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House of The Dragon

House of The Dragon Episode 2 Review: Last night, simultaneously with the airing in the United States on HBO and exclusively on Sky and streaming on NOW, the second installment of the new Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon, was released. The series is inspired by the novel “Fire and Blood” by George R.R. Martin, who is also the creator of the series along with Ryan J. Condal. 

The series is precisely a prequel set 200 years earlier than seen in Game of Thrones during the reign of King Viserys I Targaryen and follows the bloody story that will lead to the outbreak of the “Dance of Dragons”, the civil war for the succession to the Throne. of Spade. After talking to you more generally about the series in our review of the first six episodes (which you can read here), it’s time to analyze the second episode in more detail!

[The review below features several plot SPOILERS for House of the Dragon 1 × 02: The Rogue Prince]

In this second episode, we have the first time skip of the series: in fact, a year and a half have passed since the queen’s death and Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine), the current ruler of the seven kingdoms, is asked to remarry to keep her image strong, which has deteriorated over the years and now may have an enemy at the gates. 

Indeed, as Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) points out, a dangerous army is approaching the seven kingdoms from across the sea and risks becoming a problem first for his house and then for King’s Landing. Meanwhile, Lord Velaryon always tries to push the king to marry his young daughter, but the king’s attention is attracted by a very different woman, Lady Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey). 

House of The Dragon Episode 2 – HBO Max

As if that weren’t enough, Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) moved to Dragonstone after the king’s attack, taking possession of it. In all of this, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (Milly Alcock), the actual next pretender to the throne as decided by King Viserys, finds herself in a complicated position again when she decides to disobey the advice of the King’s Hand, Sir Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) and he decides to take matters into his own hands with Uncle Daemon.

The second installment of House of the Dragon again demonstrates the great writing skills of Martin and Condal, who after defining the starting points of the story, the motives of the various characters involved, and their position in the circle of power of Westeros, moves on to messing up the cards again. 

With a threat at the gates, a succession questioned, and a prince removed from King’s Landing, all the conditions are created so that internal conflicts can actually begin to develop and magnify, while the external ones arrive inexorably, ready to shake Westeros. In all this, the second episode finally also gives us a greater taste of some characters that we have seen very little in the first, such as Lord Velaryon, played by the talented Steve Toussaint, and Lady Velaryon, played by Eve Best. 

Lord Velaryon proves to be an immensely complicated character, much more than the one that revealed his role in the council, a role that we see close to him. Velaryon is one of the last of one of the oldest dynasties of Westeros and therefore suffers subjection to the Targaryens, but he is also a partly honorable man who, worried about Westeros, finds himself making questionable choices in terms of alliances.

House of The Dragon Episode 2 – HBO Max

Instead, Lady Velaryon, the “queen who was denied the throne” here takes a more interesting dimension, and shares with her husband the contempt for her house’s forced subjection to the Targaryens, but seems much closer to Rhaenyra than she could. understand the first episode, certainly always a conflictual relationship but which shows how the two women are not so different but are partly experiencing the same drama. 

Even Daemon, played by the talented Matt Smith, in this episode proves to be a complicated character, certainly violent and over the top, a somewhat rogue prince, but who understands his inferior position and suffers from it. The discourse with his niece, but also the one with his lover, reveals a large part of the psyche of the character, showing a character that is not mad but more embittered by his life.

This second installment again confirms all the good impressions of the first, House of The Dragon is truly Game of Thrones at its highest level. These two episodes are reminiscent in some ways of the subterfuges of the first season of the mother series, with a hint of the wind of war blowing in the background, and of alliances between nobles ready to oust a too weak king. The pilot, who was not a pilot, had demonstrated the potential of such a prequel and the second episode presses the accelerator constantly, but without giving an idea of ​​excessive speed, a big problem in the last two seasons of the parent series.

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.