George R. R. Martin Wants Four Seasons of House of the Dragon

House of the Dragon has proven to be a worthy successor to Game of Thrones over the course of its eight episodes. The series, which takes place about 200 years before the events of the original series, introduces a slew of new characters while also bringing out some great storylines and conflicts that are directly related to the prophecy of the ‘Prince that was Promised,’ bringing the Game of Thrones universe full circle. However, while the original series had eight seasons to flesh out the characters and storylines, Martin claims that it would only take four full seasons of ten episodes to complete the Targaryens’ story.

Martin addressed the series’ time jumps briefly in a recent blog post. The audience was given a history lesson from 101 AC and brought to the present day right from the first episode, with each episode since adding a few years covering the timeline from Rhaenyra and Alicent’s youth, as played by Milly Alcock and Emily Carey, to Emma Darcy and Olivia Cooke taking over as the older versions. “I think (co-showrunner) Ryan (Condal) has handled the jumps, very well,” Martin wrote, adding that he likes “both the younger Alicent and Rhaenyra and the adult versions, and the actresses who play them.”

While Martin’s books delve deeply into Targaryen history, emphasizing events that polarised the characters, he wishes the series “had had more time to explore the relationship between Rhaenyra and Ser Harwin, the marriage of Daemon and Laena and their time in Pentos, the birth of various and sundry children, and everything else we had to skip.” The author also confirmed that Alicent had four children with Viserys, three sons and a daughter and that their youngest son Daeron is “down in Oldtown, we just did not have the time to work him in this season.” “If House of the Dragon had 13 episodes per season, maybe we could have shown all the things we had to the time jump,” the author speculated.

But the author knows that if he or she had done that, some viewers might have said that the show was “slow” or that “nothing happened.” He also said that he was glad they still had 10 hours in each season to tell the story. “It will take four full seasons of 10 episodes each to do the Dance of the Dragons justice, from beginning to end,” he said.