“There is more than one way to fight a war,” Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) explains to Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy). What she means to inform her ruler is that warfare is not relegated to battlefields; there are modes of fight that embrace politics, deceit, and technique. However maybe House of the Dragon must take its personal character’s recommendation and contemplate the monotony of what this second season’s “war” has consisted of: countless strategizing and mobilizing for little dramatic payoff. This previous season ended practically each episode — minus the one with an precise battle — with a winking, sly, “OK, now it’s war”-type of transition solely to fall again on countless small council conferences and advisory one-on-ones.
The finale of House of the Dragon’s second season exemplified the present’s best and worst qualities — a talky episode that reneged on the season’s unfastened promise of violence and chaos in the face of continued strategizing and personal deal-making. There’s been quite a bit of set-up over the course of the season, whether or not it’s Matt Smiths’ Daemon bulking up of Harrenhal, Rhaenyra educating lowly Targaryen bastards tips on how to dragon-ride, or the sudden upheaval of King’s Touchdown, with Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) ascending in place of his injured brother Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney). It’s not a lot that these potential set-ups aren’t in and of themselves attention-grabbing, however the present appears in any other case content material to elide the most fascinating elements. We see way more of Daemon’s goals than we do his time with the Strongs or the Tullys, the Targaryen bastards have already taken to Rhaeynra’s warfare room, and Aemond stays one of the present’s cyphers. For the complete of the second season, we’ve seen characters focus on what they’ll do or react to what has occurred, quite than any interiority into why or how.
Season 2’s final episode, “The Queen Who Ever Was,” units up a quantity of compelling prospects for the highway forward, from Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Corridor) adventuring in Lys with the sailor Sharako Lohar (a fantastic Abigail Thorn), to Larys (Matthew Needham) and Aegon’s plotting to overthrow the injured king’s brother, however neither of these prospects come to go in the episode at hand. Will we ever truly see naval fight between the Lannisters and the Sea Snake? Will Aegon withdraw and search revenge on Aemond? Will probably be greater than a yr, at least, till any of us know. Season finales usually have cliffhangers; this, we all know. Nonetheless, there’s a lot brushed towards in the last episode, together with an entire city massacred by Aemond, or Rhaena’s (Phoebe Campbell) journey to a dragon. An entire episode, nevertheless, shaped round a half-dozen cliffhangers leaves little lingering reminiscence for what did occur in place of what might.
Picture: Ollie Upton/HBO
There are a number of moments of decision and readability inside the episode, an unexpectedly ugly argument between Corlys and his bastard son Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty). Although the former tries to make amends in direction of his unclaimed son, Hull rejects this peace providing. The two are little greater than coworkers, nothing kind of — rejecting the heartwarming embrace that Corlys hoped for in his time of loneliness. It’s a pleasant element, one which highlights what usually works best about House of the Dragon: the mix of private and political, and how these two stability out. A quantity of these characters have been compelled into uneasy alliances — this is the nature of politics itself — however hardly ever do these relationships bear fruit. Some of the best elements of House of the Dragon’s predecessor Sport of Thrones occurred when characters who didn’t like one another and didn’t agree had been compelled to mix their powers in direction of a larger good. Typically these alliances bloomed (like Jaime and Brienne); different occasions they arrived at a begrudging respect (The Hound and Ayra). That Addam and Corlys conform to trip out to battle collectively seems like at least one of the present’s many plotlines bearing fruit.
Later, Rhaenyra lastly tracks down Daemon, who has been hiding out and hallucinating at Harrenhal with Ser Simon Robust (the excellent Simon Russell Beale) and Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin). Daemon’s storyline has been some of the season at its worst. His repetitive, tedious, unfulfilling existential goals have amounted to little outdoors of reminders of the previous season with cameos from Milly Alcock and Paddy Considine. On this finale, he lastly will get the imaginative and prescient his brother received: the glimpse at the Track of Ice and Fireplace — or, quite, all of Sport of Thrones. This reckoning permits Daemon to make peace with Rhaenyra when she arrives at Harrenhal, a shift that feels too abrupt to belief. Maybe that’s as a result of the episode saves its largest reunion for final: a bootleg dialog between Rhaenyra and Alicent in Dragonstone, through which the latter provides up Aegon’s head for peace between them. It’s emotional, abrupt, and tragic — these characters waited too lengthy and nonetheless misplaced an excessive amount of.
The most irritating half of the warfare these characters battle is that it separates everybody from their most attention-grabbing foils. Rhaenyra and Alicent spent all of 10 minutes collectively this season, scarcely extra will be mentioned for Rhaenyra and Daemon. D’Arcy and Cooke have such nice pure chemistry, even in moments of strife, and the separation of them can’t reside as much as how nice the present was after they had been butting heads. Equally, Aegon and Aemond, so completely different of their management kinds, now not share a lot display time after the former was injured in battle. Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) has been banished, robbing Alicent of her battles with him. Just one compelling new pairing on this second season stood the take a look at of the previous few episodes: Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) and Ser Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox — do you assume they bond over their alliterative names?). The two share the battlefield, the warfare camps. They bicker and spar towards each other. They’re dwelling in the realities of the world these different characters have established, and the violence and inaction of their leaders have turned them bitter and ironic.
Picture: Theo Whiteman/HBO
Corlys warns Rhaenyra that she should crush this beast at its head earlier than too many days have flown, however the days are already flying by. It’s been an entire season of days flown. Maybe the irritating tempo of the season is reminiscent of how histories felt in actual time. Whereas we will cram the occasions of one thing like the Seven Years Struggle into a number of pages of a textbook, the real-time occasions had been little question slogs of politics and blood. This second season of House of the Dragon, nevertheless, by no means fairly blended motion and politics, the former standing as set piece whereas the latter by no means transcends greater than arched eyebrow set-up. “We must do this,” the characters say; “I want that,” they add. The whole lot initiatives ahead whereas the current feels staid, nonetheless. It’s attainable one other future existed for the present, had they not continued to work amid the strikes of last year. With restricted workers and a crunched timeline, what we see is a present shot with few on-the-go adjustments that might have helped adapt the drama to the tempo and supplied room to experiment. What we see on display is ever-beholden to its unique drafts, ever spinning its wheels.
Of their teary-eyed last dialog, Alicent admits, “I lost my way, or rather, it was taken from me.” We’re to imagine her lengthy, solo trek into the woods granted her a readability we can not see, simply as we watch the aftermath of Aemond’s assault on Sharp Level from the ashes. What the second between the queens cements is that neither needs what’s being offered to them. They’re resigned and pissed off by their fates, but know no different manner ahead. These characters, and this present’s creators, know there is a brand new path forward, as long as they’re keen to take the first steps, quite than simply speaking about it.
