House of the Dragon has aired two episodes on HBO, and it’s safe to say it’s a hit…a big one, bigger than even I expected, and I run a Game of Thrones fansite. Clearly, people did not get their fill of Westeros with the end of the original series, and House of the Dragon is giving them plenty to dine on. We have a new cast of climbers, a family saga that spans decades, and a sky full of dragons. The show is off to a great start and only promises to get better.
Meanwhile, Amazon is readying its own fantasy series: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. While excitement for House of the Dragon was pretty high before the show premiered earlier this month, hype for The Rings of Power has been more tepid, although there are plenty of reasons to get excited. The Lord of the Rings is a beloved brand, after all, and Jeff Bezos has spent a comically large amount of money to make sure this series is something at least worth talking about. I was curious about the show, at minimum.
I’ve now watched the first two episodes of The Rings of Power and liked them quite a bit more than I thought I would…or maybe I didn’t dislike them nearly as much as I feared, there are a lot of emotions to sort through. In any case, the show premieres tomorrow on Amazon Prime Video, which means it’s going to be running alongside House of the Dragon; new episodes of Rings of Power drop on Fridays and new episodes of House of the Dragon on Sundays. There’s been a lot of discussion — including plenty from us — about the upcoming clash. Which show will be better? Which will triumph and which will fail?
And just to be clear, I have no intention of slowing down on the comparisons; they’re way too fun to make. But especially now that I’ve seen both, it’s easier to articulate the truth at the bottom of the noise: these are two very good fantasy shows, they’re different enough that they can each be enjoyed on their own terms, and we are all lucky that we get to watch TV at a time when they’re both on.
The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon: Compare and contrast
These two shows do have some things in common. For instance, they’re both prequels. House of the Dragon is set over 150 years before Game of Thrones, back when the Targaryens were at the height of their power. And The Rings of Power is set thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings, when elves were still plentiful in Middle-earth, hobbits weren’t really known, and Sauron hadn’t yet made the One Ring.
It’s also true that both shows are in the fantasy genre. But you can only call these series “similar” in the broadest of strokes. Yes, they’re both fantasy, but in The Rings of Power, magic and wonder suffuses all. We have main characters who are elves and dwarves and hobbits, monstrous orcs are a real danger, a kid gets ahold of a blood-sucking sword, and a mysterious man falls from the sky in a comet, as we’ve glimpsed in trailers. This is all magic, all the time.
Like Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon tamps things down a bit. It’s at once more and less fantastical than its mother show. Less, because unless anything surprising happens, we won’t see any White Walkers or magical red witches on this series. Generally speaking, House of the Dragon plays out like a medieval period piece, with characters jockeying for power and trying to get a leg up on each other. The difference is that several of these characters have dragons, but they aren’t intelligent fantasy creatures like Smaug from The Hobbit; they’re more like super-sized guard dogs, a combination of pet and nuclear weapon that gives the Targaryens a serious advantage when it comes to negotiating their position.
If the kings had dragons back in the day, they’d probably have used them like this. House of the Dragon wants to come off as historical fiction with fantasy trappings, whereas The Rings of Power leans fully into the mythic impossibility of it all.
Obviously, no one is getting a forced C-section in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
And then there’s the tone. By this point, the Game of Thrones style is well established: Westeros is a bleak place, and the only humor is dark humor. These people have wanton sex, they plot to kill their own family members, and they commit atrocities in the name of their own ambition. House of the Dragon is already picking up where Game of Thrones left off. The premiere episode featured a scene where King Viserys is called away from a tourney to attend to his wife, who is in labor. It’s not going well, and without consulting her, the king gives the maester leave to cut his wife open and remove the baby, knowing that she will bleed out and die. We watch it happen, we see her terror, as well as the king’s self-loathing. It should go without saying that nothing remotely like this is ever going to happen in The Rings of Power.
That’s not to say that The Rings of Power can’t get dark, but the darkness is more elemental and therefore not as viscerally disturbing; a sea monster attacks a ship in a storm, Galadriel pursues the dark god Sauron in revenge for him killing her brother in the War of Wrath. It’s sweeping and epic and fun, and hits very differently.
In the first two episodes, the closest The Rings of Power gets to the gritty conflicts of House of the Dragon is a thread about elves watching over a group of men whose ancestors fought for Sauron’s master Morgoth in battles millennia ago. Frankly, it’s probably the weakest storyline in the show so far. The Rings of Power is at its best when it’s exploring the black and white battle between good and evil, whereas House of the Dragon lives in the shades of gray between.
And just as there are grim scenes on House of the Dragon you’ll never see on The Rings of Power, so are there joyful scenes in that show that are unthinkable in Westeros. In particular, the harfoots (think prehistoric hobbits) are a delight. Their scenes have a warmth and innocence that contrasts nicely with the noble determination of Galadriel, for instance.
There are also some very fun scenes set in Khazad-dûm, the thriving Dwarven city that will eventually become the haunted Mines of Moria. People are friends in The Rings of Power, whereas in Westeros friendship is always conditional, or crumbles in the face of impossible circumstance. Love and faith and loyalty are real things in Middle-earth, and not just chips used to better one’s position.
You can watch both House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power (and love it)
The upshot of all this is that I never once thought of House of the Dragon while watching The Rings of Power, or vice versa. The shows feel worlds apart, even if they both feature people with swords on horses.
Even the structures are different. After the geographical sprawl of Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon is more intimate, focusing mostly on how one family changes over the years; alliances shift, new members are added, and grudges are made, nursed and finally acted upon.
Structurally, The Rings of Power may be more like Game of Thrones than House of the Dragon, because once again we’re dealing with many different groups of characters spread all over the map, and part of the fun is watching and expecting them to eventually intersect. Both shows have a large scope, but one sprawls through time and the other through space.
All of this helps make the shows feel distinct, and that’s even before we get to the aesthetics. Both series look great, but Amazon has spent a record-breaking amount of money on The Rings of Power and it shows. Not only do we get incredibly detailed fantasy environments, we get a lot of them, all the time; the show constantly hits us with one new eye-popping sight after another. House of the Dragon is less flashy but more visually consistent, which fits the more intimate vibe its going for, vs the giddy expansiveness of The Rings of Power.
So basically, while it’s natural to want to compare these two series, they’re very different beasts and I think people are going to enjoy both for what they are once they’re both out. There isn’t one winner here. There aren’t two. There are millions, and you’re one of them.
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