Sophomore Season of 'House of the Dragon' Can't Maintain Hot Start

by Tyler Glover

Photo: HBO

Season two of “The House of the Dragon” returned to HBO this summer. The prequel series to the massively successful HBO series, “Game of Thrones,” continued to show us the events that unfolded within the Targaryen family 300 years before the events of the original series.

As we know, King Viserys I Targaryen (Paddy Constantine) had decided to make his daughter, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), his rightful heir. This, of course, caused controversy because she is a female. He was given the crown over his sister, Princess Rhaenys (Eve Best), because of his gender. He overlooked his brother, Daemon (Matt Smith), who is now married to Princess Rhaenyra. On his deathbed, he told his wife, Queen Alicent (Olivia Cooke), of a prophecy of The Prince That Was Promised. She mistakenly believes that this means he is wanting their son, Prince Aegon II (Tom Glenn-Carney) to ascend the throne. Alicent’s misunderstanding pushes all the events of the war into motion.

Season two sees Princess Rhaenyra out for blood. The young prince, Aemond, has killed her son, Jacaerys, and she wants payback — his head on a stick! When the assassin cannot locate Aemond in the castle, the events that unfold lead to shocking deaths and consequences for everyone involved.

Rhaenyra struggles with the idea of the war. Is it avoidable? She wants to know for certain before waging it. When it becomes apparent that it is unavoidable, she struggles to find the best action to win it.
King Aegon II suffers a major blow to his rule and new leadership threatens to undermine him. Prince Aemond becomes even more arrogant and vindictive. Queen Alicent starts to feel remorseful that a war is going to take place at all ... it is impossible to feel sorry for her, though, knowing that she played a major role in it all happening in the first place. Finally, Prince Daemon battles some major inner demons that threaten his chances to be an asset to Princess Rhaenyra’s challenge to the throne.

“House of the Dragon” continued the high production value of its predecessor to almost perfection. The show has such beautiful production design, exquisite costumes, astonishing visual effects, and great acting, and it delivers shocking events in the perfect direction. You should never think any character is safe, even with a smaller cast. They are not. The feeling that no character was safe was one thing that made “Game of Thrones” so exciting to watch and that same uneasiness for a character’s fate remains in ‘HOTD.’

One thing that hurts this series is that the momentum was able to continue a little easier in the original “Game of Thrones.” This is probably because there were so many characters and so many stories. If the progression of one story took longer, we could focus on more interesting ones for the time being. The scope of the prequel is focused solely on this small portion of characters, making it more difficult for the writers to keep everything compelling.

One thing is for sure, though: the season starts with a huge bang. The first five episodes are truly compelling and suspenseful television. The problem is that it isn’t able to sustain that momentum throughout the entire season (even with the episode total being reduced from 10 in the first season to just eight for the second season). It is clear, though, that this season does appear to be really setting the scene for an epic third season.

Hopefully, the less compelling moments of season two will lead to an action-packed blockbuster of season three. One thing is clear, though: war (and winter) is coming.