7 ways to fix House Of The Dragon
Slow down! Lighten up! Show more Velaryons! As season 2 approaches, here are our suggestions for making the HBO epic better.
TV Features Ned Stark
When HBO’s House Of The Dragon premiered two summers ago, it had direwolf-size shoes to fill. After all, it was the first spinoff of Game Of Thrones, one of the most popular series in television history. Over the course of eight seasons, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ Emmy-winning fantasy saga became the water-cooler show of the 2010s, delighting—and, nearly as often, mightily pissing off—its legions of fans.
Set two centuries before Ned Stark made his fateful journey from Winterfell to King’s Landing, House Of The Dragon is based on Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin’s history of the Targaryen dynasty that ruled Westeros for nearly 300 years. The show homes in on the Dance of Dragons, a war of succession that tore the most incestuous house in the Seven Kingdoms in two.
Season one sets up the action. Lacking a male heir, King Viserys I (Paddy Considine) names his daughter, Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock/Emma D’Arcy), as his successor. But things get messy after he weds her best friend, Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey/Olivia Cooke), who threatens Rhaenyra’s claim to the throne when she gives birth to a son. By the finale, Viserys is dead, and the two former besties find themselves on opposite sides of a looming civil war.
Ryan J. Condal and Martin’s series came right out of the gate with dragonfire blazing, netting 9.3 million viewers in 2022. But despite being a ratings hit, the season was a mixed bag, quality-wise. It lacked some essentials that made its predecessor such a roaring success—often letting the tension go slack, trotting out a small army of barely defined side characters, and striking a uniformly grim tone. That said, House Of The Dragon has a lot going for it: a uniformly stellar cast, a central plot that highlights the inextricable link between the personal and the political, and a conclusion that sets up an explosive season to come.
Whether you’re rooting for the Greens or the Blacks, here are seven ways the show could improve upon its uneven first season to conjure a second batch, which starts June 16, that’s truly fire (and blood).
89 Comments
Lacking a male heilyikes
wow, a bad AV Club article, that’s rare!
The show’s biggest problem is one it really can’t do anything about: it’s impossible to take the Prince Who Was Promised prophesy seriously, because we already know it’ll ultimately mean jack shit. Thus, any time Viserys or Rhaenyra make such a big deal about it, you can’t help laughing.The absolute biggest thing it needs to do is get over the bizarre hangup Season 1 had about letting anyone but Daemon deliberately kill people. It started bringing up memories of how the bad guys from Alias kept conveniently falling on their own knives because they thought Sydney Bristow couldn’t possibly be a hero people would root for if her hands ever personally got dirty. And with the war now fully on, that’s going to be a major issue if they try to stick to it.
I actually liked how they recontextualized the prophecy within the series. That stuff isn’t there to create meaning for the botched GoT ending where it turns out absolutely nothing mattered around the Prince Who Was Promised. Instead, Aegon’s dream is revealed to be the secret family motivation for the Targaryens to hold onto / recapture the throne by any means necessary. Both sides in the civil war believe that the world is going to end if their side loses.Of course, this is wrong, because the White Walkers will eventually be defeated in a single battle by a silly girl who is good at stick fighting. But it doesn’t matter in the HotD timeframe — the prophecy is just the reason these factions can’t sit down for a drink and hammer out their differences with a new power sharing arrangement.
I still wish we had gotten a full season with the Walkers in charge of Westeros and the surviving characters forming an insurgency to defeat them, similar to the final season of Fringe. It seems like this is what Martin had in mind before the showrunners decided they would rather make a Star Wars.
It seems like this is what Martin had in mindHe remains insistent that the rest of his narrative can fit in two books, but he’s only got as far as Jon’s death and has several additional spinning plates that the show simplified or did away with entirely. Where do you think a season’s worth of fallen Westeros fits into that?
I don’t think Martin is very good at estimating how much story he can fit into a book, haha.
Martin was convinced the he could fit “a Song of Ice and Fire” in a trilogy, he’s bad at word counts.
Martin was convinced the he could fit “a Song of Ice and Fire” in a trilogy, he’s bad at word counts.
The prophecy in HoD is not taken from the book, it’s made up for the TV show. It is literally only in there to create meaning for the botched GoT ending. By far the worst adaptation choice of the series imo.
I’m trying to think if the dragons did ultimately mean jack shit. Like I bet you could argue that without Dany and her dragons humanity loses before Arya gets her shot. Like this is a show where a god revived Beric like what half a dozen times so he could be there to save Arya’s life. Doesn’t make sense to me and I think it’s really stupid, but that’s the kinda story we’re dealing with.
You gotta love Martin ripping into Tolkien for reviving Gandalf, even as he brings back Catelyn Stark (sorry, “Lady Stone heart”). I’d add Jon Snow to that too, but who the hell knows if that’ll happen in The Books That Were Promised.
Oh Jon will totally come back. It will just be better executed, like everything else. Like he might actually be changed like books Beric is and decline mentally until he can’t even remember his home. Or his soul was in his dog and somehow goes back and that protects him, but at least that’s an explanation the show didn’t even bother with. It’s something to attempt to explain “hey why doesn’t she just revive everyone?”
Not he wont because the books wont be finished.
Agreed, but to be fair he only has to release one more book for Jon to come back. I’m not one of “those GRRM has no pages” people. He has after all released or read like ten chapters from the book. So while I’ve given up all hope of the series getting finished, I still hope he’ll release The Winds of Winter. Even if it ends abruptly.
I can do it in 2 steps1. Cancel it2. Make Bloodmoon instead
At least release the pilot. Surely they’d get some viewers for something they already spent the money to make.
Depends. Is it eligible to bet set on fire for a tax break?
Hm, I’ve only heard of that happening with movies but I’m not sure.
You’re seriously misremembering Laena’s death. Or deliberately misrepresenting it to make your point.
Which retard wrote this? What a dumbass take. 1) pacing is great, no need to change anything. The first season had to cover 20 years of history, that’s why there were time jumps. If you can’t understand that, maybe this ain’t the show for you, clown. 2) this is a show about grey complex characters and there are many characters you can root for. This ain’t your tom and Jerry, if you want that, go and watch CN, you dimbwit. 3) about the births, this show clearly laid out the parallels of what childbirths and wars do to different people. Missing out on the nuance and whining about it being there makes no sense. Get a brain, braindead clown. 4) we don’t need back stories, this story isn’t about them. They’re not even a big part of the books. And show more of other people other than Targaryens, are you retarded? The name of the show is House of the Dragon. They had to establish that in season 1 by showing us the Targ family. That’s the whole conflict, Targaryens splitting into two. Does your retarded brain understand what a civil war is, whore? And we will see other houses when the war starts aka Season 2 and beyond.
Gosh, this is such a stupid article written clearly by someone who doesn’t understand storytelling or even the point of the show. And I’m glad people who are retarded as you didn’t get to work on the show and the show actually has good writers who understand what the show is about. Pathetic slut.
Ease up on the meth and sister fucking, my braindiseased friend.
Damn, Kinja’s not letting me flag the douche. Anyone else able to?
Whoa. Calm down. Did you know you can criticize someone’s work without personal attacks?
This is what happens when manchildren use the Internet unsupervised.
Yeah, seriously. Who un-grayed this chud?
I can’t get out of the greys and this does?
These are people who think Rings of Power or the Acolyte are good, so you can’t take them seriously.
Sone of the underlying points you make have some validity, but what a terrible way to express them. The constant use of the “r******” slur is gross.
If you were at a party with strangers and spoke like this, they’d all back away and not make further eye contact with you. If you were lucky.
You only speak like this here because we’re all anonymous and can’t see each other. You’re a coward and your opinion is as valuable as you are.
What really supports your points is how many times you say “retard”. Also ending on “pathetic slut” really makes you seem intelligent
The main problem with the first season is that they were covering roughly twenty years worth of events in ten episodes. They didn’t have the time to make smaller characters feel more realized or to give moments time to feel their weight. My hope is some of those issues disappear now that the main event is upon us in S2 and there shouldn’t be a need to jump forward as much.I wholeheartedly agree on the childbirth scenes though. I get wanting to show how dangerous and horrific childbirth could be in medievel ages but one such scene would have sufficed.
I think I laughed at the third birthing scene. It was like, okay guys you got the point across the first time, now we are reaching near comedic repetition where your protagonist queen gave birth and now is giving a meeting in afterbirth mess.
But it wouldn’t be an adaptation of a GRRM novel if it didn’t beat you over the head with gratuitous gore!
The best way to fix the show is to build a time machine and erase the last season of GoTs
I think it’s obvious Aegon is the way he is because he felt neglected and unloved his whole life. His father was really sick and favored his older sister- they never seem to have any meaningful interactions. And his mother had him really young, is basically a single parent, and plagued with paranoia. All Alicent interactions we see with him are her scolding and criticizing him.
But House Of The Dragon was far from finished. In “The Princess And The Queen,” Daemon’s second wife, Laena Valeryon (Nanna Blondell), endured a traumatic labor that she survived, but her infant didn’t. Immediately after giving birth, she staggered out of her bedchamber and onto a Pentosi beach, where she self-immolated by dragonfire. (This despite the fact that she still had two living children and seemed to be fairly content with her life up until that moment.) JFC…you even watch this show? That is not what happened. The baby was still inside her, could not be safely born/removed w/o killing Laena and SHE chose to end the suffering, of her and basically her yet born child.
Imagine being an entertainment blogger who writes articles about “fixing” a TV show, and you can’t even keep up with basic plot points.
It is honestly infuriating. Should it grind my gears so much? No, probably not. BUT, it does, it really, really does.
It’s the smarmy superiority that does it for me. “Here’s what needs corrected in something I couldn’t be bothered to fully understand!”
*Shrug* I really liked the first season, thought it was pretty strong.
Me too. The start was a bit shaky, but the latter half of the season was solid as a rock, with some scenes as good as any on GoT.
As a former GoT fan, I didn’t give HotD a chance for two reasons. First, the botched ending to the show and the impossible to finish book series (GRRM isn’t going to ever finish it because he doesn’t know how) made me retroactively feel a bit dumb for investing so much time and energy into it. The second reason is the second slide. It’s a shitty world out there in the real world, I don’t need my escapism to be “which of these horrible people are you going to cheer for because they are the least horrible of the collected group?” In GoT, I could put up with Ned’s death, Red Wedding, Ramsay, etc. because there were protagonists out there doing things to even it out. That’s fine and might even be compelling television for many, but not for me personally at this stage of my life.
Thats a good point. I mean life was often miserable when GOT ended. Now? I turn on the news to, a dictator invading and killing hundreds of thousands in Eastern Europe. An allied nation casually blowing up civilians every day. A presidential election that threatens to tear democracy apart. Who wants to sit back and watch a civil war between two unlikable factions that’ll ultimately just kill untold numbers of people and change nothing?
I could handle the darker moments in the first three books. By AFFC and ADWD it was starting to become too much. I really hate anything to do with “Reek” and Ramsay. Just unnecessary torture porn in a book with enough suffering. At least the Red Wedding was compelling, and Ned’s death impactful. Honestly, all of the Greyjoy’s bring out the worst in the series, with the possible exception of Asha. More like House Killjoy.
made me retroactively feel a bit dumb for investing so much time and energy into it.
I get it, but go easy on yourself and remember that the majority of GoT was good, even great. It’s entertainment, so if you were entertained and enjoyed it then it wasn’t a waste of time.
I’m still a Babylon 5 fan regardless of the 5th season and spin-off(s).
I still go back and re-watch those first 5 seasons, just amazing television.
I mostly agree with these suggestions. But I can’t buy the criticism of the childbirth scenes. The same negative reaction seems to arise whenever graphic violence is visited on women in the Game of Thrones universe, whether it be sexual assaults or the stabbing of the pregnant Talia Stark. I share some of the shocked reaction to these scenes, but I think that tells us more that we react more viscerally to violence against women than that the violence is in any way unjustified or unusually graphic. It’s hard to have a Game of Thrones show that puts women characters in lead roles (as House of the Dragon does) and protects them from . . . the kinds of fates that befall people in Game of Thrones.I think it’s hard to say the men have had it easier. Viewers have seen:— a boy paralyzed after being pushed out a window— a man castrated and tortured— a man eaten by dogs— a man getting his eyes gouged out and his head crushed like a pumpkin— a man burned to death with molten gold— a man shot on the toilet— a boy impaled with an arrow as he ran to his family— a father and son burned to death together— a king rotting to deathThey’re violent shows, which often focus on the way cruelty is visited on people in terrible ways. It’s commendable that House of the Dragon as focused on women more than Game of Thrones did. But the more you focus on women in a Game of Thrones show, the more Game of Thrones-y stuff is going to happen to women.
Yeah this idea that women on GoT/HotD experience more gratuitous violence than men is frankly insane. Funniest moment of this discourse is when the Game of Thrones writers clearly preempted internet outrage when [spoiler!] they chose to cut away to Grey Worm’s reaction when Missandei is beheaded instead of showing it graphically, and of course that turned out to be sexist too, because by cutting to Grey Worm’s face they made her death “about a man” instead of it being “her story”. You just can’t win.
That cutaway is a common thing to do though no? I know for sure they like cut to some doves for Ned. Then I think maybe the next episode opened with his severed head being presented to the crowd, but still.
You have to understand: Somebody somewhere at some point said something in some way about it.
“We want women to treated equally- no, not like that.”Show a horrific mediaeval birth? Oh, well, that’s just misogyny, because men directed it – but it begs the question, would it have been better if a woman directed it? Would she have pilloried the directors (who probably didn’t write the scene) if they didn’t linger on it? Or would she have complained about marginalising the challenges of childbirth?I hope the new AV Club stops hiring painfully white Brooklyn trust fund hipsters.
Why is this a comparison thing? What’s a bigger problem right now in society violence against men or violence against women? Shut the fuck up with your sexist ju-jitsu
a boy impaled with an arrow as he ran to his familyThis is pretty far down on the show’s list of problems, but man what a non-character poor Rickon was. They probably could have brought he and Osha back sooner, or at least spared a few more scenes for him after he re-emerged. Maybe some where it’s wasn’t immediately apparent he was fucked.
It really cannot be stated enough how having nobody likable is deadly for drama. Yes, there are conflicts with no clear good factions, hell the War of the Roses that inspired the show is very messy. But your lying if you must make every single individual involved either conniving, cruel, or merely interested in power. You can make factions ambiguous, but not every player.
Not true. Succession was able to do it.
Is Succession really any different than say The Sopranos, where many of the characters are likable monsters? Or…Tony’s kids?
Charisma and being funny always help. If I just read the Wikipedia page for Paulie Walnuts I’d rightfully conclude what a scumbag screw him. But Tony Sirco rung every quirk, joke, and charm out of the script and its so easy to just ignore all the casual murder.Maybe that’s the problem with House of the Dragon. It lacks any wit or humor in its characters.
To be fair a few characters at least start off semi likable like Shiv. But by the end yeah its scumbag central. But, hmmm, maybe the fact the show isn’t about a war makes it more palpable? Or perhaps the characters were more charismatic and made it easier to ignore the faultlines?
I think there might be a connotation gap with the word “likeable.” To me Logan Roy is shockingly likeable. I find his politics abhorrent and agree with his much cooler brother that he’s arguably, by pure mathematics, the worst human ever in their fictional universe. But it’s not my universe, so I can enjoy when he tells someone to “fuck off” and they kind of deserve it. I can root for him over his cunt kids and not feel bad.
It’s the charisma 100%. I can’t tell you how much joy I got out of any time Logan Roy humbled his arrogant kids. He’s the biggest bastard on the show, but he’s electric to watch. Or any time someone would outsmart the other with a clever play. Intelligence also goes a long way in appealing to audiences. Protagonists can be unlikable characters, but there’s something universally admirable in being good at what you do.
What viewers have little patience for is incompetence. And I think that made Succession a different viewing experience from Thrones/HotD, (and most other shows). People weren’t rooting for the Roy children, but against them to fail. Audiences could still take sides based on who they liked on their own, but it wasn’t something being pushed per se, like the Team Green/Team Black stuff going on with HotD.
Ah, but Succession was able to do it because they also had that all-important levity to balance it out. If you can’t have someone to root for, have something to laugh at. HotD is humorless
It also helps that the characters of Succession are just fleshed out, well rounded characters. This bunch… not so much.
I often worry about people who like that sort of thing, because I wonder the hell they think normal relationships are like. It just makes me turn off the damn show. “OK, everyone’s a prick, they can all die in a fire, preferably burning slowly from the legs up.” Video games have discovered this style of writing, and there it’s even worse, because you, the player, are forced to be party to it. (See: every Rockstar game since GTA IV).
One of the biggest problems this show was always going to have to overcome is that the entire cast is bastards and nobody wins.
Weird takes.Were people really dissatisfied to any huge extent with Season 1? I saw loads of positive sentiment from fans and critics.The Kinjasphere is like a parallel universe sometimes.
You completely missed the point of Laena’s death. Her baby was never born. She knew she would die in childbirth. She chose to be immolated by her dragon because she was a dragon rider – you know, a warrior – and wanted to die a warrior’s death. She may not have been a character that was around for a long time, but she was clearly written. To reduce her death as being sad about a dead baby is so gross. Never mind the parallels between Damon and Viserys having to make a choice about who, if anyone to save. Did you actually watch the show?
“The series premiere, The Heirs Of The Dragon, came out swinging with a bloody, satisfying jousting sequence.”Satisfying? I thought it was appalling, and meant to show how disconnected the king was from any meaningful reality. Was it supposed to be satisfying? Would the author have been cool with it if it had been female jousters pointlessly murdering each other?
They should have a character named Goompy that randomly shows and offers the characters Campbell’s Chunky Soup.
They should have a fishmonger who sells singing fish that put Alicent into an enchanted sleep.
I mean, in the world that they are adapting one of the three main sources for what happened in the dance of the dragons is the kings fool, a dwarf named Mushroom for the reported size of his… ahem… mushroom, it wouldn’t be out of place.
How about more awkward foot stuff with Alicent?Asking for a friend.
You’re friends with Quentin Tarantino?
Hey, foot fetish stuff, fine. But giving the foot fetish to the guy whose nickname is “the clubfoot” because he has a bum foot is just…. I mean I can’t be sure I’m not a therapist or sexyologist or whatever but I don’t think that’s how it works.
I’m picturing a Property Brothers episode all about fixing up the House Of The Dragon and flipping it for a great profit. (Maybe Max can trade up to The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, or even Bodkin.)
I’m picturing the Always Sunny crew going at it the way they built the house for the “Juarez Family”.
When you wrote “lighten up”, I thought you were talking about the horrible lighting throughout much of the show, not a lack of humor. The show could, in fact, use some more humor but the bigger problem is the poor lighting that makes it hard to see what is happening
The biggest problem is that the two actors who played the (now) two main characters – the daughter and her former friend/Queen – were way more appealing than the two actors who are playing them as adults. In particular, transforming Milly Alcock, who played a kickass, likable, swashbuckling Rhaenyra, into a whining loser as an adult was disastrous.Did the story really need to go forward 20 years? Could it have taken place over a year or two instead, with story changes? I.e. was there no other way to tell the story than to subtract the personifications we had become invested in with new people we didn’t care about?
I agree they could use a little more lightness and humor. And that doesn’t even necessarily need to come from a “good guy.” Just some moments that tickles a different note than dark and grim. Especially the latter half of season 1 could have used that.
Bring back the very sexy Milly Alcock and I’ll tune in.
7 things to fix??? If there’s that much wrong with it, wouldn’t it be easier to just stick a fork in the damn thing?
I’m not the only one who thought this but the first season could’ve really benefited from two additional episodes. I think allowing for us to sit with moments and characters a bit more would’ve really worked better without really stretching things too much. Still absolutely loved the first season and think it’s easily up there with the better seasons of GoT.
The biggest problem is the lack of humor.
Even GoT wasn’t always so self-serious and had a sense of humor about itself, sometimes embodied in characters and dialogue, other times in situations.
You can tell a serious story but you have to be a really good writer to make it convincing and compelling, and the writing in HotD just isn’t. Lightening up would help hide these flaws.
I remember the water funeral for Cat Stark’s uncle or something, and I guess it was her brother who kept missing the flaming arrow shot? It was embarrassing, and funny, and just one of those moments that lightened the mood.Also Hot Pie. HotD needs a Hot Pie. Maybe a carefree sellsword like Bronn, who tells it like it is. Podrick? Wow, there was more than I remember.
I kinda felt bad for Cat’s brother Edmure at the end. When he proposes himself for king and they all basically laugh at him and tell him to sit down and shut up. Like sure it was a dumb, self serving suggestion. But the dude spent half the show in a dungeon after most if his family was murdered while he was consummating his marriage in the other room. I felt he deserved to be written with a little sympathy at that point.
Lol oh yea! Poor guy
Why would you have viable or good ideas for this show? You’re clearly not a book reader or serious fan of the source material. You’re just some casual viewer with no expertise or specialized knowledge.
“Oops! All Tywin Lannisters!” Haha, I like that.Pacing, more characters worth rooting for, and levity are the main 3 for me. Not everyone needs to have the wit of Tyrion, but what about the stoic sarcasm of The Hound, or the goofy charm of Samwell Tarly? It may be too late now, but they need to color this ensemble with a greater variety of personalities.As for investing in side characters’ back stories, that’s a good point, too. And it’s not even like Littlefinger needed entire scenes showing us where he came from or anything. We are told entirely through great dialogue (same with Varys and a number of other characters). That’s the bare minimum, and HotD shouldn’t have a problem finding the time to simply do this.
I would also note that the “lighten up” critique can be taken literally. As in LIGHT YOUR FUCKING SETS SO I CAN SEE WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING! Somewhere around Season 5 of Game of Thrones they decided to take all the lights that they had all stuff they were using to show what the hell was going on during night scenes and throw them into the nearest river. Leaving the audience helplessly squinting at the screen, hoping to be able to see a damn thing.