The season 2 finale of House of the Dragon aired this past Sunday, with the episode - and the season overall - coming in for quite a bit of backlash.
Season 1 of the Game of Thrones prequel series laid the groundwork for the Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons, and season 2... continued to set up the conflict. Though we did get to see a couple of exciting events such as the Battle of Rook's Rest and the Red Sowing, most of the episodes focused on moving the pieces into place for the major battles to come.
There's nothing wrong with more character-focused drama, of course, but the consensus among fans seems to be that most of the supporting players and their arcs simply aren't compelling enough to sustain interest, and it seems obvious that HBO is padding out the story as much as possible in order to keep the show going.
Now, showrunner Ryan Condol has defended “The Queen Who Ever Was” from its detractors, explaining that the huge naval Battle of the Gullet the episode builds towards was not shown because, well, they couldn't afford it.
"I mean, one of the challenges of making television at any scale, even this scale, which seems to be one of infinite time and resources, it's just never the case. Nobody has infinite time and resources," Condal began. "As a showrunner, you're always in the position of having to balance storytelling and the resources you have available to tell that story, and you're also starting to think about — and one of the things that came into play in Season 2 — is, what is the final destination of this series and where are we going? And I think it was a combination of factors that led us to rebalance the story, knowing where we're going and where that endpoint is, to rebalance the story in such a way that we had three great seasons of television [after Season 1]... to round out and tell this story."
What do you make of Condol's comments? Were you disappointed by season 2 of House of the Dragon?
"The prequel series finds the Targaryen dynasty at the absolute apex of its power, with more than 15 dragons under their yoke. Most empires—real and imagined—crumble from such heights. In the case of the Targaryens, their slow fall begins almost 193 years before the events of Game of Thrones, when King Viserys Targaryen breaks with a century of tradition by naming his daughter Rhaenyra heir to the Iron Throne. But when Viserys later fathers a son, the court is shocked when Rhaenyra retains her status as his heir, and seeds of division sow friction across the realm."
House of the Dragon season 2 sees Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Eve Best, Steve Toussaint, Fabien Frankel, Ewan Mitchell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sonoya Mizuno, and Rhys Ifans reprise their respective roles. Additional returning cast includes Harry Collett, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Phia Saban, Jefferson Hall, and Matthew Needham.
The directors for the new season are Alan Taylor (Episodes 1 & 4), Clare Kilner (Episodes 2 & 5), Geeta Patel (Episodes 3 & 8), Andrij Parekh (Episode 6), and Loni Peristere (Episode 7).