I freely admit that I’m not the most ardent follower of all things GAME OF THRONES; I’ve only sampled parts of several episodes of the OG series even when it was one of the last vestiges of appointment Sunday night television that drove HBO to the level of fandom and zeitgeist that defined at least its first half-century. In our humble residence, it’s my roommate that waves that flag, and two summers ago when HOUSE OF THE DRAGON debuted he championed it as ardently as he does anything that doesn’t involve politics. And even this summer as its season two has played out he has, like clockwork, commandeered our living room for the live Sunday night feed and hasn’t failed to give me updates on what transpired.
But this summer has been notably he has been notably less evangelical and ebullient, at times surprised that a show which had been defined by dramatic staging, uncompromising battles and bacchanals and cliffhangers has seemed to take on a more reflective and at times somber tone. All the while, he kept holding out hope for something bigger and better. And like I suppose many, he had all but forgotten that this season’s order was two episodes shorter and last night was indeed the season two finale.
When I knew the show had ended I half-jokingly chided him “So did more people die than get laid”? (See, I at least know SOMETHING about the Targaryen-verse). His reply was even more muted than usual “Plenty of deaths. A lot less sex. It was…OK.”.
And for a change, a “focus group” of one seems to be in symaptico with the majority of those with larger pulpits and even more investment than he has. Witness MASHABLE’s Belen Edwards:
This season on House of the Dragon, we endured the horrors of Blood and Cheese, witnessed the pivotal battle of Rook’s Rest, and welcomed new dragonriders following the fiery Red Sowing. Now, we come to the finale, and the results are… a tad underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, the Season 2 finale is by no means a bad episode of House of the Dragon. That emotional reunion between Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent (Olivia Cooke) alone is worth heaps and heaps of praise. Plus, there are plenty of juicy lore tidbits that hint at big things ahead for the show. Unfortunately, in terms of ending Season 2 with a bang, this finale fails to deliver. It plays more like a mid-season episode or a “next-on” trailer for Season 3 than a satisfying conclusion to Season 2.
And THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s James Hibberd was even less kind:
HBO cutting to black hasn’t annoyed this many TV fans since The Sopranos ended.
Season two of House of the Dragon led up to a great battle for control of Westeros — a war potentially fought on several fronts, with massive armies, impossibly high stakes, and fire-breathing dragons galore! And to see it, you’ll just have to wait a couple years for season three, since Sunday’s finale concluded moments before the action was seemingly about to get underway (“When the most action in the season finale is mud wresting,” groused one viewer).
For fans (some the heated and varied reactions below), the finale felt a bit like deja vu. The first season finale ended with a sense of “okay, now it’s war!” The second season finale has now also ended with “okay, now it’s war!” HBO’s pre-season marketing issued dueling Green vs. Black trailers and a viral marketing stunt hanging the rival Targaryen banners at historic locations, teasing an epic civil war clash between a house divided befitting of a franchise known for its epic clashes.
What ultimately has played out with Season 2 is the same kind of long-term planning that a show that is renewed for multiple seasons at the same time demonstrates. In the big picture, the promise of something epic down the road in theory should keep audiences abuzz and theoretically allow more people time to eventually digest and catch up with the franchise. That is certainly the spin that HBO tried to offer up the last time they allowed reporters a whiff at this season’s numbers, in the aftermath of the pivotal Battle at Rook’s Rest episode, which Hibberd’s colleague Rick Porter faithfully conveyed last month:
The 8.1 million viewers tops the 7.8 million who watched the season two premiere on its first night. The show’s night-one audience has slipped some this year — season one averaged better than 9 million viewers — due in part to a decline in the number of people watching via HBO’s cable channel. Streaming has made up some of that difference: The show’s all-in, first-night average is 7.5 million viewers so far this season, off by about 18 percent to 20 percent compared to season one — about half of the linear decline. HBO also says that the season opener has grown to 25 million viewers in the three weeks since it premiered, which is approaching the season one average of 29 million for HotD (HBO measures viewing of a series for 90 days after the first episode).
But that average included an uptick for the Season 1 finale, strategically scheduled for mid-October against a muted entertainment landscape that had all but conceded that Sunday night to NFL football and what turned out to be a lackluster American League championship series game between the soon-to-be-swept New York Yankees. The fact that HBO was willing to challenge the most jam-packed night of competition for the Paris Olympics–the final night of swimming and the first waves of track and field together–with the Season 2 coda was to me telling in its own right that the powers that be didn’t have as much investment–or confidence–in what they had to work with this time around.
And it doesn’t help that 90-day measurement upside, or even the potential catchup leading to what will likely be a 2026 premiere for Season 3, that reviews like this one from THE TELEGRAPH’s Ed Power, are out there waiting to be clicked on just like I did:
There’s no need to be hyperbolic, and it is important to point out that the episode was nowhere near as wretched as the conflagration of cack-handed twists and turns that tanked Thrones five years ago. But it was nonetheless a thumpingly disappointing denouement in which several key players in this chronicling of an ancient civil war within the dragon-riding Targaryen dynasty acted wildly out of character.
The biggest victim of the personality do-over was Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke), who infiltrated the castle of her best friend-turned-mortal enemy, Rhaenyra (a perpetually peeved Emma D’Arcy), to propose a peace deal.
Deal? More an abject capitulation by Alicent. Her murderous son Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) – de facto ruler of the Seven Kingdoms by virtue of owning the biggest dragon – was soon to fly off to battle. Once he had taken his leave, Alicent would open the gates to King’s Landing and surrender her “green” forces to Rhaenyra’s “blacks.”
For a company as obsessed with the chasing of green and being in the black at today’s HBO–er, MAX–, that’s hardly a ringing endorsement. And given the trajectory so far of these Olympics, there’s gonna have to be an awful lot of streaming catchup to make up for what I fully expect will be at best a modest–more likely, a significant–downtick from the 9.1 million viewers that watched that Season 1 climax.
And for as imposing as are the villainous forces in Targaryen, they are perhaps not as daunting as the overlord of all WBD who has not been shy to abort or at least diminish support for what he interprets as loss leaders or worse, impediments to his bonus. And at the rate the rest of this summer has been going for the rest of his empire, I’m not so sure that there may yet be an even more epic battle for survival ahead even before the first director’s cuts on Season 3 are available.
Even them dragons don’t scare ol’ Yosemite Zas.
Until next time…