SPOILER ALERT: This overview accommodates spoilers for HBO’s “Home of the Dragon” Season 2 finale, titled “The Queen Who Ever Was,” now streaming on Max.
“The Queen Who Ever Was,” the Season 2 finale of HBO’s “Home of the Dragon,” is an episode of tv largely outlined by what doesn’t occur in its practically 70-minute runtime. There are not any main battles between the Greens and the Blacks, the 2 Targaryen household factions at the moment vying for the Iron Throne. Nor are there any main deaths — in contrast to final season’s conclusion, by which aspiring queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) misplaced her younger son Lucerys (Elliot Grihault) to the vengeful impulse of her half-brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell).
“Home of the Dragon” differs from “Sport of Thrones,” the generation-defining hit of which it’s a by-product, within the nature of its supply materials. Not like George R.R. Martin’s major sequence of novels, which stay unfinished to this present day, the fictional historical past “Hearth & Blood” is each an entire work and intentionally ambiguous. Relatively than a real-time narration of occasions from the standpoint of its characters, “Hearth & Blood” is a composite of a number of retrospective accounts, none of which is canonical — at the same time as sure milestones are set in stone. This high quality gave “Home of the Dragon” showrunner Ryan Condal the liberty to select and select what model of the reality the present would decide on, in addition to followers the flexibility to frantically speculate in regards to the impending arrival of main developments they knew have been coming, if not when or in what context.
That “The Queen Who Ever Was” — written by producer Sara Hess and directed by Geeta Vasant Patel, who additionally helmed Episode 3 — stops in need of these looming cataclysms might be attributed to its compressed schedule, which wrapped the season at eight episodes as an alternative of 10. There was no faceoff at Harrenhal, the place Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) has spent months elevating a military and dealing with his demons. Nor was there a payoff to the mounting tensions in capital metropolis King’s Touchdown, the place Rhaenyra’s lowborn advisor Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) has been sowing the seeds of insurrection among the many widespread folks.
As an alternative, the episode’s crescendos have been principally interpersonal: Daemon lastly accepted Rhaenyra as his superior after a lifetime of lusting after the crown; bastard sailor Alyn (Abubakar Salim) lastly confronted his father Corlys (Steven Toussaint) over many years of neglect; Rhaenyra’s childhood good friend Alicent (Olivia Cooke) lastly gave up the self-righteousness she’d clung to love a safety blanket, admitting she was within the fallacious to assist begin a conflict. Any bloodshed paled compared to simply final week, when scores of Targaryen bastards went up in flames as a part of the so-called Pink Sowing.
Many followers will probably think about “The Queen Who Ever Was” anticlimactic, particularly as a remaining glimpse of Westeros earlier than a probably yearslong look ahead to Season 3. (Season 1 premiered in August 2022, although at the very least a second spinoff, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” is already in manufacturing.) But, in one other mild, the finale reads as an announcement of intent. “Home of the Dragon” might have a premise that calls for high-octane dragon battles, however the present doesn’t need to be outlined by them. As an alternative, the finale reiterates that the true focus of the sequence is on the lives and relationships set to change into these battles’ collateral injury. The extra “Home of the Dragon” can delay gratification through wonderful gore, the extra it forces the viewer to sit down within the grim fatalism that’s more and more its most popular mode.
Surprisingly, the Cassandra of this battle is Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), Rhaenyra and Alicent’s shared ex and heretofore a prick of the very best order. However witnessing Season 2’s sole dragon-on-dragon matchup — the conflagration at Rook’s Relaxation in Episode 4, which took the lifetime of Princess Rhaenys (Eve Greatest) and completely crippled Rhaenyra’s usurper brother King Aegon (Tom Glynn Carney) — up shut has humbled the bitter, revenge-minded knight. “The dragons dance and males are like mud below their toes,” he grouses. “All our positive ideas and all our endeavors are as nothing.” However to “Home of the Dragon,” they’re one thing. The truth is, the present reverses Cole’s hierarchy, placing human ideas, emotions and efforts over the spectacle of fire-powered carnage.
“Historical past will paint you a villain,” Rhaenyra tells Alicent within the remaining scene, after her former good friend affords to give up King’s Touchdown to an invading military. “Home of the Dragon” is, as an entire, deeply involved with historical past, partly as a nod to “Hearth & Blood.” In “The Queen Who Ever Was” alone, the ultimate shot of Rhaenyra frames her amongst a wall of scrolls containing millennia of previous lore, whereas Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) convinces Daemon to commit by displaying him a imaginative and prescient of the existential wrestle to come back in “Sport of Thrones,” greater than a century sooner or later. The occasions of “Home of the Dragon” are framed as mere blips in (to borrow the opening credit’ visible metaphor) a much wider tapestry, its characters’ motivations unknowable and inevitably misconstrued by future generations. All of what we’re watching will ultimately be misplaced to time. Paradoxically, this attitude solely heightens the stakes of the feelings in play. Earlier than these Targaryens grew to become correct nouns in a historical past e book, they have been the middle of their very own narrative.
This focus is way from universally rewarding. Whereas its conclusion was comparatively satisfying — Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes), I’d pledge my sword to you any day — Daemon’s stint at Harrenhal felt interminable, marooning the character in navel-gazing hallucinations stretched to the higher a part of a season. Candid conversations between Rhaenyra’s inheritor Jacaerys (Harry Collett) and his members of the family have been a long-overdue reckoning along with his adulterous heritage, retroactively attempting to make up for the warp velocity of Season 1.
However whereas it’s truthful to fault “Home of the Dragon” for mismanaging the tempo of those inside journeys, it’s much less of a flaw that the season ends with armies on the march slightly than within the area. When motion does arrive, “Home of the Dragon” both cuts round it, just like the breakout of hostilities between longtime rivals the Blackwoods and Brackens or Aemond’s torching of a small fort on this very episode, or makes it actively disagreeable to look at. In case you have been wanting ahead to dragons squaring off, Rook’s Relaxation seemingly nipped that enthusiasm within the bud. Season 1 felt like an prolonged set-up by necessity, arranging the chess items earlier than the sport might begin in earnest. Upon its conclusion, Season 2 appears like an prolonged set-up as a deliberate thematic alternative.
In spite of everything, the sense that catastrophe is at all times simply across the bend helps illustrate the slippery slope of armed battle. The Dance of the Dragons has already seen conflict crimes, little one homicide and the demise of majestic creatures as soon as revered as gods. It’s troublesome to pinpoint the precise second the combatants went previous the purpose of no return, however conflict has very a lot arrived, although it might actually at all times worsen and extra damaging. We all know extra loss of life is coming, a certainty that colours each interplay and scene to stomach-twisting impact. What’s the frenzy to see it arrive?