The New Teaser For 'House of the Dragon' Might Have Me Back In On This Floundering Series

I've not been a huge fan of 'House of the Dragon' so far. After the main GoT series sputtered out with a whimpering ghost load of a finale, I think we were all desperate for something of even reasonable quality. To a degree, I think that's what we got out of season 1. A decent season of TV featuring SOME good performances, but it was drastically overhyped by people comparing it relatively to the end of GoT. That's not the goalposts. Season 2, in my opinion, was a step down. Boring, repetitive, toothless. It lacked everything that made Thrones great. 

As time went on, it came out that that a huge rift had developed between George R.R. Martin HotD showrunner Ryan Condol. 

I ask Martin carefully: I know you can’t say much about this, but I was wondering how your relationship with Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal got so rocky?

“It’s worse than rocky,” Martin says, looking miserable. “It’s abysmal.”

“I hired Ryan,” Martin says. “I thought Ryan and I were partners. And we were all through the first season. I would read early drafts of the scripts. I would give notes. He would change some things. It was working really well — I thought.”

When Ryan came to loggerheads with original Dragon co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik, Ryan asked for Martin’s support in their dispute, and got it (Sapochnik left the show after season one).

“Then we got into season two, and he basically stopped listening to me,” Martin says. “I would give notes, and nothing would happen. Sometimes he would explain why he wasn’t doing it. Other times, he would tell me, ‘Oh, OK, yeah, I’ll think about that.’ It got worse and worse, and I began to get more and more annoyed. Finally, it got to a point where I was told by HBO that I should submit all my notes to them and they would give Ryan our combined notes.”

Martin says he can’t say anything beyond this. But sources say Martin and Condal’s relationship deteriorated further and came to a head during a Zoom call with the show’s producers and some HBO executives. The purpose of the call was for Condal to present his vision for season three. After Condal spoke, Martin detailed his many objections and allegedly declared, “This is not my story any longer.”

So the showrunner stopped listening to the creator, the quality went down AND, to make the optics worse, 'A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms' came out and was incredible. A completely different vibe from the previous two entries, no big names attached, low budget, and a great relationship between Martin and their showrunner (Ira Parker). All of this has combined to lower my hype level for season 3 of House of the Dragon. 

I gotta say, though, this trailer does it for me. Grand-scale action, dragons, big production value, some hints of rededication to palace intrigue. That's the kind of stuff I need to see from this section of the franchise. Especially with the Battle of the Gullet prominently featured. Condol has described that episode as "arguably the craziest episode of television ever made.".

All of this could end up being worthless hype and it may suck ass, but I'll try to keep this newfound optimisim for the series going until the premiere date (6/21)