And so, House of the Dragon is gone for another year. The Sky Atlantic show, which is set a century before the events of Game of Thrones, wrapped up its second season last night, and the reception has been mixed.
The show follows the power struggles between the ‘Green’ and ‘Black’ factions, who both claim the Iron Throne as their own. Finally done with the time-jumping antics of the first season (in which Paddy Considine’s Viserys aged and withered faster than an avocado left in the sun), this time around we had dragon battles, plots galore and... a whole lot of Daemon wandering around Harrenhal by himself, hallucinating.
Here’s our roundup of the good, the bad and the ugliest moments of season two.
The Good
Dragons! Lots of them!
After being teased with flashes of dragonwing in season one, season two fully stretches the CGI budget by giving us lots of dragons. We see Vhagar, Meleys and Syrax, of course, but then the show really goes off-piste by sending the Black team off on a quest to ‘reclaim’ some of the world’s oldest dragons in the name of war.
Thus we get Seasmoke (who bonds with Addam of Hull in a much-memed scene), Vermithor, the second-largest dragon to ever exist, who bonds with Hugh the Hammer, and Silverwing, who is claimed by the half-brother of Viserys and Daemon.
Seeing so many snapping, snarling creatures on-screen never ceases to be a delight, especially at the end of episode seven, when Vhagar is turned away by Rhaenyra’s newly-formed dragon army.
The Red Dragon and the Gold
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By far the best episode of the entire season, the fourth, centres around the Battle of Rook’s Rest, which sees the first proper Targaryen bloodshed of the entire war. And there’s a lot of it – from Vhagar attacking and killing Rhaenys and her mount Meleys (sob) to Vhagar also, um, attacking and almost killing Aegon (his brother) and his dragon Sunfyre.
Never mind that they’re supposed to be on the same side; the episode ends with Aegon horribly burned, Ser Criston Cole reevaluating his life choices and Eve Best exiting stage left. A great hour of television.
Alyn and Addam of Hull
The story of the bastard children of Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) has to be one of the season’s most interesting. Abandoned by their father, they nevertheless end up in a position of power after Addam finds himself becoming a dragon rider and Alyn is brought into the fold by his absentee father – though, in one of the show’s best scenes, rejects any notion of being made into Corlys’ legitimate heir. “I am of salt and sea, I yearn for nothing more,” he says. Very brooding.
Rhaenyra and Mysaria’s kiss
In a move that set the internet alight (some of it with joy and others with considerably less joy), episode six saw some unexpected sexual tension come to the fore in the form of Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) getting it on.
Yep: that Mysaria. The White Worm spymaster, and formerly Daemon’s lover, who became Rhaenyra’s advisor. After she opens up to her about not trusting men, after being abused by her father as a child, the pair end up kissing, which Mizuno later said was completely unscripted. “It wasn’t scripted as a kiss. I think it was scripted as ... there’s just breath between them or something, and then whatever happens is interrupted,” she said. Hooray for spontaneity: it injected some much-needed passion into the show.
The Bad
Daemon in Harrenhal
Oh, Daemon. Whoever made the decision to waste one of the UK’s best actors in Matt Smith by making them run around a castle having visions for literally an entire season should be fired. The resentful prince (who secretly wants to be king, rather than support Rhaenyra’s claim to the throne) rocks up there to guarantee the Blacks’ influence over the Riverlands at the start of the show.
However, thanks to a certain Alys Rivers, he instead ends up wandering around Harrenhal, speaking to his late wife Laena, his late brother Viserys (yay, Paddy Considine) and several others that it’s too boring to name fully. That all pays off in the end when he has his prophetic visions of the Prince Who Was Promised, including a cheeky snapshot of Daenerys. So all’s well that ends well?
Alicent going for a swim
Capping off a rather lacklustre season for her character, Olivia Cooke’s Alicent Hightower finds herself floating in the middle of a random lake at the end of episode seven. Why? Well, she’d just been kicked off the Small Council by her son, and the resulting mental collapse sees her set off for the Kingswood and walk into the lake.
It has not been officially confirmed (though Cooke has hinted it was an attempt to take her own life), but if Alicent is harbouring any dark thoughts, they’re soon dispelled when she sees a bird fly overhead. A bird… a dragon… surely Rhaenyra will help her? Sigh. It’s a moment that would have benefitted from a bit more exposition.
Criston Cole
Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) is the person we all love to hate, and with good reason. He spends the first few episodes sleeping with Alicent and lying about it – which leads to him indirectly killing both the Arryk twins. And then he gets made the Hand of the King in episode two: the man just can’t help failing upwards.
He’s quite clearly a piece of bad work. On the other hand, his experience at the battle of Rook’s Rest seemed to humble him, to the point where he even fesses up to Gwayne Hightower about the fact he’s been sleeping with Gwayne’s sister). "To die would be a kind of relief,” he says. A relief to us, too.
It’s so slowww
Honestly – after the complex political manoeuvring of season one, we were promised dragons in season two! Death and destruction! And while there’s a bit of that, sure – see the above on episode four – there certainly isn’t enough of it. Instead, we get talking (so much talking), episode-spanning arcs that could be condensed into one scene (see: the entire Harrenhal saga) and a lot of Rhaenyra umming and aah’ing.
The finale of the entire season saw no bloodshed at all, preferring instead to focus on more talking, more plotting and an inconclusive final scene that promises death and destruction on the horizon… in two years’ time, when season three comes out.
The Ugly
The kiddie killers
As season openers go, it was a shocker. Still, there’s no denying it was a very ugly bit of television. As Blood and Cheese (aka Daemon’s handpicked pair of assassins) go wandering through the Red Keep in search of Aemond, they instead stumble upon Helaena and her two infant children.
Reckoning one dead prince is as good as another, they force Helaena to choose between which of her children to save… leading to the other having his head brutally hacked off, complete with gory sound effects. Yikes.
Aegon’s roasted sausage
Yes, we get that Aegon was roasted head to toe during the Battle of Rook’s Rest. But did the show have to be quite so demeaning about it? In episode seven, we find out that the king is actually… um… incontinent, due to the fire having roasted away an important part of his anatomy. Did we really need to know that? I think not.
House of the Dragon is streaming on Sky Atlantic and NOW
