House of the Dragon Remains the Fantasy Equivalent of Reality TV in Largely Entertaining Second Season

It’s been a little over five years since the final season of Game of Thrones nosedived spectacularly in a collection of baffling story choices that brought a multi-year cultural event to its knees. But even if this conclusion ruffled many feathers, the franchise was simply too lucrative for HBO to pass up. For those not entirely burned by the fiasco, in 2022, we received House of the Dragon, the first of many planned spinoffs set in the land of Westeros and beyond. While the series, co-created by Ryan Condal and George R.R. Martin, never reached the peaks of its predecessor in that first season, it was still a mostly celebrated follow-up that honed in on the familial drama and succession crisis of a divided House Targaryen with the scandalizing eye of a paparazzi. And perhaps most notably of all, it squarely focused on one of the elements that made the old show so beloved: Machiavellian power politics.

Through the first four episodes of its second season, House of the Dragon mostly feels in line with what came before. While it ditches the controversial time-skips from the previous run, it’s still clearly an adaptation of a fictional history book (Fire and Blood) that lacks the propulsive storytelling of Game of Thrones. That said, what it lacks in narrative pizzazz, it frequently makes up for with impressive production value, great performances, memorable gaudiness, and all the other little details that make it mostly worthwhile to return to this brutal fantasy world, even if there are diminishing returns.

The story picks up right where it left off, after King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) ascended the throne with the help of his mother, Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), and her allies, pushing the realm closer to civil war as Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) and her followers find themselves on the back foot. Queen Rhaenyra is grieving the loss of her son after yet another accidental escalation between the two factions, and Westeros waits with bated breath as a cataclysmic war between dragons becomes increasingly likely.

As alluded to, unlike the time-jumping antics of Season 1, where we would frequently fast forward months or years between episodes, there aren’t any major leaps forward through the first half of this latest run (four episodes were made available for review). This time around, we have far more time to sit with the cast, absorbing their motivations, personalities, and litany of similar-sounding names. However, while these skips were a commonly complained-about element of what came before, there’s been something of an overcorrection this time around. Throughout the first three episodes, the story spins its wheels a bit as Rhaenyra’s council repeats the same objections, and Aegon predictably behaves like a little shit while both sides mean mug the other. It’s not that this focus on politics can’t be interesting—after all, this is what made the original series so memorable—but at least early on, both sides can come across as incompetent in ways that can be tough to watch, and the lack of solid B-plots cause the narrative to lose steam.

Thankfully, even during some of these dry spells, there’s still plenty to ogle at because, much like the previous season, there are plenty of tasteless turns in the form of wanton sex and violence (especially the violence this time around). The series is just as trashy and shocking as ever, further magnifying Game of Thrones’ taboos, but thankfully, it puts its most toxic relationships on the back burner in its second season. And most pivotally, as the fourth episode kicks into gear, the show finally makes good on the previous table-setting to bring this tale in an exciting direction that bodes well for what’s to come.

Although the pacing remains up and down, these characters are compelling enough to mostly make up for these occasionally static conflicts. Rhaenyra is a complex protagonist whose inner battle between wanting the Iron Throne and worries about plunging Westeros into civil war make her more than a two-bit despot, while her main foe and former friend Alicent is similarly torn. Their childhood friendship tinges this conflict with tragedy, which stings all the more because they both come across as reasonable people who are pitted against one another by a mixture of political inertia, stupid men, and unlucky turns, such as a misinterpretation of prophecy.

Flanking these heroines are a procession of unlikable doofuses who are fun to hate, such as the woefully incompetent Aegon, disaster master Daemon (Matt Smith), who somehow ups his previous screw-ups, or a-hole extraordinaire Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel). Although the cast can sometimes feel a little too big for its own good, the subdued pace lets us fully marinate in these people’s drives, ambitions, and deceptions. Admittedly, there is still a lot of sleaziness involved, including the continuation of the worst ship of all time due to the Targaryens being little freaks, but outside of this, many of these motivations are well-conveyed.