HBO is getting ready to head back to Westeros. More than a year after the epic debut season finale, HBO on Friday released first-look posters at House of the Dragon Season 2, showing Emma D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra Targaryen and Olivia Cooke’s Alicent Hightower.
Released just a day before HBO plans to release a 75-second-long first trailer for the show’s sophomore season at Comic Con Experience 2023 in Brazil, the posters tease the war heating up in Westeros following the events of Season 1. With embers rising around them, Alicent’s poster reads, “blood for blood,” with the poster for Rhaenyra, which shows a tear streaming down her face, reading, “fire to fire,” an obvious reference to George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood, the book the hit series is based on.
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Acting as a prequel to Game of Thrones, which ended in May 2019, House of the Dragon is set approximately 200 years before the events of the main series. It focuses on House Targaryen’s rule over Westeros, starting with its high point and extending into one of its darkest chapters. The series debuted on HBO in August 2022, with the Season 1 finale, which premiered in October 2022, (warning: spoilers ahead) seeing Aemond Targaryen’s dragon Vhagar kill Lucerys “Luke” Velaryon and his dragon Arrax, officially starting what would become known as the Dance of Dragons, the civil war between factions within House Targaryen over who is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne.
Along with D’Arcy and Cooke, House of the Dragon stars Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Fabien Frankel, Sonoya Mizuno, and Rhys Ifans. Season 2 will see four new faces join the mix – Simon Russell Beale as Ser Simon Strong, Freddie Fox as Ser Gwayne Hightower, Gayle Rankin as Alys Rivers and Abubakar Salim as Alyn of Hull – as well as several more dragons as the Dance of the Dragons gets underway.
House of the Dragon Season 2 is set for an “early summer 2024” release. The season will consist of eight episodes, two fewer than the debut season, HBO CEO Casey Bloys previously confirmed. HBO confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) Friday that “75 seconds” of a first-look trailer will debut Saturday. Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon Season 1 are streaming now on Max.