The latest episode of House of the Dragon might be the most action-packed of the entire series. It also seems that there's plenty that took place that's going to impact the rest of the HBO Max series. Because of that, this is one of the season's best episodes by far. The series has been slowly walking towards what went down in Episode 7. But that doesn't mean that everything that went down was carried out perfectly.
The episode picked up not long after the events of Episode 6 of House of the Dragon took place as all the families that are ruling Westeros have come together for a funeral. Daemon's wife has died, after it became clear that she wasn't going to survive childbirth and that the baby wasn't surviving either, she ordered her dragon to burn her alive. It appears she felt this was a better death than the agony she was feeling trying to give birth.
Now everyone has come together to honor her life and it turns out that they've also decided to settle some grudges. One of the interesting things this episode does, especially in the first half of the show, is to show quite a bit of the scenes in the nighttime, without much light at all. it's clear that the editors and the director would be a very cool effect, but unfortunately, it loses something to the fact that it's almost too dark. There are entire scenes where it feels as though the screen has gone black and there's no way to tell what's really going on in House of the Dragon.
There were obvious reasons for this and it even makes sense. It just doesn't make great television. There is one particular "love" scene that is probably better if the audience can't see it all that clearly. Although it was far too long than it needed to be and only seemed to be done that way to make the audience that much more uncomfortable, while not actually being able to see what was going on. There was also the music that was definitely supposed to be romantic that made this one of the most cringe-worthy episodes of the entire House of the Dragon series.
There is something to be said for the darkness when it comes to one particular scene and that's when Aegon decides to ride his aunt's former dragon. It definitely works to know that he's wandering near a dragon but doesn't know exactly where it is. When the dragon opens its mouth to burn the young man to cinder it definitely is one of the better scenes in House of the Dragon. But it doesn't make up for all the rest of the scenes where it's incredibly hard to see what's going on or why the viewers should care.
It's possible that the director realized that if the screen is mostly black, this episode of House of the Dragon wouldn't suffer from CGI issues. It has been noticeable for the last few installments that when a dragon was flying through the air, or over the heads of someone, those people were standing in front of green screens. Rather than upping the budget, they went this route and it wasn't the worst choice they could have made.
Speaking of choices and settling scores, it turns out that the show wants the viewers to know that whatever friendship there was between Alicent and Rhaenyra is dead and gone. That isn't really a secret as they've made it plain that it actually died before this particular time jump. However, this time it's clear that if there was any chance they were eventually going to reconcile, that hope is dead.
The biggest reason for that is some very strong acting by Olivia Cooke as a mother who has both been driven mad with anguish over her son and some real animosity toward Rhaenyra's children. One of the most interesting notes is that while she seems to want revenge, there's also just a kind of hatred for the other children that is born out of knowing that her former friend's kids are eventually going to be the ones who rule the land.
This is the first part of the episode where people could look at what happens as a kind of Breaking Bad, House of the Dragon style. One of the things this particular episode of HoD does is to make sure that the audience who thought a person was one way was actually another. In fact, the heel turn that takes place in this particular episode is one of the best the Game of Thrones franchise has had to offer.
House of the Dragon actually does a very good job of taking a character that was one of the most honorable in the HBO Max series and making them "break bad" in a way that was both hard to see coming and yet totally believable. That's one of the nice touches that this show was able to do with all the focus on the main characters.
While there have been some complaints about the fact that the other characters in the show haven't been focused on enough, the singular focus of the show has allowed people to really feel like they know the people that are most intimately involved in the program. That allowed people who have been watching House of the Dragon to better follow the way the various characters that have broken bad have gone down that path.
The show, much in the same way that episode 5 of House of the Dragon did, is make this installment quite interesting while the real interest is in what happens next. The groundwork has absolutely been laid and it was laid pretty darn expertly. If not for half the episode being so dark that it was hard to see, this might be one of the best episodes of either show. As it is, it continues to make this HBO Max spinoff one of the best programs of the year.
House of the Dragon is airing on Sundays on HBO and HBO Max.