How the new episode of House of the Dragon retroactively improves the rest of the season

It's pretty much agreed upon at this point that the most recent episode of House of the Dragon, "The Red Dragon and the Gold," blew the roof off the place. Characters from the Green and Black factions finally clashed in a brutal battle fought on dragons hundreds of feet in the air. The special effects were incredible, the character drama taut, and the death of Rhaenys Targaryen heartbreaking...it was just great. Kudos to the cast and crew.

Before this episode came along, many fans, including me, were getting concerned that House of the Dragon was losing momentum. The first three episodes — "A Son for a Son," "Rhaenyra the Cruel" and "The Burning Mill" — weren't bad, but there was a feeling that things should be moving quicker now that war had officially broken out. Even creator George R.R. Martin acknowledged this in a new blog post. "A lot of you have been wanting for action, I know," he wrote, "this episode delivered it in spades with the Battle of Rook’s Rest, when dragon met dragon in the skies."

It's true that "The Red Dragon and the Gold" catapulted the season into a new phase, moving so quickly it's easy to forgive the deliberate pace of the first three episodes. You could even argue that the show was intentionally drawing things out before so that we would be as tense as possible going into "The Red Dragon and the Gold," where everything would be released in a torrent of emotion and violence.

I think there's some truth to that, but it goes further. One of my problems with the first three episodes was that I sometimes felt like I was being preached to, specifically about the value of forebearance and mercy in the face of war and brutality.

In one of the first lines of the season, Rhaenys Targaryen chastises Daemon Targaryen for wanting to fly to King's Landing and burn the Greens where they live, praising Daemon's wife Queen Rhaenyra for not plunging everybody headlong into a war that will surely cost the realm dearly in lives and suffering. Later, she suggests that Rhaenyra meet with Alicent Hightower rather than take the fight to the Greens, and finally tut-tuts Rhaenyra's small council for being too eager to shed blood. It's okay to be cautious, of course, but it was starting to feel like the show was casting Rhaenys especially in the role of saint and everyone around her as bloodthirsty boors. That kind of binarism is a little dull for a show that's supposed to be a dense character drama where everyone has shades of light and dark within them, and extra annoying when I'm here at home hoping that the show picks up the pace. Yes, I understand that the characters want to prevent loss of human life, but I want to be entertained, and war is entertaining. Why else would there be so many movies and TV shows about it?

But then, when we actually see the Battle of Rook's Rest play out in Episode 4, everything clicked. In that episode, we see Aemond Targaryen's enormous dragon Vhagar carelessly stomp on soldiers like they're bugs. We see Rhaenys burn the Green army by the score as easily as we would swat a fly. After the battle is over, Criston Cole tries to rouse a man on his knees, only to find that he's been flash-fried down to his bones within his armor. The man crumbles like dust.

It was at this point that I thought, "Oh, now I get why Rhaenys and Rhaenyra were being so cautious." It really was as bad as they feared, and what felt like tedious moralizing in the first three episodes now seemed like common good sense.

The Dance of Onscreen Violence

Pretty much any action drama has to walk a fine line. In real life, violence and war are terrible; they destroy families, lives and nations. But onscreen, they're terribly entertaining. Again, ask yourself why so many movies and TV shows, fantasy-themed or otherwise, rely so heavily on action, war and violent conflict. It's because we love watching this stuff. It's exciting.

House of the Dragon knows this, but it also seems to want to depict violence in a way that drives home how awful it really is...but at the same time, the violence is also the biggest draw; "The Red Dragon and the Gold" is the highest-rated episode of the show so far. Characters like Aemond and Aegon, who eagerly seek violence, are exciting to watch. Watching Rhaenyra and Rhaenys do everything they can to avoid it doesn't get the blood pumping in the same way.

So it's a balancing act, and one I think the show is mostly doing a good job with so far. I'll try to have more faith now whenever the show slows down, trusting they they will provide me with an emotional release when the time is right. And maybe I'll even appreciate the slower, temperate moments more. In Westeros, I want to have my bloody cake and eat it, too.

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