The House of the Dragon is a different beast than Game of Thrones, following the civil war of a single family through the years and generations. This timeline forced the creators of the series to use jumps in time, something that George RR Martin defends while he affirms that the series will need four seasons at the current rate.
In his most recent personal blog, George RR Martin wrote about the latest episode of House of the Dragon, “Lord of the Tides,” praising writer, director and actor Paddy Considine, whom he personally texted to congratulate him.
He also took the time to tackle time jumps that the series has done over the course of the first season to move the timeline close to 20 years since it began. This also means that some actors like Milly Alcock (young Rhanyra) and Emily Carey (young Alicent) have been replaced by Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke respectively.
Martin praised the use of time jumps as a necessity resulting from the shorter seasons. House of the Dragon only has 10 episodes per season, unlike shows like The Sopranos, which had 13 episodes just a decade ago.
“The Sopranos” had 13 episodes per season, but a few years later, “Game of Thrones” only had 10 (and not even that, those last two seasons). If House of the Dragon had 13 episodes per season, maybe we could have shown everything we had to ‘jump through time,'” says Martin.
But Martin also says that the added arguments “would have risked some viewers complained that the series was too “slow”that “nothing happened”.
So with 10 episodes, The House of the Dragon needed to make some decisions about the storybut at the current rate “it’s going to take four full seasons of 10 episodes each to do A Dance with Dragons justice from start to finish,” admits Martin.
Luckily, The House of the Dragon has already been renewed for a second season. If you want to know more, take a look at how the emotional scene between Daemon and Viserys was conceived.
