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Like a seasonal rental, the dragon house reopens for the summer. If it is scorching, we will find the right amount of clouds and showers. If it is rotten, we will try to warm ourselves in the flames of the monsters ridden by the rivals, who compete for the Iron Throne.
The first season of House of the Dragon offered a landscape familiar enough for veterans of Game Of Thrones found their comfort there. Taking place a few centuries before the saga that HBO unfolded from 2011 to 2019, this new adaptation of a text by George R. R. Martin distinguished itself from its epic predecessor by the sensation of claustrophobia that it aroused.
We will have to wait for the fourth episode of this new delivery to rediscover the moments of hyperspectacle, which once punctuated Game Of Thrones. Until then, we will resume the march towards civil war, which will soon pit the two branches of the Targaryen dynasty against each other.
Rival queens
This long introduction to the catastrophe is far from devoid of interest. The performers took the measure of their characters, starting with the rival queens. Alicent (Olivia Cooke), the dowager, has imposed her son Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) on the throne, at the expense of Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), first-born daughter of her late husband. The latter has retreated to Dragonstone, the family’s stronghold where, in the company of her uncle and husband, Daemon (Matt Smith), she tries to rally her vassals to her banner.
Max, the platform of the Warner-Discovery conglomerate, which has swallowed up HBO, continues, through marketing operations, to encourage spectators to choose between the black camp (that of Rhaenyra) and that of the green d ‘Alicent, as if we were on the verge of a championship. For this to happen, the legitimacy of one or the other of the causes would have to be established.
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Certainly, the two queens do not lack nobility, Olivia Cooke and Emma D’Arcy embody, with a certain grandeur, their helplessness, in this march towards the abyss. But the men take it upon themselves to take a big step forward: Aegon, capricious and cruel, gets rid of Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), his devious but cautious advisor, who also happens to be his grandfather, while Daemon plotted an atrocious crime, to terrorize his adversaries.
Night clash
We could, with hemoglobin and adrenaline, give this long preamble a spectacular turn. Unexpectedly (and the gods, old and new, know that we need the unexpected in the world of series), House of the Dragon rather highlights the boredom in which the adversaries Aegon and Daemon get stuck.
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