‘On his deathbed, he knew the realm would never accept a queen…’
As the credits rolled on the finale of Season 2 of HBO’s Game of Thrones follow-up House of the Dragon, the supposed halfway point of the entire series (it is slated to run for four seasons and no more), 18 episodes in, I am still none the wiser as to whether any of this is going anywhere. Across those 18 episodes, there hasn’t been a single line of memorable dialogue. I don’t really care whether any of the characters live or die (aside perhaps from Matt Smith’s fiendish King Consort Daemon Targaryen). It’s all been a bit disappointing really…
After the flurry of excitement and infanticide that livened up the first couple of episodes, this second season of House of the Dragon settled into its usual mode of being which is boring characters spouting boring dialogue in darkened rooms. There are far too many of these characters to keep up with, and their names are too similar, and the long-feted battle between the warring factions of House Targaryen still hasn’t started yet. Instead, this is a season of table setting. This may mean that season three will be a banger, but that doesn’t mean that season two will go down as anything other than a mostly boring slog.
House of the Dragon is not as bad as some of those terrible final seasons of Game of Thrones but it’s still just as frustrating. There are moments here where the show offers a glimpse of how good it could be – they are just far too few and far between.