Westeros

We’re barreling on towards the end of the third season of House of the Dragon, and Elio and Linda are back on Youtube to discuss the penultimate, 7th episode. You can see their thoughts below!

Another evening, another episode of House of the Dragon. This one may be a surprise for many, as it shifts almost entirely (besides the cold open) to Rhaenyra’s story as she tries to get a grip with King’s Landing, the city she finally claimed at the end of the previous episode. Suffice it to say, there’s quite a lot to untangle about this episode.

The first episode of the penultimate season of House of the Dragon, and Westeros.org’s founders return to Youtube (from sunny Denmark!) to discuss it in detail, covering the major character and story beats.

It’s certainly an eventful episode, filled with spectacular moments in the back half, with every penny on the screen. But is it all equally good from start to finish? That’s a matter of some discussion…

Just a bit over a week left to the premiere of House of the Dragon‘s third season premiere, and another behind the scenes teaser has dropped, this time focused on the absolutely massive logistics behind the spectacles promised for this season which explain, to some degree, just why it takes so long to produce a season:

Among the details are that the season involved 314 days of filming, with the naval battle that will be featured in the opening alone taking 27 days of shooting.

Now out, the latest trailer is also the last for the upcoming House of the Dragon season 3. The penultimate season promises a great deal of bloodshed, between battles on land and sea.

Tommy Flanagan as Lord Roderick Dustin, Lord of Barrowton.

Ahead of the June 21st release, HBO has begun to ramp up promotion of House of the Dragon‘s penultimate season. First, they released the official poster art. And now, during the upfronts going on with the press, they have released a behind the scenes video with, among other things, good looks at several of the show’s new characters who’ll all play significant roles in the Dance of the Dragons. As well, at the upfronts HBO revealed that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms season 2, presently filming on location in the Canary Islands, is set to return in the first couple of months of 2027.

See the video below!

HBO has set the date for the upcoming and penultimate season of House of the Dragon: June 21st. And to mark that announcement, here’s a dragon-filled, bloody new teaser promising quite a lot of violence (as one might have expected from a show about the Dance of the Dragons).

Suffice it to say, some of the details we see don’t seem to have too much connection to the version of the events described in Fire and Blood, but others seem readily identifiable. And dragons—there are definitely a lot of them involved in the events this season will be covering, by the looks of it.

HBO’s social medias have spread the word: the first teaser for the upcoming season of House of the Dragon will be released tomorrow…

And not just that. The promotional poster for this news also includes a date: June. We don’t know the exact day, but it looks like it’s just four short months until a dynastic clash of dragons is back on the screen.

Over at the movie prop collecting podcast The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of, House of the Dragon co-creator Ryan Condal recently offered a window into the show’s production as the third season filming is hurtling to completion, detailing a tradition he’s started on the show.

Speaking with his co-host, David Mandel (Veep, Seinfeld), Condal confirmed that as the series moves into its later seasons, a growing number of principal characters are having their “series wrap”. Filmed sometime after the 13th or 14th based on remarks on a recent auction, Condal noted that in the last ten days or so of filming there were several such “wraps”. In the unforgiving world of Westeros, of course, we all know what that means. Condal, whose passion for props apparently amuses his show’s directors and writers, revealed that he has adopted a tradition inspired by Peter Jackson’s celebrated practice on The Lord of the Rings: sending off each departing actor with a significant prop tied to their character.

Via Deadline, they have confirmed that Australian actress Annie Shapero has been cast to play the role of Alysanne Blackwood.

In the history as written by George R.R. Martin, Alysanne was the young maiden aunt of the even-younger Ben Blackwood, and was a skilled archer who took part in a number of battles during the Dance of the Dragons. It’s unclear how much of that will remain unchanged, but according to Deadline Alysanne will appear in five of the eight episodes in the third season of House of the Dragon.

Alysanne Blackwood at the Battle of the Burning Mill, a battle briefly featured during season 2 but without her presence being explicitly noted.

HBO has announced three new cast members for House of the Dragon Season 3, each taking on important roles as knights caught up in the brutal Dance of the Dragons. I believe at least one of these has been hinted at previously, when Steve Toussaint posted an image of a script listing a number of characters who were present.

You can see the list of the actors and their characters below, as well as some additional thoughts from us!

Barry Sloane, Tom Cullen, and Joplin Sibtain.

House of the Dragon‘s third season officially kicked off a few days ago, and HBO wanted to make sure everyone knew it by having star Emma d’Arcy make the announcement in a video:

There’s quite a bit more news besides that, however, as some new castings have been revealed… and a new interview with show runner and co-creator Ryan Condal responds to some questions from EW about the season to come… and gives his version of the situation that stirred a great deal of controversy preceding it.

As far as the casting goes, two northerners have been announced: Dan Fogler will play Ser Torrhen Manderly, and Tommy Flanagan will play

[Edit: Ryan Condal has since confirmed to us that Roderick is a lord on the show, not a knight.]

See the full press release that came with the announcement, and list of returning cast members as well as confirmed new ones, below!

At a recent Emmys FYC (“For Your Consideration” event), House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal, executive producer Sara Hess, and a bevy of key cast members teased a number of details about the in-production Season 3, which as yet does not have a release date (though it’ll certainly be sometime in 2026). Noting that cameras haven’t quite started rolling—on The Stuff Dreams Are MAde Of podcast, recorded a week or two so earlier, he noted he was in Wales for final location scouting—the showrunner revealed that writing was basically done on the season. Condal and company hinted that this season will cover four major events described in Fire and Blood, GRRM’s account on which the show is based, and that there would be some new faces in the cast but that most of the significant characters had already been introduced.

It’s not usual for HBO to do this even before the premiere, but it seemed a foregone conclusion to everyone (including GRRM and Ryan Condal, based on remarks they have made) that House of the Dragon would see at least one more season. But now the word is official, via a press release from HBO:

Short and sweet, as they say.

Some significant House of the Dragon news reported by Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva, who has received word (and confirmed some parts of it with HBO) that for “story-driven” reasons the plan of a 10 episode 2nd season has been changed to an 8 episode 2nd season, which has necessitated some re-writing and likely has contributed to the slight delays to the planned commencement of filming (however, production is imminent and the prospective air date remains summer 2024). Per Andreeva’s report:

Interestingly, Andreeva notes that even with the reduction of two episodes, Condal and GRRM are still discussing whether three or four seasons work better. Her piece goes into some more detail about just what was moved out of the 2nd season for the prospective 3rd season, which we’ll quote below and speculate on a bit.