The first season of “House of the Dragon,” the prequel to HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and the first spinoff in the network’s history, was widely considered a success. But it was also, in essence, 10 hours of drama, traversing decades of context to take audiences to the brink of the Westerosi civil war known as the Dance of Dragons. Despite its many strengths, the series began as a structural oxymoron: too rushed to do the patient plotting and character building that gave its parent series such a solid foundation; too slow to get to the heart of its story until the latter part of the episodes, which saw the death of King Viserys (Paddy Considine) and the formation of factions around his two potential heirs.
In Season 2, “House of the Dragon” feels like it’s finally the show it was always meant to be. It turns out that this whole parade led to a tragedy of epic proportions, darker than even the famously violent and cynical “Game of Thrones” could ever dream of. In the war between two descendants of the long-ruling Targaryen clan, there is no winner, much less the kingdom each contender hopes to rule. The new episodes, four of which were screened in advance for critics, contain much of what their predecessors lacked, from the development of key relationships to the dragon-on-dragon violence promised by the title. “House of the Dragon” has been elevated, sharpened and expanded in scope – all in the service of a show now as figuratively dark as it already was literally.
Showrunner Ryan Condal and co-creator George RR Martin, the author of the series’ source material, could barely fit all of the political and personal context of Dance of Dragons into a full season intro. But at the start of Season 2, the fighters are helpfully divided into color-coded contingents: the Blacks, loyal to Viserys’ eldest child, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), and the Greens, who support the half-brother of Rhaenyra, Aegon (Tom Glynn). -Carney), the offspring of Viserys’ second marriage to Rhaenyra’s childhood friend Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke). For what it’s worth, the show’s sympathies are clearly skewed toward black people. Rhaenyra’s claim to succession is contested, in part due to misogyny, and in last season’s finale she suffered the first real loss of the war when Aegon’s sadistic and vindictive brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), killed his young son Lucerys (Elliot Grihault). Yet the crux of the thematic of “House of the Dragon” is that once the bodies start falling, sympathy ceases to matter in the face of a self-perpetuating cycle of destruction.
From the outset, Season 2 signals an intention to broaden its focus beyond palace intrigue within a single blended family in a few castles. We open not in King’s Landing or Dragonstone, but in Winterfell, the seat of the Stark family whose own dissolution formed the backbone of “Game of Thrones.” The purpose of the excursion north is not only to highlight historical parallels; this indicates that “House of the Dragon” is shifting its focus from the Targaryens’ intimate dynamics to their disastrous continent-wide consequences. “When princes lose their temper,” warns a character, “it is often others who suffer.” »
The point is made bluntly, and only reinforced by lurid spectacles seemingly designed to refute Truffaut’s apocryphal quote that there is no such thing as an anti-war film. (Or a TV show with the budget of a box office tentpole.) An argument between two bickering teenagers heads straight to a corpse-strewn battlefield; A modest family living in a blocked city worries about soaring food prices. These exchanges do not take place between our main anti-heroes, but between minor, even anonymous, characters who we may never hear from again. Cumulatively, they represent the masses who have nothing to gain from two camps armed with the magical equivalent of nuclear bombs engaged in mutually assured annihilation.
This thread draws on long-standing themes from the “Game of Thrones” universe. (Martin’s original novels, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” made it clear that armies of all sides, no matter how righteous their commanders’ cause, would engage in small atrocities like rape and theft if they were given an excuse.) There is always an added sense of the futility of “House of the Dragon”. Ned Stark may have been naive, but there was a clear morality to his initial search for the truth that applied less to Rhaenyra, a blatant runner – much like Ned’s adversary, Cersei Lannister! – who clings to his birthright primarily out of personal grievance. And as the war intensifies, calmer heads on both sides are gradually pushed aside in favor of bloodthirsty hardliners like Daemon (Matt Smith), Aemond’s uncle/husband and of Rhaenyra, whose one-upmanship makes peace more and more impossible. “Soon they won’t even remember why they started the war,” laments Rhaenys (Eve Best), Rhaenyra’s aunt. One of the even-tempered types on the losing side of this fictional story, Rhaenys was herself passed over for the Iron Throne. She has lived long enough to see history repeat itself, and the viewer brings their own knowledge of what awaits generations to come.
That future, of course, includes a horde of ice zombies coming for a kingdom left without the dragons that serve as its best defense, a near-extinction tied directly to the Dance and its winged victims. At first, I balked at the way “House of the Dragon” retroactively transformed the dynasty’s founder, Aegon the Conqueror, into a prophet passing his apocalyptic dream down through the generations. But in season 2, this device effectively highlights the damage caused by the war. Rhaenyra claims to act with the predictions of the prophecy in mind; in reality, it only guarantees that they will come true.
The oppressive atmosphere can make “House of the Dragon” a trial to watch, albeit in a way that speaks to its power. (Any show that gives you bad dreams, as these episodes did for me, has worked its way deep into the subconscious.) There are occasional challenges to the show’s cultivated sense of reality, like the patently absurd idea that the 30-year-old Cooke is a grandmother. But for the most part, the widespread empathy that “Game of Thrones” cultivates for its many protagonists is deployed here to explain what might lead otherwise sane people to cold-bloodedly murder family members and honestly believe that They had no other choice. It’s a worldview rarely illustrated on this scale. Most blockbusters need a happy ending to attract crowds. After making a saga where blood flows freely and incest is normalized, television’s biggest attraction, “House of the Dragon” doesn’t feel the need to spare our feelings.
“House of the Dragon” Season 2 premieres on HBO and Max on June 16 at 9 p.m. ET, with remaining episodes airing weekly on Sundays.