The most recent episode of House of the Dragon, “We Light The Way,” felt like a turning point. The friendship between Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower is well and truly over, King Viserys I Targaryen has lost control over his court, and the show is about to jump forward 10 years in time, after which several of the actors will be replaced.
So how did the first half of the season go? Pretty darn well! The show is a huge hit for HBO, posting numbers far beyond where Game of Thrones was during its first season. More importantly, the show has summoned up the same excitement that Game of Thrones did, all while distinguishing itself with a new cast of characters and storyline that have proved gripping in their own right.
That said, the show isn’t perfect. Whether it’s puzzling changes from the source material — George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood — or storytelling choices that have hurt more than they helped, there are some things on House of the Dragon that have stuck in my craw. In this article, I want to outline how I think some things could have gone more smoothly, just to get it all out of my system before the back half of the season begins.
No one needs to “fix” House of the Dragon because it isn’t broken. But if we were going to tinker anyway…
What’s working on House of the Dragon
But before we go negative, let’s praise some of the stuff House of the Dragon has done well, cause there’s a lot of it. And not just that the show is gobsmackingly beautiful to look at and listen to, with gorgeous costumes, special effects and music. For better or worse, that’s something we take for granted in the age of multi-million dollar super-shows. For the money HBO is spending on it, House of the Dragon had better look and sound fantastic.
Happily, House of the Dragon has also excelled in other categories that are trickier to manage no matter how much money you throw at them. For example…
House of the Dragon quickly establishes compelling conflicts
With its premiere episode, House of the Dragon established that not only did it have a cast of characters worth following, but that it was willing to take them places. Characters like King Viserys Targaryen, his brother Daemon and his daughter Rhaenyra immediately jumped off the screen. We knew what they wanted and it was easy to sympathize with all of them to different degrees. House of the Dragon hit the ground running, in part because Game of Thrones had done a lot of the heavy lifting where the lore and world were concerned. We could launch right into the drama surrounding King Viserys’ succession, and we did.
House of the Dragon also proved that it was a show willing to take risks. The scene where King Viserys orders a caesarian section be performed on his wife Aemma without her knowledge is absolutely harrowing, and hit harder than perhaps it meant to given what’s been in the news lately. Game of Thrones had a lot of scenes that have rightly been called shocking, and House of the Dragon quickly proved that it could hang.
House of the Dragon channels the spirit of Game of Thrones without feeling like a retread
At the same time, this isn’t just Game of Thrones season 9. House of the Dragon takes place nearly two centuries before Game of Thrones, and it feels like a gentler, more sophisticated time, even if the avarice that suffused the original show lurks right beneath the surface.
The new series also feels different structurally. Whereas Game of Thrones told the stories of several powerful families at war with each other while an inhuman menace grew in the far north, House of the Dragon focuses on one family at war with itself. Where Game of Thrones sprawled over huge swaths of geography, House of the Dragon sprawls through time, jumping forward each episode to show us how characters change as they marry, become parents, and more. Both series feel both epic and intimate, but in distinct ways.
Daemon Motherf**king Targaryen
Viserys and Rhaenyra Targaryen were memorable characters right from the start, and folks like Alicent Hightower, Otto Hightower and Corlys Velaryon have become more compelling over the course of these first five episodes, but it was always pretty clear who the breakout character from this show was: Daemon Targaryen.
This is a guy who can seduce his niece and murder his wife and still have you rooting for him…or at least wanting to see more. One episode he’s stealing a dragon egg just to vex his brother the king, and the next he’s running through a hail of arrows to try and prove himself to him. Daemon is an unpredictable character, and very exciting to watch.
A lot of credit must go to actor Matt Smith, who oozes dangerous charisma. Daemon doesn’t speak for most of his scenes in Episodes 3 and 5, but you perk up whenever the camera pans to him. It’s hard to believe there was a time when fans questioned whether Smith was right for the part; if everything pans out, this could be the role of his career.
There’s more we could praise about House of the Dragon, but that’s enough sunshine and rainbows for now. Let’s get to bitching.
The Princess and the Queen
One of the key units of drama in the first five episodes is the deterioration of the relationship between Rhaenrya Targaryen, the king’s daughter; and Alicent Hightower, the daughter of the king’s closest advisor. They begin the series as best friends, but were enemies last we left them.
A lot of this worked, but some of it didn’t. Let’s take a closer look.
What went wrong
I had a couple of issues with Alicent and Rhaenrya, starting with how erratically their relationship progressed. In the first episode they’re inseparable besties, which I thought was sweet and convincing. By the second episode, Alicent is already lying to Rhaenrya, although at least she has a good reason: her father Otto has ordered her to get closer to Rhaenyra’s father the king, no doubt in the hope that the recent widower will make Alicent his wife, which he soon does. In the next episode, which is set two years later, Alicent wants to continue her friendship with Rhaenrya but Rhaenyra is shutting her out. In the episode after that, they’re buddies again.
I’m sure things happened between these episodes, but as a viewer, it felt like I was being jerked back and forth with little rhyme or reason. And then came Episode 5, where Alicent essentially decides to sever ties with Rhaenyra after finding out that Rhaenyra lied to her about her sexual escapades on the night Daemon Targaryen returned to King’s Landing. Alicent signals her intentions publicly in a very dramatic scene, and I didn’t quite understand why; was one lie of omission really enough reason to don the green dress of war?
Granted, that wasn’t the only reason Alicent decided to break with Rhaenyra and start looking out for the interests of herself, her house, and her children. Not long before, Rhaenyra got Alicent’s father fired as Hand of the King, and before he leaves town Otto tells his daughter that should Rhaenyra inherit the Iron Throne, she will have to kill Alicent’s children and maybe even Alicent herself in order to secure her rule. That’s a pretty compelling reason for Alicent to step things up, but it felt like it came out of nowhere; we’d never seen Rhaenyra even contemplate something like this, nor seen Alicent get the idea that she would.
How to fix it
I wish we had more of an idea of what Alicent and Rhaenyra were like as friends before circumstance divided them. I think that would make their eventual split more powerful. My idea is this: in Episode 2, instead of keeping her meetings with the king a secret, I think Alicent should tell Rhaenyra about them. They’re best friends, after all, and they tell each other everything, whatever their fathers might want. Rhaenyra would understand that Alicent’s father was putting her up to this and sympathize with her friend, even as the idea made her uncomfortable.
As the episode went on, Rhaenyra would see that her father’s remarriage was inevitable, and figure that as long as her dad had to remarry, it might as well be to someone Rhaenyra could trust not to screw her out of her inheritance. So she gives her tacit blessing to the match. Thus is the friendship between Alicent and Rhaenyra preserved for a while longer; in fact, the secret understanding might even bind them closer.
Then comes Episode 3, which is set two years after the birth of Aegon II, Alicent’s first child with King Viserys. Instead, I would set this episode soon after Aegon’s birth. The friendship between the two girls is holding, but now that the king has a trueborn son, Rhaenyra is noticing that more and more people are treating her claim to the Iron Throne as if it was merely a stopgap measure; surely her younger half-brother is the real heir.
Meanwhile, pressure mounts on Alicent to prepare her son for rule. This is the point where Otto should first suggest to his daughter that Rhaenyra would have to kill her and her children should she take the throne. Alicent would try and shrug it off, but it’s a suggestion that’s hard to forget. These doubts wouldn’t destroy the friendship, but it would start to fray. Importantly, there would be a scene towards the end where Rhaenyra holds her baby half-brother in her arms and wonders, if only fleetingly…will people accept me as queen if he’s around? Is it possible I’ll have to…y’know? Alicent will see the look in Rhaenyra’s eyes and correctly guess at what she’s thinking, even if she can’t admit it to herself…yet.
I think that would be enough to set up what happens between these two in Episodes 4 and 5. And now let’s turn to my other problem with the series so far:
What the s**t, Criston Cole?
In the first episode, Criston Cole beats Daemon Targaryen during a tournament, so we know he’s a good fighter. And Alicent says he’s Dornish, so we know he’s Dornish. In the second episode, Rhaenyra names him to the Kingsguard. In the third, he and Rhaenyra spend some time wandering the woods, and he seems a pretty decent fellow. In the fourth, Rhaenyra flirts with him and, after some resistance on his part, they sleep together.
In the fifth episode, Criston asks Rhaenyra to run away with him and is so undone by her rejection that he blurts out his secret to Alicent Hightower and then beats a guy to death at a wedding. Huh?
What went wrong
My first problem with Criston’s homicidal turn is that it doesn’t seem set up at all. I mean, dude, I understand you’re upset that your crush doesn’t want to marry you, but you just punched the future king of the realm in the face (a very bad look for a kingsguard) and then beat a guy to death with your bare hands in front of tons of witnesses, all for suggesting that the two of you should work together to protect the king and queen from gossip. Where did that come from?
The best explanation I’ve heard is that at this point Criston wanted to die and let himself go in the hope that someone would kill him. He tries to end things himself afterward, but is stopped by Alicent. Still, the scene smacks of shock for the sake of shock. We couldn’t have seen it coming, which is the cheap kind of surprising.
My bigger problem is that apparently Criston is still around 10 years into the future, which is when we’ll pick things up in Episode 6. So you’re telling me that a member of the Kingsguard can punch the future king consort in the face and then beat an anointed knight to death in front of a huge wedding party and not be sent to the Wall or executed? The only word for that is “ridiculous.” It strains believability way past the breaking point.
How to fix it
So Criston Cole apparently loses his shit because he is torn up about violating his vow of chastity with Rhaenyra. The first thing we need to do is establish that he takes these vows very seriously. Maybe we could see him taking his vows in Episode 2, when Rhaenyra picks him for the kingsguard? Maybe he could talk about them to Rhaenyra in Episode 3? Maybe both? Cause we gotta have something more than what we got.
As for the problem of how in the hell Criston can get away with beating Joffrey Lonmouth to death at a wedding, we can look to George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood. In the book, Criston and Joffrey square off during a tournament a few days after the wedding feast. Criston goes too far and dents Joffrey’s helm, rendering him unconscious. He dies days later.
We saw in the first episode that people can die during a tournament. It might not be pretty, it might not be polite, but it happens. It would make a lot more sense for Criston to be let off the hook if events went down this way. I think the show should have eschewed the feast entirely and have all of these events — Alicent’s entrance, Viserys’ collapse, Daemon and Laena’s flirtation — happen at the tournament. That’s also where Criston could kill Joffrey, closing this massive plot hole.
Onward to the back half of the season!
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.
Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels