Launched in early summer 2024, season 2 of House of the Dragon provoked contrasting comments. Several months after its conclusion, the series has broken a record that is impressive to say the least.
House of the Dragon: new record for the Game of Thrones universe
In 2022, HBO marks a huge milestone with the first season of House of the Dragon. For his immense qualities of writing, production and interpretation, the series was immediately received with rave reviews from the press and the public. Telling the conflict between Rhaenyra Targaryen and her former best friend Alicent Hightower, Ryan Condal managed to convince even the most skeptical fans who were disappointed by the eighth season of Game of Thrones. As a result, season 2 of House of the Dragon was eagerly awaited.
Very qualitative, the second season nevertheless gave rise to more contrasting opinions. The first criticism that was made of the series was the Daemon Targaryen story arc, which slowed down the pace of the series; Next, the financial difficulties of Warner Bros. Discovery – owner of the HBO channel – forced the channel to change the number of episodes of the eighth season in the midst of a writers’ strike. Hence this impression of a false final at the end of season 2, with a conclusion which effectively teases the events expected in season 3.
However, season 2 of House of the Dragon was a great success from an audience point of view. According to Variety, the season finale was seen by just under 9 million people live on American soil, and each episode was seen by nearly 25 million fans on all platforms combined. Very good performances, certainly, which make House of the Dragon one of the undisputed hits of the year.
-But new data reveals the power of the license: in fact, according to a study by Television Stats, House of the Dragon is the series that generated the most online reaction of the year 2024, with an annual engagement score of 11,603,722 (based on the number of comments, shares, retweets, popular hashtags, posts on Reddit, ratings and reviews on aggregators, etc.).
She is far ahead The Boys et The Simpsonswhich respectively occupy second and third places on the podium, with an estimated score of 8,495.066 for the Amazon Prime Video series and 7,688.102 for Matt Groening’s sitcom. (On this subject, we refer you to this catastrophic decision by Disney+ which could harm the Simpsons.) Dfor its part, the series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power reached twenty-first place, with a score of 4,497.329which says a lot about the lack of interest in Prime Video’s attempt to adapt the world of JRR Tolkien for television.
Obviously, if this data is important, it must be qualified. Indeed, if it is common that the universe of Game of Thrones obtain high annual engagement scores, that of House of the Dragon sparked many skeptical comments. Certain scenes were also victims of review bombing, notably its sixth episode.
