Dragons Go Rawr

It’s taken me a while to get back to House of the Dragon. Some of that is simply because it’s hard to get excited for anything Game of Thrones related at this point. As we’ve discussed before, the final season of Game of Thrones shit the bed so bad that all love for the series basically vanished. Sure, season six and season seven weren’t great, but if the final season had actually managed to bring about a satisfying ending to its various storylines, we could have forgiven the few stumbles along the way. It didn’t, though, and it trashed the reputation for the series. Going into anything related to the series, even a prequel headed up by a different creative team, still felt like a lot of effort that, likely, wouldn’t pay off.

I watched the first season of House of the Dragon and it was… fine? It didn’t have any major issues, per se, but it also didn’t thrill and delight the way its parent series managed to for a good length of its run time. Its characters aren’t as interesting and the fight for power at the center of the series doesn’t have the same heft and intrigue as Game of Thrones. The first season was perfectly serviceable, managing to show that not everything tied to the property was going to be awful… but it never really rose to the occasion either.

Thus, even though I’ve had a Max subscription for a couple of months now (upgrading my Disney+Disney's answer in the streaming service game, Disney+ features the studio's (nearly) full back catalog, plus new movies and shows from the likes of the MCU and Star Wars. and HuluOriginally created as a joint streaming service between the major U.S. broadcast networks, Hulu has grown to be a solid alternative to the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, even as it learns harder on its collection of shows from Fox and FX since Disney purchased a majority stake in the service. combo to include MaxThe oldest and longer-running cable subscription service, HBO provides entertainment in the force of licensed movies along with a huge slate of original programming, giving it the luster of the premiere cable service. Now known primarily for its streaming service, Max. as well because, fuck it, why not?) I couldn’t bring myself to build the desire to watch House of the Dragon. I felt no compelling urgence to get around to it, knowing that the show would be there whenever I was really bored. And I eventually got bored enough, this last weekend, to give the show another chance and see if, somehow, it had finally found some drive and energy, some way to be interesting at all.

And thankfully it did, to a certain extent. While the first half of the season is slow, continuing to build the coming war between rightful heir Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) and the man actually sitting on the throne, calling her an imposter, King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), it eventually picks up. The show feints at having three factions vie for power, with Rhaenyra’s Husband/Uncle (because Targaryens) King Consort Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) attempting to build an army for himself so he can take the throne, eventually it shifts, power realigns, and things take quite a turn. I won’t spoil the turn, but suffice it to say it does set a path forward for the series into its (proposed) final two seasons.

So it does find some energy, and it manages to create some pretty solid action setpieces in the process. There’s a solid battle around the halfway point, between the forces of Aegon II and a dragonrider sent by Rhaenyra, and this gives the sense of scale and action fans of the franchise want. It’s focused, letting you feel the tides turning back and forth through the action, but it still has the broad sense of scale that makes this feel like more than a bit of CGI and one person on a saddle against a green screen. This is the kind of action the franchise can deliver on, when the creative team cares, and that’s what House of the Dragon needs.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of slow build up to get to this point in the series, and I honestly think this is where people could start checking out. There’s a lot of political back and forth in the first half of the season, with multiple scenes of people gathered around tables, discussing what to do next. It’s enough that I thought to myself, “what is this? Table Talk with Rhaenyra and Aegon?” Which, actually, might have been a fun series to watch. Two great leaders getting together to bicker and bitch at each other over a podcast. That’s the Song of Ice and Fire content I want. But I digress.

I do understand that there is only so much money in the budget for action setpieces, and the series has to budget wisely where it can, especially with a show this expansive in its sets, costumes, and CGI. None of this can be cheap (and reportedly the per-episode costs for this series are nearly double that of Game of Thrones). Shots of people round tables are cheap. Shots of dragons burning armies are expensive. That all makes sense. But there has to be more thrilling intrigue in the show to make these scenes bearable.

The problem with the first half of the season is that it’s just a lot of people moving pieces around (sometimes literally on a table) before anything really happens. Rhaenyra grouses about being cooped up in her castle, unable to go out to the front line and fight. Aegon feels jealous and mistrustful of his brother, Prince Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), who is a right power-hungry bastard that would happily take over the throne in a second. Each has the desire to throw it all off, to fight, to be the hero that makes their own destiny, and that’s great character development. It doesn’t take half the season (or more) to tell that story, though. We needed to speed things up a bit, get the story moving faster, so that the series felt like it had energy.

Again, it does this in the second half, once the war really, truly, “we swear it this time” begins, and then all the political intrigue feels like it’s going somewhere because we’re getting people talking about action, and then action being taken. That’s the kind of stuff we need, and the series needed to find ways to get there faster. Which is weird because the first season of the show had no problem burning through plot as fast as it could. That was one of the things I respected most about the season. Have five years before the next event that matters happens? Let’s just skip those five years, they don’t matter. The series was ruthless for a time in cutting away the fat, but this second season feels as flabby as it can be for four episodes of its eight episode order. It’s not well balanced.

But then, speaking of balance, the season also doesn’t have much of an ending. It has a sweeping montage to mark what could be considered a cliffhanger moment for all the characters, but it’s not actually a season finale. That’s because, due to the writer’s strike and other budgetary factors, HBO elected to save the last two episodes of the season for season three instead, adding them to that season’s production count. Whatever was supposed to make the ending of the season will take another year or two to come along and then, finally, we can see where all this was building. But that will count for a different season and it leaves season two feeling like it’s waiting for the shoe to drop. It ends on a question mark instead of an exclamation.

Now, I’m not saying that having those final two episodes here would have completely redeemed the first half of the season, but it would have likely made it feel like the show wasm building to something good this season.the momentum would build and build until it finally released right at the end of the season, and that might have justified certain actions from the production team. We didn’t get that, leaving us waiting and wanting without necessarily being truly excited. Something was missing (two episodes) and it can be felt.

And that doesn’t help the show, especially when people are struggling to care. I’m struggling with it, and I know other commentators online are as well. Game of Thrones was a cultural moment, with seven seasons that became must watch appointment viewing. Season eight ruined that, but there was a chance that House of the Dragon could have found a way to fix that and bring people back. But a season like this second one squanders good will, especially when it can’t even end its ending.

The show needs to do better, and I guess the best thing that I can say about this season is that I want it to do better. The show is just good enough that I want to care. I don’t, but I want to. Maybe if it can nail its third season I finally will again.