Game of Thrones season 2

Production

HBO ordered the second season on April 19, 2011, two days after the series premiere, with a 15% budget increase to stage the Battle of the Blackwater in episode nine. Filming took 106 days, with two crews working simultaneously for three-quarters of that time. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss served as showrunners and co-wrote six of the ten episodes; story editor Bryan Cogman, author George R. R. Martin, and new co-executive producer Vanessa Taylor wrote the remaining four.

Alan Taylor directed four episodes, including the premiere and finale; David Petrarca and David Nutter each directed two; cinematographer Alik Sakharov and filmmaker Neil Marshall directed the other two. Casting began in May 2011, with many first-season cast members returning. The producers chose not to cast several characters from A Clash of Kings, including the Freys, Crannogmen Reeds, Tullys, Stannis's wife and daughter, Theon's uncle Aeron Greyjoy, and the bastard Ramsay Snow, delaying their introductions to the third season due to the large number of new characters already in season two.

Some characters were merged or had their plot functions reassigned, and physical traits such as ethnicity or age were altered. The cast was estimated to be the largest on television.

Reception

The second season received intensive media coverage before airing, partly due to the first season's success and HBO's marketing. A two-minute short film for Funny or Die titled Sunday is Coming satirized viewer anticipation. Several outlets reviewed the first four episodes before broadcast and gave almost uniformly positive verdicts. The season holds a Metacritic score of 90 out of 100 from 26 critics, indicating universal acclaim.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 96% approval rating from 304 critics, with an average rating of 8.9 out of 10; the critical consensus calls it an even better second season combining elegant storytelling and vivid characters. Brian Lowry of Variety praised the visual feast and fundamental storytelling pleasures. Nancy deWolf Smith of The Wall Street Journal described each episode as unfolding like a tapestry. Slant Magazine gave the season 3 out of 4, admiring its gripping presentation of splintered families.

Emily Nussbaum of The New Yorker called it a sophisticated cable drama about a patriarchal subculture. Matt Zoller Seitz of Vulture remarked that the onscreen content was consistently remarkable and smarter than necessary.

Release

The second season aired on HBO in the United States from April 1 to June 3, 2012. DVD and Blu-ray box sets and digital downloads were released in North America on February 19, 2013; the DVD includes a 30-minute feature on the production of the episode Blackwater, actor interviews, character profiles, twelve audio commentaries, and a discussion of Westerosi religions. The Blu-ray set adds a feature on the War of the Five Kings and 19 animated histories of the mythology. The season was the most-pirated TV series in 2012.