Chris Connor reviews the seventh episode of House of the Dragon season 2…
House of the Dragon’s sophomore season has surprisingly taken a more sedate pace than expected, favouring slow gradual storytelling. The penultimate episode sees a payoff for this as threads and character arcs developed across the season payoff and storylines unexpectedly intersect.
We pick up in the aftermath of the previous episode with an unknown individual able to ride Seasmoke. This sets up one of the main threads of the episode with Princess Rhaenyra and Mysaria in search of potential candidates to ride the dragons without riders, which would give them an edge in the coming war, especially against the might of Vhagar. Emma D’Arcy delivers some of their best work in this episode, showing Rhaenyra’s desperation to get an advantage against the forces of the greens.
The episode is heavily focused on the blacks with Daemon continuing his attempts to win allies in the Riverlands, still haunted by ghosts of his past actions. While Matt Smith has been as compelling as ever this season, it does seem like the writers have struggled with what to do with his fan-favourite character, isolating him from the rest of the cast. Of course, there is the potential for this storyline and development to have a payoff in the finale and beyond, but it sometimes feels like it repeats itself.
Alicent’s role may be smaller but adrift from the court she is so accustomed to we get to see what she is like separated from her family and desperate to keep herself in a position of authority. Olivia Cooke once again excels and in stark contrast to the position of Rhaenyra at this stage.
With just one episode remaining this is one of the strongest episodes of House of the Dragon’s second season giving its gradual storytelling ample payoff as some of the seemingly unrelated threads and storylines linkup in a rewarding fashion. It will be interesting to see how the finale builds on this episode and with the shorter runtime, it successfully stands on its own while building towards the in-development third season.
The season has benefited from a tighter narrative focus, giving us more focus on individual arcs and building towards a conflict, rather than the years/decades spanning storytelling of the first season. We can only hope the finale rounds the season in the manner it deserves.
Chris Connor
