Weekend Watch - House of the Dragon - Pilot Episode
Welcome back to the Weekend Watch, where each week we take a new piece of film or television media, as voted by the followers on the blog’s Instagram, and give it a rating, review, and watch recommendation. This week’s subject is the pilot episode of HBO’s House of the Dragon, a prequel series to the wildly successful Game of Thrones, set 172 years before Robert’s Rebellion, the event that directly set up the events of Thrones. The pilot stars Matt Smith, Paddy Considine, Rhys Ifans, Steve Toussaint, Fabien Frankel, Milly Alcock, Emily Carey, and Graham McTavish, among others, as major players in this family drama set in the land of Westeros. The viewership numbers for the pilot episode were apparently the highest of any HBO premier in recent history, allowing the show’s second season to already receive the green light before its second episode has released. Let’s get into it.
Letter Grade: B+/A-; there’s a lot to love and a lot of potential in this pilot, but I want to wait before I’m fully sold on the show.
Should you Watch This Show? If you were a fan of Game of Thrones, absolutely. If you like Succession or other family dramas and also want something with a more medieval/fantasy bent, absolutely. If those things are not your cup of tea, you’re probably okay skipping this one.
Why?
House of the Dragon comes out swinging with a pilot episode full of intrigue, dragons, violence, big characters, and difficult content. After a brief, possibly unnecessary, prologue, the show flashes to its present with a dragon front and center, flying over King’s Landing – a shot that might be slightly triggering to certain fans of Game of Thrones who were less than satisfied with that show’s final season. Immediately, the show’s production value (much higher than most comparable shows) becomes apparent, with some pretty good CGI work, excellent set pieces, and decent costume and makeup design (some of the wigs look a little more wig-ish than others). The characters, whose names might be a bit more difficult to pronounce/remember than Ned, Jon, or Jaime, still stand out as individuals, particularly Matt Smith’s villain(?) Daemon Targaryen, Fabien Frankel’s hot, young nobody Criston Cole, and Milly Alcock’s young heroine Rhaenyra Targaryen. Smith embodies a combination of characteristics reminiscent of some of Thrones’s most iconic villains – the creeping menace of Ramsay Bolton and the entitled violence of Joffrey Baratheon – I’m intrigued to see where they take his character as the show progresses. Frankel’s simple charm combined with his character’s skill on a battlefield make him a potentially great tragic hero, alongside Robb Stark or Jon Snow or Oberyn Martell from the original show. Alcock brings much of the charm of a young Arya Stark and combines it with the tact of Margaery Tyrell to become the show’s new protagonist (at least at this point), having to walk the complex minefield that is the political state of Westeros. If we’re being honest, my two biggest concerns going forward with the show are its inevitable time jump, which has already been teased, as both Rhaenyra and her friend Alicent Hightower are portrayed by different actresses later on in the season, and its lack of a fully likable character (a Tyrion Lannister). Time jumps in the middle of a show’s inaugural season make me considerably nervous, as audiences don’t always react super well to a change in actor, particularly in shows with character lists as lengthy as House of the Dragon’s. I also know that you shouldn’t compare two shows when doing a review, but it’s hard not to with Dragon and Thrones, especially with the knowledge of how the original ended. The surprise deaths and complex political games will only take a show so far if it doesn’t have an almost universally beloved secondary protagonist. Overall, House of the Dragon’s pilot episode does a great job of filling the shoes that its fans expected it to fill with a combination of high production value and memorable characters; we’ll see where it all ends up as the season progresses, but there’s a lot here to be optimistic about in HBO’s return to Westeros. The first episode is available on HBO Max if you missed its premier, and the second episode drops on Sunday night on HBO and HBO Max simultaneously.
