Editor’s Note: The following contains major spoilers for Season 2 Episode 1 of House of the Dragon.

The Big Picture

Episode 1 of Season 2 sees Greens vs. Blacks, with chaos, assassination, and intense romantic relationships.
Showrunner Ryan Condal discusses the impact of Miguel Sapochnik’s departure and the complex character dynamics.
Condal went into detail about Alicent Hightower and Criston Cole from Episode 1, and he also discussed Rhaenyra’s character arc.

House of the Dragon is finally back, and after that nail-biting season premiere, there’s a lot to look back on. Season 1 ended on a grim note when Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) chased down Lucerys (Elliot Grihault) on his dragon, Vhagar, and subsequently killed Luke in a dragon attack. We know it was a mistake, but it has launched the country into a war. Episode 1 of Season 2 sees the lines now firmly drawn. The Greens, who support Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) for king, are already facing a blockade to King’s Landing. Meanwhile, the Blacks, who support Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) for queen, are splintered as Rhaenyra mourns her son and Daemon champs at the bit, waiting for action. By the time Rhaenyra returns, teary-eyed and full of rage, all she says is the words, “I want Aemond Targaryen.”

This is all the signal Daemon needs to sneak into King’s Landing and hire a ratcatcher (Mark Stobbart) and one of his old Goldcloaks (Sam C. Wilson), a member of the City Watch, to assassinate Aemond. Obviously, things don’t go as planned. The ratcatcher, historically only remembered by the name “Cheese” (while the Goldcloak is known as “Blood”), finds Helaena (Phia Saban) with her two children. With Aemond missing, Blood and Cheese force Helaena to choose which of her twin children is the male heir, Jaehaerys, and butcher the child in his bed while Helaena runs away with her daughter, Jaehaera. Traumatized, she bolts for her mother’s chambers and walks in on Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) in bed with each other.

We spoke with House of the Dragon showrunner and co-creator Ryan Condal about Season 2, first discussing the departure of former showrunner Miguel Sapochnik and what effect, if any, that had on the narrative as a whole. For Episode 1, Condal spoke about the illicit relationship between Alicent and Criston, and the longevity of their relationship. We also discussed Rhaenyra’s temperament as queen and how much of that is related to trying to emulate her late father (Paddy Considine). Finally, we discussed the decision-making process that goes into picking which characters to adapt, and then Condal teased a little about the fate of Daemon and Rhaenyra’s rocky relationship for Season 2. Watch the video interview with Condal above or read the full transcript of the interview below.

House of the Dragon The reign of House Targaryen begins with this prequel to the popular HBO series Game of Thrones. Based on George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, House of the Dragon is set nearly 200 years before Game of Thrones, telling the story of the Targaryen civil war with King Viserys.Release Date August 21, 2022 Creator Ryan J. Condal, George R.R. Martin Main Genre Drama Seasons 4 Distributor HBO Expand

What Has Season 2 of ‘House of the Dragon’ Faced After Miguel Sapochnik’s Departure?
COLLIDER: I’m interested in knowing, first off, the changes from Season 1 to Season 2; obviously, there were some creative changes, Miguel Sapochnik left the team. Do you think that there was a big shift in that departure when it came to approaching storytelling this season, or do you think it’s mainly maintained the same?

RYAN CONDAL: No, the storytelling always sat with us, the writers. I have a wonderful team, and Sara Hess and I co-wrote the show together. Certainly, Miguel was involved in the creative process, but he was really more there as the filmmaker of the show to bring it to life visually, and he did great stuff for the show and certainly was a major part of it. But, I think the success of Season 1 meant that we had established something; we found a bunch of things that were working. And we were able to approach Season 2 with confidence behind us that we knew what we were doing, and I think we went in looking to improve the things we can improve, and then do more of the stuff that we thought was working well from Season 1, and I think we got there in the end.

Ryan Condal on When Criston and Alicent’s Relationship Started
Image via HBO

Jumping into this first episode, something that really surprised me is the relationship between Alicent and Criston Cole moved from what was probably subtext to overt text. I’m curious if you can divulge when this relationship made that change, because it feels like they’re very comfortable with each other, but I believe it’s only been a few days since the end of Season 1.

CONDAL: Are they comfortable with each other? It feels very awkward there. They’re literally talking about the weather. So, that’s the thing, it’s a brand new relationship. We don’t specifically get into, intentionally, when and where it started. Part of that is the fun of leaving it up to interpretation by the viewing audience. But it’s certainly a new thing, a new romance. And the idea is that these two characters have this very stunted emotional development, particularly in the world of intimacy with a partner. Cole, because he’s been a canned man his entire life in the order of the Kingsguard and his past sins with Rhaenyra and wearing that like a millstone around his neck.

And on Alicent’s side, she was married off at 14 years old to a guy that was 20-plus years her senior. She doesn’t really have a — certainly, she was physically intimate with Viserys, but I don’t know that they had a romantically intimate or emotionally intimate experience just because of the huge age gap between them. So it’s led us to this place where you see these two characters who don’t experience a lot of pleasure, experiencing great pleasure together in a nice way that I think makes the audience go, “Oh, okay. These are two humans enjoying themselves.” But they don’t have the emotional know-how and modeling for how to exist in something like that, particularly, something they have to keep a secret.

Is Rhaenyra Trying to Emulate Her Father More?
Image via HBO

Going into Season 2, looking at Rhaenyra as a character, I found it really interesting seeing in Season 1, when these characters switch over during the time jump, that a lot of Rhaenyra’s more intense and chaotic aspects seem to have been tempered a bit. We see that still in the first episode. Can you speak to that, how you have created Rhaenyra, and how, as a leader, she’s trying to probably emulate her father more than anyone else?

CONDAL: Yeah, and I think you nailed it. Is that Rhaenyra’s entire existence, now that the crown’s been put on her head, is trying to sublimate her more punk rock and rebellious instincts that we saw when she was a teenager, when she was played by Milly [Alcock], and trying to emulate her father, knowing that her father chose her so that she would rule and model in the way that he trained her to throughout her life, and would have wanted her to. But what Rhaenyra is realizing, if not in this first episode, she will realize it in the time to come, Viserys approach is maybe fine in a time of peace, but in a time of war, you can’t be a good and just person all the time and still be an effective ruler. That’s the thing that Rhaenyra is going to bump up against again and again this season. What makes that interesting is we know that she has this underlayer of rebelliousness and an unwillingness to fall in line with the expected order of the day.

Related ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 Needs To Change the Approach to Rhaenyra The next season needs to see Rhaenyra reignite her fiery nature to claim her place on the Iron Throne.

Ryan Condal Explains How They Adapt the Series and Include Characters

You’ve mentioned before in some other interviews that Daeron exists, and I’ve seen evidence of that, but when it comes to characters like that, and characters like Nettles, and all these important characters who sometimes might need to be consolidated — what is your approach when it comes to looking at the show and seeing which characters who might have been important in the book, but maybe need to be added together, to have a more succinct story?

CONDAL: Look, it’s an adaptation, and it’s a challenging one, because it’s a history book, and there is a narrative there, but it’s not a traditional narrative the way you would find in a novel like The Song of Ice and Fire stories were. So, I think there’s always a challenge as a screenwriter bringing a text to life on the screen. And I think you just have to take it on a case-by-case basis. Sort of, like, what story were you trying to tell? What characters are necessary in that story, who helps us move this tale forward? I think the other thing you’ll find generally in our rendition of Fire & Blood, that being House the Dragon, is that we’ve really hewn to the idea that this is a story about this very complicated family, and a lot of the POV characters that you will find us following are members of the family.

And there’s certainly exceptions, Criston Cole, things like that. But even he, in a way, is a member of this family, after having been adopted by both sides over the course of the years that have passed. But you only have so much screen time to tell the story. And I think we always go back to, okay, well, who’s the member of the Targaryen family that we’re following in this particular storyline? And how does this impact them, and the larger tale of this war for succession that we’re following?

Condal Emphasizes the Importance of Daemon and Rhaenyra’s Relationship
Image via HBO

Are we going to see Rhaenyra and Damon be happy at any point in this season? Because I feel like I’ve had my heart torn out a little bit watching some of these episodes.

CONDAL: [Laughs] That remains to be seen. I’ve said before, like the great tradition of Game of Thrones, the narrative in the sort of larger The Song of Ice and Fire universe, is that you build characters up who have these deeply complex relations with one another, and then the forces of politics and war drive them apart, and they go to different places, and then sometimes those circumstances bring them back together, having evolved and changed over time in interesting ways. Rhaenyra and Daemon sit at the center of this narrative as much as Alicent and Rhaenyra do, and I doubt that we have seen the last of them together.

House of the Dragon Season 2 premieres Sunday, June 16 on Max.

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