Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) ends House of the Dragon season one just as she began it, mourning a Visenya. The sustained heartache of the finale and the pace at which her losses pile up — a father, a crown, a stillborn daughter, a son — set the tone for a character overwhelmed by grief, at her most wounded and vulnerable before her eyes light up with vengeance. In a show more focussed on spectacle over sentiment so far, it’s the closest this season has come to striking a rich emotional core. House of the Dragon has churned furiously, barely allowing viewers to get invested in the characters before it decimates them through war and loss, and while the final image suggests an even further escalation, this one feels well-earned. Ten episodes later, the first cracks have appeared in the foundation of House Targaryen. All that’s left to do is watch it crumble into ash.
A return to Westeros
It wouldn’t be a Game of Thrones’–adjacent show without questions of parentage, claims of succession, major political shifts, dragons, deadly weddings and inevitably, nighttime scenes that viewers claim are too dark to see. Viewers wondering how far House Of The Dragon strays from this template need look no further than the show’s opening credits, their accompanying theme plucked straight from Ramin Djawadi’s indelible Thrones tune.
Based on George RR Martin’s Fire and Blood and set 172 years before the birth of Thrones’ Daenerys (Emilia Clarke), House of the Dragon reaches back into the past to trace the future of the Targaryen dynasty. It might chart a familiar return to Westeros but even so, its decision to confine itself to a few locations unlike its sprawling predecessor and examine the power dynamics of largely just one extended family instead of a dozen allow it to settle into a distinctive, if uneven, groove of its own. At its most engrossing, this pared-down prequel is a reminder of the smart, intricate machinations Thrones was capable of before the biggest twist it sprung on viewers was that lacklustre cop-out of a final season. At its most confusing, however, integral character development is assumed to have happened between episodes, motivations are opaque and the pacing builds urgency only to let it dissipate.
