The fire is still missing, but the dragons are back.
After a two-year hiatus, HBO’s very blond and very costly “Game of Thrones” spinoff “House of the Dragon” is back for a second season of infighting and incest. Prepare yourself accordingly for a plethora of petty man-children who can’t get over their own drama, dragons, wars, and absurd misconceptions. And be prepared to feel a little let down once more.
The highly anticipated series’ first season debuted to acclaim, largely due to a sequence of time jumps that resulted in a disorganized and rather uninteresting plot arc that truly only picked up steam in the heated season finale a la “Thrones.” Furthermore, not even that gory episode had enough emotional impact to support all of its aggression.
So perhaps it was inevitable that in response to such criticism, creators Ryan Condal and George R.R. Martin (author of the “Thrones” books and the “Fire and Ice” prequel/encyclopedia on which “Dragon” is based) would go overboard trying to remedy apparent flaws. If they have imparted a cohesive concept to “Dragon” Season 2 (Sundays, 9 EDT/PDT and streaming on Max, ★★ out of four),
it’s clearly a belief that “more is more.” Dragons abound. More demise. More violence. More twisted paths. More perplexity. Additional story gaps. More waiting for the fascinating thing to happen.
Indeed, there are more positive aspects this time around (they have, at least, figured out by Episode 4 how to deal with those damn dragons), but there are also more negative aspects: There are several sequences where logic and common reason have been completely abandoned, more twists and turns that are introduced without any background or emotion to support them, and gratuitous violence that verges on being offensive. The Iron Throne struggle, which is supposed to be the series’ central conflict, features too many side missions and has too few stakes for me to be interested in.
Okay, so what’s going on with that fight? After we left our awful Targaryens, we had two heads of state fighting for the spitzel chair: Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), who believes that being king means he gets to play with all the fancy things, and Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), the spoiled kid of the late king. His mother, his psychotic brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), and his grandfather Otto (Rhys Ifans) are supporting him.
Aegon’s older half-sister Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), who was promised the crown by her late father but has a horrible habit of upsetting everyone else at court, is glowering over on an island. Her supporters include her spouse (and uncle!), Matt Smith’s Daemon, her in-laws and cousins, Eve Best and Steve Toussaint, and her children, who must pretend to be kind even though everyone knows they are jerks.
You might or might not recall a several dozen more characters, and explaining them would take up more time than the show does reintroducing them. They’re all enraged and either in the middle of or about to start a stupid conflict. The marketing team and the writers want to reduce it to a straightforward “green versus black” struggle. For Aegon and Alicent, that means green; for Rhaenyra and Daemon, it means black; and for everyone else, it means bleeding death.
These contrasting individuals come together in the first four (out of eight) episodes that were made available for review to produce something that is occasionally good, occasionally horrible, and fine. Smith, one of the greatest performers of his time, is utterly wasted, moping and sulking. The fight scenes have improved and are (at last) bright enough. However, the plot twists demand too much suspension of disbelief and are founded on logical fallacies. Certain things are much too simple—dragons can travel huge stretches of land in the blink of an eye, assassins can sneak into castles unopposed—while other things are much too complex and challenging. Who is engaged in combat? Where and why is that? Is there a clear hierarchy or is everything decided at random? How many sons is Alicent the mother of? And is Cooke actually merely two years senior to the performer portraying her son?
At times, it’s hard not to feel totally outraged at this show. The writers consistently chose the less interesting, less hard storytelling alternative. Every dull choice and drab piece of text represents so much unrealized potential. The final result must be worthwhile given the amount of time, money, and effort put into a show like “Dragon,” as well as the labor of numerous actors and crew members. The riders of those dragons in the sky ought to possess an equal amount of majesty, allure, and strength as those CGI monsters. Thus far, the quarreling Targaryens fall short of the legendary heroes and villains of the golden age of “Thrones.”
If the fourth episode falters under the pressure of anticipation once more, this “House” will always be a hollow one. Hopefully, the rest of the season may build on a strong start and reach a thrilling and shocking finish that captures the imagination of viewers.