House of the Dragon season 2 didn’t go how anybody had hoped, apparently. The largely good second season ended on a bitter observe for some followers. Now, a number of weeks after the finale of the shorter-than-normal eight-episode season, each A Music of Ice and Hearth writer George R.R. Martin and showrunner Ryan Condal launched explanations to followers on Wednesday about their equally difficult emotions on the present thus far.
Martin’s response to the season got here in a since-deleted post on his Not a Blog website, which he teased final week. The publish is usually about Martin’s general emotions on some of the adjustments that Condal and the relaxation of the House of the Dragon group made throughout this season, and the way they evaluate to the books. He frames most of his dialogue round the idea of the butterfly impact, on this case how small adjustments to the supply materials can have enormous implications in adapting a narrative.
Martin’s largest level in the publish is about the adjustments made to the Blood and Cheese sequence in episode 2 of the season. As Martin says, the sequence obtained reward from individuals who had solely watched the present, however was met with a bit of skepticism from those that learn Martin’s Hearth & Blood ebook first. The ebook model is meaner, nastier, and extra affecting. Martin agrees with the ebook readers, which is sensible contemplating he wrote it, however he doesn’t dismiss the present’s dealing with of the scene altogether. As an alternative, what bothers him most is the manner the present has approached Aegon and Helaena’s third little one, Maelor — or extra particularly, the manner the present has appeared to eradicate him from the story fully.
Whereas Maelor’s function in the story is small on the entire, chopping him out does have fairly a number of implications for characters and their motivations. Martin will get into this in additional spoiler-filled element, which you’ll and will learn if you’d like the entire story. However when you don’t need the spoilers simply but, we’ll as an alternative summarize by saying: Martin has lots of concern about how dropping Maelor might weaken some of the present’s characters and themes later in the story, and the way this is perhaps a foul signal for the adaptation because it heads into seasons 3 and 4.
In fact, the half that Martin doesn’t say out loud however that longtime followers are certain to be considering about is the incontrovertible fact that excising seemingly small characters from variations has burned him in the previous. In the unique Recreation of Thrones, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss made a number of selections early on about what characters to chop from the plot as a result of their roles appeared unimportant to the bigger story. However as the story wore on, it turned more and more clear that these characters had a thematic and narrative function to play, some extra necessary than others. Whereas nothing about House of the Dragon’s cuts may probably be anyplace close to as necessary as the ones made in Recreation of Thrones, it’s laborious to not see a number of of these echoes, significantly for followers who felt burned the first time round.
Condal’s response to the season got here in a shock look on HBO’s official House of the Dragon podcast, additionally launched on Wednesday, that was all about the problem of adapting tales from the web page to the display. Condal is slightly bit much less candid in his response to the season, understandably, however stresses that there’ll all the time be errors and regrets and alternatives to enhance or have achieved issues higher, however that he’s general very proud of the work he and the forged and crew did on season 2. He additionally acknowledges that lots of adjustments are requirements of timing, schedules, and budgets, one thing you don’t need to take into consideration when you’re, say, writing a ebook, for example.
The podcast’s remaining query is particularly about Martin’s involvement in manufacturing of the present, which Condal handles much more fastidiously than his earlier solutions. Condal says that Martin is shipped all the materials that they write for every season and that Condal tries laborious to take Martin’s suggestions and ideas into consideration as he receives them. However that doesn’t all the time make it into the completed product. Extra particularly, Condal confused that manufacturing timing is tight and he, as the showrunner, has to make selections extraordinarily rapidly and he has to make a whole lot of selections a day. That leaves room for regrets, however it additionally signifies that typically he can’t incorporate all of Martin’s suggestions.
All of these explanations from each side quantity to principally the identical factor: Adapting a narrative is tough and compromises all the time need to be made, and at the finish of the day it’s a must to hope you made the proper ones. Both manner, it’s laborious to not really feel the unstated results of the Writers Guild strike that was occurring round the manufacturing of season 2.
Hypothesis amongst followers has been rampant since the finish of season 2 that the strike is what compelled HBO and Warner Bros. to shorten House of the Dragon’s second season from 10 episodes to only eight. Whereas this hasn’t been confirmed, it could make sense contemplating the very unusual, pretty anticlimactic cliffhanger the season ends on. On high of that, it could additionally clarify why Condal confused the tight timing and blinding pace of manufacturing in his podcast look.
An additional complication to all of that is the incontrovertible fact that Martin has now deleted his weblog publish. It’s potential that the publish simply obtained extra consideration and traction than he had hoped, or perhaps that it ran afoul of HBO, however we received’t know for certain why he deleted it except he places out an official assertion. No matter the full story is, it’s clear that nobody is all the manner pleased with House of the Dragon season 2 — a humorous outcome for a season that was fairly strong up till its remaining episode, and may nonetheless be good in the context of the completed present. Each Martin’s and Condal’s phrases are price studying and listening to respectively; whereas Martin appears slightly extra pessimistic about the future of the present and Condal appears extra optimistic, we received’t know for certain how issues go till House of the Dragon’s third season arrives, which possible received’t occur till 2026.
