‘House of the Dragon’ burns with greatness despite minor misfires
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for “House of the Dragon.”
The hit television series “House of the Dragon” recently concluded with its final episode airing on Oct. 23 bringing in about 9.3 million viewers for its season finale. The first half of the show was, for the most part, a great way to introduce viewers to a new cast of characters and events and ended with a great cliffhanger to set up for the second half of the show.
Episode six is set 10 years after the events of episode five and introduces us to the older cast of actors and actresses who play the characters, we knew in the first half of the show. Emma D’Arcy plays Rhaenyra and Olivia Cooke plays Alicent, these two switch up the roles that their younger counterparts played.
D’Arcy portrays Rhaenyra as a calmer and more calculated personality but still has the fire in her as she did when she was younger. With Cooke, we get headstrong and politically astute Alicent. Gone is the shy and timid young girl and is replaced with a young woman who is more active in playing the game of thrones.
This was a smart choice to have their personalities switch like this, Rhaenyra, when she was younger, seemed to not take her role seriously and as a result Alicent politically cornered Rhaenyra in episode six and made her realize that she has no allies in Kings Landing. The remaining five episodes do an excellent job of showing how much Alicent’s green faction slowly starts to gain more power and when Otto returns as Hand of the King in episode seven this power becomes more pronounced.
The children of Alicent and Rhaenyra represent the different parenting styles of the two based on how they grew up, Rhaenyra grew up with a loving father while Alicents father manipulated her and treated her as a tool. As a result, Alicents children have a mix of problems due to this while Rhaenyra’s are more well-rounded people.
Paddy Considine’s portrayal of King Viserys was the biggest highlight of the show. He gives Viserys more depth to his character than his book counterpart and captures the likable aspect of Viserys while also giving us a character who is conflicted with what to do as king. In episode seven we get a heartbreaking scene of Viserys who at this point in the season is slowly dying painfully from a disease that has ravaged his body, walking up the steps to the Iron Throne. Even in excruciating pain he defends his grandson’s claim and shows how much he loves Rhaenyra. He was one of the better characters in the show and while it got infuriating at times with the decisions, he made his death in episode seven incredibly sad and I will miss his character.
The dragons in this show are presented in all their glory and strength and it was always a treat to see them on screen. In “Game of Thrones”, Daenerys’s dragons all shared the same design with different sizes and colors to differentiate them. In House of the Dragon, we have numerous dragon designs and sizes to tell them apart, with Vhagar being the oldest and largest dragon dwarfing everything on screen. I liked this approach as each dragon has something unique about them and I can’t wait to see more of them in the second season.
While the story and characters were great, I do have my negative thoughts on the show. The time skips in the series serves the purpose of speeding up the story so it can introduce us to the main conflict in season two. Many fans, including me, felt there were too many time skips. In the first half of the season, the skips were used less which was okay, but in the second half we had a skip in almost every episode. We do not really get to see character interactions because of this, especially with the children who only have some scenes here and there, I feel like the show could have used more episodes to flesh out these relationships since the books also never showed the full extent of these relationships.
The show had a problem with focusing on a small cast of characters, Ser Criston is a good example of this as he was mostly relegated to a background character in some episodes and would have benefited from more screen time. This goes for the children as well who are major players in the conflict having little to no screentime to be fleshed out more, we only got a small taste of what they think and feel like with Aegon being a drunk, Lucerys being unsure of himself and Aemond being dutiful but also having anger issues. Sadly, with Lucerys death in episode 10 we lost one of the more fleshed-out child characters and while his death was inevitable, if we had more time with him, this death would have had a more tragic layer to it.
Another problem this show had was the lack of morally grey characters. It felt black and white with Rhaenyra’s side feeling like the good guys and Alicent’s being the bad guys. The show tried to present Aegon as this emotionally starved man who only wanted his family’s love and the show wants us to feel bad for him because of this. When they decided to have him sexually assault a servant, I think it was something the writers should have avoided if they wanted us to sympathize with Aegon’s character,
Overall, I did enjoy “House of the Dragon” and I feel it does carry on the legacy that “Game of Thrones” created. Whether it will it become a massive global phenomenon like “Game of Thrones” remains to be seen. The writers have promised to go all out for the second season and I am excited to see what they will do with the story. I am not excited to wait until 2024 but good things take time, I guess.
The show has an excellent cast of actors and actresses who give the characters in the show more depth and characterization, the designs for the dragons, costumes and set pieces are excellent as well and gives the show a more distinct and individual feel to it. The time skips and limited character interactions negatively affected potential scenes that could have created more personal connections with the characters that would have a deeper sense of tragedy later in the series. My hope is that season two fixes some of the problems, along with adding new story and character elements.
