the dead in 8x3 and the final battle for King’s Landing in 8x5, but instead of a series of smaller moments that led to bigger moments, the show started feeling like a rushed hurry toward the finish line.
That’s the concern I have with House Of The Dragon. There are things I really love about the show. In its best moments, it feels as good as anything Game Of Thrones gave us, but at times, the pacing seems a little inconsistent. During the first season, I chalked that up to the numerous time jumps and all the backstory the show was trying to tell. There wasn’t room for subtleties and careful plotting when they were trying to get in more than a decade of events. But now we’re in the main plot of the story. Apart from some Daemon hallucinations that just went on and on, I was relatively happy with the pace of the show during Season 2 (even if some fans thought it was too slow), but with only two seasons left, I’m already worried about what’s to come, especially because of a Season 2 decision the showrunners made.
Remember how I complained about the episode count for Game Of Thrones in the final seasons? Well, House Of The Dragon has already gone down that road. After the traditional Season 1 of ten episodes, the show scaled back to eight episodes on Season 2. At this point, we don’t know how many we’re going to get during the final two seasons, which Ryan Condal confirmed to TV Line, but I would be honestly surprised if they went back to the full ten for each. That’s concerning.
Everyone loves to talk about the big moments in Game Of Thrones. They love to talk about how shocking The Red Wedding was or how they never saw the big Jon Snow reveal coming. I agree. Those OMG moments are what will always stick out for most people, but House Of The Dragon would be well served to remember that those moments only hit as hard as they did because we spent so many quiet moments with the characters building up to them. The show runners would be well served to remember that some of the moments that have most resonated with fans have involved a kicked dog and a foot fetish and a dinner scene with a dying man.
Yes, we need dragon fights, but we also need time to build more side characters and to humanize the people we're rooting for. If we’re only going to get two seasons and perhaps not even twenty episodes more, the writers need to figure out ways to slow things down long enough to give us that, and if they do, it'll make the OMG moments all the more meaningful.
