This article contains major spoilers forHouse of the Dragon Season 2 episode 7: The red sowing.
The second cycle ofHouse of the Dragonhas indeed been as occasionally frustrating as it is often spectacular.
Sometimes, though, you should probably let a dragon be a dragon.
He has claimed the dragon Seasmoke as his mount and proven his Valyrian heritage.
Rhaenyra is at first rightly wary while entreating with this stranger.
I am glad of it.
We should all welcome such happy tidings.
Nonetheless, it sometimes seems like the show is struggling to create drama between the high points whichGeorge R.R.
Martins faux-historical text,Fire & Blood, lay out for the series.
And how each character reacts becomes instantly fascinating.
This creative choice feels right.
Rhaenyra is a woman who knows all too well the worthiness of a bastardor the worthlessness of a knight.
Yet it is by expectations and social mores alone that Jacaerys can hang onto his birthright.
Undoubtedly, some viewers flinched when he referred to Addam and other dragonseeds born of illicit nights as mongrels.
He is afraid of robbing the Targaryens of their mystiquehimself especially.
A Little Kings Landing Medicine
Her decision echoes throughout Westeros in curious ways.
Take for instance, Larys Strong in Kings Landing.
This actually began when he stripped his friend Ser Criston Cole from an office he was glaringly unfit for.
Similarly, relying on drinking buddies to be the Kingsguard is a recipe for disaster.
Unfortunately for these lads, termination from the Kingsguard means the Wall.
What are we to make of Larys attempting to help Aegon recover from his grievous wounds?
There is clearly no love lost between Larys and Aemond.
Yet I dont think Larys truly thinks Aegon will ever rebuild his authority.
We have here one fairly repellent character pitying another.
Corlys barely hides his disapproval when he tersely congratulates Addam on his unlikely success.
Instead the dramatic catharsis of Addam and Alyns changed fortunes are undercut by manufactured and unconvincing conflict.
Instead Corlys forcing Alyn to keep his head down drains this subplot of any semblance of joy or excitement.
So seeing that damnable goat bedevil Prince Daemons dreams tonight was yet again amusing.
I do not envy the creative problem season 2 presented for showrunner Ryan Condal and his fellow writers.
What little Martin tells us about Daemons experiences during this leg of the war at Harrenhal is thin.
One was painfully simple and lurid, whereas this new alternative is filled with nuance and psychosexual horror.
Harrenhal isnt haunting inHouse of the Dragon; its exhausting.
And rather than getting to reveal new layers in Daemon, Smith has been siloed into walking in circles.
It is refusing to let the dragon be a dragon.
With Lord Tully of Riverrun dead, young Oscar Tully is now the Lord of the Riverlands.
Long may he reign.
He also has no time for Daemons condescension.
Daemon sloppily does the deed in a scene that plays false.
Nay, it is magnificently terrifying, even with all that smoke.
Rhaenyra plucks potential dragonfire right out from beneath Aemonds blind grasp.
What are we to make of Rhaenyra this evening?
For many, she insists, death might seem better than a life of endless toil and hardship.
Its an image many television viewers adored and cling to still.
She is standing in front of a band of subjects and extended family who will soon die screaming.
She doesnt want to kill any of them.
Plus, what she is doing has a bleakly practical logic to it.
In the sense that she is a Targaryen, and is finally acting like a dragon.
A dragon only cares about the power you presentor dont as you cry into the flames.
Yet that is the real point of the series, no?
Its an infantilizing and exploitative system, and it is derived by the deadly firepower of dragons.
No one would mistake this beer-sodden fool for a god, even with a dragon between his legs.
He betrays the mystique which a fellow bastard like Jaecerys guards jealously.
And the regent also betrays the Targaryen lie when he barely turns Vhagar from cruising into a bruising.
At last, Rhaenyra has found seedlings of power that can take root.
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Rating:
4 out of 5
