House of the Dragon Episode 9 is a weightless, thoughtless mess

For my money, the eighth episode of House of the Dragon, “The Lord of the Tides,” is easily the best of the series so far. Its finest moments were relatively simple: an old dying man determined to stand by his daughter walks across a room so that he might defend her. That same man watches the members of his family, who have long been at odds with each other, enjoy themselves at dinner. I’ll admit that I teared up at these moments. Everything came together, from the writing to the acting to the direction.

At the end of this week’s episode, “The Green Council,” a dragon bursts through the floor of a royal coronation and I felt pretty much nothing, save for some slight confusion. There were several empty action scenes, and little of the sort of nuance and character drama that has marked the show’s best moments.

I did not like this episode. Let’s get into why.

House of the Dragon decides its characters don’t matter

“The Green Council” starts about as you’d expect: King Viserys is dead. Word spreads among the servants, and his widow Alicent Hightower is informed. The Small Council is convened and immediately start planning to crown Viserys’ son Aegon king, despite the king’s oft-stated wish that his daughter Rhaenyra inherit the Iron Throne.

As a fan of George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, I was looking forward to the moment where Lyman Beesbury, who’d been serving Viserys as Master of Coin since the series premiere, raised the lone voice of objection, an act of bravery Criston Cole punishes with death, so little does Criston want to hear the plain truth that what they are doing is treason. It’s a moment rife with dramatic potential, but it kind of comes and goes without much fanfare. Having watched the whole episode, I’m now guessing that they didn’t focus on it because they had much sillier acts of violence planned for later.

Things started to go sideways for me when it is revealed that Otto Hightower and several members of the Small Council (not Lyman Beesbury, obviously) have been planning to crown Aegon king behind Alicent’s back. Otto orders Ser Harrold Westerling of the Kingsguard to take some knights, go to Dragonstone and kill Rhaenyra, the better to head off a war before it begins. Alicent, who recently reconnected with Rhaenyra, objects.

Okay, so what’s going on here? In the book, after Viserys dies, Otto immediately sets about consolidating power by writing lords he thinks might be sympathetic to Aegon’s cause, marshaling forces for the conflict with Rhaenyra he knows is inevitable should they crown her half-brother. The idea is to gather a force so overwhelming that the other side will be forced to concede before a drop of blood is spilled (save Lyman whoops), thus ensuring a clean and orderly succession. There’s a lot of dramatic potential in that, because it means that the greens must plan and execute things very carefully; one missed step (or one dead body) can lead to war.

In the show, Otto orders knights to Dragonstone to murder Rhaenyra (and presumably her family), despite the facts that: 1) Dragonstone is a fortress garrisoned by knights and protected by dragons and surrounded by ships, not remotely the kind of place one can be taken “quickly” or “cleanly,” and; 2) killing Rhaenyra would inflame those loyal to her, leading immediately to war. On the page, this is something that the rash young Aegon wants to do, but not the methodical Otto. Frankly, it’s hard to believe him advocating for something so reckless and artless.

Basically, the show has taken Otto Hightower, a character we are supposed to believe is intelligent, and turned him into a moron. Why? So he can be in conflict with his daughter, who takes the slightly more morally defensible position that they should negotiate with Rhaenrya rather than kill her. The show wants us to see Alicent as marginally more sympathetic than her father, and if that means he comes off as an idiotic brute, then so be it.

It’s black-and-white, dualistic thinking forcing its way into a story that is supposed to be about shades of gray; it takes characters written as complex individuals and flattens them to paper cutouts representing “good” and “bad.” I don’t like it, and it gets worse. Otto and Alicent both draft different members of the Kingsguard to go find Aegon, who is MIA; the twin brothers Arryk and Erryk Cargyll go hunting on orders from Otto, while Criston Cole and Alicent’s son Aemond act on behalf of Alicent. When the Cargyll twins finally find Aegon hiding out in a sept, they chase him into the open where they come into contact with Criston and Aemond. And then the two sides fight.

When I first watched this, I think I audibly said, “What?” Over what are they fighting, exactly? The right to take Aegon to see either his mother or grandfather first? For this the Kingsguard are willing to cross swords? This bit feels shoved in to meet some action scene quota, rather than motivated by any human impulse we can identify. The whole section about looking for Aegon feels pretty weightless.

Anyway, team Criston wins the skirmish. Later, Alicent tells Otto that she “has” Aegon, which…again, what? Aegon will be king soon; he can talk to both his mother and grandfather as he pleases. This conflict seems popped into existence to fill time, and so Alicent can tell her father that she now realizes that he moved her around “like a piece on a board” when she was growing up, something the audience realized a long time ago, expressed here with the most tired metaphor possible.

There’s opportunity to deepen Aegon as a character by exploring his reluctance to sit the throne, but it goes mostly wasted; instead he runs from the Cargyll twins shouting about how he’s not fit for rule, bleary eyed and desperate. The scene between him and Alicent in the carriage, where she advises him to offer Rhaenyra terms rather than kill her (which, again, is really the only option; killing Rhaenyra is a ludicrous suggestion the writers shoved into the mouth of Otto Hightower to make Alicent look better by comparison), at least includes hints of character drama, since it suggests a complicated mother-son relationship beyond, “Alicent good, Aegon bad.” I also liked how all the guards lowered their swords as Aegon walked through the Dragonpit on his way to be crowned king. That looked neat.

Rhaenys Targaryen make floor go boom

Let’s talk a bit about Rhaenys’ journey in “The Green Council.” She hadn’t left King’s Landing since the events of “The Lord of the Tides,” and the greens lock her in her room while they sort out what to do in the aftermath of Viserys’ death. She is eventually released by Erryk Cargyll, who is sworn to protect Aegon and knows what a terrible king he will make, something his twin brother doesn’t yet have first-hand knowledge of. I thought that perhaps Rhaenys would steal Viserys’ old crown, which makes its way to Rhaenyra in Fire & Blood and could have made for some fun cloak-and-dagger bits. Instead she heads to the Dragonpit, steals beneath, mounts her dragon Meleys, and bursts through the floor of the place during Aegon’s coronation, killing an undetermined number of smallfolk in the offing, before flying away.

Nothing so melodramatic happens in the book. It feels like another action scene forced into the episode, this time because the writers wanted a big finish and didn’t trust Aegon’s coronation to serve by itself. It also begs the question why Rhaenys doesn’t kill the usurpers then and there when she has the chance. If we’re being very generous, we could say that she doesn’t want to be a kinslayer, but the show has not once taught us that this is a taboo. It feels more like they just wanted an explosive finish and didn’t care about the details. Remember when Helaena talked about the beast beneath the boards? dO yOu gEDdiT?

In the book, the greens are very careful to make sure not to draw any unnecessary blood because they want to be able to argue they’re just being good stewards for the crown (to avoid looking too bloodthirsty, they tell everyone that Lyman Beesbury is in the dungeons). If Rhaenyra acts out upon discovering that they’ve stolen her birthright, the thinking goes, then she’ll be the aggressor and they the victim, which means they can feel morally justified in waging a war they were going to fight anyway. All of that tension is shot through with Rhaenys’ stunt.

In the book, the greens are careful to make sure anyone who might know that Viserys died is locked up lest loose lips sink ships. We see them jailing some people on the show, but we also see others attending to Viserys’ dead body. We see Otto announce to a roomful of lords that the king is dead and demand their supplication to Aegon. Larys spots one guy who looks like he’s faking obeisance and later has him stopped at the gate, but what was the point? Tons of people already know. Even if they’re loyal to Aegon, people talk and word spreads. (And also they hang that guy, thus drawing first blood. No one’s being very careful here, which makes things feel way less tense than they should.)

I’ve had some issues with the writing on House of the Dragon, but generally the show has been pretty good about treating its characters as real people capable of good or evil depending on the situation, and as thinking human beings who look before they leap, even if their passion can lead them to act rashly. I know all these characters are being written by people in a room and performed by actors in costume, but when the drama is working, I don’t think about it; I don’t see the strings. In “The Green Council,” I didn’t just see the strings; I saw the hands pulling them, I saw the seams and the stage lights. This is a sloppy, stupid episode of television, and nowhere near the standard the show has set for itself.

House of the Bullet Points

• The show wants to remind us that Mysaria is around. They force her into the episode by having her “hide” Aegon from his family; she demands payment in exchange for knowledge of his whereabouts, in addition to a promise from Otto to outlaw child fighting rings. It’s not the worst part of the episode, but it is, once again, very sloppy. This is the first we’re hearing of these child fighting rings; they seem included so Mysaria can advocate against them, thus painting her as principled. (Also her accent is still silly. If you change it for season 2, I swear no one will think less of you, show.)
• Speaking of those child fighting rings, the brothers Cargyll spot what looks like Aegon Targaryen’s bastard son there. This may be Gaemon Palehair, who could play a semi-important role later.
• You cannot make me talk about the scene where Larys Strong jacks off to Alicent’s feet.
• Speaking of Alicent, she invokes Viserys’ final words a lot in this episode…too much. I like the idea of Alicent’s misinterpretation being what pushes her over the edge in deciding to crown Aegon, but it’s okay for her also to just want her son to be king because she wants it, because she’s ambitious and proud. This show lives in mortal fear of us disliking its characters when it should be embracing the idea they’re all compromised individuals who operate in a world where good and bad are relative concepts defined after the fact. We’ll like them more, not less, I swear.

Episode Grade: D

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