Some House of the Dragon fans angry over latest twist

The latest episode of House of the Dragon, “The Green Council,” is proving divisive; fans on IMDb mostly like it, for instance, but it’s gotten a lot of pushback from members of the fan community, including me: I think this was easily the worst episode of the show to date.

There are lots of reasons for that, but I think it boils down to the script playing fast and loose with plot, character and logic. The final climactic scene is a good example. While Aegon Targaryen is being crowned king, Rhaenys steals beneath the floor of the Dragonpit to get her dragon Meleys; the pair of them then burst from beneath the floor. Rhaenys stares down members of the green faction before flying away, presumably to tell Rhaenyra that Alicent and the greens are coming for her birthright.

So why didn’t Rhaenys kill the greens then and there? Writer Sara Hess gave her take to The Hollywood Reporter:

"I think she just can’t do it. It’s not her war. The fight is between these two sides and she’s kind of not in it. She doesn’t feel like she’s the one to come in and do that. But you’re right. If she had just incinerated everybody, it’s game over, Rhaenyra wins and we’re done here. But the cost is huge. I also feel like that moment, she looks Alicent in the eye and Alicent walks in front of her kid to shield him. It’s one mother to another. Rhaenys is angry, but in her previous scene with Alicent, she respected her, even if she doesn’t agree with her. So she’s not going to kill another woman like that."

Showrunner Ryan Condal said something similar in the Inside the Episode feature. “She knows if she sets fire to that dais, she ends any possibility of war and probably sets peace throughout the realm, but I think probably doesn’t want to be responsible for doing that to another mother.”

None of this rings true to me. To start, if Rhaenys murders the recently crowned king along with several members of the Hightower family, it seems just as likely to start a war as prevent one. Moreover, the idea that she would hold back because she has sympathy for Alicent is so…boring. Maybe that’s part of it, but what about the prohibition against kinslaying? What about not wanting to be the one to strike first during this (relatively) colder part of the war? I don’t like how the House of the Dragon writers seem to want to reduce character motivations down to matters of who likes whom. It leaves little room for bigger considerations about politics and power; when mixed with the interpersonal stuff, that’s what makes these shows so compelling.

Of course civilians “count” in A Song of Ice and Fire

Speaking of the cold war growing hot, I didn’t like how Rhaenys’ stunt undercut all the tension the show had been building up to that point. In George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, Otto, Alicent and the greens are very careful not to shed any blood as they install Aegon as king. (Criston Cole kills Lyman Beesbury, but they tell people he’s in the dungeons to avoid looking like they have blood on their hands.) The thinking here is that they want this to look like an orderly, lawful succession. That way, if Rhaenyra grows wroth and attacks them, they can argue that she’s trying to sow disorder and then use their victimhood as justification for waging a war they knew they were probably going to have to fight anyway.

That could have made for some thrillingly tense television as the greens make and execute their plans on a knife’s edge, knowing that one wrong move could mean war. But on the show, bodies are flying left and right. Otto Hightower openly wants to murder Rhaenyra, which would doubtlessly start a war as her allies seek revenge. A lord who remained loyal to Rhaenyra is hanged within the walls of the Red Keep, and Rhaenys bursts through the floor of the Dragonpit, killing dozens of bystanders there to watch Aegon’s coronation. There’s no tension, just weightless violence.

Rhaenys’ massacre is especially galling because the show frames her stunt as a badass moment where she refrains from murder…even as she leaves many people dead in her wake. It’s a tortuously mixed message, and based on this interview, Sara Hess seems not to have thought about it at all: “It’s Game of Thrones — civilians don’t count!” she said.

If we’re being very generous, we could say that the writers are setting up a later storyline from Fire & Blood where the peasants of King’s Landing rise up against the rulers, who they increasingly see as out of touch and tyrannical. There’s even evidence in this episode that the writers are keeping the peasantry in mind. When Otto meets with Mysaria, a sex worker who has risen to become a powerful information broker, she tells him that he only has the power the people allow him to take. So maybe we’re supposed to view Rhaenys’ big entrance as a callously evil act? That’s certainly the easiest interpretation to swallow.

But I don’t think that’s the one House of the Dragon wants to feed us, because at no point do we see this event from the perspective of the ordinary people at the coronation; at best, they’re silhouetted faces in the distance. On the other hand, we see Rhaenys riding her dragon like a boss-ass bitch in her super-cool armor. If we were supposed to see her actions as evil or even reckless, we would have seen a peasant mother crying over her son’s lifeless body or something. Civilians matter, and the audience knows that even if the episode doesn’t want them to think about it.

House of the Dragon writers: Please do things because they are good for the story, not just because they’re “awesome”

And that’s the problem: the writers didn’t seem to put enough thought into this twist. That’s why it’s rubbing so many people the wrong way. Here’s what Sara Hess said in a behind-the-scenes video:

"I just remember we were in the writer’s room one day and I was like: It would be awesome if Rhaenys just came through the floor on a dragon."

That sounds similar to something that showrunner Miguel Sapochnik said: “We needed a penultimate scene, so we tried to come up with, ‘What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen at a coronation’?”

All of this suggests that the writers came up with this twist because they thought it would be a neat way to end the episode, rather than because it flowed naturally from the characters and the story. And unless a twist does that, it can’t be neat. It can’t be awesome. It becomes inert, empty, clownish. And no one wants that, least of all the writers.

House of the Dragon has established itself as a show that cares about the details. It’s been a show that rewards close viewing, rather than one that falls apart the more you think about it. That’s the kind of show that I want House of the Dragon to be, that’s the kind of show I think Game of Thrones fans deserve, and I hope the writers are more careful and thoughtful going forward.

Of course, we have to keep in mind that all this guessing after the writers’ intentions comes from snippets of interviews. We don’t really know their hearts, which leads to one last point…

For the love of god, don’t attack people because they wrote an episode of TV you don’t like

Since these interviews with Sara Hess have come out, some fans have been attacking the writer on social media, calling her an “absolute embarrassment,” saying she needs to be fired before she ruins the show, and so on.

Hess, Sapochnik, and the rest of the House of the Dragon team (and it is the team, not just Hess; that’s how TV works) made a shitty episode of television, you won’t get any argument from me there. But it’s worth remembering that, at the end of the day, that doesn’t matter very much, or at least not nearly enough to justify attacking any of them on a personal level. These are people doing their jobs and deserve respect.

This is especially worth noting because the Game of Thrones fandom has a history of making villains out of the people who labor tirelessly to make these shows. I honestly don’t know if the fandom will ever live down the torrent of vicious hatred spewed all over Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss after the final season of that show. And I say this as someone who thought Game of Thrones season 8 largely failed to deliver, and I’m happy to talk about why. But the second you go from “I hate this TV show” to “I hate the person who made this TV show,” you’re being a jerk and disqualify yourself from being taken seriously.

So that’s where we are heading into the final episode of House of the Dragon season 1. I’ll brace for impact and hope for the best.

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