HBO’s highly popular “Game of Thrones” prequel’s second season is off to a landlocked start. Between diplomacy and violence. Respect for life against wild enthusiasm. Duty in opposition to avaricious retaliation.
I thought this was going to be about dragons.
In the second season of “House of the Dragon,” HBO’s spinoff of “Game of Thrones,” the network submitted four of the eight episodes to critics. We are in the country of the mediaeval civics class, one of the less fascinating settings in this highly regarded fantasy series, for three and a quarter of those four hours. Little Councils have meetings. One makes allies. Contestants for the throne prance and fret. When combat actually begins, it happens off screen.
The two series, which are based on George R.R. Martin’s novels, have a history of interspersing costly sequences of close-quarters dragon fighting with sexy, royal intrigue. However, waiting for the fire to ignite for almost half of a season is a long time.
The eight spectacular seasons of “Thrones,” which concluded in 2019, made up for its epic scope and the sinister tinge of its betrayal and revelry. Along with large characters portrayed with style by actors like Lena Headey, Charles Dance, and Jonathan Pryce, it included one outstanding performance by Peter Dinklage as the aristocratic dwarf Tyrion Lannister. And those dragons were real scary animals.
Despite the alleged large sums of money HBO has spent on it, “Dragon” remains a more sombre and regimented production, a trait that continues into the second season. With the exception of Eve Best, who plays the dragon-riding matriarch, Princess Rhaenys, and Ewan Mitchell, who plays the menacing Aemond, none of the cast members surpass the show’s overall level of unwavering professionalism to leave a lasting impression. Its dragons also seem and sound more tamed when they do show up.
Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), the belligerent alpha Targaryens, are shown conspiring in their respective castles at the start of the new season. It’s just easier to use the jargon, but Rhaenyra is the legitimate heir to the Iron Throne, and she lives in exile with her uncle-husband, Daemon (Matt Smith). To the dismay of his mother Alicent (Olivia Cooke), who was Rhaenyra’s closest friend before she wed Rhaenyra’s father, the former king, her half-brother Aegon rules like a whiny kid on the throne.
The family drama “Dragon” features convoluted, agonisingly incestuous relationships, but it doesn’t go to great lengths to identify who is who for the less-than-obsessed audience. You can view it on Prime Video and make use of Amazon’s useful onscreen character and actor guides for an additional cost.)
The stakes are personal, but the questions are political: who will win the crown and how much blood will be spent to find out? While the males are willing to unleash the dragons, the women tend to prefer compromise and discussion. However, relationships between mothers and sons—dead or alive—complicate matters.
Parts of the blood-spattered, heightened domestic drama are poignant and cleverly handled. Smith conveys Daemon’s conflicted emotions as he feels cheated out of the crown, which challenges his allegiance to his wife-niece. Glynn-Carney is able to evoke some pity for Aegon, who is tragically in over his head.
However, the plot is not based on actual events. It’s not strange enough to get us out of our bonds, nor is it fascinating enough to draw us in on a regular basis. The production is good yet unchanging; it has the trademark feel of a board game. Though it lacks the visual grandeur of the last exhibition, the obsession for geography and architecture is still present. Furthermore, rather than real, organic surprise, the audience’s emotions are still controlled by exaggerated choreographies of occurrences.
Plotting that is occasionally dangerously thin is a result of these tendencies. Early episodes include an alternating sequence of covert raids to add drama and tension, all of which are made possible by a laughably complete lack of protection at both castles. One point, Daemon experiences a sequence of so-called “perfunctory” dream visions that you can’t explain why they’re having such an impact on him, which puts the war preparations on hold.
Naturally, almost everything I’ve stated here will be contested by millions and millions of viewers and admirers. (A third season of “House of the Dragon” has already been renewed.) All I have to defend myself is that I have been steady for over 10 years on the “Thrones”-“Dragon” beat. “Long stretches of silence are interspersed with bursts of action” (“Thrones” Season 3); “The production’s machine-tooled professionalism redeems narrative pokiness as usual” (“Thrones” Season 4); “Dragon” Season 1: “Seriousness of purpose doesn’t translate into engaging drama” As it happened, I had already finished the review.