One theory about why of all the Game of Thrones spinoffs attempted, House of the Dragon was the one to go to series is that it's also based on a George R.R. Martin book. One of the things the acclaimed author has been doing instead of finishing The Winds of Winter is writing other Westeros stories. In Fire & Blood, Martin lays out the history of Targaryens and dragons in his universe, but the show should break with him on one major point: more dragons.
Martin knew what he was doing on Game of Thrones by making dragons so rare they were almost mythical. Their return was that much more powerful in the show, even if it took four seasons for them mature in size. In Fire & Blood, Martin maintains thematic consistency in keeping the dragons a remnant from Old Valyria, and pretty much all the dragons we'll see in the series are alive right now. One thing audiences have latched onto about House of the Dragon compared to its predecessor is how interesting it is to have dragons right away. On Game of Thrones, all the magical elements like dragons and the wights were used as slow burn teases for years. However, when the producers finally brought those stories to the fore, the execution felt rushed at best. What works for novels isn't always what works for TV.
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An interesting detail about Fire & Blood, other than it seemed like Martin was writing a series bible for a show about the Targaryens, is that it adopts a different style than his other books. Rather than the descriptive, detailed approach for the novels in A Song of Ice and Fire, these read more like contemporaneous histories, written by some maester at the Citadel after the events have occurred. It's not a spoiler to say that by the end of this story there will be fewer dragons rather than more. Daenerys Targaryen and Varys spoiled those details years ago. Yet, HBO could have its dragons and the Martin-faithful adaptation, too. They just need to play a trick Star Trek: Discovery did in its second season.
The first new Trek TV show since the mid-oughts prequel Enterprise took its final bow, Star Trek: Discovery was a prequel series set more than a decade before the events of The Original Series. One persistent complaint about the show's take on Star Trek was how the technology on this admittedly "experimental" ship were incongruous with the canon. The characters didn't help, including a previously unknown sibling to perhaps the biggest Trek character. Yet, at the end of the second season, thanks to some patented Star Trek time-travel shenanigans, Starfleet decreed that the Discovery and all her crew had to be stricken from the historical record and never mentioned again. House of the Dragon doesn't need to be even half as clever. In these sword and sorcery times, there could be any number of things out there that the fictional author of Fire & Blood didn't know about.
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Veering too far from the story could be perilous, but it couldn't hurt to add some surprise dragons or even surprise Targaryen siblings. Whatever the story ultimately becomes, they are immediately expendable. From the second they show up on screen, viewers know there is a ticking clock to remove them from the narrative. Star Wars: The Clone Wars used this kind of tension masterfully, making every episode feel like the one where characters original to the show met their end, explaining their absence in the earlier-released "sequel." Imagine a "Red Wedding" on House of the Dragon, but instead of beloved human characters, it's new dragons and their riders whose deaths break the audiences' hearts?
Unfortunately for House of the Dragon, it has to shake off the appearance that it exists just so HBO could keep the Game of Thrones money-party going. One way it could do that is by introducing a large new amount of lore that could perhaps trickle backwards and even affect the books' continuity. Even if it doesn't, how great are dragons? The show could always use a few more, and then they can take them away from us in heartbreaking ways once the real fighting starts.
See if any surprise dragons hatch on House of the Dragon's new episodes Sundays at 9 PM Eastern on HBO and HBO Max.