House of the Dragon’s five new dragons could hint at season 2’s storyline

House of the Dragon’s five new dragons could hint at season 2’s storyline

Time Stamp: March 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 a Tuesday awards dinner attended by several of the show’s cast members and series author George R.R. 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 identity or riders of these five dragons, his comment may still provide a clear hint at a plotline from Martin’s novels that could be relevant in season 2. House of the Dragon has been adapting and elaborating on history laid out in Martin’s Game of Thrones pre-history book Fire & Blood, which lays out some of the backstory of the Targaryen dynasty. The new dragons suggest Condal might be aiming at some specific plotlines 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 a lot of possibilities for which five dragons Condal could be talking about, especially if they aren’t all fighting dragons, it’s most likely that he’s 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, Grey Ghost, and the Cannibal — so named because it has eaten so many other dragons, a rare thing for their species.

While it wouldn’t be fair to the show to reveal how integral these creatures are to the story, what happens with them, or who does (or doesn’t) wind up riding them, it’s worth noting that they are incredibly important to the Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire book series. If Condal does plan to include them in the show, it suggests that he’s going to forge ahead with the series’ Targaryen civil war plotline, bringing us closer to the aerial dragon combat and open warfare known as the Dance of Dragons. The show’s first season only depicts a short section of the book, leaving the war’s biggest battles for subsequent seasons.

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

While Condal’s “five new dragons” reference is just a meager tease for House of the Dragon fans, it’s probably as good as we’re going to get for a while. There’s no official word yet on a release date for season 2 of the show, which means it likely won’t arrive until 2024 at the earliest. On the off chance you need a little more consolation, Martin did mention that he hasn’t been on the House of the Dragon set at all, mostly because he’s working on a new book you may have heard of.

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