House of the Dragon Season 1 Wasn’t Perfect — But It Was a Worthy Heir to Game of Thrones
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The post House of the Dragon Season 1 Wasn’t Perfect — But It Was a Worthy Heir to Game of Thrones appeared first on Consequence.
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of House of the Dragon, “The Black Queen.”]
Probably the most unintentionally hilarious part of House of the Dragon’s first season finale came at the very end, if you were watching with subtitles on: When Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), having just learned of her son’s death, turned away from the fire to reveal her grief-stricken face, the captions acknowledged a shift in composer Ramin Djawadi’s score like so: [Vengeful music plays].
It was funny because the captions really didn’t need to say anything — D’Arcy’s face said it all. It was all a jaw-dropping capper to a largely gripping season of television, because as we come to the finale, it can be said: If the goal was to create a new series that would please even the most Season-8-bitter Game of Thrones fans — they did it.
And when you consider the challenge the creative team faced in doing so, it is a pretty remarkable achievement. Following up an Emmy-winning juggernaut that held the world in its grasp each week is tricky enough, but then consider following up an Emmy-winning juggernaut with a final season so disliked that (even though you had nothing to do with its making) you know you’re going to get asked about it during the press tour.
Put it another way, there was more than one dragon casting its shadow over co-showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik, and the stakes were raised even higher by picking a release date that put it… perhaps not intentionally in direct competition with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, but the effect was the same.
The Rings of Power turned out to be a very different show from Dragon, though the first seasons of both shows were in many ways extended set-ups for the story to come. But Dragon’s set-up was all about setting up an entire generation’s worth of backstory in ways that are pretty unforgettable — not too many scripted series have attempted to maneuver through time like this over the course of one season, and while each time jump required a fair amount of attention for the audience to track, the resulting opportunity to see children grow into adults over the span of 10 episodes was truly unique.
House of the Dragon (HBO)
It almost gives the viewer a parental perspective on these characters: Oh, young Lucerys, I remember when he was just a little boy, it feels like just last week. And, oh, young doomed Lucerys (Elliot Grihault), whose battle in the clouds with his uncle Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) went from thrilling to heartbreaking so quickly — the larger dragon’s single vicious attack being all that was needed to destroy both dragon and rider.
It’s thanks to moments like that that this first season deserves praise. For at the end of the day, even when Dragon was difficult TV to watch, whether it be the arguably too-dark cinematography, or all that incest, it still knew how to get its hooks into us. Even when there were so many characters to keep track of, even when certain political matters got confusing, the last 10 minutes of this finale were easily some of the most gripping television of the year.
And not just because of director Greg Yaitanes’s execution, but because of all the dominos set up to establish what kind of an impact that moment could have on the story — at that point in the finale, we knew Rhaenyra was determined to keep the peace if possible, so we knew that something pretty significant would have to happen to push her towards war. Like the death of a son.
House of the Dragon has a lot of room to grow, including when it comes to balancing the narrative’s inherent cruelty with some basic hope — something that’s likely to become an increasingly important issue, as the show progresses on and the looming war begins. After all, Lucerys’ death likely won’t be the last sucker punch this show lands.
For while in many ways, the scale of Dragon feels smaller than Thrones, that proves to be a good thing, as the vast messy family at the center of this show supplies more than enough drama for seasons upon seasons to come, with its own flavor. Dragon may not change television the way that its parent series did. But it’s well on its way to finding a unique voice.
House of the Dragon is streaming now on HBO Max.
House of the Dragon Season 1 Wasn’t Perfect — But It Was a Worthy Heir to Game of Thrones
Liz Shannon Miller
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