HBO is eyeing a 2024 release date for House of the Dragon season 2, says Casey Bloys. Game of Thrones succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest expectations after hitting HBO in 2011, proving that fantasy storytelling could work on TV. So the stakes were incredibly high when the first GoT spinoff was set for 2022.

There were indeed many skeptics who believed that this spinoff, the prequel show House of the Dragon, would fail to recapture the magic of the original Thrones. But recapture the magic it did, wowing fans with its combination of intense dramatic storytelling, signature GoT shock moments and of course spectacular dragon action. House of the Dragon indeed just wrapped up its triumphant first season with a huge finale episode that delivered stunning twists, stakes-raising moments and, in a GoT universe first, jaw-dropping dragon-on-dragon violence.

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Where House of the Dragon will go after its stunning final season 1 image of a grief-stricken but more-determined-than-ever Rhaenyra is anyone’s guess. But the answer sadly won’t be coming along any time soon, as fans have a long wait ahead of them for season 2. As HBO-HBO Max chief Bloys just revealed to Vulture, the network doesn’t expect the dragons to fly again in 2023, and is currently eyeing a 2024 release date for season 2 of their wildly successful GoT spinoff. Check out Bloys remarks in the space below:

“Don’t expect it in ’23, but I think sometime in ’24. We’re just starting to put the plan together, and just like last time, there are so many unknowns. It’s not to be coy or secretive, but you don’t want to say it’s going to be ready on this date, and then you have to move it.”

How Long Was The Wait Between Seasons Of Game Of Thrones?

Emilia Clarke as Daenerys in Game of Thrones with a leashed dragon soaring above her head

For fans wanting to find out what happens next in the Dance of the Dragons, the coming year-plus will indeed be a long winter. No doubt the extended between-season time is down to the massiveness of House of the Dragon as a production, and the need for loads of post-production time to make all that dragon action come to life. Such extended breaks were actually not the norm in early seasons of Game of Thrones, which came out on a very regular schedule from seasons 1-6, with each season bowing in April (except season 3, which came out in late March) and ending in June. That left fans having to wait around 9 months for each new season to arrive.

But as Game of Thrones became a bigger hit, its budget naturally swelled and so did its production schedule. As a result, season 7 came out a little later than usual, arriving in July 2017, or over a year after the end of season 6. Things then became truly extended between seasons 7 and 8, as fans were forced to wait from August 2017 all the way to April 2019 (only to be very disappointed by the show’s final episodes). A similar wait-time is now in the cards for House of the Dragon fans, as HBO and company dive back into George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood book for more Targaryen family drama to translate into TV and streaming content. Unfortunately, the relatively quaint, largely dragonless early days of GoT are a thing of the past, as the spinoff is now expected to constantly up the stakes on epic CGI dragon action, resulting in hugely prolonged production schedules.

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Source: Vulture