In a presentation blog post today, WarnerMedia’s CEO revealed two concept images from the forthcoming Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon.
HBO greenlit the series back in October 2019 for a 10 episode first season, and A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin followed up, saying that some of the stories from his “nonfiction” book Fire & Blood will figure into the story somehow. (More on that below.) The series is expected to debut in 2022, and the only other concrete news that we’ve gotten is that Paddy Considine has been cast as King Viserys I. (There are also rumors that Doctor Who’s Matt Smith is being considered for a role in the series.)
So just who might we be seeing in House of the Dragon?
The images (which you can see here and here) are of a large red and black dragon and a sleek bronze/gold dragon.
Given what we know from the casting and the timeline contained in Fire & Blood, the TV spin-off seems poised to chronicle the Targaryen civil war known as “The Dance of the Dragons” a war of succession fought between members of an overly large Targaryen royal family (begat by the above-mentioned King Viserys).
Like in Game of Thrones, the Targaryen dragons are characters unto themselves, with distinct looks, personalities, and roles within the history of Westeros.
The first image, of a powerful red and black dragon, seems likely to be Vhagar, a powerful and key combatant in the Targaryen civil war. (If the art makes you think of Daenerys’ main powerhouse of a dragon Drogon, that’s not far off from how Vhagar is described in Fire & Blood and other related materials.) Although in latter parts of the war, additional red dragons come into play, so we can’t say for sure.
The orange/bronze/gold dragon seems likely to be Sunfyre, the mount for Aegon Targaryen II, one of the two rulers vying for control of Westeros during this civil war. Although it’s also possible that the image could depict Vermithor, or one of the lesser dragons.
We’ll know more as 2021 unfolds, as HBO also mentioned that House of the Dragon will begin principal photography in only a few months.
