Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon completed its second season quite successfully earlier this month. However, the franchise is a breeding place for controversies, and the spinoff show wasn’t devoid of it. One of the key criticisms was its slow pacing.
House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal has come forward to address these issues. And it seems like the slow pacing stems from PTSD, which most Game of Thrones fans are suffering from after its horrific final season.
House of the Dragon showrunner explains Season 2’s slow pace
One of the main complaints with the second season of House of the Dragon was its expansive storyline that takes its time to set up the key players, making it look stretched out and boring. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Ryan Condal explained:
One of the challenges of making television at any scale [is] nobody has infinite time and resources. When you’re as a showrunner, you’re always in the position of having to balance storytelling and the resources that you have available to tell that story. One of the things that came into play in season two is: What is the final destination of the series and where are we going? It was a combination of factors that led us to rebalance the season knowing now where we’re going.
We wanted to rebalance the story in such a way that we had three great seasons of television [after season one] 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 — trying to give it the time and the space that it deserves.
To avoid a rushed storytelling that ruined the most anticipated battle of Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon chose to dive into the lore extensively. And the battle to come is no slouch either.
Ryan Condal teases the Battle of the Gullet
The second season of House of the Dragon felt like a trailer for something big to come, and for a good reason. The readers of Fire & Blood know Season 3 will erupt with a bang, with the infamous Battle of the Gullet possibly taking place in the early episodes.
Condal went on to hype the upcoming war sequence:
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 we’ve pulled off. 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, but … with the team that we have together, we’re going to pull off a hell of a win with The Battle of the Gullet.
The Battle of the Gullet was the bloodiest sea battle in Westerosi history, with massive casualties on both sides. It might even surpass the likes of the Battle of the Bastards, a cinematic epic. A battle of this proportion definitely needs a nice build-up. Hopefully, the hyped sequence will be worth the wait.
As of August 19, 2024, House of the Dragon can be streamed on HBO Max.
