“History will paint you as a villain.” ~ Rhaenyra Targaryen
“I could have you killed.” // “It wouldn’t change anything.” ~ Aemond & Helaena Targaryen
“All our fine thoughts, all our endeavours are as nothing. We march now toward our annihilation.” ~ Criston Cole
“Winter is coming." ~ Daemon Targaryen
The above are all quotes from the second season finale of House of the Dragon, awkwardly titled “The Queen Who Ever Was”. It is the capstone to an eight-episode arc more forlorn than conventionally dramatic, interested primarily in the promises of what is to come rather than in moving its story towards those events. That is not to say it has been an entirely unsuccessful run; the early episodes in particular share the same piercing dialogue, visual language and jolting action that made Game of Thrones so rich in its heyday. However, as the season went on and it became increasingly apparent that the fourth episode’s dragon skirmish took the lion’s share of the budget, the slowing pace became dependent on other techniques, filling its runtimes with endless foreshadowing, vision quests and, inevitably, cameos from the far future (or rather, 2011).
This obsession with prophecy stems at least in part from the very nature of Dragons as a prequel series; Better Call Saul remains the gold standard for the format, largely due to its weaponising of dramatic irony as a tool. Despite us knowing the approximate fates for most of its characters, the series thrived by hitching itself to the two or three unknowns in among its ensemble, relegating Saul almost to second fiddle behind the dazzling, doomed heroine of Kim Wexler.
This is a trick House of the Dragon could have pulled - the majority of its audience are unlikely to have read George RR Martin’s faux-history book “Fire & Blood” - but going by their latest finale, it appears that showrunner Ryan Condal and his team have opted instead for what can only be described as the opposite approach. By the end of this second series, half our characters, including wildcards Daemon, Aemond and Helaena, have been made explicitly aware of their fates, while even the others seem preternaturally aware that their stories are pre-written.
It’s a strange decision, particularly for Daemon, who is transformed into a loyal King Consort not by way of the hallucinations that have haunted him across the season, but through a glimpsed cameo of Daenerys Targaryen and her war against the White Walkers in Thrones. Daemon’s nightmares of executing a young Rhaenyra, becoming his rival Aemond and reliving the death of his brother Viserys all become irrelevant as he instead proclaims himself a zealot, sworn now to follow his Wikipedia outline to the letter. It’s a bizarre, meta-textual pivot, and one that works only to strip him of any agency or intrigue going forwards.
All of this could be overlooked however, if it wasn’t for the finale’s total lack of material beyond these nods to the future. Throughout the episode, we are told of various plans to be enacted “on the morrow”. The final montage (scored with reliable elegance by Ramin Djawadi) sees Corlys setting sail for the Gullet where he will clash with Tyland’s new Triarchy alliance, while elsewhere the Starks and Lannisters march towards one another in the Riverlands as Aemond and Criston ride for Harrenhal. Even Rhaenyra has decided at last to act, plotting to fly for Oldtown with her Dragonseeds… at dawn.
It has the feel of a table-setting, eve of war piece, the type we’d typically see before the climactic ninth episode in a traditional season of Thrones. There have been rumours of last-minute cuts to the season, whether due to financial strain or delays caused by the WGA strikes last year. Whatever the case, it is not difficult to imagine a ten-episode version of this arc culminating in one or more of these battles after a season of watching our heroes fail to prevent them.
Ironically, the conflicts now mere hours away from the various players across Westeros must be paused now for at least two years, with a 2026 release being targeted for the fantasy's third season. This is a more systematic issue, similarly afflicting other high-end dramas like Stranger Things and The Boys, but here it begs the question of whether House of the Dragon is truly tenable as a show. If the dogfight above Rook's Rest was so strenuous as to cut the season abruptly short, then how can the many promised battles to come possibly hope to be achieved?
That is not to say that the high points of Season 2 aren't remarkable; Rook's Rest is of course a true cinematic feat, so impressive that it might even redeem its director for his previous Thrones effort. And of course, the true core of Dragons remains its cast, with Emma D'Arcy's regal yet perpetually splintering performance as Rhaenyra continuing to serve as a fascinating anchor point for the series. They are matched this time by a smouldering performance from Harry Collett as Rhaenyra's eldest son Jacaerys, and balanced across the bay by Ewan Hewitt and Tom Glynn-Carney as the pretenders to her Throne.
Glynn-Carney in particular has proven to be a revelation, resisting at every turn the temptation to make his brat king in any way comparable to Thrones baddies Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsay Snow. His Aegon is among the drama's most tragically unwilling victims, the only lead entirely disinterested in the prescient speeches and lore unravelling around him. Aegon is the Targaryen most focused on the present rather than some far off future, which unsurprisingly goes a long way in affording some immediate stakes to the tale. In the spirit of the writers room, we can now only look ahead and hope that, come 2026, House of the Dragon can do these performances justice and find the means to deliver on some of its many, muddled promises. Then again, much like Aegon we've all been burned before.
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