“Wanted To Build Some Anticipation”

This article contains spoilers from the House of the Dragon season 2 finale.

House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal explains why the season 2 finale did not culminate with the massive Battle of the Gullet. The battle is a pivotal event that occurs during Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin, which serves as the source material for House of the Dragon.

Per IGN, moderator Joanna Robinson asked Condal during a virtual Q&A with the press to break down why the Battle of the Gullet was not featured in the season 2 finale and his approach to bringing fantasy battles to life. Condal spoke about the “tremendous amount of resources” needed for this event and how he is “trying to give it the time and the space that it deserves. And obviously, as anyone who has seen the finale [knows], we are building to that.” Check out the rest of his response below:

I mean, one of the challenges of making television at any scale, even this scale, which
seems
to be one of infinite time and resources, it’s just never the case. Nobody has infinite time and resources. As a showrunner, you’re always in the position of having to balance storytelling and the resources you have available to tell that story, and you’re also starting to think about — and one of the things that came into play in Season 2 — is, what is the final destination of this series and where are we going? And I think it was a combination of factors that led us to rebalance the story, knowing where we’re going and where that endpoint is, to rebalance the story in such a way that we had three great seasons of television [after Season 1]… to round out and tell this story.

That event (the Battle of the Gullet) will happen very shortly in terms of the storytelling in House of the Dragon. And it should be, based on what we know now, it should be the biggest thing to date that we’ve pulled off. And we just wanted to have the time and the space to do that at a level that is going to excite and satisfy the fans in the way it deserves. And we also wanted to build some anticipation towards it.

More to come…

Source: IGN