The following contains spoilers for House of the Dragon.

The second season of House of the Dragon is a story about people realizing the discrepancies between their desires and their power. The people who, in trying to maintain the reality of those discrepancies as fictions of balance, yield catastrophic results and widespread destruction. The people who, in assessing the costs of that damage, remain tragically incapable of recognizing the full scale of consequences to come. That last part is the most relatable; who, truly, can assess the complete scale of potential consequences, especially when they span a continent?

It’s a season that was marred by significant production issues and, from that vantage point, it is mildly impressive that it came together at all. I can’t say for certain what production issues are real and which ones are extrapolations from cryptic commentary. Therefore, it’s difficult to parse which of those production issues caused and/or exacerbated the season’s sense of pacing. Especially with its finale building towards two monumental events from the story, I’m not sure if one or both of them would’ve concluded the season in the original draft. I can only critique what we have and not what we were supposed to have.

From that particular precipice, pacing was absolutely an issue this season. I get the idea: Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) wants vengeance and the immediate consequence of that vengeance is that a toddler’s head is sawed off his body. She recoils. The immediate consequence of that brutal act is a murder-suicide between two brothers. It’s a perfectly natural reaction for her to wonder if any of this is worth it at all. Then, Alicent (Olivia Cooke) inadvertently confirms her father (Paddy Considine) did want Rhaenyra to succeed him. After she sets her first play in motion with Rhaenys (Eve Best) and Meleys, it immediately backfires with their deaths.

When she was younger, Rhaenyra saw the fabled White Hart, what was considered to be a symbol of divine providence. That false confidence grew into complacency, which in part allowed the Greens to install Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) as King instead. When you take into account all the tragedies and losses she suffers from the end of Season 1 through Rhaenys’ death, it’s hard not to sympathize with her feeling at a complete loss. She has to do something. But she doesn’t know what to do and she’s not being allowed to take an active role. You, as the viewer, become frustrated in turn…until the Red Sowing.

The look Rhaenyra gives Vermithor when he obeys her commands is everything. It’s the look of the Rhaenyra many of us know from the books: confident, entitled, ruthless. But it’s also the look of someone who is finally feeling that maybe, just maybe, the divine providence of Targaryen rule was true, that the White Hart she saw in her youth was true. And when the new Dragonriders come forth, it’s confirmation that the gods are on her side and she must win. Everything, and anything, was worth that price because of the greater good.

The complaint that “nothing happened this season” is baffling to me for that reason alone: the transformation of Rhaenyra is at once exhilarating and terrifying. Most of the audience is rooting for her so a part of us wants her to win, but there is a casual callousness towards her whole “we maybe should burn down Oldtown and Lannisport” take that is devastating. Yes, it’s war, that’s obvious, but there’s a cautionary note warning viewers that maybe we should hope Rhaenyra doesn’t fully buy into the divine notion that she is a messiah and deserves to win at all costs.

It hasn’t been the smoothest and most consistent writing this season but I appreciate the focus on character. It’s a tragedy being adapted from what is effectively a novella of historical facts and there needs to be a suspense as to what these characters will do for the tragedies to fully land. Will Rhaenyra temper herself? Will Aegon learn anything from his brother’s almost successful fratricide attempt? How will Daemon (Matt Smith), put through mental illness witch therapy courtesy of Alys (Gayle Rankin), uplift Rhaenyra without giving into his tendencies to be wantonly destructive?

If Season 1 was setting up the stage, Season 2 had the task of both deepening the bench, so to speak. In that regard, it works remarkably well. The characterizations are overall an improvement from the text and characters like Alicent and Aegon especially feel much more textured and, crucially, distinct from their original Game of Thrones counterparts. Rhaenyra is at times too close to Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) but I appreciate all the ways in which she is different and hope that those differences come more to the forefront for the second half of the series.

The visuals of this season are a staggering improvement over the first. The visual language of the show’s cinematography is particularly impressive and layered – the final two shots of Rhaenyra and Alicent are particularly phenomenal. The story’s layering in of how the smallfolk of King’s Landing are being impacted by the war is impressive, especially when taking into account the darkness of the remaining story. 

So while the pacing suffered – again, the production issues this season were immense – House of the Dragon remains a wildly compelling show about power: the different kinds of it, the brittleness of it, and how it shapes us. We get to know a lot of about these characters as they continue their march to, as Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) puts it, “annihilation.” And that knowing, that sense of time, the quietness, is going to feel all the more of a gut punch when shit hits the fan one tragedy after another. 

Notes:

– While a lot of the adaptive choices worked for me, the characterization of Jeyne Arryn (Amanda Collins) was incredibly weak compared to the text, which was disappointing since the performance and costuming were otherwise excellent.
– The CGI is often so good, especially at making the dragons distinct characters with emotions and personalities, that when it’s weak, it really sticks out like a sore thumb – the shots of the Tyroshi castle and their armada in particular were shoddy.
– Ramin Djawadi’s music was truly excellent this season and, in particular, his introduction of a dramatic, erratic cello is spectacular.

All episodes of House of the Dragon Season 2 are now streaming on Crave. Catch up on previous House of the Dragon recaps and reviews.