From its theme music and credit sequence, to its costumes and locales, to its lore and themes, to its narrative focus on the ceaseless competition for the Iron Throne, sought, in its first season, to not simply be a faithful prequel to , but a veritable carbon copy. Nonetheless, if it got off to marred by excessively familiar action and too many leaps forward in time, it eventually found its footing by . In electric fashion, that capper culminated with eye-patched Prince Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) getting revenge on his bastard cousin Luke Velaryon (Elliot Grihault) by chomping him and his dragon in half via his own winged beast, the gargantuan Vhagar.
While it may have required 10 uneven hours, the show finally appeared to have found its footing on the ground and in the sky, thereby setting up the savage dragon war destined to dominate the remainder of its tale. Returning to HBO nearly two years after the end of Season 1, takes true flight from the outset of its superior and stirring second season (June 16 on HBO), diving right into the fallout from that fateful murder with political jockeying and, more calamitously, a series of assassination attempts that compromise any lasting hopes for peace. Over the course of its first four episodes (which were all that were provided to press), showrunner Ryan Condal—aided by co-creator George R.
R. Martin and -vet director Alan Taylor, who helms the premiere and phenomenal fourth installment—devises a raft of intricate machina.