House of the Dragon has a Targaryen problem

House of the Dragon is a huge success.

Over seven million people tuned in to watch the season two premiere. It’s been an exciting season, with plenty of new dragons, huge battles, and scandalous conversations in candle-lit rooms. I’m a huge fan of all things Game of Thrones. I’ve read all the books and loved the original series before it all fell apart in the last two seasons. I have all the in-universe history books House of the Dragon is based on. So, I should love this show, but as season two has gone on, I find myself becoming more disappointed in it.

The issue I have is the show’s simultaneous slowing down of events while maintaining a hyper-focus on all things Targaryen. We’ve seen big battles take place this season, like the Green surprise attack on Rook’s Rest, as well as the aftermath of the Battle of Burning Mill. There’s also been no shortage of dragons featured in the show. However, six months have passed since Viserys’ death in episode eight of season one. This pace is slower than Game of Thrones, which usually covered about a year per season, spread across many more characters. With the events of the Targaryen civil war slowing down, important characters have spent most of the second season bogged down in castles, seeming indecisive, while the show struggles to add interesting new characters around them. This is most evident when the show focuses in on Dragonstone or Harrenhal.

Targaryens stagnating in nearly empty castles

The slowed-down pace has hurt some main House of the Dragon characters

In the most recent episode, we learned that it’s been six months since Viserys’ death back in season one. While the show covered literal decades in its first season, the pace has slowed to a crawl this second season, with just a few months passing since the start of season two. This could be an understandable swerve against one of the chief complaints about the final seasons of Game of Thrones—that they rushed through the final two seasons.

This has led to characters like Rhaenyra and Daemon being stuck in neutral for the majority of this season, as they’re sitting in castles without many conflicts to deal with outside the war effort. Aside from her meetup with Alicent Hightower, Rhaenyra Targaryen has been stuck on Dragonstone listening to old white lords complain this entire season. It seems like every week we experience a few members of her small council yelling about what they think is best and then advocating for a plan that goes nowhere. This has only grown worse since Daemon left Dragonstone for Harrenhal. If not for the addition of Mysaria as Rhaenyra’s newest ally and potential lover, Dragonstone could have been just as bad as Harrenhal has been.

As far as Daemon’s stay at Harrenhal goes, I just wish I could get back every second I was forced to watch the hallucination scenes. But aside from those moments, he’s met with some of the riverlords, including the Brackens and Blackwoods, as well as the heir to Riverrun, Oscar Tully. He’s yet to raise much of an army and has instead spent most of the season floating in and out of his hallucinations that haven’t done much to move the plot or Daemon’s ambitions forward.

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King’s Landing shows what works

Where House of the Dragon shines

HBO

The Green faction in King’s Landing has been much more entertaining this season, and that’s simply because there are more interesting characters in conflict. There’s Aemond Targaryen flaming his brother, Alicent Hightower sleeping with Criston Cole before he becomes Hand of the King, and Otto Hightower trying to wrangle his impudent grandchildren. The conversations between the small council seem to have more effect on the actual events of the show. The introduction and evolution of Alicent Hightower’s brother Gwayne after witnessing Rook’s Rest has been one of the show’s best additions this season. King’s Landing is also the only place where we see how people who aren’t closely invested in the Blacks or Greens are being affected by the civil war, with scenes featuring blacksmith Hugh Strong struggling to feed his family and common people in pubs. This pales in comparison to Dragonstone and Harrenhal, where the action is usually focused on Rhaenyra or Daemon exclusively.

Daemon has spent more time talking to ghosts than people since arriving at Harrenhal, and I’m not convinced that regular people even live on Dragonstone—it’s just a handful of lords who want to be in charge of Rhaenyra’s war effort. The most interesting moments in Dragonstone this season, aside from Ser Darklyn getting roasted by Seasmoke, came when Rhaenyra and Daemon shared the screen together. Their complicated relationship makes for great drama, but it has been missing since Daemon fled to Harrenhal.

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The real problem

There’s more than just Targaryens in Westeros

HBO

The show can still pay off the slow-moving pace in the final episodes, but I think these build-up episodes have wasted some screentime. The biggest way House of the Dragon has differed from Game of Thrones is its hyper-focus on a singular house. We just haven’t gotten a lot of other perspectives from outside the Targaryen strongholds. Our best look at other houses this season has come with the Brackens and Blackwoods, and most of the rivalry between the two houses has occurred off-screen. Game of Thrones had no problem jumping across continents and making small characters into household names. Think of Tyrion being forced to travel all over Westeros, meeting new characters like the Night’s Watchmen, Bronn, and Lysa Arryn early on in the original show, or a new character like Oberyn Martell arriving in season three of the series. Instead, most of season two has been spent across three locations: Dragonstone, King’s Landing, and Harrenhal, and few important characters have been introduced yet this season.

We have instead gotten small tastes of the wider world of Westeros. Examples like Jace visiting Winterfell and the Twins to help win each house to his mother’s side or Daemon meeting with Oscar Tully have been great at showing what factors are making houses choose sides in the conflict, but they haven’t shown us any interesting characters from these houses other than the usual stereotypes—the Starks are honorable, and the Freys can be bought off. We still haven’t seen Oldtown yet in season two, where Otto Hightower has spent his time tutoring Alicent Hightower’s youngest son. We’ve also just begun to scratch the surface of the Vale’s place in House of the Dragon, with Rhaena Targaryen discovering a dragon there in the most recent episode.

There’s still time in season two of House of the Dragon, so I’m hoping the world of the show opens up a little more in the final two episodes. Hopefully, they pull it off, because it seems like we could be waiting a few years before we get season three.

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