House of the Dragon

MAX

I know that HBO has to be breathing a sigh of relief at this point. It is pretty clear by now that House of the Dragon is a hit, in terms of viewership, in terms of critical response, and in terms of audience interest and appreciation.

It’s hard to understate the amount of pure damage the rushed, non-book-based ending of Game of Thrones did to the entire series in season 8. The show has some of the highest scored episodes of television ever, 9.7s-9.9s, ending with…a 4/10, a finale featuring a dead Lannisters, dead, newly evil Daenerys, useless Jon Snow and Bran as King.

Now, House of the Dragon has changed that narrative and is indeed the kind of must-see TV that Game of Thrones used to be, culminating in last week’s thrilling dragon fight, though the quality of the entire run of the show has been excellent thus far. Overall viewership is unlikely to reach the highs of the original Thrones, but this has cemented the idea that Thrones spin-offs, prequels all, should be able to work and carry the franchise far into the future. Next up is A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, once again based on actual George RR Martin work as opposed to the final Game of Thrones seasons.

Game of Thrones

HBO

I would argue that HBO has done a bit of a marketing misstep with the whole “Are you Team Green or Black?” concept, as given the events of the show, it’s essentially impossible to be Team Green when it’s made up of very clear villains. While Daemon is “Team Black,” and also pretty awful, he’s clearly separated himself from that group and is (poorly) attempting to amass power to take the throne for himself, and “allowing” Rhaenyra to rule by his side once he does. Good luck with that.

House of the Dragon is also able to use dragons in a way that Game of Thrones could not. One issue with that show is that it made Dany eternally overpowered, as nothing could match her three dragons until they started being killed off in rather silly ways (an ice spear, for one). That was…not that best aspect of that show, but instead of House of the Dragon, the dragons themselves are also characters, and their victories and deaths have been thrilling and tragic. As much as any character, in some instances, with a dragon like Vhagar being one of the chief “villains” of the show. The dragon Godzilla, essentially.

It’s unclear whether HBO can keep this level of quality across other shows. Many concepts for Thrones spin-offs have been killed already, including the singular sequel series that Kit Harrington wanted to make about Jon Snow. They even filmed an entire pilot in the Age of Heroes which never saw the light of day.

But House of the Dragon is working on every level now, and I hope future projects do in fact emulate its success. It’s nice to have Thrones to talk about on Sunday nights and Monday mornings again.