Our conception of what qualifies as a satisfying season of television is of course contextual: depending on the show, there are different expectations audiences will bring to bear as a season concludes. With The Bear, for example, the first and second seasons had clear arc structures built around first the collapse of the original restaurant and then the creation of a new one; as a result, when season three left the fate of The Bear and the relationships between its characters unresolved, some viewers logically felt the season was unfinished.

House of the Dragon is an interesting case study in this reality of television narrative. On the one hand, the time jumps in the first season made it clear that the show will not have an explicit pattern: no season of the show will be like the first. However, on the other hand, this is a spinoff of a series that did have explicit patterns, to the point where we knew each season would end with a thrilling penultimate episode. My interpretation of the first season was that its breakneck pace was at its core designed to allow the show to settle into a more familiar rhythm for the franchise come season two, and any subsequent seasons that followed.

As you can tell from this preamble, I’m not convinced that the second season of House of the Dragon is a satisfying whole. To be clear, I knew that the second season wouldn’t be telling the story of the entire war between Team Black and Team Green, but it retrospect it was filled with false starts that gave an incorrect impression of how close we were to the precipice of the conflict. The dogfight between Aemond and Rhaenys felt like a turning point, but it mostly just maintained the status quo, and the same can be said for the clandestine meeting between Rhaenyra and Alicent. In fact, that latter scene gets repeated at the end of this finale, resetting the clock on what we now know is the actual eve of the war that even three new dragon riders couldn’t avert in the end.

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When House of the Dragon won the spin-off bake-off as Game of Thrones concluded, I’d argue that “dragon” did a lot of the heavy lifting. While there’s some additional argument to be made that the Targaryen civil war creates the best parallels to the stories and characters audiences had already connected with, the simplest pitch of “a recognizable world but where dragons still roam” is itself a huge draw.

The challenge, then, became simultaneously delivering the dragon action the title promises while nonetheless maintaining their mystique. Although dragons may be more casual in this era than they are when no one alive remembers them, they’re still beasts of immense power, and there’s a risk of deploying them for thrills so often that the “awe” of the situation dissipates.

This becomes a meta concern for Rhaenyra and Team Black in the season’s penultimate episode, as the revelation of Seasmoke choosing Addam has threatened the meaning of dragons in this w…

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At the end of its first season, Game of Thrones killed its only objectively leading character: once Ned Stark died, there was a fundamental absence at the top line of the series, the ensemble sprawling out to fill the vacuum. While this shifted by the end of the series, where Jon and Dany’s narrative importance moved them into leading roles, the story was built on the idea that no one story was more important than the others.

House of the Dragon reset this principle back to where it started. By focusing so exclusively on a single family, there was a clear hierarchy: Rhaenyra, Alicent, and Daemon were the leading players of this tale, and everything boiled down to their relationships with one another and with their families (or family, as it were). And the major death in its first season, Viserys, only reaffirmed their central role in the story, meaning that there wasn’t a vacuum to fill in a traditional sense: this is still the…

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The fallout from the Battle at Rook’s Rest is immediate across Westeros, but it’s notable where it starts from the show’s perspective.

This episode opens on Corlys, returning to his throne to grieve his wife. It’s a logical choice, given that hers was the most emotional of the losses for the audience, but it seems strange from the perspective of the realm as a whole: the death of a king is no doubt the greater burden. It’s the first hint—provided you, like me, didn’t have access to the preview of this episode when watching last week—that perhaps the loss of Aegon may not be as definitive as it seemed.

But what becomes clear over the course of this hour is that it doesn’t much matter if Aegon is dead or alive. In fact, for the purposes of the story being told, it’s far more convenient if he lives on in his grievously injured state, his burnt flesh scarring a broken boy who just wants his mummy in what small moments of consciousness he manages.…

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When Rhaenyra returns to Dragonstone after her failed parlay with Alicent, she finds a combative Jace frustrated that his mother has abandoned the task at hand. But with clarity that no peace will be found, Rhaenyra is not only committed to fighting for the Iron Throne or dying trying, but she’s also going to read Jace in on her true purpose. She isn’t going to shed blood purely for a crown—she believes that it is her responsibility to unite Westeros in order to protect against a much larger threat beyond the Wall.

It’s a stark contrast from what Alicent finds in King’s Landing. After requesting some “special tea” from the Grand Maester following her encounters with Cole, she’s processing what Rhaenyra told her, poring over old history books searching for…it’s not really clear what she expects. Is she trying to prove Rhaenyra wrong? Is she searching for some other reason why Viserys would have chosen Aegon as his …

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After a premiere where House of the Dragon delivered a cliffhanger that promised significant advancement in our narrative, the tragic end of Erryk and Arryk didn’t exactly hit the same note. It was less a deepening of the conflict and more a symbol of the collateral damage that this will generate across Westeros. And just to reiterate that point, the third episode begins with young Blackwood and Bracken knights playing out a proxy war on their border. At first it seems like it will be a small tragedy, a shedding of blood between boys playing at being men, but then the camera cuts abruptly to the gruesome battleground that followed. The once verdant lands have turned red, both families decimated by a war that has nothing to do with them.

We learn later that this has already been christened “The Battle at Burning Mill,” and no one seems all that surprised that this was the first skirmish to break out: the Blackwoods and Brackens have hated e…

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When Otto Hightower learns of the horrible fate of his great-grandson and heir to the Iron Throne, he doesn’t really grieve per se. While Alicent is distraught, and believes that the gods are punishing her for her sins, he basically tells her to look on the bright side: this is a tremendous gift in their diplomatic war with Rhaenyra, an easy way to smear her name and paint her as a child killer and kingslayer.

It’s not dissimilar to Daemon’s reaction to the news back on Dragonstone: as Rhaenyra expresses her outrage that these lies are being spread about her when she had nothing to do with the murder of Jaeherys, her husband sits there smugly, saying nothing. When she confronts him, it becomes clear that he has no desire to be responsible for the mistake, nor is he willing to apologize. He frames it as fulfilling her desires and avenging her son’s death, but that’s not what he was doing. He was asserting his own authority and power, because that’s all that really matters to him. It’s a fight that’s been brewing throughout the entire series, and Rhaenyra is now strong enough to see how he’s been manipulating her, and how all of this is still about his lost claim to the throne rather than her own.

There are clear links between Otto and Daemon—they’re each the devil on the shoulder for the standard bearers of Team Green and Team Black, respectively, and they’re both forced to grasp at power indirectly having no clear path to the Iron Throne in their own right. But what “Rhaenyra the Cruel” reinforces by its conclusion is that while both men are unfazed by the morass of morality created by their actions, there’s a difference between their motives. Neither really cares about the human costs of their respective causes, but Otto believes in a way Daemon doesn’t that his personal goals align with that of the realm. He might be more concerned about optics when Aegon hangs the ratcatchers en masse as opposed to their actual lives, but his fury with Aegon is about the idea of carrying on Viserys’ legacy, and his traditionalist belief that a king under his control has the best opportunity to do so. Where Daemon’s confrontation with Rhaenyra reinforces his selfishness, Otto’s argument with—and subsequent firing by—Aegon reveals an old man whose Machiavellian designs have been about legacy rather than spite or revenge.

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Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of season two of HBO’s House of the Dragon. As always, this review is free for all, with subsequent reviews exclusively for paid subscribers. For more information on our schedule for June and what your subscription gets you, check out our About Page for more information. To revisit our reviews of the first season, click here.

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I admire that House of the Dragon doesn’t spend much time on exposition as it begins its second season. Although we live in an era where past seasons are instantly accessible, and anyone who is concerned about their understanding of the plot could easily turn on the first season finale to become reacquainted, the fact it’s been off the air for almost two years means that there are no doubt finer details that we probably forgot about. Case in point: I certainly would have never recalled the tale of Kingsguard twins Arryk and Erryk if I hadn’t reread my own review of the finale before watching the premiere. But after basically giving over its entire first season to an expositional series of vignettes to rush through twenty years of history, “A Son for a Son” is better for predominantly focusing on the moment we’re in.

The above quote—from Erryk, the one who sided with Rhaenyra—is the most important dimension of that moment, reinforced by where the episode begins. Sure, we mostly open the episode at Winterfell and The Wall because this is a prequel to Game of Thrones and they don’t want us to forget that, but it’s also helpful to show us how a house that we know and understand is responding to the conflict playing out in close quarters in both King’s Landing and Dragonstone. The first season clearly established the interpersonal stakes of the battle between Black and Green—what this second season gets to add in lieu of the expositional framework of season one is the human cost for the rest of the Seven Kingdoms.

Jacaerys’ conversation with Cragen Stark might seem like fan service at first glance, what with its gestures toward the White Walkers, but the Starks and the North as a whole are the epitome of honor as we understand it in this story. But their decision is simpler than that facing others: they’re far away from King’s Landing, with no strategic value and an importance to the larger security of the realm than others. They honor their oath to Viserys and the Targaryens with two thousand (“seasoned”) soldiers, but the small folk around King’s Landing have far less agency to make such a decision, and the diplomatic game is going to become even harder once all-out war comes to all of Westeros. As the dragon eats its own tail, as it were, it’s the people of the Seven Kingdoms who are going to face the consequences, whether in the form of blockades or barbecues.  

This is not a huge part of the episode, admittedly, given there’s plenty of plot within the Green and Black sides of this story to focus on. However, it’s the part of the episode that felt like the show maturing into itself, with now solo showrunner Ryan Condal asserting the show’s intentions in a way that the narrative structure of season one never quite allowed. It’s not a dramatically different show—I was reminded that he said it was going to be “funnier” in interviews around the end of season one, and while there’s maybe a bit more humor, this is still an episode about a grieving mother who asks for the head of her son’s killer and instead sets into motion the beheading of an innocent child. We know that’s the kind of show House of the Dragon is, but I’ll be curious to see how the war that follows continues to find moments like the opening scenes where the worldbuilding comes to the forefront even as that world comes apart.

We’ve known since last season’s finale that war was inevitable—although Rhaenyra fought against the idea for a long time, there was no way she would continue to do so after Luke’s death, even if it’s also clear she would have never supported Jaeharys’ murder. But whereas we’ve come to see Daemon as the devil on her shoulder, the equivalent to Aemond and Aegon’s recklessness under Alicent’s watch, in this case he was following her instructions and simply chose to put his plan in the hands of men without a clear handle on the politics involved. I have no doubt that killing Aemond would have plunged them into war just the same as this will, but it would have been a more justified death—arguing that the episode’s title applies to what happened here is difficult, even if you could argue that “an heir for an heir” is politically trenchant if also destructive to that faint glimpse of a possible peace that Alicent continues to hold onto even after Luke’s death.

Rhaenyra spends the majority of the episode exiling herself in her mourning, returning only after recovering Luke’s cloak from the ocean, so this is really Alicent’s episode in terms of our two central characters. Overall, it captures the contradictions that define her life, which Aemond characterizes as “speaking with two tongues.” She is self-aware enough to realize that her sons are pieces of shit that need to be controlled if they’re going to accomplish any kind of diplomacy, but she’s still resistant to Otto’s machiavellian scheming. She uses the whispers of Larys in order to do her bidding, but she still is discomforted by the idea of his control over her staff, who she sends away. She tells Criston that they must cease their sexual activity, but she’s also riding him when Helaena enters her chamber with news of her grandson’s death. She’s not fully cut out for the world she’s inherited after her husband’s death, but she’s still playing the game, and I appreciate how there’s no easy read on how she’ll handle what’s to come. Does this give her the same taste for war Rhaenyra gained after Luke’s death? Or does her pragmatic side continue to win out?

As I noted last season, I’m choosing not to read Fire & Blood this time around, and while I suggested back then that I’d read up until where the first season left off, I regret to inform you that I never got around to it. But the final moments of this episode are the reason why I made that choice, as I got to experience the horror first hand. While not among the show’s biggest twists, the sound department really went to town on the grisly nature of the attack, and it’s the kind of ending where you’re left sitting with something deeply disturbing when the credits roll. I don’t know if the scene was suspenseful, exactly—even without reading the book, I felt confident Aemond wouldn’t be dying this early, so I never expected the mission to be successful. But there’s a tension in knowing that Westeros sits on a knife’s edge, and Daemon placed its fate in the hands of a ratcatcher and a disgruntled member of the City Watch.

If I have a central complaint about this episode, it was the choice to return to the White Worm, a character that I didn’t think worked last season and which doesn’t get dramatically better here. Some of this is the inscrutable accent that Sonoya Mizuno unfortunately did not abandon between seasons, but it also feels too convenient that she’d be randomly found on a ship leaving King’s Landing, delivered to Daemon, and then offer him the necessary details to infiltrate the Red Keep. In an episode where we were reminded that there is a much bigger world outside of this conflict—like in Corlys briefly connecting with the man who saved his life—to see it come back to a character we had already met in this way shrunk that down. I would have been more than happy to see her just disappear between seasons, allowing the show to focus its energy elsewhere.

Overall, “A Son for a Son” reminds us of the compelling dynamics that the first season’s story gave us, whether it’s Rhaenys jousting with Daemon over strategy or Larys poisoning Otto in Aegon’s ear. I don’t know if I have any deep investment in any of these characters in the way that Game of Thrones established early on, but I was still moved by Rhaenyra’s grief, particularly in her reunion with Jacaerys. Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke may have memed their way into notoriety between seasons, but I’m compelled by the idea of these two women grappling with their combination of a righteous claim to honoring Viserys’ wishes, the intense grief of the losses they’ve suffered at each other’s hands, and the bloodlust of their advisors who desire power for reasons entirely unrelated to what is just or right. Every now and then there’s a scene where I wonder why I’m supposed to care about this, but that core struggle is central enough, and once we get into actual war I’m presuming there will be some stronger justifications for time spent.

“A Son for a Son” did reinforce to me, though, that I have become disconnected from the “fan” experience of this show. It’s not just that I didn’t read the books—I also can’t fathom the idea of “picking a side” as though there’s a rooting interest, and I’m not trying to keep up with the dragon names either. I definitely forgot all the kids’ names between seasons, and while I obviously had the ability to look them up, I struggle to imagine them entering into the larger cultural lexicon. And given the long gap between seasons, I do have to wonder whether the same will be true for the audience who made the show a “relative” hit for our Peak TV moment, even as it fell far below Game of Thrones’ peak.

That said, I’m hoping that the show will find some momentum of its own in the seven episodes that follow this one. House of the Dragon scratches the itch of what Game of Thrones offered, and I appreciate that the latter’s success opened the door for this scale of fantasy storytelling to exist on television in a way that seemed unfathomable two decades ago. And there’s something dramaturgically interesting about a prequel that always compels me, and while I might not be optimistic that it will become a show that I’m truly on the edge of my seat for each week, I’m at least open to the idea that all-out war could give the show a new angle into this world that will give us something to talk about.

Stray observations

• Love the new tapestry opening title sequence, wish they would have gone all in and just changed the main title theme as well. Still flabbergasted by that decision.

• Given how crucial Alan Taylor was to the early seasons of Game of Thrones, there’s not really any significant aesthetic shift after the departure of director/co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik. This remains a handsomely made television show.

• “Would that you were the king”—I want to see Rhaenys have a more active political role as well, but existing mostly to just needle Daemon is working for me in the meantime. (He’s right about how her choice to not just burn up the entire family was dumb iin retrospect, though).

• Sometimes I forget character names between seasons just because they’re all too similar and weird, and sometimes I forget because I want to erase someone from existence. That was certainly the case with Ser Criston Cole, who is just a sniveling snit of a snot.

• I appreciate that they’re not depicting Aegon as evil in the way they did with Joffrey—same with Aemond, for that matter. The latter got caught up in the revenge over his eye, while the former’s time hearing the pleas of the smallfolk reveals him as inherently decent—he wants to give the dude his sheep back, after all. He has no acumen for political strategy, and no respect for the throne as he drinks on it with his bros, but he’s not a terrible person and that’s for the best.

• I know from the comments last year that there was some frustration with Luke’s death being played as an accident on Aemond’s part, as it softened his character. It’s clear here that he hasn’t told anyone that, and we don’t really get any sense of vulnerability or trauma from his point-of-view, so it does seem like he’s going to become that hardened version of himself even if we know the inciting incident was maybe more complicated than the history books will suggest.

• Welcome back to Episodic Medium’s coverage of House of the Dragon! This review is going out to over 5000 more free subscribers than my first review of season one, and this is one of the shows I committed to reviewing when this Substack was just me and my desire to stay on my existing A.V. Club beats back in early 2022. I appreciate that some of you may have followed me from there, and am excited to continue our conversation about the show alongside lots of other great shows this summer. As always, your support is so important in helping me support not just my reviews but those of our tremendous contributors, so I hope you’ll consider joining us if you’re heading back to Westeros in the months ahead.

On the one hand, the decision to not read Fire & Blood ahead of House of the Dragon’s debut made this season a more exciting experience. I had no idea of the events that were about to take place on a weekly basis, and thus could be surprised at plot points both big and small as the story of Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower’s march to war played out.

On the other hand, though, over the course of the season it became clear that a huge part of the show’s appeal was in the choices being made presenting that story in relation to George R.R. Martin’s text. Within his diegetic history was one version of the facts, which showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik have—based on our discussion in the comments, and what I’ve read online—treated as a contested account of the period from the moment the show began. The appeal of the show as a “reader,” then, is seeing what the show chooses to present as what actually happened to lead the historians to their conclusions, portraying what they left out or what they simply couldn’t have known was true.

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Last week’s episode of House of the Dragon was unquestionably a breakthrough moment, but it largely achieved this by focusing on a character that dies at episode’s end. The show proved that Viserys’ life had served as a catalyst for compelling drama and meaningful pathos, but his death—and the war the show has always acted like it would start—doesn’t automatically ensure the show has a stable foundation to continue to reach these heights.

“The Green Council” is an effort to create this foundation, an attempt to rebalance the scales after a season largely invested in the dynamics of Rhaenyra’s claim to the throne. By choosing to tell so much of the season through Rhaenyra’s perspective, and as a byproduct of Daemon’s substantial (if scattered) arc intersecting with hers through their marriage, the show anchored itself to their side of the story, to the point where it has felt like the writers were outright taking sides. Whereas Game of Thrones at least gave us Tyrion amidst th…

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In the midst of last week’s episode of House of the Dragon, which worked overtime to rush the younger generation of this blended Targaryen family into the limelight, I came to a realization. For as much as the early episodes seemingly placed Rhaenyra as our central protagonist, and built out Alicent as her friend and then rival, they are not actually the anchor on which House of the Dragon has built its first season. That honor belongs to Viserys Targaryen, King of the Seven Kingdoms, literally disintegrating in front of our eyes.

There’s two reasons for this. The first is the idea that all of this comes down to decisions he made: pushing Aemma to he death to have a male heir, the choice to name Rhaenyra, maintaining this position after Alicent bore a son, and every subsequent decisision he made that would eventually lead to the absolute mayhem within his family that we saw in “Driftmark.” But the second is that, out of all of the show’s characters, he is the one …

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By choosing not to read Fire & Blood before House of the Dragon debuted, I knew spoilers could happen. The “facts” of this story have been apparent to readers of the book from the beginning, and I accepted that as a necessary consequence of my desire to let this narrative unfold as it would for most viewers.

But the truth is that I was never going to be like “most” viewers, because I live on the internet, and I am writing about the show professionally, which combined creates lots of clear opportunities for casual spoilers. None of these come with malicious intent, nor do they necessarily ruin the story being told. But I still find myself realizing that the “pure” experience I’m chasing is really only available to the person who never has to Google how a name is spelled, and who lacks social media connections to folks who have read the books.

And the truth is that book readers had no chill with the incest angle. I don’t hold this against them, and on some level appr…

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On the one hand, “The Princess and the Queen” continues the trend of House of the Dragon largely revealing that Westeros’ past looks a lot like its future. Royal children straight out of a Clickhole quiz? Genetic mysteries easily answered by a simple glance at the company a mother keeps? A displaced queen feuding with her replacement, as those around her see opportunity to take advantage of her desperation to claim power of their own? While there may be more dragons this time around, the palace dramas surrounding House Targaryen bear a striking resemblance to those that will play out among the Baratheon/Lannister line of succession two centuries later.

On the other hand, however, this hour of television is a thing entirely unto itself, given the novelty of what transpires. It’s not like we’re surprised when the episode begins with a time jump: while I suppose there will be viewers out there who skipped the preview for this week’s episode, didn’t read any of the in…

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“The time is coming, Alicent.”

Otto Hightower, having been dismissed as Hand of the King, is furious with his daughter. In the aftermath of the claims made regarding Rhaenyra and Daemon, she chose to believe her friend, giving Viserys leave to remove Otto as his chief advisor. Alicent insists that perhaps things wouldn’t have gone the way they did if only he hadn’t been pushing Aegon as heir so hard, but Otto remains steadfast in his beliefs on this point. While it is easy to frame Otto’s quest for his grandson to ascend to the throne as yet another second son trying to improve his place in history, and this may well be true, he doesn’t see it that way. He simply believes that pushing forward Rhaenyra as heir to the throne is a one-way ticket to absolute anarchy. He was only doing what he thought necessary to keep the realm from descending into war, and the time is indeed coming when there will be no turning back.

“We Light The Way” is the point of no return for th…

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When they first announced they were adapting A Song of Ice and Fire into a TV show, I wrote a piece reflecting on rereading the books with that in mind, and pondered at how the show could use themes to connect its disconnected stories together. And while there were certainly Game of Thrones episodes along the way that embraced this potential, I can think of very few episodes where the entire episode boiled down to a single idea. There was just always that outlier of needing to check in with Daenerys, or moving along a story that doesn’t really have much thematic material to grasp onto.

House of the Dragon has, thus far, been heavily committed to thematic storytelling, mainly because there’s nothing the show needs to be addressing at any given time. In telling this period of history, jumping months or years between episodes, the story is what the writers determine the story to be, and thus if they choose to let a character or a story be sidelined for an episode, so…

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I still don’t really know what to call House of the Dragon. 

It is no doubt a clear effort to take component parts of what made Game of Thrones a success and build a new show out of them, but since the premiere’s effort to turn the events of that series into a prophecy in this one the connections to that show have been scattered. It’s technically a prequel, but I don’t know that it’s really functioning as one, and while it’s spinning off a particular family it involves no direct links to the previous series, making that claim equally dubious, as far as I’m concerned.

In “Second of His Name,” my efforts to articulate the series’ creative choices has left the realm  of television vernacular entirely, as I don’t think it captures the vibe of this story. What House of the Dragon feels like to me is a band playing its greatest hits, but all of the band members have been changed out. It’s not exactly a cover band—the songs still sound great, and the concert transports yo…

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[Reminder: Until 9/9, yearly subscriptions to Episodic Medium are 20%, at only $40, with all subscribers taking advantage of this deal entering a drawing for a copy of my book, Game of Thrones: A Guide to Westeros and Beyond. This gets you access to all reviews of House of the Dragon, Rings of Power, and much more. Find out more information on our mission and our future schedule on our About page.]

With HBO’s largest premiere ever and a swift second season renewal, there is no arguing that last week’s premiere proved House of the Dragon is capable of carrying the Game of Thrones franchise into its next era.

What remained unclear coming into this week’s episode was how exactly it would approach that task. The setup of “The Heirs of the Dragon” was clear: an initial prologue, followed by a detailed account of the death of the Queen and her newborn son and the divisions in the Targaryen dynasty created in the process. But that offered more clarity on the show’s story than how it intended to tell that story, which is ultimately where the show will live or die as a prequel to the biggest show in television history.

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[The following review is written from the perspective of someone who has read existing volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire, seen Game of Thrones, but has not read Fire & Blood. As such, there will be no spoilers, but tread carefully in the comment section.]

“The dream was clearer than a memory.”

Late in the episode, Viserys Targaryen confides in his daughter Rheanyra a secret, passed down to each Targaryen who sits on the Iron Throne, or who is named as a successor to it. Aegon the Conqueror, who had flown in from Dragonstone to rule over all of Westeros and unite the Seven Kingdoms, did not do so out of a lust for power, or as a sign of madness. Instead, he foresaw a dark winter descending over Westeros, accompanied by a terrifying threat, and the only thing that will stop it is a united seven kingdoms with a Targaryen on the throne.

It is the only moment in this premiere that explicitly frames the House of the Dragon as a prequel to Game of Thrones, and is notably a new addition to the canon of A Song of Ice and Fire, which just so happens to be the name given to the dream among the Targaryen heirs. It’s a reminder that with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss stepping away from the franchise, and with no other writers from the original series returning, George R.R. Martin himself is now the primary creative force behind whatever spinoffs, sequels, and other content emerges from HBO’s efforts to iterate off of their most successful show of all time. And with this revelatory retcon, Martin lets viewers know that at least in the minds of Viserys, the power struggle within the Targaryens themselves is not simply an isolated drama, but rather one part of a long lineage of stewards of Westeros’ very future.

That being said, however, everything about how House of the Dragon operates in this opening hour leans on our memory of Game of Thrones. After Rhaenyra’s opening narration that establishes us within the Targaryen dynasty, we get what I’d call a series of re-establishing shots—as she flies into frame on her dragon, they soar over King’s Landing, with the Red Keep and Flea Bottom pulling us back into the world bit by bit. And as she returns home after returning her dragon to its handlers, we see a King’s Landing alive with energy, and a Red Keep bustling with activity. We’ve seen this space like this before, but it was almost a decade ago, and we never saw a version of it with this much budget behind it—with fewer locations to wrestle with, House of the Dragon is instead committed to showing us the scale of this space we already know, reimagined with the budget Game of Thrones only achieved later in its run, and mostly spent on epic battles that (at least for now) are not part of this show’s milieu.

This is no clearer than in the Tourney scene. In the first season of Game of Thrones, we’re told that the tournament is a critical part of the naming of Ned as Hand of the King, but the actual event is a crowd in a field, because the budget didn’t give them the ability to communicate how much this form of heraldry is built into the culture of Westeros. By comparison, with a much larger budget and clearer expectations to go with it, the tourney Viserys throws in honor of his unborn child—which he dreams is the son he’s always wanted—is huge in scale, the royal box towering over the joust itself, with thousands in the crowd screaming their support and encouragement. This increase in scale doesn’t mean the scene is better than what Game of Thrones managed, mind you, but it’s able to communicate more information about this culture, which is critically important to selling this narrower vision into Westeros.

Because House of the Dragon is inherently narrower. Instead of focusing on three far-flung families, one of which sits on the throne, it narrows its point of view to the jostling of power in King’s Landing. Rhaenyra’s initial introduction gives us the recent history: a dying king with no heirs who opens up the bidding to his relatives, with the realm choosing the male Viserys over his cousin Rhaenys. It becomes a thematic backdrop for the story that emerges, as Viserys’ quest for a male heir dies alongside his wife, and he is forced to decide whether he will allow his ambitious brother Daemon to remain his heir or elevate Princess Rhaenyra against tradition. Although Viserys’ reveal of Aegon’s dream works to place this conflict amidst a longer lineage of Targaryen rule and Westerosi history, the focus on the path of Targaryen succession offers a natural locus of intrigue, using plot and character dynamics that certainly echo those we saw in Game of Thrones’ early seasons when the political dynamics of King’s Landing were a central part of the show.

The remaining question, for me, is whether I’m actually invested in these characters. Certainly Rhaenyra is the most dynamic, but although we open on her narration and on her flying through the sky on her dragon, I’m not necessarily convinced that we learn enough about her to really engage with her as a character. Certainly her position in the story is compelling, but we’re left with only a few glimpses of personality as she’s a bit flirty with Alicent and speaks High Valyrian with her uncle. We see her as her father’s cupbearer, but not enough to really see the dynamic between her and her father that she speaks about, and which kind of gets glossed over. I’m absolutely interested in seeing what she does as the new heir, but the events of this premiere feel like something that happens to her, and her reactions aren’t as central as they needed to be.

Elsewhere, I’m not sure House of the Dragon escapes its origins as a retelling of historical events. Viserys certainly has the largest emotional arc here, andthe character is well-drawn. He’s only king because he was a man, and as his wounds show he may not truly be worthy to sit on the Iron Throne, at least according to that bit of lore. And while he loved his wife, he pushed her through numerous miscarriages and stillbirths to keep pursuing a male heir, eventually being forced to sacrifice her life in hopes the baby could survive. But the weight of this tragedy, and the meaning of this transformation, is weakened by the fact we were just introduced to the character. I realize that they’re rushing to get to the most dynamic point in this bit of history—defying his brother’s claim and instead elevating his daughter—but in the process the story becomes more abstract, a plot development rather than a character development.

The same is true of said brother. Daemon Targaryen is, we learn, the origin behind the feared Gold Cloaks of the City Watch, but he’s also sadistic in the way Targaryens can be, and is just a loathsome creature from the moment we meet him. He trashes his wife and the entirety of the Vale, massacres “criminals” in the streets with impunity for crimes we don’t see, and speaks of his brother’s tragedy through the lens of his own fortunes. And quite simply, I don’t know how you come back from this. If he’s an outright villain, that’s fine, but I don’t know how that squares with the story they’re telling. His scenes with Rhaenyra are pitched differently, and he tries to insist to Viserys that he’s actually a better advisor to him than Otto Hightower because he understands his weaknesses and can account for them, but that reads as an unsympathetic position, and I’m not sure where you take a character like this one.

By comparison, the supporting characters at Viserys’ High Council offer more dynamism, although they are adjacent to the core story. As Hand of the King, Otto Hightower is in the position of wielding tremendous power, but always at the King’s behest, and learning that he was the one responsible for shipping Daemon around the various roles trying to diminish his ambition means he’s been trying to manage this situation for a while. His actions on the Council itself seem moral and just, but the way he pimps out his daughter to potentially be the next Queen as Viserys mourns his wife is deeply alarming in ways that reinforce that although Daemon may be positioned as an outright villain, no one is immune from the corruptive influence of power.

I’m equally interested in Rheanys and her husband, Lord Corlys, who have been forced to sit by and watch as a throne that could have been theirs is disputed without them. Whereas Daemon has stewed in his frustration with not being named Hand of the King, Rheanys and Corlys have accepted their duty, and sit at Court peacefully. The episode uses the tournament to reveal that there are still those in the realm who believe she should have been queen—when the knight asks for the favor of “The Queen Who Never Was,” it shows us the cracks in this peaceful time, not just within the Targaryen family itself but within Westeros as a whole, and it makes me intrigued at how these dynamics will shift and change.

Broadly, then, House of the Dragon promises a lot of palace intrigue, but I am not yet sure if that’s enough to keep me engaged. I’m not worried about a lack of action—it was never my primary interest in this franchise, and while I appreciate the occasional dragon flights they’re not really a major draw either. What was missing for me here was some type of levity. We get a glimpse at possible romance with tourney winner Ser Cristen Cole (and Rheanyra and Alicent with each other, frankly), but Daemon is too cruel to read as clever, and there’s just a distinct lack of mirth given the tragedy that defines the hour. The Targaryens are rich and interesting, but also a little bit humorless, and I wonder if centering an entire show around them is able to offer enough diverse characterization to feel as “whole” as Game of Thrones did.

It’s not an entirely fair comparison, and one I don’t want to get too stuck on, but I do think on a simple narrative level House of the Dragon is hurt by how it begins its story. The power of Game of Thrones’ first season is how it built to its huge turning point: we had an entire season with Ned before his beheading, and thus we had a strong understanding of the status quo before Joffrey burned it down. We knew what was at stake when Caetlyn made her error arresting Tyrion, or when Robert died, and that added weight to those moments that otherwise could have felt procedural.

House of the Dragon starts us at its own turning point, without giving us a chance to understand the full stakes of these events, and instead uses them as a crucible for introducing us to these characters. This is a valid way to start a story, perhaps, but I’m not sure if it’s a better one, and my apprehension is whether it will create the space for the show to let character rather than plot drive its action. There’s no definitive judgment to be made coming out of this premiere, of course, but it’s a marked shift from its predecessor, and one that will no doubt shape the story moving forward for better or for worse.

As a production, the premiere revels in its directorial continuity with said predecessor. Miguel Sapochnik has been given a rare credit as “co-showrunner” to reflect how critical he is to ensuring the show lives up to Game of Thrones’ visual spectacle, and this is a handsomely made and compelling hour of television. Similarly, although casting has been one area of change with Nina Gold sitting this one out, Kate Rhodes James (Sherlock) has nonetheless brought together a compelling assortment of performers, with Milly Alcock standing out as a solid find as Young Rhaenyra1 to be able to anchor what feels like the show’s central character. I’ve never really had any lack of confidence in HBO’s willingness to provide the resources necessary to create something that lives up to Game of Thrones in terms of the production itself, and this premiere affirmed that.

It’s possible that this single hour was enough to communicate to some people that they’re either all in on returning to Westeros or disinterested in this next chapter of HBO’s leveraging of their most valuable intellectual property. For me, though, the premiere is interesting enough to make me intrigued to see more, but makes some choices that have me questioning whether the balancing act of spinning off from Game of Thrones will be able to create truly great television. Which is to say that the start of House of the Dragon is not that atypical from other television pilots, and will be interesting to revisit when the rest of the season comes into focus.

Stray observations

• So, as I wrote about on Friday and reflected on at Polygon, I chose not to read Fire & Blood, and I have to say that I’m appreciating being in this world without being burdened by what’s going to happen. I very much enjoyed playing “spot the foreshadowing” for five seasons, but then we had three seasons of “is this going to happen in the books” that were less fun, and this new mode where I’m able to be introduced to the characters and the story as we go along is a nice change of pace. It does mean that I now have to try to avoid spoilers, though, so I’m going to ask folks who have read the book to be on their best behavior in the comments (and if there’s enough demand, I’ll commit to the Episodic Medium Discord to give y’all a space to talk spoilers).

• While Game of Thrones eventually diversified its characters, House of the Dragon commits up front with Lord Corlys, who is of House Velayron. For spoiler reasons I’m not going to look up the family to figure out if Corlys being Black is something Martin himself discusses, but I think the colorblind approach works in a context where House Velaryon is as old as House Targaryen but lacks the same power and respect. I don’t think there was any house in Martin’s main story that could have been colorblind cast without being forced to dramatically change the story for it to be meaningful, so we’ll see how this plays out.

• I say I’m trying to avoid spoilers, but I decided to use the character guide HBO sent to help me get names right when taking notes, and when Aemma didn’t show up as a main character her fate was pretty clear the second I realized she was pregnant and about to go into labor. Without an opening credit sequence, the episode itself doesn’t really reveal its hand on that, so the perils of paratexts for me.

• Speaking of: no opening credit sequence? I realize that it’s hard to follow what will go down as one of the most iconic in TV history, but to not even try? Disappointing.

• They don’t spend a huge amount of time trying to articulate how this moment in history is different than the one we spend eight seasons in, but a Heart Tree in the Red Keep is certainly a change, although religion plays no significant role here with the Maesters mainly focused on medical care.

• Putting stark white wigs on actors is a crapshoot if ever there was one, and they lost on Matt Smith (the others are fine).

• We get glimpses of Baratheons and Starks, but the episode avoids going full “wink wink” with it, and I’m curious how that holds as time goes on.

• They resisted showing us the actual invision for the c-section, but they still showed us lots of blood, and I appreciated that it was treated as a “gory” moment alongside the whole decapitation scene. Both are meant to demonstrate the gruesomeness of life and death, and made an impact on me.

• As for the sex, we did indeed return to the brothels of King’s Landing, but as always I don’t think simply showing sex is a problem. The fact Daemon frequents the brothels gives him a space to articulate his separation from the palace, and while his paramour Mysaria may not have much character in the moment, she is listed as a main character, so I’m intrigued to see how her role evolves. And we did get equality in butt shots during their first sex scene, so there’s that at least. 

• Also, when Daemon gives his big speech there’s a dude who’s just paused in doggy style with one of the women, and it’s the only moment in the episode that made laugh, so I can’t be too mad at the brothel of it all.

• I was wracking my brain to figure out why I found Eve Best so familiar as Rhaenys until I realized she was the friend in Nurse Jackie. Remember Nurse Jackie?

• Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of House of the Dragon. After a decade of covering Game of Thrones, I’m excited to dive back into this world, and about the possibility of having a dynamic and engaged comment section with which to do so. As noted above, the first review of each show is free here at Episodic Medium, but only paid subscribers will have access to all reviews for this season. However, your $5 a month will get you access to these reviews and Zack Handlen’s coverage of Rings of Power, along with reviews of major Star Wars and MCU projects airing in the months ahead. For a full schedule for the fall, check out our About Page. In addition, we’re running a 20% discount on full-year subscriptions, which are only $40 through September 9, and everyone who signs up for a yearly subscription during this period is entered into a draw for a signed copy of my book, Game of Thrones: A Guide to Westeros and Beyond.

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