House of the Dragon S2E8 Recap: To War Then?

The following recap contains spoilers for House of the Dragon S2E8, “The Queen Who Ever Was” (written by Sara Hess and directed by Geeta Vasant Patel)

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That’s it?

Did Ryan Condal and company forget that they were only given an eight-episode run for Season 2 of House of the Dragon and thought they had another episode or two left in the season? During the “Inside the Episode” of Sunday’s finale, “The Queen Who Ever Was,” Condal commented that, “The final episode is such a great build for everywhere we’ve been in Season 2 and promising what’s to come.”

Promising what’s to come? Isn’t this the same show whose marketing materials focused on King Aegon smugly proclaiming, “To war then!” That’s quite a leap of faith this show has in its audience that they will consider this season a reward or payoff after the time-jumping, character-hopping, uneven Season 1. That was supposed to the chess piece moving season. This was the season the realm went to war. Outside one major skirmish and a few clandestine murders, what exactly did we get?

In the end, this season had as many dragon battles as Season 1 (I don’t count the few dozen smallfolk who were cooked in last week’s episode, “The Red Sowing”) and featured a battlefield laid waste after a massive conflict but never actually gave us any of the conflict (The Battle of Burning Mill between the Blackwoods and the Brackens). I would push back on Ryan Condal and say that just this finale was not a great build on what is to come, it was the whole season that was a build towards very little actually happening outside of inner-room plots and schemes.

Consider where the following stand at the end of Season 2:

1. Daemon raised an army at Harrenhal consisting of people in the Riverlands, but they haven’t budged off the grounds outside the castle.
2. Rhaenyra found three new dragon-riders, but we haven’t actually seen them fly anywhere yet.
3. Ser Criston Cole and Ser Gwayne Hightower left to march on some of their enemies, but they have been lost in the woods for three episodes
4. Rhaena left her infant step-brother and infant step-sister so she could bond with a wild dragon. After two scenes in Episode 7 and four scenes in the finale, she spotted the dragon but hasn’t actually formed a connection yet.
5. Ser Otto Hightower left five episodes ago and managed to get as far as….? A cage somewhere on a ship? In a carriage? Who can say?

   

6. Prince Aemond rides the most fearsome dragon in the realm, Vhagar, but has managed to participate in just one battle (which almost ended the king’s life) and burn the faceless, hapless, and meaningless Team Black town of Sharp Point.
7. Besides leaving Dragonstone to confront Addam of Hull after he claimed a dragon, Rhaenyra departs her fortified castle for the first time so she can run down allegations that Daemon raised up an army to take King’s Landing.
8. We learn that Corlys Velaryon’s ship was almost sea-ready in the first episode of the season, and in the closing moments of the finale, he is finally able to board the ship for the first time all season.
9. At various points we have seen the armies of the Lannisters, Starks, Tullys, and Strongs converging, preparing for battle, and strategizing. By the end of the finale, they are all either still camping or still walking to their next destination.
10. Alicent was given an opportunity to end the unnecessary future conflict by Rhaenyra when Rhaenyra visited her in the Sept at the end of Episode 3, but Alicent rebuffed her, saying, “It’s too late!” In the finale, we see the mirror-universe conversation with Alicent secretly visiting Rhaenyra and offering her a way to take over King’s Landing without bloodshed. Fittingly, Rhaenyra says, “It’s too late!” and she must react and respond to the events set in motion by Alicent, Otto, and her children’s attempt to take over the Iron Throne.

With at least two seasons remaining of House of the Dragon, the showrunners are ironically running into a problem with source text that Game of Thrones had to contend with in its last two seasons. In Seasons 6 through 8 of GOT, David Benioff and D.B. Wiess had to create the story because they had moved the show beyond what existed in George R.R. Martin’s source text, the Song of Ice and Fire Series.

Ryan Condal faces a problem where HBO is going to want to run this series perhaps four or five seasons and they only have about 175 pages of text in Fire & Blood from which to work. They have shown a strong ability this season to develop characters outside of the scope of the text, but not to invent plot, war stories, or adventures outside the text.

Fire & Blood also poses the interesting problem that not many of the book’s main characters are in places near each other during this crucial Civil War period. That forces Condal and Co. to create two scenes where Rhaenyra and Alicent meet, for example. I, as an interested audience member, appreciate that effort and we all would have revolted if the dynamic Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke did not have screen time together this season. But with few battles and action sequences to draw from in the war, Season 2 ended up feeling like we got 80% of the way across the bridge in The Twins, but encountered the treacherous House Frey who commanded us to wait while they decide our fate.

At the table, while Rhaenyra toasts her three new dragon-riders, she informs them that they must learn their commands and prepare for battle, as they will fly in two days’ time. Lucky for them. We’ve been waiting to truly take flight with this show for some time and we’ve probably got two years until we are going to be in the air with dragons again.

Who Danced Best with Dragons?

(This weekly section will look at who played the game of war the best within the episode.)

We will henceforth be re-naming this the “Anti-Alicent Award,” presented to the character or characters who do not want to run from the Game of Thrones just to be able to breathe free air with all their riches after they conjured up false intentions that led to the war for the throne in the first place.

The season-long MVP and winner of who positioned themselves best to sit upon the Throne in Season 3 is clearly Rhaenyra. Despite the lack of faith from her small council, the loss of her husband-uncle-general Daemon for most of the season, the death of her son, the doubt (and pout) of her other son, and a slew of hastily put together alliances and dragon warriors, she is well-positioned heading into war.

Aemond can not convince Helaena to ride her dragon into battle. The dragon on the way (more on that below), is young and not battle-tested. Everyone on Team Green seems to want out of King’s Landing, which will leave Aemond and his weak council to defend the capital with only Vhagar as a real weapon. His dragon may be the oldest and scariest in the kingdom, but even that formidable reputation can’t help him if this becomes a one-on-seven matchup against Rhaenyra (assuming Rhaena does bond with Sheep Stealer).

What is Within the Dragon’s Egg?

(This weekly section will identify some of the plot points or surprises that hatched during the episode.)

1. Love them or hate them, minimizing the talents of Matt Smith (Daemon), Fabien Frankel (Ser Criston Cole), and Rhys Ifans (Otto Hightower) this season was certainly a choice by those who run this show. Daemon was in a hallucinating vision-state for literally seven episodes before Alys (who could have shown him the Song of Ice and Fire vision weeks ago, right?) helped him understand that he is but a spoke in the wheel that Daenerys will eventually break. Being back together with Rhaenyra for one scene was a thrill, but also highlighted what we lost by him spending the season at his vacation home in Harrenhal.
2. Speaking of Criston Cole, he is still loathsome, but after what he has witnessed this season, his nihilistic views of humanity make sense. Coincidentally, his thoughts on his purpose in life (“Dragons dance and men are like dust under their feet. All our fine thoughts now, our endeavors, are nothing. We march now towards our annihilation. To die will be a kind of relief.”) was about how I felt when watching this finale.
3. Tyland Lannister and a group of pirates and sea captains we have never seen before received more screen time in this episode than all characters except for Rhaenyra. I understand the removal of the naval blockade is an important strategic military decision that must be made, but this is how and when the writers chose to address it? And mud wrestling?

   

4. At least Ulf the White added a little levity to the series finale, but I am not sure how he so quickly went from a man telling tales in a pub to someone who felt comfortable disrespecting the queen and talking over her at dinner. He has had the dragon for two days, maybe? Addam was unafraid to stand up to him and understands the magnitude of their situation. I implore you, bookmark his comment to Ulf—“There will be time enough to see which one of us is a coward.”—in the back of your brain somewhere to be pulled out again later.
5. We did finally see Tessarion (Daeron’s dragon, the blue one) flying in the sky in the closing montage, signaling they will both be part of the war in Season 3 for Team Green.
6. Did you catch the latest “order of things” comment from Alicent in this episode? Increasingly, this show is becoming more and more about what certain highborn people perceive about the way things should be, and they do not know (or can not know) how to react when that order of things is thrown into chaos. That’s why the storylines with the smallfolk this season resonated so well with me and many others.
7. We know that the House of the Dragon creators have wanted to tie this show back to Game of Thrones so that there are some common stakes and an anchor that longtime GOT fans can hold onto. That’s why we heard King Viserys tell Rhaenyra of the Song of Ice and Fire in the first episode of the season. But showing us a glimpse of Daenerys, her eggs, and a small horde of White Walkers in Daemon’s vision just seemed like a bit too desperate to me.
8. Finally, I really should not take out my frustration on Ryan Condal, Sara Hess, or any of the other creative forces behind the show and its eight-episode run. As Hess told Entertainment Weekly, “It wasn’t really our choice.”

Thank you all for reading our House of the Dragon coverage this season, and I look forward to joining you back here again when A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms comes to HBO in 2025.