It takes forever to get new seasons of TV shows these days, but something has shifted the last few years that is starting to make it unbearable. Now, with House of the Dragon season 3, it’s happening again.
It’s been announced that filming for House of the Dragon season 3 is not even starting until “earlyish 2025” according to showrunner Ryan Condal. From that, we can extrapolate an eventual release date window.
After season 1 ended in October of 2022, House of the Dragon season 2 started filming in April of 2023. It was eventually released in June of 2024. That’s 14 months later for the filming portion. So, using that same estimate, if we guess that “earlyish 2025” is say, February at the earliest, that would mean 14 months from that is April 2026. If “early” instead means say, April 2024, then that’s June 2026, a full two years after season 2 aired.
This did not used to happen as recently as Game of Thrones, which hit the mark every year with 10 episode seasons for most of its run. Look at this chart:
- Season 1 release date – April 17, 2011
- Season 2 – April 1 2012
- Season 3 – March 31, 2013
- Season 4 – April 6, 2014
- Season 5 – April 12, 2015
- Season 6 – April 24, 2016
- Season 7 – July 16, 2017
- Season 8 – April 14, 2019
Only at the very end there did things start to get stretched out with fewer episodes and bigger battles, but up until the release of season 7 these were exact, year-long gaps between seasons, and I would argue part of the reason it made such a cultural impact. The only show I can even think of that does something similar now is The Bear, releasing every year on the dot consistently. House of the Dragon meanwhile will air three seasons with fewer episodes in the time it could have take Game of Thrones to air 5-6 seasons of 10 episodes. It’s ridiculous.
Production in Hollywood is slowing to a crawl as expenses balloon and timelines stretch out eternally. It’s not even with big-budget series as practically all shows are now on 18-24 month gaps, if not a few with more than that. It’s no wonder fans keep getting frustrated about these release dates, and House of the Dragon is no exception. It might even take longer if there are even bigger battles and it requires even more work to bring them to life. And yet I don’t think anyone was complaining about the production value of the first six seasons of Game of Thrones, were they?
