HBO’s ‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2 is Kind of Boring and Bad
House of the Dragon season 2 has premiered and… it wasn’t great. It might even have been bad.
House of the Dragon Season One was a strong opening for the new show. After the collapse of Game of Thrones as it drew to its final seasons, this was a strong redemption for the franchise. It left us hyped for the show to come back with Season 2.
That season has now come and gone. It… wasn’t a very good season overall. Not only that, it was just kind of boring.
Spoilers for the show and books below.
House of the Dragon Season 2: It Was a Boring Season
Look, let’s just get this out of the way. It was a pretty boring season overall with no real payoff. For a show about a civil war, we had one good battle scene in episode 4. Other than that it was pretty devoid of action, combat, or even significant threats.
Most of those that did appear where in the first half of the season, with the second half just kind of going nowhere. I’m sorry, but watching a few common folk get roasted by a dragon just isn’t Battle-of-the-Blackwater-level entertainment. Part of this is due to the book. The section they’ve adapted is a bit slower and focuses more on the build up to the bigger clashes that come.
But it’s not just the book’s fault. The show has stayed away from adapting some of the action. For instance, the Battle of the Burning Mill, which the book describes, is only shown in aftermath. Also, it was the showrunners’ choice on what to adapt for the season. It does seem like they hit the breaks a bit to slow down how fast they were moving through the source material. This seems to have been a choice to give them a longer show, but it left this season lack. However it wasn’t just the lack of action that made House of the Dragon Season 2 bad.
The Personal Conflict Issue
You don’t have to be all big battles to be an interesting show. Season 1 managed with just a bit of action. But the show also kind of fell down on the interpersonal stuff as well. This is more due to the books flaws and a failure to adapt to them. After season 1 of House of the Dragon came out I wrote about some issues they’d have to overcome for season 2. In particular the lack of important people having scenes together.
In Season 2 of House of the Dragon the main three characters (Rhaenyra, Daemon, and Alicent) spend most of their time separated—this is bad. They simply aren’t able to play off each other. Without any physical conflict, the conflicts are reduced to people on the same side having disagreements, which is a lot less interesting. The show clearly knew this and tried to get the core three together, but that mostly led to some really stupid scenes of Rhaenyra and Alicent slipping into heavily-guarded places and risking their lives to chat.
The Ensemble Issue
I think another issue the show is having is how much it focused on the core three of Rhaenyra, Daemon, and Alicent Hightower. They are clearly the main characters, even more so than in the first season. Pretty much everyone is a in a supporting role. In season one this gave us some great conflict between them and led to some good moments. However in season 2 of House of the Dragon. It’s become more of a weakness. Because they aren’t together much they can’t play off each other. Also not all of them have a lot to do, in particular Alicent is sidelined during this part of the story. Daemon is really the only one doing anything active.
This tight focus also means we only get a very little of what is going on elsewhere in the world. We get just the quickest of glimpses at the North or South, or even the West, yet these are major players. We don’t get to see the Battle of the Burning Mill because we are too focused on the core, rather than the characters that are there. This could also be an issue going forward as, spoilers, not all of these make to the end, or even close, of the story.
No Free Will
Another issue I have with the show is how it’s removed a lot of the free will of characters and set them as slaves of fate and prophecy. Now A Song of Ice and Fire is full of prophecies. However most people believe that G.R.R. Martin is not a big fan of them. Indeed there are many threads in the books showing how prophecies are BS and lies. House of the Dragon has taken a bit of a different approach.
Now we could see that this could be an issue in season one, when Viserys I tied a lot of his choices into the prophecy of a song of ice and fire. However, having a character believe in a prophecy he heard is totally fine.
Season Two has made things a lot more concrete. Daemon, for instance, basically has free will taken away when he is shown prophetic visions in the final episodes of the season. Rather than him working through his issues, he is basically shown the future that he has to remain loyal. Likewise Helaena has gone cryptic mutters to straight up telling people their future (which we know to be correct from the books). What’s the point of these people actions if everything is not only just pre-determined but only matters in how it effects events 200 years in the future?
Season 2 Has Good Scenes But Never Ties Things Together
I feel like I’m being pretty hard on the season. And I do want to say that it has good parts. Most of it looks good. The actors are great and give it their all. There are really good scenes. But the issue really is that they rarely tie together well. Taken as a whole things just fall apart.
I’ll go back to Daemon. He spends a lot of time getting visions. Some of these scenes are great. You can see him working through issues. But he never seems to make any progress or change as a result. They also don’t built up to a character moment. He’s basically given a final vision that says he needs to serve Rhaenyra or the world will end. This could have been the first vision and it would have had the same result.
Again and gain we see this kind of thing in the season. It made House of the Dragon bad. Scenes are good, but there feel disconnected. Characters change motivation and personality with no reason. Lary’s Strong killed his whole family to advance at court and now is suddenly… just really loyal and nice? Aemond was cool and collected and then just went a bit mad? Helaena was grieving her murdered son and then just kind of got over it. The show can be good, but this wasn’t and it needs to be better.
Let us know what you thought of the season, down in the comments!
