I have very mixed feelings about Season 2 of House Of The Dragon, which I really did like overall, but which in many ways feels like a season frozen in time. Things happened, sure, but by the end it’s as if the entire ungainly machinery of Westeros’s most brutal civil war simply stood still. The disappointing finale really cements that feeling of inertia.
Think about it: Season 1 ended with Team Green and Team Black on the precipice of war. I remember thinking, “Well that season was kind of slow, but I enjoyed all the build-up and character development, and now it’s about to go down!”
Season 2 has now ended with Team Green and Team Black on the precipice of war. Again. But now I’m thinking, “Well that season was kind of slow, and while I enjoyed all the build-up and character development, I expected more was actually going to happen!” I certainly didn’t expect things to end exactly the same way as Season 1.
And sure, we have more dragonriders now. Armies are marching. We are more poised for war than we were before. But it’s still build-up, and maybe that’s all we needed after 18 episodes, but we probably needed two more episodes in this season to really make it stick. In episode 9, we could have had the big battle. And when I say big battle, I don’t mean they need to show us all the various armies fighting, all the dragons battling in the sky, every ship in every fleet smashing into each other. A lot of that can happen offscreen. We just need the most important bits.
Episode 10, the finale, could have been the falling action, dealing with the fallout of the battle and setting the stage for Season 3. I think everyone would have been really happy with that instead of a two year wait.
But wait! I’ve entirely buried the lede. I got sidetracked thinking about how annoyed I am with the way this season ended, I almost forgot why I was writing this post in the first place.
What in the name of the Seven is Otto Hightower doing locked in a cage? Is it even a cage? Is it the hold of a ship, or a barn or something? He looks dirty, so I assume he’s being held in captivity, but by whom? And where? And for what reason?
The show slipped this in all sneaky-like in what is perhaps the most clumsily handled, perplexingly strange moment in the entire series’ run. Right at the very end—as Alicent walks from Dragonstone—as the “episode is about to end” music plays (and what music!) we get this two second scene of Otto sitting here looking glum.
What is the point of this? We’ve heard he’s been hard to get ahold of, and we know Aemond is trying to bring him back to be Hand, but there’s been no other scene with him since he was dismissed by his grandson, Aegon, early on in the season. My only guess—and I think it’s the best possible guess—is that Larys, when tasked with finding Otto, arranged for his imprisonment. Maybe he’s being held even now in the dungeons of the Red Keep, held by Larys’s loyalists. That’s kind of interesting, but is it interesting enough to toss in when the whole entire rest of the season is ending on one massive, infuriating cliffhanger?
Honestly, I think I’m mostly annoyed by these cliffhangers because of the way George R.R. Martin ended A Dance Of Dragons, the fifth (and possibly final) book of A Song Of Ice And Fire. So many cliffhangers. Chapter after chapter of them. And this from a guy who takes years—decades!—to finish a book. It’s the last thing we need in House of the Dragon. A good cliffhanger ending works in some shows. Here, I’d much rather get a satisfying end-point, some good denouement, and feel satisfied rather than teased. Having this weird Otto moment is just one more itch I don’t care to scratch.
We do, at least, finally have official confirmation of when the show is coming to an end. That’s something!
P.S. I included the top image for two reasons: First, I didn’t really want to give away what I was talking about in the image. That’s too easy. Second, I wanted to discuss that moment as well. I think Daemon comes over to Rhaenyra too easily. He bends the knee because of a vision that, let’s be honest, wasn’t very compelling. I’ll have more thoughts on that in a separate post. But what I wanted to also say is the reaction of Ser Simon Strong was one of the best moments of the season. Seeing him clap so happily in the background just made me love him even more. What a surprise treat that character ended up being!