DUBAI: Reviews of season two of the “Game of Thrones” prequel/spinoff series “House of the Dragon” have focused heavily on its pace. It’s slow (at least for the majority of the four episodes available to reviewers) — a criticism also levied against season one.
But slow can be a strength. Much of the first episode is taken up with a (necessary) slew of exposition that brings viewers up to speed with the story of the Targaryen dynasty that ruled the Seven Kingdoms for almost three centuries, thanks in large part to the fact that the Targaryens are dragon lords. Which in these faux-medieval times is like owning a B-52 bomber when no one else even has a hang glider. So the Targaryens don’t have any outside forces realistically capable of taking them on. Instead, their own in-fighting tears them apart.
Season two begins almost immediately after the events of season one. King Viserys is dead and there is a rift over who should succeed him: his daughter Rhaenyra, long proclaimed publicly as his heir, or his young son Aegon, whom Viserys’ wife Alicent Hightower (Rhaenyra’s childhood friend and Aegon’s mother) mistakenly believes Viserys named heir on his deathbed. Since no one else was present, there’s nobody to tell her she’s wrong. And, since she’s the queen, many believe her. But many don’t.
Perhaps it was expected that season two would jump straight into the devastating civil war known as The Dance of Dragons. It doesn’t. Instead, showrunner Ryan Condal takes his time, ratcheting up the tension, showing the political maneuverings in the respective courts of Rhaenyra and Aegon, and also the lengths to which Rhaenyra — still determined to claim her throne — will go to try and avoid the horrors she knows must accompany any war involving dragons.
Don’t mistake slow for boring, though. For those wanting visceral violence, for example, episode one ends with the beheading of an infant in front of his stricken mother — a death that is swiftly turned into political currency by Aegon’s chief advisor. Cynicism is ever-present in Westeros.
And then, in episode four, the levee breaks. The tension is released. The dragons fly. It’s brutal, bloody, and glorious.
“House of the Dragon” still doesn’t quite have the ‘wow’ factor of its predecessor, but it’s enthralling, thought-provoking, sometimes nauseating, rage-inducing, and bold. And it rewards your patience.
