“The dragons dance, and men are like dust under their feet. And all our fine thoughts, all our endeavours, are as nothing.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
House of the Dragon wound to the finale of its second season with the same mix of moments of brilliance and frustratingly uneven pacing that have characterised it this time round. This was a good episode for character development, nicely tying up some arcs that have been seriously dragging for most of the season, but in terms of advancing the plot it mostly meandered along setting up pieces for next season before suddenly dropping a plot bomb in our laps with an excellent final montage and cliffhanger.
None of that is to say that I didn’t enjoy this, but if you’re one of those who’s found the show’s slow pace somewhat dull, this won’t have done much to reassure you. You’d have thought that after last week’s climax, showing Aemond fleeing in terror after being confronted by Rhaenyra’s ever-growing fleet of dragons, there’d have been some dragon action. And in fact there was; but it was offscreen. All we saw was the aftermath of the frustrated Aemond’s torching of the town of Sharp Point, accompanied by the screams of the survivors.
I’m actually ok with that. Show the dragons in action every week, and it would lose the impact it currently has. Besides, it made sense to focus a little more on Rhaenyra’s newly minted dragon riders, whose commoner status is still causing outrage among the aristocracy on both sides. Predictably, Ulf White in particular is not well-suited to the manners of royal society, as he demonstrated in an amusing scene with the furious Price Jaecaerys. While it was played for laughs though, there was a serious implication – can the Blacks really rely on this drunken blowhard in combat?
Hugh Hammer seems to take his responsibilities more seriously, along with the need to comport himself appropriately in his new surroundings. And Addam Hull, perhaps serving as the audience’s identification point, seems scared of the impending carnage in which he is likely about to take part.
All three served to underline the class conflict that’s been central to this season, with its new focus on the smallfolk of Westeros. Aemond too was outraged at these mere commoners being ‘dragonlords’, while Rhaenyra’s solution was to knight the lot of them, removing the problem. Good luck with that – I don’t think a ‘Ser’ will civilise Ulf any.
Also out of his depth in an alien culture was Tyland Lannister, seeking to recruit the navy of the Triarchy in the first glimpse of Essos we’ve seen in the show. Jefferson Hall has not been well-served with lines in either season of the show so far, especially considering that he plays both Tyland and his twin brother Jason, but here he got a nice little comic subplot of his own.
His struggle to deal with the boisterous Essosi (is that the nationality?) seemed of little consequence, but of course it is – the coming war is obviously going to have a naval theatre, and currently the Greens don’t have much in the way of ships. This meant that Tyland had to make several compromises – not only ceding them the Stepstones, which seem to occupy the contested position of Gibraltar in the real world, but also agreeing to impregnate the (several) wives of rip-roaring Admiral Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn, in the most fun performance of an otherwise dour season).
Just as well Tyland was up for all that (and a hilarious mud fight), because the Greens are now acutely aware that they’re massively outgunned, dragonwise. King’s Landing wasn’t exactly full of confidence this week, with Aemond trying and failing to enlist Halaena and her dragon to the cause. Phia Saban as Halaena is another one that’s not had much to do; after her heartwrenching choice as to which of her children would be murdered in episode one, she’s just been sort of… there all season, rather underutilised given the dramatic potential.
Here though she showed her true mettle – as a pacifist who would have no part in Aemond’s planned slaughter of innocents, much to his teeth-grinding annoyance. After all, if she’s going to conscientiously object, that reduces the Greens’ dragon force to only about two, and one of those is the still-unseen Daeron’s beastie, reportedly still only half grown.
Halaena’s face off with Aemond did, however, allow her to fall back on the portentous, ominous prophecies she specialised in last season, as she foretold the fall of King’s Landing and the death of Aemond himself. Small wonder then that morale in the capital is at an all-time low, and various important parties are scarpering while the going’s good. The most important of which being the actual King himself, spurred on by the ever-scheming Ser Larys, who figures the best thing is to let both sides destroy each other before sweeping back in with the broken Aegon to take back the throne.
Tom Glynn-Carney was back in action (at least verbally) this week, with a bitter but darkly comic diatribe about his now missing cock (it “burst”, apparently), and as concise an appraisal of his power-hungry brother as you’re likely to hear – “fucking mad cunt”. His performance has evolved nicely from the impulsive, naïve King wanting to be loved to this crippled bedridden shell, good only as a pawn in Larys’ chessboard scheming.
Also plagued by visions of the future (again) was Daemon at Harrenhal, despite his success at recruiting the River Lords to Rhaenyra’s cause. This time, his ghostly visions directly tied in to the original Game of Thrones, as witchy (and Scottish) Alys Rivers showed him the rise of the White Walkers and their army of wights, together with a shot of (presumably) Daenerys Targaryen and her dragon eggs, shown from behind to avoid paying Emilia Clarke to reappear.
Nice fanservice and all, but to what end? The events of Game of Thrones are a couple of centuries in the future from here, and aside from being (vaguely) ancestors of Daenerys, we already know that Daemon and Rhaenyra have no impact on that story. Somehow, though, it convinced Daemon that his dreams of kingship were a Bad Idea, so he yet again swore allegiance to Rhaenyra when she turned up at Harrenhal to find out just what the heck he’d been up to.
Which, of course, rendered this whole, season-long subplot utterly superfluous. Being familiar with the very briefly sketched source material, I can charitably see that it needs fleshing out for a complete drama serial, but why inject an entire subplot that ended up going nowhere? It feels like this season has very much wasted the estimable Matt Smith and his scenery-chewing performance after being so vital to the plot the last time.
Also seemingly irrelevant thus far was the final scene between Corlys and Alyn Hull, taking place at that shipyard that’s been about the only bit of Driftmark we’ve seen all season. Like Ulf and Hugh, we’ve seen Alyn and Addam moping around since the beginning, but while Addam at least now has a plot purpose, Alyn’s only apparent point is to make Corlys feel guilty. It was another bit of obvious fleshing out/padding, but very nicely played by Steve Toussaint as Corlys and Abubakar Salim as Alyn, so I didn’t mind it as much as the redundant Daemon/Harrenhal scenes. Besides, Alyn may turn out to serve an important purpose next season – we don’t know yet.
But I can forgive the apparent irrelevance of some of the scenes just for the real dramatic climax of the episode, because it was superb. And while I think many fans may have been disappointed that it wasn’t a stonking great battle, I at least was knocked out by what was a tense, two-handed scene between Alicent and Rhaenyra, as these two friends turned bitter enemies effectively decided the future of the realm alone in a dark room.
Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke were absolutely at the top of their games as Rhaenyra and Alicent respectively, in a scene that cleverly mirrored their earlier clandestine meeting in King’s Landing. The boot was on the other foot this time, as a repentant, beaten Alicent had made a pilgrimage to Dragonstone; not to avert the war, but to hand victory to Rhaenyra with as little loss of life as possible.
It’s an entirely believable character development that wasn’t in the (very short) book, based on everything we’ve seen of Alicent till now. Her recent ostracisation from the corridors of power has given her time to reflect on everything that’s happened (so that was the point of that random walk in the forest last week), and all she wants is to fade away. To just be herself, and live a happy, unremarkable life, regardless of what history has to say about her. And so she, in essence, was prepared to hand the keys of King’s Landing to her “enemy”.
It was a well-written speech from scripter Sara Hess, and Cooke played it with great conviction. But just as she told Rhaenyra at their last meeting, now Rhaenyra had to tell her – things have gone too far for that. Emma D’Arcy too was on great form as Rhaenyra reminded her rival that, for her to take the throne, Aegon would have to die. Of course Alicent doesn’t know that Aegon has already fled, so her agonising decision, to let both her older sons die, was an electric moment.
So we didn’t get a bloody great battle, but this was truly the dramatic climax of the season. And the montage of both sides’ forces building up, intercut nicely with Alicent’s departure, certainly promises one next season. Frustratingly, based on previous experience, it may be another two years before we see it.
As sophomore seasons go, this has been a less assured one than its confident first season. With eight episodes instead of ten, it’s somehow felt both too short and too long, full of redundant subplots that went nowhere at great length while still full of gripping political machination. The pacing has been all over the place, seemingly peaking with the Big Battle in episode four then meandering since then.
Of course, I don’t know the showrunners’ full plan to adapt George RR Martin’s roughly sketched out history to a full drama series; fleshing out is definitely needed, even if some of it comes off as padding. Still, I don’t think it has enough plot to spin it out to the eight seasons its predecessor had, and I wonder how long exactly it is planned to run for.
The original story is at least finished, so there’ll be less of the vaguely sketched plot that hamstrung the unfinished (bookwise) Game of Thrones. And even with its flaws, this has been a gripping season of the Machiavellian scheming that, for me, was the best part of its hugely successful predecessor. There’s room for improvement, sure, but I’m glad HBO has definitely greenlit the next season. If only we didn’t have to wait so long for it…
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