House of the Dragon vs The Rings of Power: Which had the better second season?

After Game of Thrones wrapped up in 2019, networks rushed to fill the void left by HBO's megahit. There would be a new epic fantasy to beat, but who would claim the title?

Many shows have taken their best shot since then, and two of the main competitors often get compared to each other: on the one hand there's House of the Dragon, HBO's own Game of Thrones prequel series; and on the other there's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Amazon Prime Video's fabulously expensive show set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings story most of us know.

Now's a good time for a disclaimer: House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power do not need to be compared to each other. You can enjoy (or not enjoy) both. They both have room to exist. But it also makes sense why they're often thrown in the ring together. They're both high fantasy shows, they both cost a pretty penny, and their premiere seasons aired opposite each other back in 2022, giving people plentiful opportunities to compare and contrast.

In that contest, critics and fans alike seemed to agree that House of the Dragon came out on top: it was better written, better acted, more tightly plotted, and more respectful of its source material, whereas The Rings of Power seemed a bit scattershot. In 2024, both shows aired their second seasons, although not at the same time. Now that both are in the rearview mirror, who won round 2? Let's consider at that question below.

The look

Both House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power are among the most expensive shows on TV today, with episodes costing tens of millions of dollars to produce. In both cases, you can see that expense onscreen. The Rings of Power takes us to the Elven kingdom of Eregion, into the dwarven mines of Khazad-dûm, and to the architectural marvels on the island nation of Númenor. House of the Dragon visits fewer locations but delivers what it promises: the best dragons we have ever seen on TV. One sequence in the middle of the season features what is likely the most impressive dragon-vs-dragon battle ever put to the screen, in movies or on TV.

Both shows look splendid, but I think House of the Dragon makes smarter use of its resources, perhaps because it can afford to given its less sprawling story. The Rings of Power has to spread itself more thin, and sometimes the visuals can suffer. The climactic Siege of Eregion is exciting, but it doesn't top the thrilling battles from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, whereas House of the Dragon breaks new ground.

Because it has fewer storylines to service, I'm better able to appreciate the intricacy of the costumes on House of the Dragon, or the beauty of the sets. The directors compose some beautiful frames. This round to the dragons.

Winner: House of the Dragon

Pacing

Both The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon gave us eight episodes apiece for their second seasons. That was consistent for The Rings of Power, which also had eight episodes in its first season. But House of the Dragon came down from 10, and you could feel the difference.

The stories on The Rings of Power sometimes roll out unevenly; in season 2, for instance, the events in Rhûn and Númenor seem to skip ahead awkwardly between episodes. And I feel like Galadriel and her followers marked time earlier in the season as they traveled from Lindon to Eregion. But The Rings of Power does a good job of bringing everything to a head in the two-part battle episode that ends the season. The corrupted elf Adar is attacking the elven city of Eregion, where his rival Sauron is trying to manipulate the smith Celebrimbor into creating rings of power. Durin IV, the new king of the dwarves and a friend to the elf Elrond, arrives with an army at the last minute to prevent a complete route, and the season ends with the survivors rallying and facing the future. Events come together nicely.

On the other hand, House of the Dragon basically ends with a teaser for episodes that won't air for years. The season gets off to a solid start as Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen and her rival and half-brother King Aegon II Targaryen try to infiltrate each other's strongholds. The Battle of Rook's Rest — that's the spectacular dragon-vs-dragon battle I mentioned above — makes for a thrilling midpoint, but the end of the season builds up to battles and conflicts we don't see happen.

We've heard that the producers of House of the Dragon originally had more planned for the end of the season but had to hold back due to budgetary concerns, which has the ring of truth; it's very hard to believe the writers ended the season in so dramatically flaccid a fashion on purpose. Whatever the reason, the lack of a proper finish harms the season, making this a pretty easy win for The Rings of Power.

Winner: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Characters

Game of Thrones distinguished itself by having an embarassment of rich, memorable characters; from Jon Snow to Daenerys Targaryen to Tyrion Lannister to Arya Stark to Brienne of Tarth to Theon Greyjoy to the Hound to...I could go on. Each of these characters and more felt like they could be the lead on their own show, and the series was constructed to make us unsure whose story it really was until the very end. I can't remember another show with this many great characters worth rooting for, against, or both.

House of the Dragon also has its share of rich characters; my favorites in season 2 were hopeful queen Rhaenyra Targaryen and her rival and half-brother Aegon, who was pushed and pulled in a million directions. Characters like the spymaster Mysaria and soiled knight Criston Cole also came more into their own this year.

That said, too many of the supporting characters feel shallow compared to the ones on Game of Thrones; folks like Baela and Rhaena Targaryen still feel hastily sketched even after two seasons. Helaena Targaryen is a cipher. Corlys Velaryon and Daemon Targaryen, two of the most compelling characters from season 1, were sidelined this time in repetitive plotlines that didn't do nearly as much with the characters and actors as they could. There were some interesting newcomers, including the irresponsible dragonrider Ulf White, but there's a saminess and blandness to the characters on House of the Dragon that was never a problem on Game of Thrones. When they break out of that, the characters can be terrific. But too many don't.

The characters are The Rings of Power are also a mixed bag. Highlights include literally any dwarf, especially Durin IV, his wife Disa and his father Durin III, who have some rich family drama material to play in season 2. The dwarves in general feel more warm and relatable than an other group of characters. Sauron, the villain of the piece, was also a highlight of season 2 as he embarked on a scheme to rule Middle-earth by creating rings of power.

Meanwhile, the human and elven characters alike have a habit of collectively staring into the distance and making somber declarations about the shape of things. Personalities have a hard time poking through this self-seriousness. I liked the characters of the Stranger and Nori his harfoot companion, but the show kept them separated for too much of the second season, and they both receded into the background.

Overall, the cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is shallower than the one on House of the Dragon. That could be a strength of the show — morally, the universe of The Lord of the Rings is simpler than the one on House of the Dragon, so I don't need the characters to be as complicated — but the show seems to be striving for depth it doesn't always reach. Notch another win for the dragons.

Winner: House of the Dragon

Faithfulness to the source material

When it comes to adaptation, both House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power have difficult jobs. The Rings of Power is set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings story most of us know. J.R.R. Tolkien laid out the basics about the Second Age in the back of his original Lord of the Rings trilogy as well as his book The Silmarillion, but The Rings of Power team has to make up a lot of the details.

Their solution is to basically change everything readers know about the Second Age. Events that take place hundreds of even thousands of years apart in the text are compressed into the space of what looks like a few months, major characters like Adar and Disa are invented, and Tolkien characters like Gandalf and Tom Bombadil are used in ways Tolkien never contemplated.

Not all of this is bad — as I said above, Disa is a highlight, just like all the dwarves — but it does mean that The Rings of Power resembles its source material only in the loosest sense, at least a good chunk of the time; some plotlines try and stick closer to the source than others. In a way, that sets The Rings of Power free to stand on its own; if comparing it to the original text is an often fruitless exercise, you might as well enjoy the show for the brand new tale that it is. That said, I would like a show with The Lord of the Rings label to try and stay a little closer to the original tales, which are beloved and have stood the test of time for a reason.

House of the Dragon is based on the book Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin, which has a unique structure: it's "written" by an in-world historian who's piecing the tale together years afte the fact based on incomplete accounts, so there are narrative gaps by design. The first season did a very good job of keeping the shape and tone of the original story while filling in these gaps with interesting details. But the second season started to wander further afield of the source material in ways that dragged it down, sometimes seeming to go out of its way to do the opposite of what was written.

For instance, in Fire & Blood, we know that Daemon travels to the castle of Harrenhal and quickly raises an army. On House of the Dragon, he does indeed go to Harrenhal and raise an army, but in between he has a series of tedious, repetitive dream sequences that kill the show's momentum. And when he's awake, he makes elementary blunders that undercut what both the book and the show have told us about him being a capable leader; it gets to the point when you wonder why anyone in this world would ever take him seriously.

And then there's the relationship between Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower. In the book, these two are rivals. The show did a great job of fleshing out their relationship in the first season, showing us how they went from best friends to reluctant enemies. The second season undercuts this tragedy in the making by yoking them back together. Not only does this go directly against the book, but the show must contort itself into awkward shapes to make it happen. We have to believe that Rhaenyra would sneak into King's Landing, a city whose rulers want to find and kill her, for a chance to meet with Alicent, who has no real power to help Rhaenyra achieve her goals; or that Alicent would sacrifice her own children to ally herself with someone she was friends with decades ago. The producers could claim that these silly events simply didn't make their way into the historical record that is Fire & Blood, even as they distort the shape and spirit of that very book, lower the stakes of the story, and generally make audiences roll their eyes.

In the end, House of the Dragon still sticks much closer to its source material than The Rings of Power. But I think I'm more upset by the changes on House of the Dragon, because while I already knew The Rings of Power had little interest in staying true to the source text, I thought House of the Dragon had more respect for it, so it was a bummer to see it go in another direction, especially when the results were so middling. If you're going to change the source material, your version of the story needs to be better than the original, and this was not. As with the works of Tolkien, the works of George R.R. Martin are beloved for a reason.

Winner: House of the Dragon

Conclusion

In the end, I think House of the Dragon pulled out a better second season than The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. On the whole, the characters are more interesting and the drama more compelling. Even without a proper finish, House of the Dragon holds my attention more than The Rings of Power, which can swing from fun and engaging to background noise depending on which plotline the show is following that moment.

That said, while House of the Dragon handily beat The Rings of Power when the two shows went head to head back in 2022, I think this victory this time was much narrower. My overall impression is that while The Rings of Power stayed pretty consistent from season 1 to 2 — it was uneven fun then and it's uneven fun now — House of the Dragon dropped off. It can still pull off magnificent scenes — the Battle of Rook's Rest may be my favorite sequence of the year — but the character drama was hit or miss compared to the first season, and the lack of a climax was a big let-down.

House of the Dragon is officially renewed for a third season. The Rings of Power hasn't been officially renewed yet, although everyone sounds optimistic. For The Rings of Power, I hope the team learns from the first two seasons how to zero in on what works. For House of the Dragon, I hope the producers think about the production and do everything they can to make sure they're able to pace a season in a way that will hold people all the way through, and to be brave and humble enough to embrace the source material.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.