The One Thing Fans Definitely Won't See In House Of The Dragon Season 2
With any spin-off series, fans usually come to the table with certain expectations they developed through watching the original series. Since "House of the Dragon" is meant to explore events from the same universe as "Game of Thrones," fans naturally expect the two shows to share some similarities. However, "House of the Dragon" starts out 172 years before the events on "Game of Thrones," so there are also many differences between the shows. For example, most of the characters from "Game of Thrones" are not in "House of the Dragon" because they were not alive yet. However, "House of the Dragon" does explore characters who are connected to those on "Game of Thrones," such as their ancestors. There are several ways "House of the Dragon" is trying to retcon "Game of Thrones."
As a prequel, "House of the Dragon" uses various narrative techniques to tell a story that is connected to "Game of Thrones," and that helps fill in some of the gaps in the original series. "House of the Dragon" explores the backstory of the Targaryen family during the height of their power when they still ruled the Seven Kingdoms before they were ousted by "Game of Thrones" character Robert Baratheon (Mark Addy). To achieve this, the show uses techniques like flashbacks, time jumps, and shifts in which characters are being focused on. This allows a lot of narrative ground to be covered in the series. However, there is one technique from "House of the Dragon" Season 1 that will definitely not appear in Season 2.
Season 2 will not have any major time jumps
In order to allow the series to cover more backstory, one storytelling technique used in Season 1 of "House of the Dragon" was time jumps, some of which were so big that different actors were needed to portray older versions of the characters. For example, in Episodes 1-5, the teenage Rhaenyra Targaryen is played by Milly Alcock and the teenage Alicent Hightower is played by Emily Carey. However, Episode 6 takes place ten years after Episode 5, so the adult Rhaenyra is played by Emma D'Arcy and the adult Alicent is played by Olivia Cooke.
In an interview with Variety, "House of the Dragon" showrunner Ryan Condal said that despite this use of time jumps in Season 1, viewers should not expect any major time jumps in Season 2. He added that following Season 1, "the storytelling becomes fairly in the rhythms of the original 'Game of Thrones' series." The original series only utilized short time jumps of a couple of months between seasons, not major time jumps of years or decades that would require child actors to be replaced. Apparently, this is also what fans can expect from "House of the Dragon" Season 2 — more relaxed narrative pacing and consistent representation of the characters.