House of the Dragon is returning to Max for its second season and now following the release of not one but two trailers—one for Team Black and one for Team Green, obviously— we finally have an official premiere date.
Season 2 was confirmed to be in the works in 2022, with filming expected to commence at the beginning of 2023 and end around the summer of 2023. The start of production had been announced with a post on the official House of the Dragon Instagram reading, “It’s time to return to King’s Landing. Season 2 of #HouseoftheDragon is now in production.”
Judging by the usual lead times of Max shows of this magnitude, we had speculated that we could probably expect to see House of the Dragon season 2 in 2024. That estimate has been proven correct. Here’s everything we know about season 2 of the blockbuster Game of Thrones spinoff starting with the first official posters featuring the show’s main characters.
House of the Dragon season 2 has not one or two but three trailers!
A new trailer was released that is less about who you should be rooting for and more about the story as a whole. Rhaenyra asks Daemon if he accepts her as his queen and ruler and we don’t see his answer. But tensions are high as there are two Targaryens fighting for the throne they believe is rightfully theirs.
With the second season of HotD diving into the true blood and gore—literally—of the Dance of the Dragons, it only makes sense for it to have two trailers dedicated to each of the warring teams. Both are introduced on Max’s social media channels by Emma D’Arcy and Tom Glynn-Carney, who play Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen and King Aegon II Targaryen respectively—the two claimants to the Iron Throne.
While the trailers are somewhat similar—and don’t give out too much of all the battles that are sure to come, of course—there are a handful of characters and scenes that only appear in the trailer dedicated to their team.
So the Team Black trailer opens with an understandably angry and distressed Rhaenyra—who has just lost her secondborn child, Lucerys, in the closing scene of season one—declaring that she means to fight the war that is coming and take the throne that her father intended for her at all costs. She says this while at a table in Dragonstone—a table where we can recognise Prince Jacaerys and Lady Baela sitting right next to Rhaenyra and then three new characters that those familiar with Fire & Blood might recognise as some of the dragonseeds.
The trailer continues by finally bringing us North, where Jace is shown talking with someone who can’t be anyone but Cregan Stark, the then Lord of Winterfell and one of this season’s most anticipated new characters. Add triumphal music, enough shots of people flying on their dragons—especially Rhaenyra on her Syrax—to fill my dragon enthusiast’s heart, Daemon being the menace he was born to be, and you have a pretty perfect trailer to represent Team Black.
On the other side of the Dance, you have the Greens, whose trailer of course opens with Alicent taking in the way her life has dramatically shifted in a course of a few short weeks. Her eldest son, Aegon, sits the Iron Throne—having grown very attached to it even after a lifetime spent running from the possibility of sitting on it. Just like Princess Rhaenys and Lord Corlys act as council for Rhaenyra, Alicent’s father Otto Hightower is one of the players of the game in the Green faction, warning of how high the cost of this war will go—especially now that the Blacks will be seeking retribution for Lucerys’s death.
Book readers know very well what shape will that retribution take, and there are a few scenes that refer to it—chiefest of all Alicent and her daughter Helaena sitting in what seems to be a funeral procession, grief on their veiled faces. And then there’s Team Green’s unhinged second son, Prince Aemond, who’s clearly very much looking to clash with the uncle that is his narrative mirror. We finally see a larger shot of Aegon’s dragon, Sunfyre, and Ser Criston Cole wearing a very particular chain over his Kingsguard armour that hints at a considerable change in his political role. The Greens also have their fair share of battles, both in the air and on the ground, just what I need to start frenetically marking down the days on my calendar until that fateful release date.
These two trailers come after the much-anticipated first teaser that was released on December 2, 2023, as part of the show’s panel at CCXP 2023 in São Paulo, Brazil.
When is season 2 of House of the Dragon coming out?
Just like the first season of House of the Dragon dominated Sundays back in the summer of 2022, the show’s second season will return to do the same in the summer of 2024—as anticipated by the show’s first trailer, which was released on social media with the caption “SUMMER 2024”.
Now that release window has finally been narrowed down to a day, after J.B. Perrette, CEO of Global Streaming and Games for Warner Bros. Discovery, had confirmed as reported by IGN that the show was expected to debut in June 2024. Mark your calendars for June 16, ASOIAF fans everywhere, because that’s when the second season of House of the Dragon is going to premiere.
Who is in House of the Dragon season 2?
With no more time jumps expected in Season 2, House of the Dragon will stick with the majority of the cast for the next season. That means everybody’s favorite duo, Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy, will return as Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen, respectively, alongside Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen, Steve Toussaint as the Sea Snake, Corlys Velaryon, and Eve Best as the Queen Who Never Was, Rhaenys Targaryen.
For the Greens, Aegon II Targaryen and Aemond Targaryen will also continue to be played by Tom Glynn-Carney and Ewan Mitchell, with Phia Saban as their sister Helaena. Grandfather Otto Hightower will be brought to life once again by Welsh actor Rhys Ifans. We can also expect to see much more of Matthew Needham as Larys Strong and Fabien Frankel as whiny Commander of the Kingsguard Ser Criston Cole.
Of course, a sprawling world such as the Seven Kingdoms means an equally massive cast of characters. Readers of Fire and Blood—the in-universe chronicle of the three centuries of Targaryen reign that serves as the basis for House of the Dragon—know that we are bound to see some new and very beloved faces in future seasons.
The first round of casting announcements included four new characters, which will be listed here with no spoilers, but with a huge, meaningful glance to those who know. Aboubakar Salim will star as Alyn of Hull, a sailor in the Velaryon fleet who already fought with Lord Corlys in the Stepstones—so we can expect him to fight for the Blacks.
On the Greens’ side, we’ll see the addition of Freddie Fox as Gwayne Hightower, son of Otto Hightower and brother to Queen Alicent. In the book, he’s just the younger of her unspecified number of brothers, but in the show, he has been bumped up to Otto’s heir.
Then there are Simon Russell Beale and Gayle Rankin, who will play Ser Simon Strong—great-uncle to the gone-too-soon Harwin Strong and his brother Larys—and Alys Rivers, respectively. They are based in Harrenhal, the greatest castle in the Seven Kingdoms and a strategic stronghold whenever winds of war are blowing in Westeros.
A handful more of new cast members were revealed on December 2, 2023, alongside the unveiling of the very first trailer for season 2. Jamie Kenna and Vincent Regan will play Ser Alfred Broome and Ser Rickard Thorne respectively—the former being the most senior knight on Dragonstone at the time the Dance breaks out and the latter being a member of Aegon II’s Kingsguard.
Then there’s Clinton Liberty, who will take up the role of Addam of Hull—brother of Alyn of Hull, played by the already-announced Aboubakar Salim—and then Kieran Bew and Tom Bennett as High and Ulf. All will come into play once the Blacks realise that they do indeed have more dragons than the Greens but not enough people to ride them, a moment in the history of the Dance which Fire and Blood calls “the Sowing”.
Finally, one of the show’s most anticipated characters finally has a face—Tom Taylor will appear as Lord Cregan Stark, the current Lord of Winterfell and ancestor to the Starks we have come to know and love in Game of Thrones. We will undoubtedly meet him alongside Prince Jacaerys Velaryon, who was sent North to win allies for his mother at the end of season 1.
He’s one of the characters whose announcement fans were expecting the most, with the other being Prince Daeron Targaryen. George R.R. Martin himself already confirmed that he exists in the universe of House of the Dragon—as if there could have ever been a version of the Dance without him, I would add, all those battles in the Southern part of Westeros are not going to fight themselves—but that he had been fostering with his Hightower family in Oldtown during the events of the show’s first season.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Emily Carey, who played young Alicent Hightower, also shared that there had been talks about both her and Milly Alcock (young Rhaenyra) returning for flashbacks. This has yet to be confirmed.
What will House of the Dragon season 2 be about?
The second season of House of the Dragon will see the civil war that is the Dance of Dragons kick off in earnest. We’ve already put together some predictions for what will come next, but few details are confirmed yet.
“We will get to the spectacle,” showrunner Ryan Condal told The Times. “But you have to understand these people’s complexities before they’re thrown into war. Series two will hit the rhythms people came to expect from the middle run of Game of Thrones, but it will have been earned, and viewers will feel the tragedies because we put the work in.”
The actors have definitely put their work in if what Tom Glynn-Carney revealed before the official start of production on season 2 is to be believed. Speaking at the Game of Thrones Fan Convention in December 2022, he said that they were “training very hard and we are making sure our bodies are in good enough condition for how strenuous season 2 is gonna be.”
As noted above, there will be no huge time jumps in season 2, so the story will be told in a slower, more linear fashion.
Where is House of the Dragon season 2 filming?
Many of the locations used in season 1, such as Cornwall and Derbyshire in England, Cáceres in Spain, and Monsanto in Portugal, will be revisited in season 2.
Spanish fan site Los Siete Reinos has confirmed that House of the Dragon will return to shoot scenes in Cáceres in 2023, between March and June. This is the real-life location of King’s Landing, so there’s no surprise that we’ll be returning here.
How many seasons of House of the Dragon will there be?
George R.R. Martin has said he thinks there should be four seasons of House of the Dragon to tell the story fully. However, he also argued for 10 seasons of Game of Thrones and didn’t get them.
You’d think HBO would learn from the disaster that was Game of Thrones season 8 and take Martin’s advice on this one, yet it seems like season 2 of House of the Dragon will be shorter than the first one, with Deadline reporting in March 2023 that there will be eight episodes instead of 10.
HBO has so far only confirmed a second season of the show. We imagine that the number of seasons House of the Dragon receives will have a lot to do with how future seasons are received, so that means the pressure is on the show’s creatives to keep delivering. That same Deadline report revealed that discussions are still happening about whether House of the Dragon will have three seasons—with the third one seemingly already mapped out—or four, as in Martin’s original design.
(featured image: HBO)
Published: May 14, 2024 11:25 am