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The following story contains spoilers for the House of the Dragon season 2 finale, “The Queen Who Ever Was.”
THE SEASON TWO
House of the Dragon finale aired this past weekend, and it has left fans with mixed feelings. The episode ended on a cliffhanger, cutting to black and leaving the outcome of several highly anticipated battles of Westeros unresolved.
Many expected seasons 2 to have a lot more action following its marketing campaign, which highlighted the ongoing tension between the two factions of warring Targaryens: the Greens and the Blacks. Rather, this season mostly consisted of politicking, strategizing, and a number of small council meetings; Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) largely remained at home at their castles.
Many familiar with the source material—George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood—had hope that the season would end with a major battle (The Battle of Gullet to be exact). But instead, fans were treated with a case of deja vu to season one’s ending, as Rhaenyra was once again preparing for war.
Showrunner Ryan Condal defended the anti-climatic ending in a press conference recently moderated by Joanna Robinson.
“We wanted to rebalance the story in such a way that we had three great seasons of television [after season one] to round out and tell this story. When you’re trying to mount the show, which requires a tremendous amount of resources, construction, armor, costumes, visual effects … we are trying to give The Gullet—which is arguably the second most anticipated action event of Fire & Blood—trying to give it the time and the space that it deserves.”
Condal reassured fans that season 3 will most likely start off with the anticipated battle, and will live up to what it is promised.
“We are building to that event that will happen very shortly in terms of the storytelling, and it should be the biggest thing to date that we’ve pulled off. We just wanted to have the time and the space to do that at a level that is going to excite and satisfy the fans in the way it’s deserved. We also wanted to build some anticipation toward it. So I apologize for the wait, but … with the team that we have together, we’re going to pull off a hell of a win with The Battle of the Gullet.”
With season 3 expected to begin production in early 2025, fans have taken their frustration to X after the season ended in a way that didn’t match up with their expectation. Here are some of our some of our favorite reactions to the finale below:
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