House of The Dragon review, with this HBO series, launches the expansion of the Game of Thrones universe using a local approach, very different from the original series.
We have already reached that time of year that many were waiting for. Those who watch TV series know that the end of summer will be a fairly busy time for entertainment, and part of the responsibility lies with HBO which will release episodes of House of The Dragon weekly. Before starting with the review of the first 6 episodes of House of The Dragon, let’s make a summary of the programming of the series.
House of The Dragon will debut on August 22, For all the basic details on the series, trailer plot, and cast, we invite you to read our dedicated sheet.
House of the Dragon review, a question of expectations …
Expectations influence everything, especially when it comes to entertainment products as popular as Game of Thrones has become. Even the authors Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik, are aware of the incredibly complicated mission, only because they arrived after 8 seasons of a pop phenomenon. House of the Dragon is not Game of Thrones and it cannot be in any scenario, this is probably the biggest obstacle that each of us will have to overcome.
What we remember from the original series are the deaths, the dragons, the wars, and all the junctions that made the series evolve and the last season, as much as it may have been discussed, was full of them. These events gave the series a completely different pace than it started when it was more political and House of the Dragon starts right there from the very beginning.
The premise of the series is quite simple, and it connects perfectly to the choice of the showrunners to go back slightly and build this “new” universe of characters in a fairly timely manner. A construction that has also given rise to the need to look for two actors to play the same role, such as those of Rhaenyra and Alicent. This allowed the series to tell the foundations of these characters, so as not to find ourselves confused by political and court dynamics that have already begun. This also justifies the unusual and numerous time jumps that we will see in the first part.
The local approach of the House of The Dragon
If you already start with the awareness that House of the Dragon is not Game of Thrones, the only other obstacle to overcome is its much narrower vision than the original series. Game of Thrones had such a vast and complex history, in which an extremely large number of protagonists orbited, that it is difficult to match.
House of The Dragon instead exists in a subset of this universe and tells some events that involved the House of Targaryen, 200 years before the story we know. Precisely for this reason, the series lives almost completely, and perhaps even a little too much, in King’s Landing, we also notice it from the set that has many more details than in the past. The rest happens in the background, we don’t see it, but they tell us about it in words.
This approach certainly makes sense if we look at it from a commercial point of view. It is clear HBO’s intention to create a subset of series that will focus on subsets of stories set in that huge universe. The fact of remaining closed within certain confines responds to that precise need not to “ruin” probably one of the many projects that the channel has in development.
So House of The Dragon mentions names people and places, just for the fun of it and to remind us that the Targaryens always live in Westeros; which has so many Dragons; which are many more than we were used to and which are powerful. The rest of the story takes place within the family, and with its absurd dynamics.
House of The Dragon also lacks a physical enemy, but there is perhaps the most complicated of all to defeat and understand: power. The Targaryens are constantly victims of power and the Targaryens themselves. The need to fulfill the obligations for the survival of the family is the only fuel of the series. Everything else does not represent a real threat, also because the future is already written.
When we get to know these new characters we find them in a fairly quiet period for the House of Targaryen, the only problem with King Viserys Targaryen concerns his succession to the throne. So the problem here is not which house will sit on the Iron Throne, but which of the Targaryens will, family is a permanent fixture in House of The Dragon and would make any attempt to create enemies superfluously.
The Targaryens then find themselves dealing with some crisis caused by a family member. Nothing to worry about, the ambition of other houses is always there, but it is often politically resolved with marriages to strengthen both. They are simple political dynamics … nothing more.
The consequences of this approach
King Viserys in his first marriage failed to produce a male heir and Rhaenyra is the only child who can succeed him, but she is a woman. This obviously opens up a huge issue that, however modern it may be, has very ancient foundations.
House of the Dragon manages to deal with it thanks to this local approach that allows it to elaborate, not to relegate the issue to a catchphrase, because you have to move to Winterfell to understand what is happening there. The theme of the role of the woman is the cause of the decline of the Targaryens, it always has been, after all, and here they found the time to dissect it and understand what impact it had on their history.
The fact that House of The Dragon somehow tries to differentiate itself from the original series is natural, you can’t expect the opposite, and you can’t even say it’s the same. Everything I have just written is part of a simple acceptance process that each of us should go through before watching the series, they are not defects, but quality.
You cannot approach the series with the hope that it will continue in the same vein as the parent series: so many battles, so many dragons, so many twists, plots, so much of everything that has made it a global phenomenon. House of the Dragon clears the beat; it is full of speeches in which so many people are mentioned, so many places, without really exploring them.
The Game of Thrones universe is moving towards the creation of appendages and sub-stories, probably replicating what Marvel and Star Wars have already done on Disney +. They are glimpses of history that come to life, which do not care about what is happening around them because it is not necessary, probably someone else will.
The “local” approach of House of The Dragon is the only obstacle that the viewer has to overcome. Needs to! Because it is almost certain that every project in this universe uses the same strategy. After all, the most choral story, the biggest and most spectacular one has already been told, now it’s time to tell the details … not to photocopy.