Here’s my review of House of the Dragon S3E02 and whilst it was a good episode again, it really should have been the Season 2 finale. As always I am trying to stay as spoiler free as possible, but I’ll assume you’ve at least watched Season 2 of the series.
I’ll start simply by saying I really enjoyed this episode, not quite as much as last week, but any criticisms I have are minor. My main gripe boils down to episode placement and the cut budget/episode count for Season 2.
I really enjoyed the Season 3 premiere last week and this one follows on naturally as Allicent continues to manipulate events around King’s Landing for Rhaenyra’s return. Meanwhile Rhaenyra receives tragic news as Daemon returns to her once more.
Good?
A few quibbles aside this is an exciting episode with a lot of dragon scenes if not necessarily a lot of action. The plot flows reasonably well and the actors have some drama to chew on and show their chops. There’s a bit of a switcheroo in terms of what everyone is doing this week and it bookends in a way a lot of the plot that Season 2 was fermenting. More on that below.
Those few quibbles are really just some of the usual travelling issues. Don’t think too long about all the various dragon travelling that happens in this episode or the order it happens in, or you’ll go crazy. There’s also a tease from the Season 2 finale which is finally paid off here. For me it loses some of the drama it would have had in the place it should have appeared, in Season 2.
I still see some of the choices made in Season 2 beginning to cause ripples down the line. However, the opening two episodes of Season 3 do definitely fill in gaps within the printed stories reasonably well. The events mostly happen as is written in Fire & Blood, but we get some surprising details and one change that may even work slightly better than it read in the book. Praise where praise is due.
Still, it’s not quite as concise and well thought out as episode 1.
The Season 2 Issue
So, we know House of the Dragon was cut by two episodes in Season 2 for budget reasons. These first two episodes of Season 3 were originally planned as the final two episodes of Season 2. If they had done this, I think that the flow of Season 2 would have been much better and it would have been better received by fans.
In many way’s it’s a shame that HBO mandated an episode reduction when they did. Viewership has dropped in Season 3 and that may be in part down to how Season 2 ended with, frankly a whimper. Instead we’d have had a classic penultimate episode in Thrones tradition and the classic follow up episode setting up the next Season. It really feels like Season 2 just ended this week after a huge gap and now we’re getting Season 3 right away.
RELATED: House Of The Dragon S3E01 Review – Brilliant Start
I talked about how this episode bookends the Season 2 plot lines and it really does. Even without spoilers, one example is Daemon and Rhaenyra being together again as I said up top. But there are many others I cannot mention due to spoilers. I also alluded to a switcheroo which also reverses the status quo of Season 2. Narratively these episode belong in Season 2 and it was the original plan. Frankly instead of heling HBO, I think this decision actually hurt them and the shows viewership.
GRADE: A-
Great episode, but not quite as good as its predecessor. Dragons, violence, shifting political allegiances and death. Just what you expect from this universe. However, this episode should have been and would have worked much better as the final of Season 2 as was the original narrative plan.
Let me know what you thought of House of the Dragon S3E02 below, or what you thought of my take on it?
