House of the Dragon’s showrunner says 5 new dragons coming in season 2

Bring back the wild dragons and civil war of House Targaryen from the books by George RR Martin

By Austen Goslin on Mar 8, 2023 5:51 pm

House of the Dragon is getting a lot more dragons in its second season, according to showrunner Ryan Condal. During an awards dinner on Tuesday attended by some of the show’s cast members and series creator George RR Martin himself, Condal confirmed that Season 2 of the show will add five new dragons to the lineup already on the show.

While Condal didn’t elaborate much on the identities or riders of these five dragons, his comment may still give a clear hint at a plot from Martin’s novels that could be important in Season 2. House of the Dragon has been adapting and fleshed out the story presented in Martin’s pre-historic book Game of Thrones, Fire & Blood, which features some of the backstory of the Targaryen dynasty. The new dragons suggest that Condal may be targeting some specific lines from that book.

[Ed. note: This story contains possible spoilers for season 2 of House of the Dragon and definite spoilers for Fire & Blood.]

While there are certainly many possibilities that Condal could be talking about five dragons, especially if they are not all fighting dragons, it is more likely that he is talking about dragons with key roles in the book. The ones that are most important in the story are the wild dragons.

In Fire & Blood, House Targaryen’s ancestral island of Dragonstone features three wild dragons that roam the area, ready to pounce on and eat anything unfortunate enough to come their way. These three dragons are Sheepstealer, Gray Ghost and Cannibal – so named because it has eaten so many other dragons, a rarity for their species.

While it wouldn’t be fair for the show to reveal how integral these creatures are to the story, what happens to them, or who ends up (or doesn’t) riding them, it’s worth noting that they’re incredibly important to the book series. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire. If Condal plans to include them in the show, it suggests that he will continue the plot of the Targaryen civil war series, bringing us closer to the aerial dragon fights and open warfare known as the Dance of the Dragons. The first season of the show depicts only a short part of the book, leaving the larger battles of the war for the later seasons.

Other dragons Condal can refer to include Fire & Blood’s Tessario and Moondancer, which will round out the total well. These two are both family dragons in the Targaryens arsenal.

While Condal’s “five new dragons” reference is only a weak tease for House of the Dragon fans, it’s probably as good as we’ll get for a while. There’s still no official word on a release date for Season 2 of the show, meaning it likely won’t arrive until 2024. In case you need a little more consolation, Martin mentioned that he hasn’t hasn’t been on the Dragon House set at all, mostly because he’s working on a new book you might have heard about.

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