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House of the Dragon is gearing up for its third season, and Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin has finally updated his Not a Blog about what he plans to write next. No, it’s not a tangible update on the Winds of Winter; it’s a dissertation of sorts on everything that went wrong with the HBO show.
In Martin’s brief blog update, the author regaled his fans about his much-needed vacation, which he’d just returned from, and his bout with covid. Martin also handily acknowledged that his time away meant he had a lot of catching up to with his writing. More specifically, he expressed his thoughts on House of the Dragon season two, which wrapped up in August.
“I do not look forward to other posts I need to write, about everything that’s gone wrong with House of the Dragon… but I need to do that too, and I will,” Martin wrote. “Not today, though.”
While Martin hasn’t been shy about vocalizing various critiques of HBO’s handling of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon—most recently regarding visual inaccuracies of the Targaryen flag—it’s rare for him to say there was something wrong with the show explicitly. When Game of Thrones‘ contentious series finale rolled around, Martin alluded to the showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff going down a different path than he would have liked.
Although Martin doesn’t disclose what his upcoming critiques will focus on, most negative fan reactions to House of the Dragon season two have taken issue with the show’s pacing, specifically how the series plans on stretching out an admittedly loose section of Martin’s Targaryen history Fire & Blood into four seasons. This, in turn, has led many viewers to feel like the second season dragged in places with filler content to space out the gaps between the source material’s major story beats. Seeing as how Martin initially wanted Game of Thrones to end in a movie trilogy to circumvent its pacing issues, there’s a non-zero percent chance his forthcoming critic may take umbrage with House of the Dragon‘s pacing issues.
As with most things with Martin, we won’t know exactly what he’s cooking in a critique of House of Dragon until he puts the proverbial pen to paper. Let’s hope whatever he writes lights a fire under his ass to get back to finishing the very long-awaited Winds of Winter.
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