‘Game of Thrones’ Spin-Off Officially Hits Huge HBO Max Milestone

Published Aug 19, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT

In over three years at Collider, senior author Jake has now penned over 3000 articles covering a wide range of TV and film for the resources, lists, utilities, news, and interview teams. Alongside interviewing stars such as Selin Hizli, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Harlan Coben, and Chelsea Peretti, Jake was lucky enough to visit the set of Aardman and Netflix’s Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl in 2024, getting the chance to chat with four-time Academy Award winner Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. Jake has also worked for other publications, including Agents of Fandom. You can also hear Jake every week as the resident film and TV journalist on Track Radio.

When the long-awaited ***Game of Thrones ***adaptation House of the Dragon first aired, it was an instant hit. Earning widespread acclaim from both critics and fans, all the series had to do was repeat the same formula to win over hearts once more with Season 2. Alas, the second installment proved much more divisive, even causing a public fallout between **George R.R. Martin *and House of the Dragon ***showrunner Ryan Condal, with the creator admitting that a once-close creative partnership had deteriorated, even calling it “abysmal.”

But that all changed just a couple of months ago, when *House of the Dragon *made its explosive return to HBO and set the record straight. The Season 3 premiere, “Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood,” earned 21.5 million global viewers within its first three days, with the season then averaging over 33 million global viewers per episode. The Season 3 finale, “The Treasons at Tumbleton,” debuted on August 9 to even more applause, even scoring a 9.1/10 rating from users, making it one of the highest-rated episodes in the show’s three-season history.

However, any finale of a great series is inevitably bittersweet, with *House of the Dragon *Season 4 predicted to air sometime in 2028. This fourth season will also be the last and will only consist of eight episodes in total, which Condal himself admitted in a recent interview. “I think for us, it’s really, how do we take these eight hours that we have left—eight chapters that we have left—and tell a compelling, satisfying story that ties up as many of the threads as we’re able to,” he said.

Your answers point to the great house whose words, values, and way of surviving in Westeros match your own. Bend the knee — or don’t. That’s very much up to you.

Winter is Coming — and you have always known it. You prepare not out of fear but out of duty, because the people who depend on you deserve someone who takes the long view.

You understand the game — its rules, its exceptions, and exactly when the rules become the exception. You play it without illusions and without apology.

You carry a sense of destiny that is difficult to explain and impossible to ignore — the feeling that you are not simply participating in the world but meant to reshape it.

You are a force — direct, powerful, and difficult to ignore when you enter a room or a conflict. You do not negotiate with challenges. You meet them.

You understand that power does not always announce itself — that sometimes it arrives with flowers, good wine, and a smile that doesn’t quite reach the eyes.

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