House of the Dragon vs Rings of Power: Episode 6 (Who Won the Week?)

Both House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power should be hitting their stride in their sixth episodes. Unfortunately, both shows stumble.

House of the Dragon‘s “The Princess and the Queen” is knocked off kilter by its full decade jump forward in time. Its characters are strangely still stuck in Episode 5. The Rings of Power‘s offering, “New Life,” focuses on the action in the Southlands, but flails as it attempts to elicit emotional reactions it doesn’t earn.

House of the Dragon, Episode 6: “The Princess and the Queen”

Having jumped forward a decade, House of the Dragon lands in the same cauldron it left behind, though this time the water is much hotter. King Viserys’ house of cards crumbles around him but he chooses not to notice; the weight of his failure to head off the looming civil war is too much for the dying, well-intentioned man to bear. He’s older and sicker, but he’s still the exact same man he was 10 years prior.

Baby-making is everywhere; there are bushels of young, royal children bounding about, Rheanyra (now played by Emma D’Arcy) has just given birth and Lady Laena Velaryon (Nana Blondell) is pregnant with another child via Daemon, her husband. It’s a fitting motif, for the children are about to become helpless pawns in a violent struggle for power.

As a note, if you enjoy the amplified sounds of childbirth, specifically the squishy, gushy, squirty emergence of baby and afterbirth from the birth canal (fortunately, none of this is shown), make sure you ratchet up your home audio volume to enhance the already loud audio effects.

Viserys has done his best to raise Alicent (now played by Olivia Cooke) and Rhaenyra’s children together to encourage their familial bond, but it’s no use; Alicent continually warns Aegon (Ty Tennant), her eldest, that his life is under threat from Rhaenyra and her supporters. The idea that Rhaenyra’s brown-haired children are heir to the Iron Throne when they are obviously the offspring of her adulterous relationship with Ser Harwin “Breakbones” Strong (Ryan Corr) is considered a scandal.

The peril surrounding the children of both families becomes omnipresent. On the training ground, Criston Cole’s preference for Alicent’s children over Rhaenyra’s becomes almost dangerous and draws Ser Harwin’s fatherly instincts, costing him his position as the commander of the City Watch.

Who stands with Rhaenyra once Viserys is gone? Her husband-in-name-only Ser Laenor (John Macmillan) is proving useless. Her offer to Viserys and Rhaenyra at the small council to betroth her son Jacaerys to their daughter Helaena (along with a dragon’s egg for Prince Aemond) is met with enthusiasm by the King and suspicion by Alicent.

Ten years on, Daemon Targaryen has found domestic bliss with his wife and children in faraway Pentos. He’s quenched his thirst for power with the peaceful and wealthy life of a valuable expat, allowing his dragons to be used as political pawns by his grateful hosts. But are his ambitions truly extinguished? The death of Lady Laena in childbirth may change things.

Exasperated by Viserys’ refusal to accept the resignation of his faithful Hand, Lord Lionel Strong, Alicent feels as if she has no allies in King’s Landing beyond the bitterly snotty Ser Criston, a once regal character who, 10 years later, is still emotionally unhinged over his breakup with Rhaenyra (for the record, he was the one who dumped her because she wouldn’t do what he wanted).

“The Princess and the Queen” is not kind to Alicent; her imagined concern for her children and her disgust with Rhaenyra’s behavior has made her uncharacteristically untrusting, aggressive and underhanded. Whether her offer to marry the children is genuine or not, Rhaenyra appears to be trying to do damage control, while Alicent turns to a viper (Larys Strong) for aid and is somehow surprised when people end up dead.

Perhaps 10 years’ worth of tension and mistrust have built a wall between Rhaenyra and Alicent, but the viewers haven’t seen it; the conflict between the young mothers, this battle for survival, feels too forced, for neither has been threatened by the other in any real way.

Yes, there are whisperers in their ears, but Rhaenyra and Alicent have done nothing to make the other fear for the lives of their children; without solid footing for their motivations, the mothers’ actions ring hollow as they push the plot forward.

The Rings of Power, Episode 6: “Udûn”

“Udûn” opens with Adar revving up his torch-bearing legions to begin the assault on Ostirith. Arondir and Bronwyn await with the defenders who didn’t go turncoat with Waldreg in Episode 5—or do they? Adar clumsily leads his minions into a hey-the-door-is-wide-open trap so predictable neither the impressive CGI nor Arondir’s excellent archery and parkour skills can salvage the sequence.

Bronwyn, the healer-turned battlefield commander (huh?), leads her cheering militia into the town to prepare another mousetrap. The defenders prepare with a bunch of predictable scenes: Bronwyn bolsters the teary-eyed Theo, Arondir and Bronwyn expressing their love as the battle looms…but for all the intense emotions, the scenes come off shallow. Why? Because they’re essentially choosing to put themselves and their weak followers in danger.

The Sauron sword-thing is buried. Adar wants the Sauron sword-thing. It seems prudent for Arondir and Bronwyn to protect their ragtag army of muddy women, children and elders by doing all they can to escape Adar’s vastly more powerful horde. Yet they choose to stand and fight. By electing to remain in extreme peril, the heroes don’t win the viewers’ empathy in the way they would if they’d attempted every means of escape and still became trapped.

Arondir and Bronwyn’s second defensive snare (burn, burn, burn, ring of fire) is rather lame but it works, of course. Arondir provides a few nifty fight moves in the cliché-riddled action sequence, but this time Adar is smart enough to bring a few tricks of his own. The first “orc” assault wave consists of the turncoat villagers, though one might be hard pressed to recognize any of them, so minimal was their screen time.

With his own trap sprung, Adar moves in with his real horde. In the tavern, the brutally wounded Bronwyn is put through the usual medieval surgery with the biting stick, arrow withdrawn, cauterization and, of course, the silly “is she dead or alive?” wannabe nailbiter moment.

Though there are a few decent (if standard) character-building moments, such as Theo having to apply the fire to his mother’s wound, they’re smothered by weak dialog and the show’s vain attempts to elicit emotional responses alongside a huddle of muddy villagers the viewers do not know. Adar’s orcs bash in the door, capturing the handful of trapped defenders within.

Adar executes the anonymous villagers as Arondir refuses to reveal the location of the Sauron sword. How could Arondir and Bronwyn have expected any other result?

Yet, a great cavalry charge can get the spine tingling, and Galadriel leading the gorgeous Númenorean cavalry across a gorgeous landscape with a stirring orchestral soundtrack is just the thing. After 40-odd minutes of lurching, “Udûn” finally finds its footing in the enjoyable village battle sequence where the Númenoreans overwhelm the orcs and save the day.

Galadriel pursues the fleeing Adar (with Sauron sword in hand), and Halbrand follows close on their heels. Adar is captured and interrogated. It’s fun to watch Galadriel and Adar tee off on one another, even if their conversation doesn’t offer much of anything new.

Dang, Galadriel can ride a horse and has some kicka** armor. She’s an all work and no play kind of girl, but the romantic potential with the handsome Halbrand (or the musky Captain Elendil, perhaps) is too much for the writers to pass up. The haughty Elf obviously has no need for a man, which is exactly why it’s fun for her to struggle with feelings for one. Poor lovelorn Elrond, squarely in the friendzone back in Lindon, probably feels a painful disturbance in the Force as Galadriel’s steely gaze turns soft on Halbrand.

It might be better late than never, but “Udûn” only rises out of the dramatic doldrums between the Númenorean cavalry charge and the end of the attraction-heavy scene between Galadriel and Halbrand. Once the story returns to the sunlit village where the ravaged villagers blissfully celebrate victory and Bronwyn wanders around looking little worse for wear after being run through by an orc arrow just hours previously, everything falls into glossy staginess once again.

Halbrand is hailed as the new “king that was promised” of the Southlands, Galadriel returns the Sauron sword to Arondir, who lets Theo off the hook for nearly betraying the entirety of Middle-earth. Nobody has been safeguarding the vital Sauron sword that caused all the trouble, because now Waldreg (What? Where did he come from?) is sticking it into the carved rocks and releasing hell.

The sword causes the dam at Ostirith to break, sending a monumental torrent of water into the valley where it courses along tunnels the orcs dug until it reaches the lava lake inside the nearby mountain, turning it into an erupting volcano. The Pompeiian-level eruption rains burning lava down upon the village, literally crashing the party. The last we see of Galadriel (and everyone else) is when she’s swallowed by a massive pyroclastic flow.

Who Won the Week?

Unfortunately, both shows flounder in their sixth episodes. From episodes 1-5, House of the Dragon has been largely successful in realizing its characters and effectively executing its dramatic plotlines, but the writers have taken too much for granted in Episode 6. Rhaenyra and Alicent’s conflict, stuck in the same place it was 10 years previous, lacks the snowballing churn it needs. That big problem, along with the awkwardness of the time jump itself, easily makes “The Princess and the Queen” the weakest installment thus far.

The Rings of Power fares little better with “Udûn” as it strives to deliver a powerful, action-oriented episode and gets a dud-filled extravaganza instead. Galadriel is an intriguing character and her post-battle interactions with Adar and Halbrand, two interesting but criminally underdeveloped players, provide glimpses of the show’s dramatic potential. Suicidal decisions and the slaughter of endless anonymous orcs and villagers do not raise the stakes as well as the show would like.

At least the cavalry charge was cool. This week’s blue ribbon goes to The Rings of Power, but it shouldn’t be proud of it.

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