House of the Dragon creator teases season 3's Battle of the Gullet: 'It should be the biggest thing'

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

House of the Dragon's biggest twist in the season 2 finale wasn't what was shown onscreen — it was actually what didn't happen.

Fans were left stunned Sunday night when season 2 ended before the pivotal Battle of the Gullet from George R.R. Martin's prequel book Fire & Blood. All the pieces were in place for the war's next bloody convergence — Ser Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) secured an alliance with the Triarchy after mud wrestling head commander Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn), and their ships began their voyage to attack Corlys Velaryon's (Steve Toussaint) fleet blockade — but the credits rolled before the fighting began.

On Monday, House of the Dragon creator Ryan Condal promised that the Battle of the Gullet is coming early in season 3 (which is "actively" being written now), and it will be the biggest action sequence the show has done yet (no book spoilers ahead!).

"Obviously, to anybody that’s seen the finale, we are building to that," Condal told reporters with a laugh during a Zoom press conference. "That event will happen very shortly in terms of the storytelling of this, of House of the Dragon. Based on what we know now, I mean, 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 that is deserved."

Condal also said that the House of the Dragon team "wanted to build some anticipation toward" the massive naval battle.

"I know everybody wants this to come out every summer, it's just the show is so complex that we're really making multiple feature films every season," he added. "So I apologize for the wait, but I will just say if Rook's Rest and the Red Sowing are any indication, [with] the team that we have together, we're going to pull off a hell of a win with the Battle of the Gullet in the future."

Like most seasons of Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon season 1 had 10 episodes, but season 2 was shortened to eight, leading many to wonder if the Battle of the Gullet had to be pushed due to limited time and budget. The showrunner acknowledged that was indeed a factor, but he also revealed that with only two seasons left before the show ends, he had to "rebalance" all the major events from the book.

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"One of the challenges of making television at any scale, even this scale, which seems to be one of infinite time and resources, which is 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 that you have available to tell that story," Condal said.

"One of the things that really came into play in season 2 is, what is the final destination of this series and where are we going?" he continued. "And I think it was a combination of factors that led us — knowing now where we're going, and we know what that endpoint is — to rebalance the story in such a way that we had three further great seasons of television to round out and tell this story."

He continued, "We knew where we were going, and we know how those things kind of break up and break out. And when you're trying to mount this show, which requires a tremendous amount of resources, construction, armor, costumes, visual effects, we were trying to give the Gullet, which is arguably the most anticipated — well, I would say maybe the second most anticipated — action event of Fire & Blood, we were trying to give it the time and the space that it deserved."

House of the Dragon season 3 is tentatively slated to begin filming "in early-ish 2025," according to Condal.