When the first season of House of the Dragon aired back in 2022, it seemed to present a much needed return to form for the hit fantasy franchise, after Game of Thrones’s lacklustre ending.
Over ten episodes, the writers expertly set up the characters and conflicts of this new chapter, as they slowly built up to the larger conflict that was coming. For the most part, Season 2 brings back all of the key elements that made the first season tick – with its tight focus on the politics and the infighting between the different factions in Westeros, the Greens and the Blacks. The production values and the soundtrack from Ramin Djawadi all remain stellar throughout, while the cast continue to be perhaps the best thing about it.
Having only half the season as lead character Rhaenyra during Season 1, Emma D’Arcy is able to truly make the role hers here, while Tom Glynn-Carney makes a really solid impression here as her rival to the Throne, King Aegon. Having had an even smaller role in the previous seasons, with much of the manoeuvring by his own faction being done around him, he’s given a lot more to do here. He injects the role with a surprising amount of humour and vulnerability, after having been introduced as the typical spoilt boy Prince. The 20-year old Harry Collett also really impresses as Jacerys, who similarly gives the role a lot more weight in spite of his youth, and having little role in the show thus far.
Another character who gets a much bigger role here is Ewan Mitchell, as Aemond One-Eye, who takes over as Prince Regent halfway through, following his turning on Aegon. He isn’t given quite as much depth however. Being in large part the Throne’s franchise’s answer to Richard III, he spends much of the runtime glowering at everyone around him, though still for the most part holding a strong screen presence.
The same cannot be said to the same degree for the various new lowborn characters that this season introduces. Each shown as coming from very different backgrounds and mindsets, the season spends much the same amount of time on each of them throughout, but they remain for the most part pretty thinly sketched, with little about them to get viewers invested until the moments in which they each claim dragons of their own in the final few episodes. At the same time, because we have still spent much of the season with them, these moments fall flat, since we know exactly who is getting out of the dragon pits alive, and who isn’t.
These characters are one example of several new plot beats which have been added to Season 2, but which ultimately don’t feel especially meaningful. Many online have critiqued the newest season for essentially ending things on much the same note as where it had started.
If there was one key aspect to the previous season which may have been disappointing for viewers, it was that the season had seemed to end just as the main thrust of its story appeared to get going. Most of Season 1 had functioned as set up for the conflict that has now come, boasting few large scale action paces in favour of a focus on the mounting tensions and escalations between different characters and factions. All this gradually built towards the breakout of war at the season’s climax, with the savage murder of the young Prince Lucerys appearing to signal a start to the conflict that had been set up throughout the season.
The pay-off to this is likely what most went into Season 2 expecting, and yet, in many respects this newest season ultimately also ends on a similar beat of promising big things to come, but delivering seemingly little in the interim. Much of it feels like a strangely muted, static affair, with many characters quite literally stuck in the same places which they start from, be that Emma D’Arcy’s Rhaenyra on the island of Dragonstone, or Matt Smith’s Daemon in the haunted castle, Harrenhal. By the final episode, it feels like much of the previous eight could quite easily have been skipped altogether, with a final scene promising that now, now, the big confrontations are coming.
Much of this is of course quite on purpose. Both these characters are shown to chafe against these situations, and plenty of work is done to demonstrate why there is little else to be done. It’s drummed in time and time again throughout the season’s run that characters such as Rhaenyra are fully aware of what a full-scale war with Dragons entails, and therefore she is desperate to avoid it – much to the chagrin of the other characters around her. The one big action set piece that comes in Episode 4 does a masterful job of selling this, with its visions of the Dragons bleeding noxious acids on men below, and of armies reduced to ash.
Some of these situations in which the characters find themselves locked in like this really work. Matt Smith as Daemon remains one of the best things about this show, his character bringing a level of wit and unpredictability which is reminiscent of some of Game of Thrones’ best characters. His scenes in Harrenhal – which play out like Westeros’s version of the Shining, as Daemon is haunted by visions from his past – make for a far different atmosphere to everything else we see going on. These scenes allow for the brief return of stars such as Milly Alcock and Paddy Considine – the best thing about the previous season – as well as a strong turn from Simon Russell Beale as Simon Strong, who bounces off Smith’s character brilliantly.
And yet, detaching the cast from each other in this way, as well as holding off on some of the bigger moments from the books, can’t help but lessen somewhat the impact of those moments that had come before, such as in the aftermath of Lucery’s death, and Emma D’Arcy’s look of pure vengeance, or the infamous ‘Blood and Cheese’ moment that comes here in Episode 1. Many of these moments fall flat when it seems as if there is little payoff, nor much fundamental change in how these characters operate.
This season, as a result, ends up following a strange, at times mismatched feeling storyline in which we are told there is a war being fought, and yet where it seems for long periods as if it’s one which essentially no one wants, or even is all that invested in.
Part of this may have been due to the season apparently being cut in length – getting just eight episodes as opposed to the usual ten, a decision which apparently was made late in the day following the writer’s strike. Another factor however may be that the showrunners have run into a similar issue to those behind Game of Thrones, that is, what to do if lacking for source material. A major issue for the show always was that it is, for the most part, being adapted from just two chapters of George RR Martin’s ‘Fire and Blood.’ As such, it feels at times as if it has perhaps been dragged out unnaturally, with certain events held off for the sake of it.
One of the strengths of previous seasons was in their focus on political drama and on character development. But much here feels lacking in momentum. One of the best things about the first season for this show was in how it wasn’t afraid to skip years in between episodes in order to advance the plot to the point where it needed to be, without missing out any important context. Here, however, it seems as if it instead wants to put off certain points for as long as possible, and as a result, just feels as if it is going in circles, telling viewers what they already know whilst not remaining true to the emotional arcs of many of its characters.
There is still much to like here for fans of the franchise, with plenty of spectacle still, as well as great performances from the cast. Everything that makes this world as enthralling as it has always been is still there to draw viewers in. Nevertheless, this newest season feels a lot more as if it’s on auto-pilot, and is a noticeable step down from the first. HBO have confirmed that there will be just two more seasons, so it seems that the showrunners aren’t intent on dragging things out far longer than they can be. Whether the show can pull off the remainder of its storyline over these two seasons, however, remains to be seen.
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