'House of the Dragon' recap: Babies, battles and bloody boars

Spoiler alert! The following contains details from “House of the Dragon” Season 1, Episode 3, "Second of His Name." Read our recap of Episode 2 here. 

Have any of the Targaryens ever considered getting out of their own way?

In the third episode of HBO's "Game of Thrones" spinoff, "House of the Dragon," we see that the ruling leaders of the house of Westeros are extremely skilled at creating problems for themselves – particularly King Viserys (Paddy Considine), who is stubborn and self-important in a way that is both aggravating and very plot-necessary for the series to exist at all.

So far, "Dragon" feels mostly like a series of plot contrivances to create conflict between characters that aren't fully formed. This episode takes place three years after the last, which allows babies to be born and grow but leaves all the character development offscreen that a series needs to get the audience to connect with its heroes and villains.

Instead of seeing relationships and people change, we hear learn Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) has spent years alone and angry, and Daemon (Matt Smith) has been losing a war. We don't know these people and we don't care about them, so by the time the episode crescendos to a battle sequence bigger than anything we saw in the whole first season of "Thrones," there is no emotional or narrative heft to the proceeding, just a lot of fire, blood, mud and entrails.

Sure, people tuned into "Thrones" because the battle sequences were epic and gory, but their scope and scale came not just from the number of extras who were killed but from the characters we loved or hated battling in them. "Dragon" needs to stop cherry-picking elements of "Thrones" to copy and develop as a meaningful show on its own. Until then, it can't become something great, no matter how many dragons it has.

More: Descend into madness: How 'House of the Dragon' tracks the Targaryen's dragon-taming empire

Another baby named Aegon Targaryen

Not only are Viserys and Alicent (Emily Carey) married, they have a 2-year-old son, Aegon, and another baby on the way. Despite having the royal son he's always wanted, Viserys doesn't waver from Rhaenyra as his heir, much to the chagrin of Aegon's grandpa Otto (Rhys Ifans) and the rest of the patriarchal court.

Rhaenyra is convinced she's been passed over and is acting like the sullen teen she is, lashing out at her father, Alicent and anyone else who gets in her way. At a great hunt assembled for little Prince Aegon's second birthday, Rhaenyra and her father get in a huge fight over Viserys' desire for her to marry someone like Jason Lannister (Jefferson Hall, who also plays Jason's twin, Tyland, in a fun little Lannister Easter egg).

In spite of her insolence and his new son, Viserys is dead set on Rhaenyra inheriting the throne. Is it because he really believes she'll be the best ruler? Because he doesn't want to be seen as someone who goes back on his word? Does he think his new son is lesser, because Alicent is his mother? We have no idea, because the writers don't tell us, and Viserys mostly spends this episode getting drunk and ranting about the whole affair.

Not just a white stag

Any fan of "Thrones" and Martin's writing knows that animals are not simply props in the story but symbols. So when the hunters spot a "white hart" (a white stag or deer) that symbolizes the king, Otto is falling over himself to proclaim it as a sign that Aegon is meant to be king.

Unfortunately, Viserys and Otto don't catch up to that stag, but Rhaenyra does. After leaving the hunt in a huff with her kingsguard knight Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), whom she's becoming very fond of, Rhaenyra proceeds to kill a wild boar that attacks her and then finds the white hart. She leaves the animal alone, and returns to camp triumphant with her dead boar and blood in her silvery hair.

The last battle of the Step Stones

It took until the end of the second season of "Thrones" before we got the first truly big, bloody, bombastic war sequence, the Battle of Blackwater. But there are bigger budgets and expectations with "Dragon," so we get a battle sequence with the scale and scope of Blackwater or the Battle of the Bastards in Episode 3. But it doesn't feel anything like those superb sequences.

The battle of the Step Stones feels like a throwaway. There are no emotional stakes leading up to the death and dismemberment. There's just Daemon having a temper tantrum because Viserys offered some help in the war Daemon and Corlys (Steve Toussaint) started over the shipping lanes. The battle also makes no tactical sense. Why, exactly, couldn't the dragons not breathe fire into those caves where the pirates were hiding and kill them all? Bing, bang, boom, done?

Something that long plagued "Thrones" and now will clearly be a problem in the prequel series is that the dragons are only as powerful as the writers want them to be at any given moment for the sake of the plot. Sometimes they're nuclear weapons, sometimes they're hardly as good as a foot soldier. It's frustrating and makes it impossible for the audience to decipher the stakes of any given battle.

The other problem with stakes here is the audience has no frame of reference for what this battle actually means. Yay, I guess, that the Crab Feeder is gone and Daemon cut him in half? I guess it means the Velaryons are less mad at Viserys? And Daemon will, what, be less annoying? More annoying?

We don't know any of that, we only know that a very dull villain is dead. Probably not worth the expense and episode minutes the battle took.

Review: Sorry, but HBO's 'House of the Dragon' can't touch 'Game of Thrones' greatness

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'House of the Dragon' recap: Season 1, Episode 3, 'Second of His Name'