Summary

House of the Dragonis one of the few TV shows that’s gripping me at the moment. I liked the opening ofThe Acolyte, but it lost its way with the pointless cameos. Season 3 of The Bear was disappointing and felt rushed. The Boys has been deteriorating for the past two seasons, avoiding clever satire and straying too far intojust pointing at real things that happened in US politics and copying them outright.

House of the Dragon has been doing things right. I miss Paddy Considine’s stellar performance in Season 2, but the slow-burn politics are reminiscent of earlyGame of Thronesand the awestriking dragon fights add gargantuan hits of excitement.

The giant beast Vhagar emerging from slumber in the sand, as a small Aemond Targaryen sets out to claim it.

However, the penultimate episode of the season has been divisive to say the least. As Rhaenyra Targaryen seeks riders for her three dragons in order to turn the tides of war and reclaim her throne, she looks to lowborns. Minor characters who we’ve followed throughout the season are rounded up and brought to Dragonstone. These are characters who have existed before only to give the world some flavour, to show what the everyday worker in King’s Landing feels about the war.

I thought the show was going to take these characters and extinguish their heartwarming backstories of protecting families and laughing in taverns in a vile bout of dragon flame. That would have been very Game of Thrones, after all. Instead,House of the Dragon made three lowborn characters befriend great dragons, assembling behind Rhaenyra to ward off Aemond, setting up a dragontastic season finale.

Vermithor staring at Daemon Targaryen when he visited the Dragon in Dragonstone.

More dragons is always a good thing, in my eyes. The show is called House of theDragon, after all. And lowborn dragonriders present myriad opportunities for conflict between characters. Rhaenyra’s council rejects the idea and her bastard son Jacaerys resents her. While I’m all for class squabbles in fantasy, it’s this latter conversation that really struck home how important this decision could be.

Jacaerys is heir to the throne, should Rhaenyra be successful in reclaiming it. But he’s an illegitimate son. The only thing that makes him a Targaryen, he believes, is the fact he can ride a dragon. With lowborn commoners mounting the fearsome beasts as well, he feels redundant. Not only is his birthright at risk, his identity is being eroded. And his mother doesn’t have the answers. She must win this war, at whatever cost.

Hugh Hammer staring down Vermithor in his nest as Vermithor decides whether to burn him or not

These interactions are what House of the Dragon is (and early seasons of Game of Thrones were) known for. Fraught political conversations, often sparking discord between close family members. I want to see where this thread goes, how the Targaryens further unravel. Lowborn dragonriders present numerous problems for the ruling class, and it’s in this conflict that the show will thrive.

But there’s a problem. George R. R. Martin doesn’t like the idea. It wasn’t in the book (the ones he’s actually finished, that is). And therefore fans hate the idea, too. Nothing can change from the established canon, nothing must veer away from the author’s original intent. Except, as countless adaptations have shown, they can and often do.

Seasmoke confronting Addam of Hull before being claimed by him.

This isn’t always a bad thing. The Peter JacksonLord of the Ringsmovies, my go-to example for changing a beloved book, made great changes to Aragorn and Boromir and awful changes to Gimli. The most important chapter in the book is skipped completely. But they’re beloved films because they’regood. Martin has a different problem: he hasn’t written the canon he wants the adaptation to adhere to.

“[Dragons] bond with men… some men… and the why and how of that, and how it came to be, will eventually be revealed in more detail in The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring and some in Blood & Fire,” he explains on hisblog. He threatens the issues that arise if you ignore the canon, but how can adaptors understand the canon if you haven’t written it yet? I’m not trying to rag on a fantasy great here, but if you wanted creative control, you needed a more watertight contract and shouldn’t expect TV producers to read your mind.

‘Blood & Fire’ seems to be a typo for Fire & Blood, the second volume of which is currently being written.

However, we also encounter another problem with the lowborn dragonriders: the execution. The final scene of episode seven shows Ulf, a lowborn drunkard elevated to dragonrider by way of his dubious Targaryen heritage, flying across King’s Landing to antagonise Aemond. He woops with joy as his scaled beast swoops over the rooftops, the camera positioned as if it’s on Silverwing’s neck.

It feels tacky, to put it bluntly. The first thing it brought to mind was the final scene of Prisoner of Azkaban, where Harry Potter rides Buckbeak the Hippogriff through the Hogwarts grounds. Then we transition into a shot of Rhaenyra with three dragons and their lowborn riders behind her. It’s a shot made for posters and to be shared online with captions like, “Yaaasss Queen”. But it feels forced. It feels like Daenerys being framed with Drogon’s wings in the ill-fated final season of Game of Thrones. It’s not a shot for the show, it’s a shot for the marketing, and the final moments of the episode therefore leave a sour taste in the mouth.

I don’t hate the idea of lowborn dragonriders, but I’ve only ever read one George R. R. Martin book and couldn’t bear to start another. The premise sets up political tensions that perfectly embody Martin’s work, at least in adaptations, but House of the Dragon needs to be careful in how it attempts to pull it off. The final episode of Season 2 will tip the scales in either direction, and I’m crossing my fingers that it leans towards political intrigue rather than shoddy humour.