House of the Dragon (2022 - Season 1)

 

 

Rating: ★★★★ 

 

House of the Dragon, a prequel to the worldwide sensation Game of Thrones, revolves around the story of heirdom of House Targaryen about 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen, one half of the two central figures of Game of Thrones. 

 

I was impressed by House of the Dragon right from the first episode as it immediately captured all of the aspects that made Game of Thrones so good for its first four seasons. The storytelling was detailed and efficient, perhaps even more so than the beginning of Game of Thrones, because here not so many characters and houses gets thrown at us from the get-go. This level of storytelling is maintained and heightened up until episode 5, and then after that, *slight spoiler alert* the show takes a huge time jump, and along with that, actor changes for some of the characters, including the two main female characters that will end up fighting for the throne - Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower. 

 

This threw me off some of the important plot angles and beat choices that the show had seemed to commit on in previous episodes, and the deftness of the storytelling suffered especially for the next 2 and a half episodes. The general aesthetics also just didn't look good because you would get characters that aged a lot in comparison to others who have not at all, and even later the supposed younger Aemond Targaryen ends up looking older than Aegon Targaryen. It was just messily done, simply put, especially for an HBO show with such a big budget and audience. It never really gets back to that high level of the start of the season, because it feels like the show just wanted to get to a specific point by episode 10, just to set up the stage for the eventual big spectacle - which will be the "Dance of Dragons" and ultimate fight for the throne from season 2 onwards.

Now, I am not a reader of the books which this is based upon, so I do not know how much still needs to be covered and how many seasons the showrunners have in mind for this. But I can't help but feel that they could have stretched out this entire season into two, and just let some of the conniving inner politics between the Targaryens, Hightowers and Valeryans play out across those two seasons. At best, this would have avoided all of the clunkiness in the middle episodes, and given actors such as Milly Alcock who plays the young Rhaenyra more time to show off her skills and perhaps get an Emmy nomination because I really enjoyed her portrayal of the character. Alas, it is not such a big problem, because overall the show is still impressive considering how much of a mess Game of Thrones ended in, and it's just nice to get hooked on a high fantasy show of this level and magnitude again.