House of the Dragon S2 is slow to take flight but finally catches fire
By Karl Quinn
House of the Dragon season 2, Foxtel/Binge new episodes Mondays
★★★★
For most of the first episode of the second season of the Game of Thrones prequel, Emma D’Arcy is nowhere to be seen. And that’s an enormous shame because every time the actor is onscreen House of the Dragon truly catches fire.
As Rhaenyra Targaryen, the daughter of late king Viserys I (Paddy Considine) who died a long and agonising death towards the end of season one, D’Arcy radiates an air of queenly expectancy. But D’Arcy also burns with a barely suppressed rage at the death of son Lucerys at the hands – well, teeth and claw and flame, to be precise – of the dragon ridden by his one-eyed cousin Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell).
Ewan Mitchell as Aemond Targaryen in House of the Dragon season 2.Credit: AP
Phew. So many names. So much plot. So much complicated interweaving of families (including wives who are also sisters, husbands who are also uncles) and competing claims to the Iron Throne.
If, like me, you have a sketchy memory for this sort of detail you might be well advised to go back and rewatch the last episode of season one before starting on season two, or at least have the Wikipedia page open as you go. Things in Westeros sure get confusing at times.
Only the first half of this eight-episode season has been made available for preview. On that basis, I’d observe that House of the Dragon is dense, talky and occasionally slow. But it’s also enthralling, shocking and incredibly cinematic in its scope and scale. If you’re not totally hooked by that fourth episode you might want to check you have a pulse.
Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenyra Targaryen, grieving the death of her son and contemplating going to war to claim the throne she believes is rightfully hers.Credit: Foxtel/HBO
Still, the season opened with a clunk as Rhaenyra’s son Jacaerys (Harry Collett) paid a visit to The Wall, where he had words with the young Stark lord (Tom Taylor), who had been sent north by his family as part of their obligation to the Knights of the Watch.
As they mumbled on about the cold, the wall that’s been built to keep out death, and the obligatory onset of winter – it’s coming, don’t you know – it felt like fan service of the worst and most wooden kind. But by the end of the episode, with perhaps the most vile act in Game of Thrones′ long and rich history of vile acts, we were thankfully on more stable (which is to say completely unstable) footing.
These episodes are, though, largely preamble. They’re all about the imminent war that will decide who sits on the throne, and the reluctance with which Rhaenyra inches towards it. Men are raised to revel in the idea of bloodshed, she notes at one stage, but surely there is a better way. Against all evidence to the contrary, she hopes that her one-time friend Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) – who wed Viserys and bore him the sons he craved, including the petulant Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) who now sits upon the throne – might be of a similar mind.
Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower.Credit: Foxtel/HBO
Showrunner Ryan Condal takes his time to get there, but there’s no doubting the mission he and George R.R. Martin are on: a critique of the blind ambition and born-to-rule mentality that sees the “smallfolk” as expendable in the mighty’s quest for power. The dragons are the nuclear weapons of this world, capable of mass destruction but ultimately locked in a zero-sum game. The foot soldiers are merely tinder.
Contact the author at kquinn@theage.com.au, follow him on Facebook at karlquinnjournalist and Twitter at @karlkwin, and read more of his work here.
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