Game of Thrones, if you abstract from its messy final season (and abysmal final three episodes), is one of the greatest fantasy series of all time. The series has such a strong overall profile that it sets the terrain for future fantasy series despite fumbling the ball with such rigor at the end that it also defines the terrain for ‘fumbling the ball’, not just among fantasy series but among the totality of television series itself. So how do you follow that?
House of the Dragon has an unenviable task in at least two ways. It’s the first Thrones project to emerge following the phenomenal overall run of that major series, and it’s the first to emerge after the collective death sigh of so many fans following the series’ monumental collapse (thanks mainly to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss getting overwhelmed with steering the ship and wanting to move on to other things). It’s not exactly a fruitful context into which one starts a series... but here we are.
House of the Dragon is a prequel series set two hundred years before Thrones, centering on the House Targaryen and its infamous war of succession. Paddy Considine is King Viserys Targaryen, whose firstborn child Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) expects to be the first queen regent when her plans are upset simultaneously by the King’s new wife and his brother, Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), a would-be conqueror who would love nothing more than the throne.
In Thrones, we were thrown into a tenuous political situation from the start. In Dragon we haven’t yet seen the fires of open political conflict, but we’re seeing the slow burning coals of conflict—it’s a different vibe, but one clearly in the Thrones world. We also see the emerging factors that portend a massive series of inter-house conflicts, alongside a number of the features that make Thrones stand out from other fantasy TV series—dragons, sex, violence, and so on.
Paddy Considine is an excellent, if muted, King Viserys. Emma D’Arcy’s virtuous, growing, scheming Rhaenyra is a complex addition in a number of good ways, and her ultimate moral trajectory is relevantly mysterious—as she individuates, one could see her becoming a hero as easily as a tyrant. Meanwhile, Matt Smith’s Prince Daemon is a standout. To be honest, this reviewer didn’t really see him working in the role, and I’m the first to admit when I’m wrong—as Daemon he’s cunning, multifaceted, ambitious, and likable while being borderline evil at times. He’s a mystery, and laps ahead of the competition. It’s a fun role, and he clearly has a blast.
The series is set beautifully—it’s gorgeous, really selling the visual grandeur of the Westeros world. Currently it doesn’t recognizably sport the same level of practical depth as Thrones, but it’s the first half of a new series so it makes sense they don’t quite have the hundreds of extras and massive sets of the original (yet). It is nonetheless a lovely world here, with lots of great dragon action and solid production design. It’s also worth noting that already the series hasn’t shied away from its predecessor’s penchant for bloody violence and unabashed sexuality, which is a welcome sight in an increasingly PG-13 media landscape.
In the first set of episodes, the biggest series weakness so far is that some of the concerns seem a little slow to ‘get big’, a little small to start, but admittedly that’s nearly inevitable when one’s comparing a full-throated Game of Thrones against any new series. The action at first is also somewhat repetitive, with the concerns over succession hitting some of the same plot beats too frequently without relevant variation over a few introductory episodes. These aren’t the most damning of criticisms, however, as Dragon is clearly building momentum in its first half towards a series of more monumental conflicts.
House of the Dragon boasts a rich world, a solid cast, and a clear sense that it’s building towards something greater as it goes along. Although the first episodes are firmly locked into the localized world of courtly intrigue (minus some interesting sea-bound nemeses), it’s walking the balance of delivering the familiar and the new with a fair amount of grace. As odd as it might be to say, it’s hard to say off a few episodes if it will deliver something satisfying at the end of a first season, but it seems that the major elements are there and ready to be deployed once things fully come to a head and different factions arise.
In the interim, there’s more than enough to merit an open-minded watch. While it runs the unenviable task of being directly compared to Thrones, if any other series looked this good out of the gate it would be given a very, very long leash to succeed... so perhaps that’s the best and fairest way forward. It’s a promising and beautiful start, and while the first few episodes find themselves rather uneven in pacing it’s fair to say that the drums of war are starting to beat and there’s a lot to look forward to in the ride ahead.
House of the Dragon premieres August 21st on HBO and HBO Max.