Daemon Targaryen – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

House of the Dragon: Season 3, Episode 1 – Salt and Sea, Fire and Blood

“We will all become beasts before our end.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It’s been early two years since last we caught up with the ever-quarrelling Targaryen factions of House of the Dragon; and in the interim, its attempt to recreate the vibe of the original Game of Thrones has been challenged by the less complex (and more fun) Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Can the more dour original spinoff still compete?

House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 8 – The Queen Who Ever Was

“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.

House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 7 – The Red Sowing

“Well then – let us raise an army of bastards.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Now that’s more like it. This wasn’t a barnstorming, action-packed episode of House of the Dragon; but it didn’t need to be. It’s a penultimate episode, and what it needed was to set things up for the finale while providing a building sense of pace in the narrative. After last week’s ponderous instalment, I’d been uncertain it could do that, but it succeeded admirably.