The 'House of the Dragon' Season 2 Finale Delivers a Familiar Blow
For fans who endured the fiasco that befell Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon's season 2 conclusion foreshadows an ominous fate ahead
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In almost every regard, House of the Dragon can be fairly credited with reprising the world that charred and crumbled upon the earth-shattering disappointment of Game of Thrones’ ending. But, like a fire-breathing predator ascending from the ashes of defeat, season 1 was by and large well-received.
I would argue that it hinted at a more auspicious, infernal, and bombastic show ahead than what Game of Thrones’ initial season crafted a decade prior. House of the Dragon launches out of the gate and circumvents much of the drawn-out world-building of the original. But the dynamic dialogue and processional, ostentatious pageantry of the 2011 show remains in full swing in this prequel adaptation taking place within the same world.
While Game of Thrones had approximately 6 million dollars budgeted per episode and rose to 15 million by the time the show had achieved its phenomenon status, House of the Dragon from the very beginning, has had an apparent 20 million dollars designated for each individual episode, according to Variety.
The show provides enough familiar to leave returning fans of the original struck by its unflinching faithfulness to tone, stakes, atmosphere, and brutality. The staples that bring the earliest seasons of Game of Thrones to life most are all present here, from the intricacy of plot to the protagonists in which we almost unfailingly find a certain malice and the antagonists in which we can’t help but discern a glimmer of good.
One of the interesting aspects about the failure of this latest season is that, until the very end, each episode wasn’t actually devoid of any of those most defining facets. Until the closing credits of the finale, it was unremitting in its ability to deliver that hallmark complexity fans expect. Sparing Daemon’s overlong side-plot in Harrenhal, there’s not a lot that feels like it deserves to be trimmed; by and large, Game of Thrones’ dialogue-driven scenes have always been those which viewers remember most fondly.
House of the Dragon drives home a similar weight in its action-free sequences. Perhaps there’s been no clearer display of this than in the aged majesty and diplomacy of Paddy Considine as King Viserys, who briefly reprised his role in season 2 with a remarkable efficacy.
But for all of its greatness this season, it seems as though by the final episode its writers had forgotten one of contemporary Television’s most focal rules: always deliver a memorable finale. Make the fans talk. Leave them with an image that penetrates or surprises so deeply that the growing waits between seasons feel less bothersome.
As the 2–3 year wait between finale and premiere has become the law of the land, viewers have become increasingly reliant on the jaw-dropping cliffhanger to carry them through that soul-crushing interregnum.
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