House Of The Dragon’s second season comes to a slightly faltering conclusion. Here’s our season 2 episode 8 review.
Spoiler warning! These reviews are spoiler-free for the week in question, but will discuss previous episodes, and the final season of Game Of Thrones, in some detail. As it’s the finale, if you want to head in completely blind, best bookmark this for later…
If you, like me, had been expecting the latest season of House Of The Dragon to end with an almighty clash at Daemon’s rainy new home of Harrenhal, then I’m afraid to say you’ll be disappointed. Harrenhal’s not even that rainy anymore, for a start, swapping leaky roofs for grey clouds and a bit of fog.
If you’d been expecting an almighty clash anywhere, of any kind, you might also watch the credits roll on the season with a puzzled expression. These pesky eight-episode seasons, rather than Thrones’ traditional ten, does mean that we’re still getting used to the show’s rhythm somewhat. Used to be that you could reliably expect something big, battle-shaped or just plain shocking to happen in episode nine, leaving the season finale for characters to pick through the aftermath and set things up for next time.
Now, however, that predictable unpredictability seems to have gone out of the window, and it can’t help but feel like a bit of a let down. Season two so far has been absolutely masterful in setting up precarious-looking dominoes. Schemes have started and fallen apart, stars risen and fallen, and at every step there’s been a definite sense of pressure building beneath a glass pot, ready to explode at any second. Well, following the season finale, it hasn’t. If anything, someone’s thrown a bucket of water on it.
The problem with only having eight episode seasons is, when you have a couple of episodes in a row without many surprises, it’s easy to feel hard done by. The finale spends so much time tying up loose ends with cheery little ribbons that the momentum the show’s been building so far can’t help but falter. By the end, it really feels like the show needs one more episode to upend the status quo and keep us hungry for the third season.
Instead, there’s an argument to be made that season two could almost function as the show’s last. If it wasn’t insane to even countenance it for a second, I’d say the finale feels like it was written by people unsure if HBO’s biggest and most popular show was even going to get a season three. It seems in such a rush to get season arcs completed that the few lingering questions we now have could be swept under the carpet without too much hassle.
That said, it’s not that the episode is a bad one; it just doesn’t feel much like a finale. Rhaenyra has her hands full solving the dual problems of Daemon’s potential rebellion and training her new dragon riders (including Ulf, a deeply, deeply annoying man I have now decided is my nemesis). Ser Criston Cole (yes, he’s back) has a Shakespearean sounding monologue about the destructive power of nuclear wea-I mean dragons, and the Master of Coin is bargaining with the Free Cities to break the Rhaenyra’s blockade. It’s in this latter section that the show introduces an intriguing new character who, again, feels like they should have been given another episode or two of warm-up before we don’t see them for two years.
Season two’s ended with a bit of a whimper for me then, sadly, but the series on the whole has been a wild ride. Stay tuned for some very spoilery thoughts on season two as a whole…
