“You now have many dragons. Are you yourself not altered?”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
For a show with the word “dragons” in the title, about a royal dynasty who maintain power through their exclusive control of them, House of the Dragon is usually quite sparing in its use of the titular beasties. Not so this week. If it’s dragons you want, this ep is chock full of them, hence the title (presumably a riff on The Lion in Winter, the 1966 play about Henry II). There may not have been any major battles, but the dragons were front and centre in an episode that focused on them more than any previously.
Your mileage may vary on how good a thing that is. I’ve never been all that keen on the outright fantasy aspects of the franchise, preferring the political and military parallels to an alternate history Europe. Still, the dragons are less of a sticking point for me than the use of actual magic, which I always feel is too easily used as a shortcut around plot points that would otherwise require some inventiveness on the part of the characters (and the writers) to overcome.
But there was magic on display here too. We already know that Alys is, to quote the Eagles, a witchy woman, and she lives in a haunted castle. Small wonder then that the increasingly befuddled Aemond is beset by dreams and visions, much like Daemon before him. And given the Targaryen predilection for incest, equally unsurprising that one of them is having sex with his newly arrived mum, Alicent – only to discover that it was Alys all along.
I’m not sure what the actual point of that was, except perhaps to give us a bit of a laugh when the real Alicent turns up a minute later, much to Aemond’s surprise. I must say, Rhaenyra’s plan to send her rival on a commando mission to off her own son seems like one of the show’s more implausible plots. Still, Olivia Cooke plays it rather well, conveying the Dowager Queen’s dilemma between poisoning Aemond or letting harm come to Helaena and her unborn child, held hostage in King’s Landing. It’s just about believable. Just.
But there’s more magic than Alys this week, and it too centres on Helaena, now definitely having the kind of cryptic prophetic dreams occasionally experienced by Daenerys in the original Game of Thrones. After barely appearing in the second season, it’s good that this one is making more use of Helaena; but what are we to make of her baffling visions?
One of them seems to show an oncoming winter, which in this world is truly something to be worried about, but which this show has never even mentioned up till now. “Winter is coming” was the watchword of the Starks in the original show, but when it did, it seemed to last for about four weeks rather than the ominous years-long period people kept stressing about. It’s almost like the writers just brushed over that rather important plot point to give the original show a more conclusive ending. So it’s something of a surprise to see it being hinted at here, both in Helaena’s dream and in the episode title.
Not that Rhaenyra is interested in the seasons. Her sudden interest in Helaena’s visions centres exclusively on whether they show her winning the war – and just as importantly, whether it’s her actual destiny to do so. This nicely shows her increasing – and increasingly justified – self-doubt. Nobody’s coming out of this conflict looking good, and the increasingly lawless state of King’s Landing has thrust that right into Rhaenyra’s face.
And she has real cause to worry now that her plan to replace the remnants of the City Watch with Velaryon soldiers has been derailed by the kidnapping of Corlys. It was to nobody’s surprise that Corlys turns up in Tumbleton this week, his capture another cog in Ormund Hightower’s long game plan to destabilise the capital rather than actually fight any sort of battle. As Gwayne and Daeron both comment, that seems strategically unambitious with a thousands-strong army bearing down on the captured town, and dragons filling the sky.
But again, it’s no surprise that the vain Ormund isn’t quite that stupid – and has plans to get a dragon of his own. The season has nicely seeded the discontent of drunken boor Ulf White as an unappreciated conscript to the Blacks’ dragon force; now we see why, as Ormund has been meeting with him for a while, and has now secured his side-swapping with the promise of Driftmark as a reward. Given the dragons’ status as living weapons of mass destruction, that’s about the equivalent of an American scientist defecting to the Soviet Union with an atomic bomb.
We’ve seen the dragons’ destructive potential in Game of Thrones, not least in the much-derided final season where one levelled King’s Landing in a Hiroshima-style inferno. “Dracarys” is back in action here, as just when it seems the game is up for King Aegon, he’s rescued by the very unexpected reappearance of his dragon Sunfyre, supposedly dead since the middle of the previous season. Ok, we know little of the creatures’ biology, but it does seem a bit of a stretch that it’s appeared dead for so long and is now hale and hearty again. There’s another example of how I find pure fantasy frustrating – Sunfyre’s reappearance may be a cool moment, but it feels like pure deus ex machina.
But the ep’s really cool dragon sequence has to be the four way fight between the various dragons of Rhaena, Daemon, Addam, and, unexpectedly, Rhaenyra herself. Having broken her deal with Daemon to stay low, Rhaena’s attempts to find the missing Vhagar with her less-than-tamed dragon Sheepstealer inevitably draws the attention of both Rhaenyra, who thinks the rogue dragon’s rider is dead, and Daemon, who lied to her to give her that impression.
It’s all a setup for a set piece sequence showing the four dragons basically tearing into each other on the ground. And good though the CG is in realising this, if I have to be honest, it would have been a lot more thrilling to have seen them battle in the air. I mean come on – they can fly, so why show them tearing chunks out of each other while lumbering clumsily round on the ground?
Still, it must be said that it’s a cool sequence, well-realised with some impressive CG. If it’s dragons you want from a show called House of the Dragon, well, you’re in luck this week. All that said, the dragons, and the use of magic, tend further towards the realm of pure fantasy than is my preference in a single episode. It may have helped some others to deal with some of the increasingly improbable plotlines though. Only one ep left of this season, which has felt strangely draggy for a story about a kingdom gripped by civil war. That’s been the MO of House of the Dragon since the start though, and I’d be surprised if the penultimate season finale does much to rectify matters.
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