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Warning: The following contains spoiler information for House of the Dragon Season 2.
The second season of House of the Dragon was met with mixed reviews with fans outraged over the plotting in the final episode. However, it’s not like nothing happened this season. Meleys and Rhaenys (Eve Best) perished at the hands of Vhagar and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell). Prince Jaehaerys was murdered in his bed for the death of Prince Lucerys last season and of course, King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney) was burned to a crisp. Season 2 of House of the Dragon also featured Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) filling her side with more dragons, while Daemon (Matt Smith) faced his demons at Harrenhall.
Positions of power have shifted, with the King fleeing King’s Landing, and Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) seemingly imprisoned. Armies are on the march including Lannister and Stark forces. So, with all this movement, why was I so dissatisfied with House of the Dragon Season 2?
Westeros Is a Big Place
If you look at the ending of the House of the Dragon’s first season, Rhaenyra was just told about her son’s murder and everyone was gearing up for war. If you look at the ending of the final episode for Season 2 – entitled The Queen Who Ever Was – everyone is just gearing up for war again. Sure, there are more of them this time, with the Starks finally getting their troops together after eight episodes, but most characters are in the same position. Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) has had his spirit broken, but he’s still fighting.
Readers of the source material, George R. R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, will know that there are moves made immediately following the events of the last episode. The showrunner Ryan Condal confirmed in a virtual Q & A one will be shown next season. A report from Deadline last year mentions that the original plan was for Season 2 to consist of 10 episodes and that moving it to a shorter eight episodes moved a battle to Season 3. It seems as though that battle was meant for the final episode.
It’s not just the pacing either. Odd decisions in House of the Dragon feel like HBO trying to cement A Song of Ice and Fire into their stable of franchises by constantly referencing Game of Thrones. In The Queen Who Ever Was, Daemon sees Daenerys as a part of his hallucinations, further tying House of the Dragon to everyone’s distant memories of the much-maligned final season of Game of Thrones. More visions and more visits to side characters weren’t needed, especially in the final episode. And then there’s the oddly timed second meeting between Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and Rhaenyra.
House of the Dragon Season 3
As House of the Dragon progresses, it’s clear that few want a full-blown war, and some only fight out of a sense of duty or honor. But is it too much to expect that during monumental conversations about ending the war, the losses are more than an inference? It was good to see Alicent and Rhaenyra in the same room, but why were they glancing over the deaths of Lucerys, Rhaenys, and Jaehaerys?
Whatever the reason, ending characters in the same places and similar strategic positions was a misfire. Along with the news that the series will conclude with Season 4, we know that Season 3 will go into production in Early 2025. So, we might not see more House of the Dragon until 2026. Fire & Blood is a great book, and some of the events coming up are genuinely epic if they’re adapted faithfully. Yet, it’s hard to get overly excited about it when it’s so far away.
Thankfully, another series is set to release next year. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, based on Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, will debut in 2025. You can watch the first snippet of the series above, featuring Peter Claffey (Vikings: Valhalla) as Ser Duncan the Tall. Much more of a character study rather than a large tapestry of a story, it should quell fans a little until we see more of House of the Dragon, whenever that might be.
