The Short Take:
A strong, surprisingly epic end to this first season.
Image Credit: YouTube/Leo Nunes
Dragon Count: 9
(A new dragon! And he’s a big boy.)
[SPOILER WARNING: It’s a season finale, y’all. I’m not sure I even owe you a pithy dragon reference at this point.]
The Long Take:
War has begun. And we got to see exactly when, where, and how — the very moment — it started.
A line from George R. R. Martin’s Fire and Blood, which I have oft heard quoted on podcasts all season long, begins the Targaryen civil war of succession with a simple yet potent line: “Then the storm broke, and the dragons danced.” The moment Rhaenyra’s son Lucerys, flying through the wind and rain on his dragon Arrax, with Aemond and Vhagar in hot pursuit, finally finds some clear skies, I heard these words echoing in my head. That was the moment I stopped lying to myself and said, “Oh, he’s toast.” The storm broke, the clouds parted, and just when he (and viewers who hadn’t heard this portentous line from the book) thought he’d gotten away, Vhagar comes out of nowhere and bites Arrax in half, swallowing Lucerys Targaryen, heir to Driftmark, along with him.
One of the signs of a great season finale is when I want to skip right to talking about the ending. And while I didn’t get to make my usual rounds with HotD podcasts this week, I still got the sense from friends I talked to and the Internet at large that fans were most a-buzz about this predatory dragon chase scene. There were so many things to appreciate, from the payoff of gradually showing us Aemond and Luc’s turbulent relationship in past episodes, to the suspense of a well-paced and blocked chase, to brutal dragon on dragon violence, unlike anything we’ve seen before.
I would say, though, that while this scene brought the finale to a shocking conclusion, it was not entirely surprising. That is, I kind of knew Luc’s death was coming, and yet the construction of the scene still had me clutching my face, heart pounding, the entire time. I experienced a sinking feeling once Jace suggested he and Luc deliver messages to Rhaenyra’s sworn houses in person, and once I saw how Rhaenyra did not want to let them go; one of them was bound to die. Or at least something else disastrous would happen to one of them. This is a Game of Thrones series, after all; everything is ominous, especially when loved ones part. Then, once I saw Vhagar, Aemond’s dragon, parked outside of Storm’s End, the home of the Baratheons, Luc’s odds of survival plummeted. I didn’t know how, but I knew then and there that he would almost certainly die at Aemond’s hand.
Image Credit: The Hollywood Reporter
The suspenseful writing and the directing of this and past episodes led me to openly delude myself into thinking that he might make it out alive. Luc’s just a messenger with safe passage, right? He seems like one of the only good, not power hungry Jon Snow type characters, so he has to stick around, right? But this is Aemond we’re talking about. Even if Lord Borros says the equivalent of “not in my house; go get someone else’s carpet bloody,” Aemond was still never going to play fair or let his grudge go. This is the guy who as a teenager claimed a dead woman’s dragon on the day of her funeral instead of letting her grieving daughter take a crack at it first. (Remember how salty I was about that in Episode 7?) So no, safe passage was never really on the table. It was more a matter of when than whether.
The bigger point of debate surrounding this sequence stems from the look on Aemond’s face after Vhagar has taken a chomp out of Arrax. He looks upset and almost full of regret, as if he did not intend for his bullying to go this far. I interpreted this look a little more as just an “oh no, I just started a war. I shouldn’t have done that” rather than a “I wish I hadn’t killed my nephew” look. Because honestly, what did Aemond think would happen taking Vhagar out to chase down Luc? I mean, really. How did he think that was going to end? I’d like to think he’s a little more worldly than that by this point. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to how complicit Vhagar is in all this in the Dragon Watch section at the end.) The flack he’s going to get from Alicent and Otto when they hear what he’s done is probably more on his mind. He didn’t have permission to kill Luc, and as the second son it’s not really his place to make that call — to start the war. It’s also just sloppy for Team Green to kick things off this way.
I’ve seen some folks complaining that this yet again hinges the entire war on a misunderstanding or a mistake, citing Viserys talking to Alicent about Aegon’s dream upon his deathbed as the other case. Does Aemond’s look of remorse — whether it be more heartfelt or more political — undercut his character’s agency? I don’t think so. My understanding of Fire and Blood is that it is first and foremost an historical text and plays with the idea that different characters have different accounts of the same event, but we as readers in the future can never really know what happened. House of the Dragon, according to its creators, is the “definitive” account, and I think that gives the series the unique opportunity to show us the humanity behind the history. How historians will never know what was going through Aemond’s head that day — no one can.
Except the audience of the show. The camera can be invasive and intimate for us in a way no character in the story or Westerosi historian can. This is especially true for Aemond’s murder of Luc because Aemond will likely act as though he intended to do this all along, for the sake of preserving his pride. He sounds a lot more formidable if he keeps the “oopsie” part of this a secret; he only benefits from taking ownership over Luc’s death in the name of protecting Aegon’s claim to the Throne.
Image Credit: Polygon
This splashy, action-heavy sequence bucks Game of Thrones tradition in a big way. More often than not, season finales for Thrones had an action-packed, eventful penultimate episode followed by a more epilogue-esque finale. In fact, when I looked up an episode synopsis for each season, the descriptions for finale episodes frequently use the word “aftermath,” implying that the main, climactic event had happened the episode prior. This set my expectations for this episode fairly low in terms of crazy, high-stakes plot points. Sure, Rhaenys would clearly go to Dragonstone to bring news of the Green coup to Rhaenyra, but after that I expected a lot of conversations about what to do next, a ramping up of the political tension as a way to set up Season 2.
We did get those conversations. Lots of them. But we also got big events that matched the energy of the penultimate episode. Not only did a dragon try to eat another dragon (!!!), but Rhaenyra went into premature labor upon hearing of Viserys’ death and Aegon being crowned in front of the people of King’s Landing. She gives birth to a stillborn baby and has to have a funeral for that child while also being crowned with her dead father’s crown (who, again, she just found out died) that a Kings Guard knight miraculously steals from the Red Keep. Oh, and through all of that she has to pull together the realm and hold a war council. That’s A LOT for a finale, even without the Aemond/Luc dragon chase.
Yes, the dragon chase at the end of the episode made it more thrilling and epic than I expected. But I don’t mean to focus on Luc and Aemond at the expense of Rhaenyra. This final episode, after all, actually ends with her reaction to the news that Aemond has murdered Luc. Emma D’Arcy brought her A-game here; looking straight at the camera, she shows the perfect cocktail of grief and anger that I know will propel Team Black into this war with a fire — an ire — of which Team Green has no idea she’s capable. A nice tension in the episode is this question of should she be more like Daemon, an aggressive warmonger, or more like Viserys the Peaceful, who was too passive. This one look told me that she would take what she needed from both approaches. She tried not to be the one to start the war, but now that it has started, the gloves are going to come off. In a behind the scenes featurette, Emma D’Arcy said she thinks that the death of Luc forever changes Rhaenyra, and I believe that based on her performance here.
Image Credit: Entertainment Weekly
I really should not have been so surprised that the finale was as big as the penultimate episode and centers on Rhaenyra because House of the Dragon has always revolved around Rhaenyra and Alicent, as the leaders of Team Black and Team Green. So it makes perfect sense that we would get twin finales. In general, this reinforces that House of the Dragon has been its own show rather than a poor facsimile of Game of Thrones, and I think that has been the key to the series’ success as a prequel. Some critics bemoaned the absence of geographical vastness and continent-hopping of Game of Thrones or the lack of humor of witty banter that we had become accustomed to in the progenitor series, but I really liked that Condal and Sapochnik said, no, we don’t have to do that. We don’t have to imitate Thrones beat for beat because we’re telling a different story and need to make choices that suit that story. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the more insular political drama fused with family drama. If you’re trying to describe the series to someone who hasn’t watched it yet, I might recommend saying, “It’s Netflix’s The Crown, but with dragons and more murder.” And that combination apparently makes for riveting TV (for me, anyway).
This finale, as I said, is really all about Rhaenyra, which gives her an edge over Alicent in terms of which character the storytelling positions as the show’s protagonist. The show has chosen a side; I actually think the show chose sides when Rhaenyra saw the white stag back in Episode 2, but this finale, down to the title, “The Black Queen,” cements this. (Episode 9 isn’t called “The Green King.”) And the structure of the episode communicates that beautifully by echoing the traumatic childbirth in Episode 1 and the standoff on the Dragonstone bridge in Episode 2.
The theme of the birthing room being a royal woman’s battleground returns as Rhaenyra’s stillborn birth and infant funeral mirrors her own mother and “heir for a day” brother’s deaths in Episode 1. This series has genuinely committed to showing how a patriarchal monarchy forces extremely perilous childbirth upon its women. While I’d like to believe that this is well-intentioned from a feminist perspective, I’m not totally ready to declare the show as a whole as feminist. My colleague Sarah Mesle’s recent piece for the LA Review of Books, for example, sheds light on several problems the series faces. She points to how Rhaenyra says she wants to do whatever she wants in her youth and then as a wife and mother is “shocked” when people question her children’s legitimacy. In conclusion, Mesle says, “I think the problem is that the show uses my feminism to try to make me root for Rhaenyra’s succession, instead of taking my feminism seriously enough to really write a show about why feminism matters. Misogyny drives the plot. But the show can’t really decide how much misogyny matters to being a person in this world.” This opened my eyes a bit and made me reevaluate the entire series to date.
The misogyny-driven moment in this episode that made me pause most was when Daemon grabbed Rhaenyra by the throat. This, of course, brings domestic abuse into their relationship. I didn’t appreciate that. I didn’t think it was particularly necessary. I just didn’t want that for those two characters. Thrones was notorious for glorifying violence against women, and House of the Dragon has gotten more praise relatively for its portrayal of events from the perspective of female characters. The throttling seems like a step backwards. Sarah Mesle’s idea about the show drawing attention to sexism but not totally knowing what to do about it brought me back to this scene because it undercuts Rhaenyra’s power in their relationship in a way that undercuts her character’s (feminist) power on the show.
I have to remember, of course, that this series has already established that Daemon murdered his first wife in cold blood. So, then I thought, this is kind of on me, wanting to like Daemon and find good in him when the show is very clearly and loudly saying nope he’s not a good guy. I shouldn’t like him or get upset when he does reprehensible things. One of the best memes I’ve seen for this series said something along the lines of, “Why is everyone getting so worked up about Daemon? You know this show is about which war criminal is your favorite, right?”
But, then, again, I go back to what I want out of Daemon’s character and what I wanted from the show’s portrayal of Rhaenyra. I want him to be a genuine ally. Matt Smith, of course, has played Prince Philip on Netflix’s The Crown, and that character resents having to play second banana to a woman in power a lot. It arguably ruins their marriage. I think this series could push more in a feminist direction if it showed male characters willing to rebel against the patriarchy as well. Daemon trying to dominate Rhaenyra with physical force — even if he is taking out his anger towards Viserys in doing so — ruins that opportunity he has to support Rhaenyra as a female ruler and defer to her judgment. He does do this elsewhere in the episode; so I think my preference would have been to not taint that with domestic violence and a power struggle between the two of them here.
This controversial scene — which would have been better without the choking — was more meaningful for the story because it shows how the ghost of Viserys haunts Daemon and Rhaenyra’s marriage. We learn that Daemon knows nothing of Aegon’s dream even though he was heir at the start of the show. This conversation reminded me that before they were partners, Rhaenyra and Daemon were rivals for the position of Viserys’ heir. In fact, a young Rhaenyra tells Daemon to kill her if he really wants the Throne, remember? And that brings us to the other instance of symmetry: Daemon and Otto facing each other on the Dragonstone bridge while Rhaenyra flies in to disrupt the tension and shift the balance of power. I love a good callback, and, for me, this scene beautifully took ownership over the time jumps that many have critiqued. When Rhaenyra — now played by a different actress — flies in on Syrax, it’s very noticeable how so much in the story has changed because we have covered so much time.
Image Credit: Radio Times
My one beacon of feminist hope now is Rhaenys because she becomes the ally that Daemon is not. She has gone from reinforcing the patriarchy by telling Rhaenyra that she can never be Queen to standing beside her and smiling at her (a lot! it was so cute) in support as they stand around the map of Westeros. This, to me, is the series trying (whether or not it succeeds is another thing) to say that feminism matters to characters in this world. The highest Alicent can hope for is guiding the men who rule, and Rhaenys notes that she’s only trying to “make a window in the wall of your prison.” After seeing how Rhaenyra treats her with more civility and respect, however, she says, “That girl is holding the realm together at the moment. A room full of men who would plunge the realm into war and she is the only one with any restraint.” She sees Rhaenyra as ruling instead of men and in opposition to men rather than through men like Alicent, and Rhaenys wants to live in that world.
Dragon Watch:
I’ve already covered the biggest dragon-related event — the dragon v. dragon fight, though it wasn’t a very evenly matched fight, to be honest. All I’ll add to that scene on the dragon front is that this cashed in on an earlier training scene that Jace has with Vermax in the dragon pit. His teacher says that a dragon rider has to work hard to bond with his dragon if he wants him to obey his orders and listen to no one else. We clearly see the consequences of not having as strong a bond when Luc and Aemond both shout orders at their dragons who seem to stop listening after a certain point and take matters into their own hands. First, Arrax goes after Vhagar even though Luc doesn’t want him to, and then Vhagar goes for the jugular in retaliation without Aemond’s express command.
There are a couple of different implications here. First, can we still blame Aemond for Luc’s murder? I say yes. Even if these dragons went rogue at the end, they were very much following their riders’ leads — Arrax trying to defend Luc who was clearly under threat and Vhagar finishing what she very reasonably assumed Aemond wanted to happen when he started chasing them. But the dragons making decisions beyond their riders’ command brings up a debate that the show has represented as a part of Targaryen culture. On the one hand, Viserys believes that men should never have trifled with dragons because they are too dangerous — one could say that using dragons is like playing with hot Targaryen fire. Daemon, on the other hands, tells Rhaenyra that Targaryens are powerful not because of prophecy but because of dragons. Who will be right? Luc’s tragic end is one point for team “Viserys says don’t mess with dragons.”
Daemon doubles down and very clearly thinks that their entire wartime strategy should revolve around their dragon power. First, he lists all the dragons that they have on their side, pointing out that they outnumber the three dragons on Team Green. As a dragon-tracking fan, I felt very seen by Daemon’s roll call, and was relieved to hear it was pretty much the same as what I had listed in my review last week. The only thing better might have been the look on Rhaenys’ face when he includes her dragon, Meleys, in the count because she at that point hadn’t officially joined Team Black. It was the closest to an “Excuuuuuse me?” we’ll ever get on this show. Daemon also shows his commitment to dragon power when he claims a SECOND dragon for himself. See why I keep trying to find reasons to like this guy? What a baller move. And he sings in High Valyrian? If I were a dragon, Matt Smith singing High Valyrian would definitely work on me. The lucky recipient of Daemon’s dulcet tones is Vermithor, known as “the Bronze Fury.” He was once the dragon of King Jaeherys (the king before Viserys), and after Jaeherys died he remained unclaimed until now. He’s big enough and fierce enough to be the perfect answer to Vhagar next season.
Image Credit: Cosmopolitan
Once of the most pleasant surprises of this series has been its use of the dragons. I always felt like the fantasy elements of Game of Thrones — primarily exhibited through dire wolves and dragons — was much richer in Martin’s novels than in the series Game of Thrones. It felt like they were trying to use their CGI budget as sparingly as possible. I do not get that sense from House of the Dragon, which seems to understand that putting dragon in your title means that you actually need to make the dragons a part of the story. We’ve been promised 17 dragons total for the series, which leaves us with 8 to go.
I can’t wait for our count to keep rising, but we’ll, unfortunately, have to wait until 2024 to see Season 2. That gives me plenty of time to read Fire and Blood. And study up on more dragons.