George R.R. Martin defends the 'House of the Dragon' time jumps and says the story needs 4 'full seasons of 10 episodes each'

In a new blog post, the "Fire and Blood" author had some brief "musings" on how the HBO series is handling the show's 20+ year span in season one.

• "Fire and Blood" author George R.R. Martin posted a new blog entry on Tuesday.
• Also a cocreator of HBO's "House of the Dragon" adaptation, Martin defended the season's structure.
• He would have loved to scenes like Harwin and Rhaenyra together, but he's happy with 10 episodes.

Within the first eight episodes of "House of the Dragon," the HBO adaptation of George R.R. Martin's "Fire and Blood" book, the series has already spanned over 20 years' worth of events. Writing some "musings" in a new blog post, Martin expressed his belief in why the choice to jump several years between some episodes was the right call for showrunner Ryan Condal.

"I think Ryan has handled the 'jumps' very well, and I love love love both the younger Alicent and Rhaenyra and the adult versions, and the actresses who play them," Martin wrote.

He continued: "Do I wish we'd had more time to explore the relationship between Rhaenyra and Ser Harwin, the marriage of Daemon and Laena and their time in Pentos, the birth of various and sundry children (and YES, Alicent gave Viserys four children, three sons and a daughter, their youngest son Daeron is down in Oldtown, we just did not have the time to work him in this season), and everything else we had to skip? Sure."

Not only did Martin reveal that there's a fourth sibling among Alicent's children (you can read our guide to all the Targaryen kids here) who will presumably be introduced in the already-confirmed second season, but Martin echoed the desire of some fans to see more of the relationships between characters like Princess Rhaenyra and her short-lived secret love affair with Harwin Strong.

Though Martin agrees that seeing more of those characters would have been nice, he said the desire to add in even three additional episodes for season one might have risked "having some viewers complain that the show was too 'slow,' that 'nothing happened.'"

"As it is, I am thrilled that we still have 10 hours every season to tell our tale," Martin wrote, adding that Amazon's "Rings of Power" series only had eight episodes for its first season that adapts a small piece of "The Lord of the Rings" story.

Last but not least, Martin hinted at the total runtime that fans could expect for this "Game of Thrones" prequel series that focuses on a Targaryen civil war known as "The Dance of the Dragons."

"It is going to take four full seasons of 10 episodes each to do justice to the Dance of the Dragons, from start to finish," the author said.

So far only a second season has been greenlit by HBO, so fans will have to wait and see if we truly get four full seasons that focus on this troubled time in Westeros. 

New episodes of "House of the Dragon" air Sundays on HBO at 9 p.m. ET. For more, read our breakdown of the best details you might have missed in last week's episode.