There are certain inevitabilities in this lifetime. Death, taxes and the England men’s football team disappointing at a major tournament. Add to that list, then, Sky’s blockbuster series House of the Dragon being compared unfavourably to its acclaimed progenitor, Game of Thrones. With the prequel back for a third season – and despite my genuine desire to say something new and interesting – that comparison once again looms large over a show that has never fully understood its own appeal.
The world of Westeros is facing civil war. In one camp are the “blacks” who support the claim of Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy). Counselled by her ruthless husband/uncle Daemon (Matt Smith), the blacks have amassed a fierce arsenal of dragons to reinforce their bid. “I must justify my father’s faith in me,” Rhaenyra muses, as she seizes the crown. “Rule as he would have wished.” Their adversaries are the “greens” who represent the Hightower branch of the Targaryen line: increasingly powerless matriarch Alicent (Olivia Cooke) and her sons Jacaerys (Harry Collett) and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell). Her eldest son, Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), has been badly injured and secreted out of the capital by spymaster Larys Strong (Matthew Needham) as Rhaenyra’s forces approached. “I am the king of nothing,” he notes, as they make their escape, “with raven s*** for a throne.” But even Rhaenyra – finally assuming her birthright – has concerns with that seat of power. Forces from the east and the west creep closer [or similar?], Aemond has gone rogue with the biggest dragon in the land, and a slippery new enemy, Ormund Hightower (James Norton), has emerged.
This season is intended to be the penultimate instalment in a sequence known to fans as the “Dance of Dragons”. That name is telling: the whole thing has been building inexorably towards whirling, twirling dragon-on-dragon action. It’s something that Game of Thrones – where the creatures served as a slow-burn, delayed gratification for seven seasons, and then Agent Orange in the finale – never had. Here, the dragons are centre stage from the off. They are great, hulking CGI critters, and the actors playing their jockeys cling to their charges in these relentless dogfights. The series opens with a dazzling skirmish involving dragon riders and the fleet of Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), where the camera moves from land to air to water with a grace and intensity to match these mythical creatures. “If this be victory, I hope I never see another,” Corlys observes in the burned-out, apocalyptic ruins of the battle.
Yet even with this technical virtuosity on display, it is hard to escape the feeling that the makers of House of the Dragon are squandering the affection viewers have for George RR Martin’s books. The battles feel lopsided (the army with the bigger dragons has a major advantage) and lacking humanity. The stakes feel both very low, given how hard it is to care about the ultimate victor, and very high (this season kills off multiple major characters within its first two episodes). When there are slower, more personal sequences, they usually consist of portentous conversations in dimly lit chambers. “You’ve come so far,” Daemon tells his queen. “And yet you still don’t know who you are.” These ominous whisperings lack the earthy wisdom, the wit and discursive pleasure that were on display in Game of Thrones.
The cast attempt to make the most of the material, even if they are increasingly playing against composited reptilians. D’Arcy and Smith remain the show’s best performers, capturing the mercurial ambition of House Targaryen. But the show is also struggling to evolve Rhaenyra beyond a one-note, vengeful mother. “I may appear to have the weak and feeble body of a woman,” she says at one point, bizarrely channelling Elizabeth I. “But I possess the heart and spirit of a king.” This unflattering writing also doesn’t help Cooke, who remains distractingly badly cast for a role that requires her to convincingly mother a brood of adult sons. James Norton – a dangerously ubiquitous presence on TV these days – is a welcome addition as the menacing Lord Ormund, but the increasing prominence of Sonoya Mizuno’s Mysaria only draws attention to how wretched that performance is.
In truth, House of the Dragon is perfectly watchable fare. But it exists in a strange limbo: it is disappointing only in comparison with Game of Thrones, yet without the world-building and fanbase of its predecessor, it would not make any dramatic sense. And so, even though it is lazy to say it, the show remains darkened by the shadow of its forebear. More dragons did not have to mean less humanity, and yet the balance remains off in a show that is dazzlingly bombastic but disappointingly shallow.
‘House of the Dragon’ season three will launch on HBO and HBO Max in the USA on Sunday, 21 June. UK viewers can watch it on HBO UK, Sky Atlantic and NOW on 22 June
