Season 1, Episode 10: “The Black Queen”
It’s a fun game until the dragons get mad.
In Sunday’s House of the Dragon season finale, that rule mostly applied to Arrax and Vhagar. When the much smaller Arax fought back at his tormentor with a face full of fire—a tinge of Ryder Luceris turning Aymond’s eye off, the root of their rivalry—Vegger was heard around the world. I relentlessly retaliated.
But that also applies to Laenira, who is in charge of the head dragon in this story now that Viserys is gone.
She saw it this week, gave birth to her own baby before embracing her inner queen, and showed grit and self-control as she stood up to Otto, Damon, and her hawkish advisors. A shocking final scene that saw her deal with the death of Luceris before, a picture of grief-stricken and vengeful determination, the war we expected from the beginning of this series. I finally saw it finished and started. (This episode was a great showcase for Emma Darcy throughout.)
The result of all of the above and beyond is a moving and often moving show that includes many of the show’s signature elements, known in George R. R. Martin’s “Fire and Blood” book as the Dragon’s Dance. It was a season finale. Thrilling dragon action, another brutal birthing scene, another profane showdown between Damon and Otto, another mature argument between Reinis and the sea serpent, the most functional couple in this story (Sea Serpent Adventures). aside from ).
It all started with a truly terrifying day for Rhaenyra, when her father died and she learned early on that her former best friend had plotted to steal the throne from her. Did.
It was a rough start to a reign that was about to get rougher. But first, we saw the new Queen put her anger aside and grow into her role, Daemon reminding everyone just how bad-tempered he is to rule. And I started making plans to strengthen her support.
This was mostly about moving tokens around Dragonstone’s painted table, which you might recall as the place where Stannis and Melisandre envisioned Shadow Baby in “Game of Thrones.” (In lore, Aegon the Conqueror built the tables so that he could plan his conquest of Westeros.)
Rhaenyra’s cool head when others instigate war is a prominent holdout in the early scenes, throwing her support behind the new queen to Rhaenys, then the same thing to Healing Seesnake. persuaded to do
His formidable Velarion Fleet pledge is Raenira’s greatest coup, sending envoys to secure the support of three important houses: House Stark of Winterfell, House Talise of Riverrun, and House Baratheon of Storm’s End. It was reason for optimism for Laenira, who had planned Unfortunately, that optimism was short-lived.
Lucerys reeked of tragedy from the very first moments of the episode. In the opening scene, as SeeSnake sheds this deadly coil, we find him stepping onto a table caring for the drift marks he was set to inherit. “I ruin everything,” he told Rhaenyra. “I don’t want drift marks.”
Return to Westeros in “House of the Dragon”
HBO’s long-awaited ‘Game of Thrones’ prequel series is here.
- Playing Kingmaker: Fabian Frankel plays Sir Christon Cole, who is set to put the crown on the head of the new king of Westeros. I still don’t know how he got that role.
- Princess and Queen: Emma Darcy and Olivia Cooke, who play grown-up Raynira Targaryen and Aricent Hightower, talk about the power that separates and draws their characters together.
- Man’s decline: By the season’s eighth episode, Viserys no longer looks like a proud Targaryen king. Actor Paddy Considine talked about character changes and what they mean.
- Rogue Prince: Demon Targaryen is an agent of Chaos. But “he has his own weird moral compass,” said Matt Smith, who portrayed him.
Later, I saw Jacaerys drive him into the sand during sparring practice. By the time Rhaenyra told his Lucerys, “I think you’ll get a very warm welcome” at Storm’s End, things were starting to look pretty bad for him. Then the camera lingered on his departure from Dragonstone until the little boy on his little dragon disappeared into the night, I was pretty sure he was gone.
And that was before he landed, seeing first Vhagar and then Aemond at Baratheon headquarters. It was just another person showing up first with a better offer, plus a sapphire shoved into his eye socket to blind him.
A walking grudge, Aymond first taunted Luc by land, ordering him to give up the eyes Aricent had demanded at Laena’s funeral long ago, and then taunted Luc by air. With the smell of battle in their nostrils, both riders briefly lost control and that was it. rice field.
“When the dragon flew to war, everything burned,” she said, referring to the Battle of Old Valyria.
I guess we’ll have to wait until next season to see if she’s still in the Council of Wise mood after Luc’s death. . The infant’s death was terrible in and of itself, but in clever writing, it also helped show us Raenira’s deep maternal grief that preceded Luc’s murder. The episode was written and directed by Greg Yaitanes.) This caused her to convulse in pain over the loss of her son, with her back to us and her subjects while she stood by the fire. When I was able to fill in the blanks. .
Previously, in her lucid and strategic mode, Rhaenyra reminded Daemon of her responsibility to unite the realms, as presented by A Song of Ice and Fire, and her greater responsibility to humanity. (He wasn’t into it.) With this, she led directly to her late father. He tried to keep his family together until the end, spending his downtime symbolically assembling a model of Old Valyria, a civilization doomed to collapse.
Westeros still exists two centuries later, so when Game of Thrones began, no matter what wars erupted in the next season and beyond, the realm would not be completely destroyed. I already know.But when Rhaenyra turned around for the final shot this Finally becoming the most angry dragon, she looked ready to burn everything down.
A big and scary “dragon”
Will Rhaenyra burn everything down in classic Targaryen fashion? That’s a question for future episodes. But now that the first season of “House of the Dragon” is in the books, it’s worth pondering another question: Was it any good?
Well, discourse about everything tends to be nasty, but pop culture in particular falls into hard binaries. Either things are great, or they’re terrible, or it’s over.
As for “Dragon”, I heard from supporters on both sides every week. (Each episode averages about 29 million viewers, according to HBO, but many of the complainers seem to stick with it.) The truth of the matter, as always, is somewhere in between. is in
Was the first season great? No. The focus on one family and the tense discussions in the dark room gave the series a claustrophobic atmosphere, but it was also bound by various constraints related to gender, birth order, royal responsibilities, and more. It’s tonally helpful in a story about people feeling on — getting more and more weary as the season progresses. (For the record, I wasn’t as annoyed by the occasionally dark cinematography as others, but I get it.)
Another, more fundamental truth is revealed each week. This show doesn’t at least yet have the qualities I liked most about ‘Game of Thrones’.
Scale; a kaleidoscopic travelogue experience that sees enchanting worlds revealed week after week. The narrative diversity of a dozen different storylines and the thrill of seeing them come together. dark comedy; movie sets and spectacle—“Dragon” had very little of it.
Then there were the more detailed issues inherent in the story and its structure. Frequent time jumps and necessary cast changes had a distancing effect, as viewers associated with the performers rather than the characters. And I remember the cacophony of the two Beckies in “Roseanne.” “Dragon” was a similar sensation on an almost weekly basis.
The gaps in time allowed chunks of each episode to be handed off to expository dialogue, with erratic characterizations to be seen. and accepted her planned dominance and usurped it. Their friendship and their spasms, of course, are the defining elements of the story.
I don’t blame Olivia Cooke. She skillfully juggles Aricent’s fickle emotions, and her powers of persuasion even when she does ridiculous things on the show, such as attacking Laenira with a dagger and misinterpreting Viserys’ dying words. had. The entire cast was great throughout.
Which brings us to the other half of the binary: Is ‘House of the Dragon’ terrible? It’s far from it, and there’s plenty of reason to think it’ll get better as it goes.
Whatever the time-jump flaws, casting directors consistently found good actors to fill each iteration of the character. Ewan Mitchell as an adult Amond is a compelling performer these days.
The battles and campaigns take the show out of the castle that locked it in for most of the first season.All these shots of the Painted Table have probably doubled as a preview of where we’re going in season 2. Conflict It also probably boosts. Eliminates the spectacle factor and eliminates the need for jarring time jumps.
So I’m bullish for next season. Most importantly from a big picture standpoint, “Dragon” nailed the most compelling aspects of Martin’s storytelling at its best. namely, the sense that history is driven by people and their recognizable and sometimes petty hopes, fears, and flaws. Consider that the dragon dance has apparently only just begun thanks to the legacy of battles between children many years ago.
Whatever the storyline or connection, the important thing that ‘Dragon’ shares with ‘Thrones’, especially compared to something like ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Ring of Power’ If it’s that dirty and naive sense of humanity. (I’m not here to start a fight — I’m thrilled if you liked it, but it was too eloquent and grand for me.)
Come on dragon doing dragon things. Stay for people to be people. Sunday night could be worse.