This article contains spoilers for Fire & Blood and therefore future seasons of House of the Dragon.
In regards to adaptation, House of the Dragon is a totally different beast to Game of Thrones. There were novels to adapt for that earlier series (until there weren’t) and the plot and character development could be translated in a traditional fashion. But House of the Dragon isn’t based on a novel. It’s basis, Fire & Blood, is a history book, albeit a fictional history, and the writers have clearly encountered struggles in how such a book can be adapted into a narrative series. It worked for the first season, which at times felt like it was retaining the historical retelling feel and pace, but less so the second season, which hopefully the third can learn from.
The Targaryen civil war in Fire & Blood often reads like a series of events: battles, beheadings, and coronations, with a list of characters who were in attendance. It’s less concerned with character motivations or how people were feeling between these events. If the book was followed verbatim then Rhaenyra would barely feature in the second season. She’s on Dragonstone, raising an army, finding dragon riders. Likewise, what is Alicent doing at this time? Nothing. The book is concerned with wherever the action is, the troop movements, rather than characters. Which is fine for the type of book it is. The season had its work cut out filling in these emotional gaps, telling a character-focused tale rather a more omnipotent historical retelling.
The writers of the show took the fact that many characters were left with nothing to do and made the bold choice to make that their story this season. Rhaenyra feels trapped on Dragonstone, unable to fight the war herself and with a council who won’t listen to her. Alicent is stripped of her duty and left adrift in King’s Landing, increasingly guilty at starting a war she no longer has control over. Impatient Daemon thinks war will be easy and finds himself stuck at Harrenhal, unable to quell petty tribalism. Jace wants to fly into battle but his mother won’t allow it. Rhaena is left in charge of children and is a pawn herself but dreams of being a dragon rider. There’s good stuff to be mined here but a whole season of watching people struggling with inaction? It gets boring.
Therefore, my main hope for the third season is action. Not just battles and violence but characters doing stuff. We all thought the second season would be the start of the war but no, it looks like that’ll be season 3. While I appreciate the ideas at play in the second season, it ended in disappointing fashion. It was all set up, no pay off. A season of armies marching towards each other ending with a montage of armies marching towards each other, but now they are slightly closer! It feels like the writers thought this was another ten episode season only for the final two to be delayed until next season. There was no narrative culmination in any respect other than character arcs.
And those character arcs ended in a much less interesting place than they did the previous season. Going into the ‘total war’ that season three will apparently offer, the personal stakes now feel much lower. So much of the character conflict has been resolved before the fighting has even begun. Rhaenyra and Alicent’s personal conflict is the heart of the show, the emotional foundation of the greater war. But now it feels like they’ve come to terms with one another, some sort of agreement, before the war begins in earnest. Why should I care about a huge battle if the emotional war is already resolved? I really disliked their secret backchanneling in season two, with Alicent going from losing a grandchild to the Blacks in the premiere to siding with them and agreeing they can kill her son just seven episodes later. The third season needs to quickly have Rhaenyra and Alicent back at each other’s throats or my investment will quickly dwindle.
After reading Fire & Blood I expected the series to run for four seasons. That feels like the correct number for the amount of story to tell. This has now been confirmed, with the renewal of the show for a fourth and final season. But I was thinking four seasons before season two aired. Now that it has concluded I’m shocked at the choice. Season two ended with neither of the big events I was expecting it to. Everything was put in place for the Battle of the Gullet and Rhaenyra taking King’s Landing but neither occurred in the finale, being pushed back into season three. The show is now going to have to dramatically pick up the pace if it wants to cram everything into just sixteen more episodes. I was expecting Rhaenyra to gain King’s Landing in the season 2 finale and lose it in the season 3 finale, now it seems like that will be pushed into the season 3 and season 4 premieres respectively. I imagine the Battle Above the God’s Eye will be the big event to close the third season, after being so heavily teased in the latest episode.
The Battle Above the God’s Eye, which sees Daemon and Aemond fight and die in a dragonback duel over the lake next to Harrenhal has almost been set up as a moment of destiny. Having read the book, I don’t need to worry about spoilers but if I hadn’t I think I’d be annoyed at the second season finale. It spells out Aemond’s ultimate fate far too clearly. The show spoils what will be one of its biggest moments. I love that Helaena is a dreamer in the show, able to see the future but her insights are often ignored. I want more of her prophecies in the third season but they have to be more ambiguous like in the first. She reveals nothing of the future for most of the second season only to then bluntly spoil what will happen next season in the finale.
After struggling with inaction, Rhaenyra will finally get something to do in season three: rule. She’ll take King’s Landing fairly bloodlessly and sit on the Iron Throne. After all this time wanting to be queen she’ll find it much harder than she imagined. In the book she’s not a good ruler. It’s not the Greens that will dethrone her but the common people, the smallfolk, who grow to despise her. I really liked the focus on the smallfolk in season two and hope to see it continue, building up a sympathetic populace of King’s Landing more than Game of Thrones ever did, although it is more necessary in this show when they eventually decide to storm the Red Keep and Dragonpit. But I wonder if these events will play out the same way as they do in the book. The show presents Rhaenyra as more heroic than her book counterpart, the protagonist of the series when she is very much not that in the book, and so maybe her downfall will be more orchestrated by the Greens. I hope not but could see that being a possibility.
And while Rhaenyra is at King’s Landing I hope we get to develop her small council. I’ve read the book and yet still only know them as ‘generic old white guys #1 through #4’. There’s a Celtigar on her council and it could be interesting to get more of his perspective considering his house is also Valyrian. Alfred Broome tried to betray Rhaenyra in the season finale and I have no idea whether that was supposed to be a twist or an expected development because I know nothing about him. And I like Maester Gerardys because he’s played by the wonderful Phil Daniels but it would be nice for the show itself to give me a reason to like or dislike that character.
People who haven’t read Fire & Blood are going to be pissed off when they find out Aemond, a fan favourite character, is presumably going to spend most of his time remaining on the show at Harrenhal, going through the same sort of thing Daemon went through in season two. I liked the idea of Daemon’s ‘side plot’ more than the execution. It’s an interesting redemptive arc, with him coming to realise his selfishness and grow, but his visions quickly began to feel repetitive. His dreams needed to feel like they were escalating rather than just repeating. And Daemon comes across like an idiot because what’s happing to him is obviously Alys’ doing yet he never seems to truly realise that. I hope we learn more of her motivation in season three. What does she want? A baby? The last we get of her in the book is her pregnant with Aemond’s bastard. But while Daemon was left changed by his experiences at Harrenhal, I hope Aemond refuses to, and the two meet above the God’s Eye with Aemond representing what Daemon used to be like, killing his former self in his final moment of growth.
I do wish Daemon’s arc didn’t get so meta in the second season finale, being shown a vision of Game of Thrones to highlight that he’s essentially a character in a bigger story (a TV show) and he only needs to play his small part. I want his change to still feel like a character choice rather than acceptance that he doesn’t get a choice. But I like the direction he’s headed for season three. Obviously Nettles has been replaced by Rhaena and Daemon will grow a fatherly connection to her (that he previously refused) rather than a romantic one (although I wouldn’t put it past this show). I’m fine with the occlusion of Nettles but I wonder what the reason will be for Rhaena and Daemon to part ways before Harrenhal, considering no one will believe Rhaena could be a turncloak.
One character I’m shocked has yet to be introduced is Daeron, Alicent’s third son. He’s been mentioned multiple times and finally appears as a blurry figure on dragonback in the season two finale, but for an important character the writers have delayed his introduction as much as possible. I’m sure we’ll meet him for the first time in the third season premiere but he’ll likely just be a one-season character now, dying at Tumbleton. Instead of introducing more Hightowers, I imagine Daeron will be joined by Otto for the season, who will have a different death than being executed once Rhaenyra takes King’s Landing like the books. Otto is briefly seen in a cell in the final moments of season 2, which is perhaps the least interesting position for the character to be in. He’s best as a political agitator, that’s the role I want him in, so I hope Daeron quickly rescues his grandfather from the Beesbury prison or wherever he is, which would be a fine introduction to Daeron, and they can go on together.
I was expecting Otto to be in Essos, dealing with the Triarchy and only be revealed in a deus ex machina moment when the Triarchy ships attack the blockade in the Battle of the Gullet. But the battle has yet to happen and it was Tyland in Essos instead. I do like Tyland and hope to see more of him, which is almost guaranteed considering he’s Hand of the King when this story ends. And hopefully Corlys takes part in the eventual sea battle just to give him something to do. He’s a cool character but at this this point in the book does very little. In season two his ship never left dry dock and his arc with his bastard sons was denied closure; I expected him to legitimise them in the finale but instead he once again stood there and did nothing.
With season three, I really hope the writers come up with another way of reacting to deaths in the show. A major character will die in an episode and you just know that the next episode will be characters mourning in very similar ways before never mentioning the character again after that point. Rhaenyra and Jace mourn Luke in the premiere, with angry looks and tears in their eyes, and then it’s like he never existed in the next episode. Jaehaerys’s death is the same way, as is Corlys’ reaction to Rhaenys dying. Not only is this becoming tiring and formulaic but season three is not going to have time for characters to react like this.
Because of the shocking way the second season was paced, every episode of the third season is going to have to have some huge event, unless some battles from the book are cut. Tumbleton, mentioned for the first time in season two, is going to be the setting for two big, important battles very soon. The writers have made Ulf and Hugh much more sympathetic characters in the show than in the book. Okay, maybe not Ulf but definitely Hugh, who has family in Tumbleton. I imagine this family will be his motivation for betraying Rhaenyra rather than just greed like in Fire & Blood. I look forward to seeing Tumbleton onscreen; I imagine it’ll be a key location for the third season.
A key change from the book I’m expecting is that Aegon will appear in the third season. In Fire & Blood he disappears for a while before finally reemerging at Dragonstone at a pivotal moment (that the show won’t get to until season four) but Tom Glynn-Carney’s performance is so good I hope we check in with the character a couple of times next season. But speaking of missing characters, where’s Harrold Westerling? I was expecting him to join Rhaenyra in season two but the former commander of the Kingsguard is nowhere to be seen. He feels very inspired by Barristan Selmy from Game of Thrones, who also stormed out of the Red Keep in the first season only to return in the third, so maybe we’ll see Westerling again next season.
And finally, I’ve very curious how the show will handle the Starks moving forward. Cregan Stark was introduced at the same time as in the book but he’s not going to play a part in this story again for a very long time. In fact, I’m not expecting him to reach King’s landing until the series finale. It’s unknown at what point in Fire & Blood the show will end, where the cut off will be, but I think the ‘Hour of the Wolf’ would make for the best series finale. Cregan comes to King’s Landing and brings with him honour and duty, ideals that have completely disappeared during the war, and sets up the new regency, doing what Ned failed to do in Game of Thrones. Cregan might be the most important character as House of the Dragon comes to an end but don’t expect him to appear in season three. A whole bunch of people have to die before this story is over.
