House Of The Dragon Will End With Season 4 — Season 3 Due To Shoot In Early 2025

*WARNING: This piece contains spoilers for House Of The Dragon S2, Episode 8*

And just like that, after two years of waiting, House Of The Dragon Season 2 is over. The battle at Rook's Rest has been fought, the Red Sowing has been reaped, the Dance of the Dragons is heating up, and the Battle of the Gullet is oh-so-very-nearly about to begin. But before the dust has even had chance to settle on the Game Of Thrones prequel's meaty-if-muted second series finale, showrunner Ryan Condal is already looking ahead. As reported by Variety, at a post-season presser earlier today Condal came in hot with confirmation that Season 3 of the HBO show is due to begin production in early 2025 (Yay!) — and that the series will end with a fourth and final season (Boo!).

During the press conference, Condal gave an update on the progress that's been made so far on House Of The Dragon's third season, which was greenlit before Season 2 even hit the air. Currently, the plan is for prep on the upcoming series to begin towards the back-end of this year, with cameras tentatively set to roll in "earlyish 2025". But whilst a 2025 shoot almost definitely means we'll be waiting another two years for Rhaenyra Targaryen's (Emma D'Arcy) Blacks and Alicent Hightower's (Olivia Cooke) Greens to go back at it, knowing that the infamously bloody Battle of the Gullet will be getting the blockbuster treatment it deserves ("it should be the biggest thing to date that we’ve pulled off" teased Condal) — and that new spin-off series A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms is still set to land in 2025 — helps soothe those post-finale blues.

As for the news that House Of The Dragon will finish after its fourth season (an admission made when Condal was asked if the show would run for five series and replied, "No, I think it's four,"), that tallies with Thrones godhead and author George R. R. Martin's long-standing assertion that adapting his Fire & Blood book would take "four full seasons of ten episodes each." Now admittedly, Season 2 is only eight episodes and Condal has indicated future series will follow that pattern, but still... four series is four series! And with the end of this latest run of episodes promising yet more war, more scheming, more familial feuding, and most importantly MORE DRAGONS to come as House Targaryen's all-out civil war comes to a head, we'll be boogieing on down with the Dance of the Dragons right to the very end. Dracarys!