‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3 Breakdown With Showrunner and Co-Creator Ryan Condal

**Joanna Robinson** (0:18)
Greetings, and welcome to House of our very special episode.

**Mallory Rubin** (0:23)
We have Ryan Condal here with us today, House of the Dragon show runner to talk to us about the season 3 finale, season 3 overall, the series overall. We're just going to dive right in, but if you're wondering where's the deep dive, it's still coming.

**Joanna Robinson** (0:39)
Coming tomorrow.

**Mallory Rubin** (0:40)
Coming tomorrow.

**Joanna Robinson** (0:40)
Also, I cut you off, I should just say, that's Mallory Rubin, I'm Joanna Robinson. Just in case you're tuning in for the first time to see Ryan Condal, that's who we are. This is House of R. We go deep on House of the Dragon every single episode.
So if you're just like hopping in for this Ryan Condal interview, we will be back again tomorrow with hours upon hours of discussion of the finale.

**Mallory Rubin** (1:01)
Instant reaction already up with Chris Ryan for Talk the Thrones. Check that out and stay tuned to see what else awaits the rest of the summer, the fall. We got all sorts of good stuff coming. Follow along on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the Ring of Earth YouTube channel and follow at House of R pod.

**Joanna Robinson** (1:18)
We're huge book readers, but there are no book spoilers in this conversation with Ryan Condal. All safe for you to enjoy if you're just a show watcher. Yeah. I'm excited for you to hear what he has to say.
Have you seen any dinosaurs?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:32)
What kind of question is that?

**Ryan Condal** (1:35)
On August 14th.

**Joanna Robinson** (1:37)
I think that our neighborhood has moved. We're in the past.

**Ryan Condal** (1:43)
Summer ends on Oak Street. Run!

**SPEAKER_3** (1:47)
From producer JJ Abrams and Hathaway, Ewan McGregor.

**Ryan Condal** (1:52)
We're going to survive.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:54)
The End of Oak Street, directed by David Robert Mitchell.

**Ryan Condal** (1:57)
Rated PG-13. May be inappropriate for children under 13

**SPEAKER_3** (2:00)
August 14th.

**Joanna Robinson** (2:01)
Hey, I just Venmo'd you for rent.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:03)
Nice. Now I can instantly spend it whether I'm checking out online with Venmo or using the Venmo debit card.

**Ryan Condal** (2:08)
Say more.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:10)
More exactly, because the more you do with Venmo, the more you get, like earning up to 5 percent cashback with Venmo stash on a bundle of brands.

**Joanna Robinson** (2:17)
So order more pizza.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:19)
The math demands it.

**Joanna Robinson** (2:20)
Get the Venmo debit card.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:22)
Venmo stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms at venmo.me slash stash terms. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank NA.

**Mallory Rubin** (2:32)
All right. What a treat. Back on the podcast for, I believe, the fourth time, which might be a record.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:39)
Wow.

**Mallory Rubin** (2:40)
Season 2 primer, a brief appearance on a House of Recommends episode, and of course, the props extravaganza. It's House of the Dragon show runner, Ryan Condal. Welcome back.

**Ryan Condal** (2:51)
Hi, guys. Very good to be here.

**Joanna Robinson** (2:52)
Thanks for coming.

**Mallory Rubin** (2:53)
We're thrilled. We have 975 questions for you, but we'll try to cut it down as we go in real time. We'll see.
Hot off the finale, we have so many things we're excited to dive into and discuss. Theme, lore, character. We want to start with morality, the moral gray. Because Team Black is by design increasingly hard to root for as the story on furls. Obviously, the finale gave us some nice child murder and betrayal and a slaying of the man of the cloth, etc. To further that. Team Green, meanwhile, has proven to be, I think Jo and I would both say, more empathetic than we or most book readers ever dreamed possible.
How, as you now wrap up Season 3 and think about Season 4 and just in general, adapting this story, how do you balance living in the moral grade that is so essential to the story's core intention and certainly to the core focus of the corrupting nature of power while giving audiences characters to root for, or is part of the appeal to you interrogating what it is that we root for and why, and what the limits of that devotion and empathy might be and assessing why and how people lose their way and when they do, whether there's a path back from that descent.

**Ryan Condal** (4:14)
Yeah.
I think you hit the nail on the head there Mallory.
I think Sarah and I were much more interested in the exploration of the moral gray and feeling like the original show gave us the classic goodies and baddies within a morally gray landscape. But we can all pretty much agree that everybody at some point was rooting for Jon Snow and Daenerys and everybody was rooting against most of the Lannisters at some point. Whereas this show felt like to take this thing and move it on, not that we're trying to make them all deplorable characters, but it felt like we needed less of that white hats and black hats that we had in the original show. Because the show had done the hard work of establishing this world where that doesn't really generally exist. And we were just more interested in portraying these very complex characters that at times, you could find sympathy and empathy for, and times to be rooting for, and other times, you could be horrified by them and their actions. I think we've done that fairly successfully throughout the three seasons as it goes up and down. I love the response following Episode 7, because we're recording this before anybody has really reacted to Episode 8 The public has reacted to Episode 8 But I love the response to Episode 7, where so many people have texted me and they're like, basically, like, you fucker, I'm rooting for Aegon now. How did that happen? I was like, yeah, and also credit to Tom Glenn Carney's wonderful performance.