HBO’s House of the Dragon Season 1 divided audiences by repeatedly leaping ahead on the Game of Thrones timeline. Showrunner Ryan Condal has since promised to ease up on this narrative device moving forward – so what is the time jump between House of the Dragon Seasons 1 and 2?
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House of the Dragon Season 2’s Place on the Game of Thrones Timeline, Explained
House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 1, “A Son for a Son,” picks up roughly a week and a half after Season 1’s finale, “The Black Queen.” Corlys Velaryon actor Steve Toussaint revealed this at a CCXP panel (per Collider) in May 2024. “[House of the Dragon] Season 2 begins about 10 days after Season 1 ends,” Toussaint told the panel’s audience.
Having already seen House of the Dragon‘s Season 2 first four episodes, The Escapist can also confirm a line of dialogue positions their events “many weeks” (not years) after King Viserys I Targaryen’s death in Season 1, Episode 8, “The Lord of the Tides.” So, no big time jumps so far!
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What about House of the Dragon Season 2’s place on the wider Game of Thrones timeline? That’s a little trickier to pin down, mostly because the chronology of author (and House of the Dragon co-creator) George R.R. Martin’s source text, Fire & Blood, is slightly different from that of the show.
Notably, the events depicted in “The Black Queen” happen in 129 AC on the Westerosi calendar in the book, whereas in House of the Dragon, it all goes down in 132 AC (some sources say 130 AC). The knock-on effect is that House of the Dragon Season 2 is also set in 132 AC. For reference, that’s 166 years before Game of Thrones Season 1 kicks off, in 298 AC.
Will House of the Dragon Season 2 Have Time Jumps?
No, House of the Dragon Season 2 won’t have time jumps – or no major ones, at any rate. As you’d expect, a small amount of time elapses between episodes – or between scenes within episodes – as it does in most scripted dramas (apart from the likes of 24).
Regardless, Ryan Condal insists the fantasy series’ days of major chronological (and cast) shake-ups are behind it. “[A]s a reward to our wonderful audience for following us through all the time jumps and recasts, they are done,” he told Deadline in October 2022. “We tell the story in real-time from here forward.”
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“The actors are playing these characters until the end,” Condal continued. “We’re not recasting anybody. We’re not making any huge jumps forward in time. We are now in [legendary Game of Thrones universe civil war] the Dance of the Dragons, and we’re gonna tell that story.”
House of the Dragon Season 2 premieres on HBO on June 16, 2024.
Published: Jun 14, 2024 07:38 am