With the penultimate episode of House of the Dragon, the issues that I’ve been talking about over the final episode continue to make themselves apparent, while slowly moving the overall plot forward. We have a total of nine episodes left, including next week’s finale, and I am quite worried about the state of the final season at this point. Let’s dive into this week’s episode.
A lot did happen this week; the main issue is that because the first few episodes of this season were actually from last season, everything got pushed out of order. Which tracks with my internal timeline of events, where next week’s finale should’ve been this season’s episode six (out of eight). Everything is pushed forward by two episodes, and there’s been little in the way of compensation to get us back on track for the inevitable endgame scenarios. The show has been meandering with many subplots, holding onto big payoffs that end up not feeling so big because the outcome was teased or foreshadowed many episodes ago in very obvious ways.
Case in point: Ulf is betraying Rhaenyra at Tumbleton. I mentioned in my reviews that we needed to have more time with the Dragonseeds, chiefly Ulf, and this is the reason why. His defection makes sense based on the treatment he’s been given, but we’ve been told about his frustration time and time again with dialogue that spells the situation out for the audience. We never had any real sense of conflict with Ulf, weighing his decision. It was just, Ulf got treated badly, and now he’s defected, and it’s supposed to come off as a big twist, but it’s been so heavy-handed that it’s not a twist.
Another example would be Aegon and Sunfyre finally reuniting in fiery glory. We pretty much knew for certain Sunfyre was coming back, emphasized by Aegon’s conviction, but why have them march on for episodes on end when this could’ve been consolidated and had their reunion happen a week or two ago? What did we gain by having Aegon march on for so long? Not much really. I do want to emphasize that their reunion was great, and Aegon himself has been a highlight this season, but I still think his arc could’ve been consolidated to allow other characters to get more screentime, such as Ulf, Hugh (absent this week), Baela and the not-Velaryon bastards.
Rhaenyra finally learns that it was Rhaena who was riding Sheepstealer and that Daemon covered up this truth to protect his daughter, whom he even admits he’s neglected over the year. This resulted in a pretty heated (no pun intended) dragon conflict between Sheepstealer and the tamed dragons and Rhaena’s eventual arrest. I would’ve liked to have seen a bit more conflict with Rhaenyra, who seems to handle this revelation surprisingly well, all things considered. She seemingly understands Daemon’s deception, but falls back into Mysaria’s affection. Rhaenyra seems to be stuck on a loop of blaming others, asking about Vhargar/Aemond/Harrenhall, asking “what am I supposed to do about it”, and debating which of her allies are really her allies. With Rhaena now under lock and key and her fate bound by Rhaenyra’s decision, I would’ve liked to have seen more conflict about what to do next. Ditto with Daemon; is he worried about his daughter being in custody? I don’t know.
Elsewhere in the episode, we got dreams from Helaena (and no insight for Rhaenyra, who tried to interrogate her divine rule from her sister’s dreams), and a very icky dream of Alys and Aemond shacking up, with the former taking on the guise of Alicent while they’re in the midst of doing it. Ick ick ick. I did find it a bit convenient that Alicent can just waltz on up to Harrenhall and find Aemond right away, while other people struggled and failed. It’s not like Alys wants Alicent there after all.
I think this would’ve been a decent episode midway through a season. But as a penultimate, it felt lacking in many regards. I’m cursed with the knowledge of the book and am weighing the events against the known timeline, and it does worry me. Couple that with the often glacial pace the third season is exhibiting, something season two suffered from, and I’m not as jazzed as I was with the first four episodes of the season. Stay tuned for the finale, which should hopefully, finally, be the Battle of Tumbleton. Stay tuned!
