Season 2 of House of the Dragon Rumored to be Chopped Down to 8 Episodes

In case you yearned for the days of shorter seasons of Game of Thrones, Deadline has just announced that season 2 of House of the Dragon will reportedly run only 8 episodes, rather than the standard 10. This comes as a shock to many, given George R. R. Martin himself had indicated that it would take four 10 episode seasons to do HOTD justice. So what happened, exactly? Dive in as I muse…

The rumors are that 10 episodes were planned, but with the full scope of the series outlined, plot points got shuffled around, resulting in a season arc that will take only 8 episodes to tell. It was even noted that an intended season 2 battle was pushed to the as-yet-unordered season 3. Going further, the rumor mill suggests that HBO is seriously considering ordering scripts and casting for season 3 just to get the ball rolling. Of additional note is that GRRM and Ryan Condal (showrunner) have seesawed with each other on whether 3 or 4 seasons are necessary to tell the complete story.

Keep in mind that TV moves both more quickly and more slowly than it used to. I say it moves more quickly because these days, greater budgets are poured into more TV shows than they ever historically have been, leading to longer delays between seasons as bigger and more expensive shows such as HOTD, The Mandalorian, The Boys, The Crown, etc. have far longer and more complicated post-production periods, meaning more people are constantly working for longer. It moves more slowly, however, in that the downtime between filming, from an actor’s experience, can sometimes stretch to over a year between literally being on set from one season to another. What used to be the September to May calendar year for TV is hardly a thing at all anymore.

Bringing this back to House of the Dragon, let’s be real, in an era of expensive TV, it’s STILL among the most expensive shows. Therefore, by scaling back from 10 episodes to 8, it can shorten (possibly) the filming time, cut back (ever so slightly) on the post-production time, (theoretically) allow the writers and producers more time to craft the next season ahead of time, and even get the actors back to work on the next season sooner than it otherwise would, keeping younger actors from aging out of their characters too quickly.

But all of this is rampant speculation; I’m just some guy. What do I even know about TV? I mean, all I do is watch it all the time. But hey, don’t you?

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