Directed by: Alan Taylor, Clare Kilner, Geeta Vasant Patel, Andrij Parekh, Loni Peristere
Distributed by: HBO
Written by Anna Harrison
60/100
“‘It all goes back and back,’ Tyrion thought, ‘to our mothers and our fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.’”
As a prequel to “Game of Thrones,” HBO’s “House of the Dragon” lacks a certain tension. We all watched season eight in horror; we know how this thing plays out, for better or worse. Maybe you didn’t read “Fire and Blood,” the faux Targaryen-centric history novel from George R. R. Martin that serves as the basis for “Dragon,” but you still know that, at a certain point, the Targaryen line gets whittled down to a very scant few. The question of this show, then, becomes not who loses, but how. And what it comes down to, really, can be summarized neatly with the above quote from Martin’s “A Storm of Swords”: the Dance of the Dragons, the Targaryen civil war at the heart of “House of the Dragon,” is, at its core, nothing more than an intergenerational family drama—only each member of this family has the fantasy equivalent of nuclear bombs.
To recap, briefly: as we ended season one, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), named heir to the Iron Throne by her father, Viserys I (Paddy Considine), was leading a contingent of her followers, colloquially known as Team Black, against her half-brother, Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), and his followers, colloquially known as Team Green. Aegon’s mother and Rhaenyra’s former friend, Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), believed that Viserys had named her son the rightful heir, not the daughter from his first marriage. Alicent’s other son, Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), had maybe-accidentally, maybe-on-purpose killed one of Rhaenyra’s sons, Lucerys (Elliot Grihault). War was on the horizon, and the last shot of Rhaenyra’s face, cold in its anger, promised retribution.
To both its credit and downfall, “House of the Dragon” avoids this retribution.
I say “credit” because “Thrones” would have portrayed Team Black’s revenge in the first episode in all its gory detail merely for the shock value of it all, and “Dragon” opts for a more restrained, but no less affecting, approach. When Daemon (Matt Smith), Rhaenyra’s husband and uncle, hears of Lucerys’s murder, he vows revenge—“a son for a son.” His first instinct has always been to resort to violence, and so he bribes ratcatcher Blood (Sam C. Wilson) and city guardsman Cheese (Mark Stobbart) to find and kill Aemond in the Red Keep. Once inside, though, the two panic, and end up killing the first son they find: the toddler Jaehaerys, son of Aegon and his sister-wife Heleana (Phia Saban). A king consort speaks, heedless of his own power, and an innocent dies. While Martin’s Blood and Cheese looks very different, the crime spiraling out of Daemon’s control is very Martin-esque. Violence, Martin shows us, is a monster that cannot be wielded without innocent victims, and it twists the intentions of the originator, regardless of how noble they were to start with (and Daemon has never been that noble). The rest of Team Black is horrified; there is no rejoicing in the murder of a child, even from Daemon.
Yet I say “downfall” because, in their desire to eschew the revelric violence of “Thrones,” season two of “Dragon” too often makes its most interesting characters passive participants in their own battles. Showrunner Ryan Condal and company correctly portray the Dance not as some epic spectacle, but rather a cascade of misunderstandings and family squabbles that spiral outwards until they become bigger than any one individual’s actions. But Condal leans into this so much that the Dance’s main participants then become static—Aemond didn’t mean to kill Lucerys back in the first season, Daemon didn’t mean to get Jaehaerys killed, on and on until no one has any agency. The Iron Throne and the violent feudalism it represents are rotten to the core, and its players are trapped performing the same song and dance as their forefathers—but even within that cycle, choices must be made for interesting television viewing.
The reluctance for the characters to get their hands dirty also backtracks the character work from last season, including a mind-numbing decision from Alicent in the season finale that made me want to gouge out my eyeballs, but it is most especially apparent in the show’s ostensible lead, Rhaenyra. In season one, especially as portrayed by Milly Alcock as a teenager, she is impetuous, impulsive, and selfish; she could also be charming, thoughtful, and sympathetic. She treats Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) like a plaything and acts surprised when she learns her dog has teeth, she lies to Alicent over her relationship with Daemon, she lies about the heritage of her first three sons, who are all bastards, and on and on. She is allowed, mercifully, to be messy. Season two has her suddenly backtracking on her desire for vengeance, and, stuck on Dragonstone, she begins bleating about her desire for peace while never taking any action herself. She expresses nothing but horror at Daemon’s actions regarding Blood and Cheese, and all concerns about the death of her own son become superseded by what happened to Heleana’s. In fact, Team Black seems more affected by the whole Blood and Cheese affair than Team Green, who, somewhat bafflingly, shrugs it off after a couple of episodes. Rhaenyra’s councilors disrespect her, Daemon flies off to Harrenhal (more on that later), and yet she does nothing, losing all spark from the first season.
Instead, she commiserates with Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno, bad) about how horrible it is that men have a desire for violence and all women want only peace, when so much of her character in season one revolves around wanting to be a man and desiring permission to be angry and violent. Rhaenyra’s relationship (and issues) with her gender in both book and show make her compelling, but now, in an apparent effort to be progressive, “Dragon” has stripped her of that inner conflict. Part of this goes back to season one, when Viserys told Rhaenyra of the prince that was promised in what felt like an HBO-mandated scene to remind viewers that, yes, this is a “Game of Thrones” spinoff (never mind that the prince that was promised prophecy ended up being such a fiasco on “Thrones,” for reasons of “subverting expectations”).
The introduction of the prophecy makes Rhaenyra’s crusade righteous and ordained; she strives for the throne because it is her holy duty to lead House Targaryen, not out of spite or desire for revenge, and so far, any messiah complex that might make this slant more interesting has yet to manifest in anything other than subtext. When Alicent, in one of two contrived scenes between her and Rhaenyra this season, becomes aware of the prophecy and promptly ignores it, the inclusion of the “song of ice and fire” also negates any legitimacy that Team Green might have had. Based on established Westerosi laws of succession, Aegon’s claim as king was a solid one, and the show took great pains in season one to make Alicent and her brood far more sympathetic than the caricatures of “Fire and Blood.” But when Alicent learns of the prince that was promised, any legitimate reasons she might have had for crowning Aegon—fear of what Rhaenyra might do to her children, pressure from her father, Otto (Rhys Ifans)—vanishes, and instead of being about a family splitting itself apart because each child wants to claim their favorite toy, “Dragon” becomes the story of the only person with any right to rule versus anyone else not on her side, removing much of the drama that season one worked so hard to build.
And still, despite everything supporting Rhaenyra’s claim in the show, Team Green steals the season. The side characters of Team Black are one-note at best, even season one standout Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), who only piddles around the docks feeling guilty for abandoning his bastard sons, Alyn (Abubakar Salim) and Addam (Clinton Liberty). Jacaerys (Harry Collett), Rhaenyra’s oldest son and ostensible heir, gets absolutely nothing to work with until the final two episodes. Baela (Bethany Antoina)? Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell)? Who are they?
Whilst Team Black spins their wheels on Dragonstone for the majority of the episodes, Team Green is a beautiful mess of dysfunction (and—thank goodness—we finally have mention of Alicent’s youngest son, Daeron, though he hasn’t shown up in the flesh yet). Nearly all of the interactions between Team Green, even with minor characters like Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall), feel rich with history, and the thorny, twisted Hightower-Targaryen family dynamic proves a prosperous mine of drama. There are two surprising standouts in particular: Aegon and Criston Cole, whose propulsion to “best characters of the season” seems entirely unexpected and yet works like gangbusters.
Last season, Aegon was little more than a petulant manchild with a habit of getting everything he wanted and raping serving girls; now, thanks to a superb performance by Glynn-Carney, we see the weight of the crown finally settle over him. Where before, his role as king allowed Aegon to do as he wished and leave everyone else to clean up his messes, now he finds himself constrained and trapped by the political machinations of his own family. And, in a strange twist of fate, Aegon gets drawn to the crippled Master of Whispers, Larys Strong (Matthew Needham), another one-note character from season one. Before, Larys felt too much like Varys (Conleth Hill) and Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) from “Thrones,” leaving him little room to flourish as his own man. Pair him with Aegon, however, and we get some of the best scenes of the season, even rivaling “Thrones” at its peak.
As for Criston this season, he reminds me of no one so much as Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau): someone whose belief in goodness and true knighthood has been stripped away, leaving a shell behind.
“So many vows,” Jaime will say years and years after Criston in “A Storm of Swords.” “They make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It’s too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or the other.”
If vows mean nothing, if it’s the whole system that’s wicked, what can you do? Jaime copes with humor; in season two of “Dragon,” Criston turns to nihilism. He can do nothing but watch as dragons begin to lay waste to his men and country over a fancy chair. “The dragons dance,” he says, “and men are like dust under their feet.” His scenes with Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox, excellent), Alicent’s brother, might as well have been written by Martin. Gone are the days of “Thrones,” which tossed aside most deeper examinations of war, of feudalism, of honor and vows. Benioff and Weiss might have said that themes are for eighth-grade book reports, but Condal and his crew have weightier stuff on their minds.
This is what makes the missteps of the show so damn frustrating—it understands so much so clearly, and yet the sum of its parts is less than the whole. Nowhere is this clearer than at Harrenhal, the ruinous castle where Arya (Maisie Williams) and Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance) spent most of season two of “Thrones” together. The largest castle in the Seven Kingdoms, Harrenhal is, according to Daemon Targaryen, the key to the Riverlands. If Daemon could bring the so-called river lords to heel, he could amass an army large enough to take on Team Green, but he runs into a slight snafu: Harrenhal has been haunted, so they say, since Aegon the Conquerer burned it down years ago.
Once there, nightmarish visions greet Daemon night after night, and during the daytime, Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale, the greatest to ever do it) pesters him with politics while owlish Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) lurks in the background. It’s everything the “A Song of Ice and Fire” fan in me wanted to see: Harrenhal being creepy as shit, magic and weirwood paste, intricate Riverlands politicking, Brackens and Blackwoods trying their best to kill each other… and yet. Rather than confining Daemon’s Harrenhal trip to a single character study episode, it gets dragged along for several until the visions start to get repetitive, and the resolution of it all, which goes back to the inclusion of that damn prophecy, leaves a sour taste in the mouth. We did all of that for… what? Does seeing a vision of the future really inspire Daemon to become selfless and heroic? Since when has he cared about anything other than himself and, depending on the time of day, possibly his immediate family? A greater understanding of Martin’s thematic thrust means nothing if it gets thrown away due to what I can only assume is an HBO-driven link to “Thrones,” nor if it is dragged down by poor pacing.
Like I said: frustrating.
There are moments of brilliance, but they are undercut by the inconsistent pacing and character choices which threaten to overwhelm the narrative until it’s hard to remember the good things. And sure, HBO cutting the episode count from ten to eight right before the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike did not help matters (say it with me now: David! Zaslav! Sucks!), but these exact problems plagued season one as well. All the ingredients for greatness are right there, but it seems that no one has figured out how to bring them together (except me, obviously). Maybe third time’s the charm, but considering this season’s reduced episode count and all of the Dance that the show still has to get through, I doubt it.
If I am forced to choose between “Thrones,” with more consistent quality but a weaker grasp of its source material, or “Dragon,” rife with inconsistencies but possessing a deep understanding of Martin’s original work, I’ll choose “House of the Dragon” almost every time. But why can’t I have both?
“House of the Dragon” Season Two Trailer
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nice!!