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‘House of the Dragon’ showrunner says the show’s third season features ‘horrible, pitiless bloodshed’

The show will feature eight episodes in its third season.

By Joe Allen Mar 31, 2025 3:26 PM

The Targaryen family is documented in House of the Dragon — Matt Smith and Emma D'Arcy play the lead roles Ollie Upton / Warner Bros. Discovery

If you’re one of those people who has been waiting for the war on House of the Dragon to really pick up, then it sounds like season 3 is for you. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, showrunner Ryan Condel promised that the third season would be the biggest and most action-packed yet.

“This is certainly our biggest season to date, both in terms of ambition and just the practical size, the amount of sets,” he explained. “We’re cresting that narrative parabola here and starting to come down into, if not the endgame, the midpoint and getting into the late Act 2 and moving onto the start of Act 3. Anybody that’s read that book knows that the narrative gets bigger and grimmer as it goes along, and the show has to match that ambition as best it possibly can.”

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He also adds that the third season, which just began production in the U.K., is definitely more all-out than the first two.

“I will say that the war this season goes very hot, very, very quickly,” he said. “I think the people that were waiting and waiting for all of the horrible, brutal, pitiless bloodshed will be getting it in copious amounts.”

We don’t know exactly when the third season will air, but given that it’s just now starting production, it seems likely to come at some point next year. The third season will be eight episodes, just like the second, and if the end of the show’s second season was any indication, there will be plenty of dragons.

Joe Allen is a freelance writer at Digital Trends, where he covers Movies and TV. He frequently writes streaming… Read Full Bio

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