The first season of House of the Dragon is over, and now that we have the whole season in the rearview mirror, we can have an honest accounting of its highs, its lows, its successes and its failures.
Happily, it did a lot more right than it did wrong. House of the Dragon had the impossible task of being worthy successor to the most exciting, popular show of the past decade — Game of Thrones — yet still establishing its own identity. With sharp writing, confident direction and wonderful performances, it pulled it off! The wait for season 2 is going to be long and difficult.
That said, there’s no show so good that I can’t find things to complain about. So without further ado, here are the five best (and worst) moments from House of the Dragon season 1!
Fifth best moment from House of the Dragon: Rhaenyra’s coronation
The first episode of the show ended with King Viserys Targaryen naming his daughter Rhaenyra heir to the Iron Throne and watching as lords from throughout the Seven Kingdoms gathered in the Red Keep to swear obeisance to her. It was a stirring moment that signaled the show knew how to build drama and mark important points in the lives of its characters.
The season finale, “The Black Queen,” had callbacks to several moments from earlier in the season, including that one. When Rhaenyra is finally crowned the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms on Dragonstone, I immediately thought of the final moment from the series premiere, and realized at once what a rich journey I’d taken with this character.
Rhaenyra’s coronation was a long time coming. It works because Emma D’Arcy sells it, it works because the whole season had been building up to it, and it works because we root for Rhaenyra. It’s the best moment from the finale.
Fifth worst moment from House of the Dragon: What we lost in the time jumps
I’m happy to report that, when I was thinking over the best and worst moments of the season, it was harder to come up with bad moments than good ones. This isn’t even really a “bad moment,” but more a lament for scenes we never got to see. Much was made of the time jumps in the first season of House of the Dragon, with the story sometimes jumping ahead by years at a time. Generally they worked well, but there were a few times I wished we could see what we skipped over.
The biggest time jump comes between Episodes 5 and 6, where we skip ahead 10 years. Characters like Rhaenyra and Daemon are now married with children, and Alicent has gone from Rhaenyra’s best friend to her bitterest enemy. The characters who get shafted the hardest are Daemon’s wife Laena Velaryon and Rhaenyra’s paramour Harwin Strong, both of whom are introduced as important fixtures in the lives of our main characters and both of whom die by the end of the episode; we leave them feeling like we only scratched the surface of who they were. I also would have liked to see a little more of the Strong family dynamic before Larys kills his father and brother at the end of “The Princess and the Queen.”
I understand that the show had limited space to tell its story and I more or less think it made the right decisions, but it’s hard not to want a bit more.