Why House Of The Dragon Season 2 Features A New Opening Credits Sequence

This article contains minor spoilers for "House of the Dragon" season 2, episode 1.

For any TV show worth its salt, the opening title sequence is treated with just as much importance as the show itself. This sets the tone, introduces (hopefully) memorable theme music, and, in the best instances, instills a Pavlovian response within the viewer to get excited. Memorable movie and TV themes are becoming a dying art but, fortunately, there are shows like "House of the Dragon" to keep the tradition alive. Reusing the same theme music from "Game of Thrones" in the same way "Star Wars" movies incorporate the original score, "House of the Dragon" season 1's opening credit sequence also mimicked the flagship series. In both cases, the title sequence uses 3D models inspired by the maps of Westeros and Leonardo da Vinci's inventions, with the camera following a pathway between lands and families. "House of the Dragon" uses a path of blood, foreshadowing how the Dance of the Dragons civil war will destroy lives, families, and kingdoms through bloodlines and bloodshed.

Instead of looking at a huge map of all of Westeros, "House of the Dragon" looks to the Targaryen family tree. It showcases the doom of Old Valyria and Aegon the Conqueror's conquest of the Seven Kingdoms, the past that lingers over the series' events. Symbols representing different monarchs are drowned in blood to indicate the monarch is no more. The bloodlines of the past and present converge into Rhaenyra's sigil (which is also the necklace design gifted to her by Daemon), the heir apparent to King Viserys.

Well, that was the opening credit sequence. Season 2 of "House of the Dragon" still uses the theme song but has completely changed the title credits. /Film's own Jacob Hall spoke with showrunner Ryan Condal about the decision to switch from a bloodied pathway to a tapestry.

The new credits for "House of the Dragon" are beautiful, as embroidery pushes through fabric and threads intertwine to tell the new story. According to Condal, the decision to change the credits didn't come easy. 

"It was after a lot of discussion [...] I felt like the sort of ancestral credits were correct for season 1, the idea of this bloodline and family tree," he says. "But this story now in season 2, now that all that stuff has kind of been set and established and entrenched, it felt more like we were watching a living history and my feeling was continuing to follow the Targaryen family tree now that we're in real-time and really, I mean, maybe there will be some children born as we move forward from here into the future, sort of that story had been set."

The tapestry does feel like a living history, as new images can be added as necessary, which we may see play out in later episodes. That would also be in line with "Game of Thrones," which often changed the focus of the credits throughout the series to reflect the locations and events and how it changed the map. "We're watching this living history as it unfolds, so it felt more interesting to see that dramatized in the way that histories were kept back in the Middle Ages, which was with beautiful tapestries," Condal explains. "And so I think as you'll see as the season goes, you'll see a bit of evolution in that version of the story we're telling. But I think these are the credits as we go from here to the end." 

Bring on the beautiful tapestries. And HBO merchandising: If you're reading this, sell me one to hang on my wall.

New episodes of "House of the Dragon" air on Sundays on HBO and Max.