DJariya

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/house-o...queen-alicent/

Why So Blu?

Triflin'!!! Good episode and I already hate the queen. Olivia Cooke is always awesome, though. She should have gotten nominated for an Oscar for her role in The Limehouse Golem - one of my favorite films of that year.

I guess the gimp advisor to the queen may be a Littlefinger ancestor.

Mike86

I knew it was coming but the time jump and the new casting really threw me. The actress playing Alicent I can buy, but the one playing Rhaenyra I have a hard time seeing as an adult version of the character. Laenor is also quite annoying.

hdtv00

https://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...-flash-forward

MrX

Vhagar looked good and some of the close ups they added details to show her age.

Viserys is going to look like Melisandre when she took the necklace off by next episode.

Chuckled at Helaena with the foreshadowing

B.A.

B.A.

Ha!

B.A.

I am unfamiliar with Emma D’Arcy and her work, but I thought she did a great job.

fujishig

Just a head's up but I believe Emma prefers they/them pronouns, though I know it's going to be hard to keep straight.

I feel like they didn't make it clear that Laena was going to die either way. Like I was fully expecting her to be able to live if they killed the baby or something, so when she did what she did I was surprised (also surprised that she could basically escape all those people and make her way to her dragon, but oh well). It didn't feel like Daemon let her do what she did, so in a lot of respects he was much better than his brother about it.

I have no idea how that plot was supposed to make Viserys go back to Otto but I guess it happens. Just seems like a stretch considering it's been a decade and the reason he ousted Otto. But I guess it'll move the plot along.

The actor changes were a bit jarring, especially on the Rhaenyra side, but I do see the resemblance they were going for and I get that that first scene especially would have been a bit hard to take if Milly had done it.

Decker

Well that was eventful. Remember how everyone said that Game of Thrones was in such a rush to finish? Well at least they were up against a clock. I found this episode pretty disconcerting with the decade jump. Felt like half the time I was just struggling to keep everyone straight and their motivations properly aligned. It’s an interesting Delma that they managed to navigate for the most part. But again I wonder : what’s the rush? Doesn’t HBO want this show to last years? Is the source material so thin that they had to Yada Yada over a decade in royal court? It’s hard to feel invested in these characters if they might die of old age whenever the show runners decide to do the next time jump.

windom

This was so confusing. It hasn't been bad before, but now they introduce a ton of new characters and I have no idea who anyone is or what's going on. Feel like I may have to drop this soon if things don't become easier to follow for a stupid person like myself.

MrX

Pretty much. The part of the book they're basing the series off, if they end it after the Dance of the Dragons, is only a couple hundred pages long. The book is written like a history book so there's not a lot of detail to events.

Josh-da-man

The story they're telling now isn't anywhere near the scope that A Game of Thones/A Song of Ice and Fire was. As MrX said, the book this is based on, Fire and Blood, isn't a novel, it's more of a text book or history book than a novel. As the title of the series, House of the Dragon, implies, it's more centered on the Targaryens (and, apparently the Velaryons) than Westeros at large.

They're doing all of these time jumps because there's just not a lot of stuff going on at the moment, and they've been putting all of the pieces into place for the coming Dance of the Dragons.

As for how long the series can last, I think they're looking at making this sort of an anthology that tells stories about the Targaryen House throughout history. There's other stuff they can cover like Aegon's Conquest and the Blackfyre Rebellion, and they've even hinted that they might even go back to Old Valyria.

The Dance of the Dragons could probably end in the second or, more likely, third season.

Mike86

I had a harder time following this episode than the previous ones too. I think between the aged up characters and new characters introduced there was a lot going on.

Kind of like was talked about in the behind the scenes feature at the end- this was almost like a second pilot episode in some ways.

MrX

Aging up a characters that had minor roles seems to causing a lot of confusion.

I've seen a lot of people miss the fact that Daemon's wife, Laena, was the 12 year old Corlys tried to marry off to Viserys earlier in the season.

B.A.

I don’t care about the pronouns.

Emma is a woman - playing a woman on a tv show.

She did a great job.

B.A.

I don’t understand the confusion.

there are not dozens of families on the show running around with platinum blonde hair.

fujishig

I could understand getting confused when they introduce like 7 new children, similar to how I got all the Starks/Snow confused when they introduced all of them together in the original. Laena, I don't get the confusion, given her name (being so similar to her brother's) and what they set up at the wedding. Harwin Strong taking a bigger role is also probably a little confusing seeing as how many like big bearded men there are. Beyond that, it's still pretty straightforward, just with Harwin in the spot that Cole once inhabited, and Cole switching sides out of spite.

They could have dragged this on but I don't see the point: in the original, the complaint was that they had a deadline and didn't adapt enough of the book or follow the storyline, in this they actually don't have enough book and are embellishing. The last thing I'd want is for them to just make even more stuff up whole cloth and struggle to get to the same spots (or tread water). It seems like the meat of this is going to be coming up, the clash between Rhaenyra and Alicent's sides, so getting to that point instead of seeing Rhaenyra sneak around with Harwin makes sense to me.

I'm interested in what Otto cooks up because while as of now one side has like every dragonrider but one and an entire fleet, the other side has like one kid dragon rider who is also the heir they are protecting plus... Mikey Day and Cristen Cole.

Decker

I knew who everyone was, but it was weird that we were supposed to appreciate that two of the main characters both had the person they cared about the most die by flame - - yet until this very episode we had no idea that either one was even in a relationship with the future briquettes.

cultshock

I was ok following what was going on and who most of the characters were, but it took awhile to get used to the actor changes.

ViewAskewbian

Non-binary House of the Dragon star reflects on playing women (pinknews.co.uk)

But yes, yes they did a great job.

B.A.

They is plural.

Emma did great.

B.A.

Miguel Sapochnik is leaving after this season? WTH.

https://www.avclub.com/house-of-the-...xit-1849580206

fujishig

I mean, technically this happened in the first episode too...

windom

What was going on with the guy cutting the dude's tongue out? I was completely lost at that point.

So are we expected to believe that princess just traded one knight for another?