The Game Of Thrones prequel is back for season 2 – Here’s our spoiler-free House Of The Dragon episode 1 review…
House Of The Dragon is back for a second season, and Westeros is on the brink of war. Naturally, then, the place is positively overflowing with maps.
King Aegon’s council chamber has one standing on a nifty new easel-thing. Rhaenyra’s covered her trusty Dragonstone slab with so many candles it’s a wonder she needs a dragon at all. Aemond Targaryen isn’t even vying for the Iron Throne, but he’s moving coins around on his bedside table like he’s lost all the counters for a game of Risk.*
If you have literally no idea who any of these people are, it might be time for some homework. There’s no shame in it: the new season continues the Thrones tradition of dropping audiences back in at the deep end without so much of a ‘last time on 24’ for your trouble, and everyone’s name rhymes to varying degrees with ‘drain cleaner’. Have a peek at the show’s Wikipedia page; we won’t tell anyone.
Kicking off days after the unhappy events of our last trip to Westeros, the courts of Dragonstone and King’s Landing are at each other’s throats. The first problem: two courts is one court too many, as far as both are concerned. The second problem is that all their political schemes keep going a bit wrong.
Politics is absolutely the name of the game here; if you’re tuning into House Of The Dragon for armed clashes and, er, dragons, you’ll likely find the particularly talk-y opening frustrating. Even more so than the last season, which felt like a very deliberate palette cleanser after the controversial ending of Game Of Thrones, the show is taking its House Of Cards-adjacent name to heart. Before the credits roll on the first episode, it seems every character has already devised a new scheme or three with scarcely a stunt/VFX coordinator in sight.
While the show’s willingness to embrace its more low-key, political roots is still welcome, a bit of visual variety would have gone a long way. We’re well past the “sexposition” of Thrones’ earlier seasons, but with a far more limited number of locations to play around in, some characters could really do with something to keep their hands busy (not like that) to stop the whole show turning into people sat talking in very dark rooms.
Occasionally, though, this more scaled-back approach to the story works in House Of The Dragon’s favour thanks to some pretty brilliant performances. The brilliant Emma D’Arcy is sadly absent from most of the first episode, which instead more or less belongs to Tom Glynn-Carney. Probably House’s most impressive achievement so far has been its ability to subvert expectations when it comes to each character’s temperament, and Aegon II proves a far more nuanced and sympathetic ruler than his Joffrey-esque upbringing might suggest. He’s still petulant, annoying, and a terrible king – just not in the way we’ve come to expect from Westerosi politics.
Read more: The Acolyte episodes 1 & 2 review | A wobbly but promising start
In fact, the two-sided narrative of the show, which essentially divides the action equally between Aegon’s court and Rhaenyra’s, means none of the characters are as morally clear-cut as we’re used to (though I’m pretty sure Ewan Mitchell’s magic-eyed Aemond Targaryen is plotting something astonishingly evil behind his incredibly pointy chin). This is by no means a bad thing, but one particularly grim event (you’ll know it when you see it) still feels like it’s trying to balance the scales in a way which borders on the distasteful. A couple of directional choices here feel like the show is leaning a little too hard into shock factor for this early in the season in a way that can’t help but leave a bad taste in the mouth. It’s maybe tempting to read a little too much into co-showrunner and prolific Thrones director Miguel Sapochnik’s between-seasons exit, but at first glance some of the filmmaking here does feel like a bit of a downgrade.
Overall, though, it’s a solid start to the latest instalment of Keeping Up With The Targaryens. Politics, murder, and the odd shot of a dragon flying over a castle – what more could we ask for?
House of the Dragon Season 2 will be available weekly from 17 June on Sky Atlantic and NOW.
*One place you won’t find a map, though? The show’s title sequence, which has swapped out last season’s blood-powered Goldberg machine for a rather lovely tapestry being woven in front of our very eyes. It looks wonderful, if a little regressive, technologically speaking. Next season it’ll just be paint smeared on a cave.
