It’s been three years since Arya set sail for the Sunset Sea, Sansa was crowned Queen of the North, and Daenerys descended into madness and sent King’s Landing up in flames. But fans won’t have to wait much longer to revisit the ruthless medieval fantasy world of Game of Thrones. On Wednesday, HBO finally set the premiere date for spin-off series House of the Dragon.
The highly anticipated 10-episode prequel will be arriving on August 21 of this year.
Set 200 years before the events of the original series, House of the Dragon centers on the House Targaryen, the noble family from which the Mother of Dragons herself descended. It stars Oliva Cooke as Alicent Hightower, Emma D’Arcy as dragon-riding royal Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, and Matt Smith as Rhaenyra’s uncle, Prince Daemon Targaryen. Paddy Considine, Fabien Frankel, Rhys Ifans, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, and Sonoya Mizuno round out the cast.
House of the Dragon was created by Ryan Condal and Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. It is based on Martin’s 2018 novel Fire & Blood. Miguel Sapochnik, who won an Emmy in 2015 for his work as a director on GOT, will once again be in the director’s chair and is also co-showrunner with Condal.
The August 2022 premiere date means the series will debut around the same time as Amazon’s long-awaited TV adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, titled The Rings of Power, which launches September 2—huge news for people who love watching guys with long hair and funny names clash swords.
The teaser trailer for House of the Dragon released all the way back in October reveals pretty standard GOT fare — a hand gripping the hilt of a sword, dragon imagery, plenty of attractive people with majestically windblown platinum locks.
“Gods, kings, fire, and blood,” says the narrator dramatically, offering an almost comically straightforward description of the series that could have been written by someone who has never seen a single episode of Thrones. Pretty much all of the dialogue of the clip seems as though it was composed by an online word cloud generator. “Dreams didn’t make us kings,” it continues, “dragons did.”
Anyway, the show will probably set viewership records and rack up a heap of Emmy nominations.
