Warning: This article contains major spoilers for House of the Dragon season 2, episode 4. HBO ‘s House of the Dragon has taken its time getting to the real, fire-breathing drama at the center of its story. The Game of Thrones prequel’s first season was largely a preamble — one that concluded with the shocking death of a character whose importance to the show’s ostensible lead, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy), was larger than it was to the audience.
In the episodes since then, House of the Dragon has similarly said goodbye — in sometimes horrifyingly brutal fashion — to several of its supporting characters. All the while, it’s done its best to make viewers feel the slow burn of a growing fire that has taken almost 14 full hours of television to explode. House of the Dragon has remained a consistently entertaining, often awe-inspiringly well-presented production throughout this time, but a slow-paced drama set mostly in the same two castles (i.
e., the Red Keep of King’s Landing and Dragonstone) isn’t necessarily what Game of Thrones fans signed up for when they originally tuned in. The series was sold as an explosive, dragon-versus-dragon prequel that would dramatize exactly how the Targaryen dynasty burned down from within.
Up to this point, it hasn’t been nearly as rip-roaring as that. It has instead been much more mannered and reserved, at least by its franchise’s standards, than many people might have predicted before its debut. Fortunately, with t.
