Ulf White – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

House of the Dragon: Season 3, Episode 7 – The Dragon in Winter

“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.

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.