(Warning: This article contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 8.)
The fates of House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones’ vast cast of characters have been intricately linked from the start.
That’s not only because they’re both set in Westeros, feature dragonriders from House Targaryen, have several factions fighting for control of the Iron Throne to the detriment of the smallfolk, or because some crew members have worked on both shows. It’s a prophecy first revealed by King Viserys (Paddy Considine) to his young daughter Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock)—one that’s familiar to fans of Game of Thrones or George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire—at the end of the show’s very first episode that makes the connection.
Two seasons in, and House of the Dragon has made the connection even more explicit. Every so often, we see one character or another wielding the Valyrian steel catspaw dagger that will, in a few hundred years, kill the Night King. But it’s never been more apparent than in the Season 2 finale, when a destiny-shaking vision has House of the Dragon falling into the classic prequel trap of heavily reminding us of what came before. Unfortunately, for House of the Dragon, that comes with a lot of baggage and hangups that the Game of Thrones prequel has mostly avoided until now.
In “The Queen Who Ever Was,” Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) has a final vision at Harrenhal. At the insistence of Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin), he placed his hand on the castle’s primary weirwood tree and saw the future.
Some of those scenes, such as Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) on the Iron Throne and Daemon plunging into the water, were more immediate. But he also got a speedrun of the next couple hundred years in Westeros, including glimpses at an army of White Walkers and wights (the true threat in the North) and his descendants Brynden “Bloodraven” Rivers (Joshua Ben-Tovim) sitting on a weirwood throne and Daenerys Targaryen hatching her three dragons in Essos. The insinuation is that Dany is the Prince That Was Promised, the Targaryen ruler who will unite the Seven Kingdoms to defeat that threat.
Matt Smith touching the weirwood tree at Harrenhal.
Ollie Upton/HBOIt serves as the catalyst for why Daemon so readily bends the knee to Rhaenyra when she later comes calling to Harrenhal and pledges himself and his men to serve her “until death or the end of our story.”
“The world is not what we thought it was,” he explained, speaking in High Valryian. “This war is just the beginning. Winter is coming with darkness and doom.” When Rhaenyra noted how similar Daemon sounded to Viserys, he added, “I saw it. I saw that we cannot withstand it...And yet, somehow, we must.”
If you didn’t pick up the connection before, Daemon uttered House Stark’s words, “Winter Is Coming,” somewhat clunkily as he pledged his loyalty. Daemon doesn’t know how Dany’s fight with the White Walkers will play out, so he’s approaching his fate head-on; he only knows that getting Rhaenyra on the Iron Throne is paramount to it. But we do. And therein is a problem.
Part of the issue that comes with crafting a prequel to a wildly successful show or film is building meaningful suspense when we already know what happens. Many prequels fail to sustain that suspense or focus too much on the granular (the “How did Han Solo get his last name” of it all). Or they’re too tempted to thread in those Easter eggs, even if it doesn’t always make sense. Andor and Better Call Saul were two of the better prequels in recent years because they offered enriching themes and characters that some viewers cared more about than the ones we know survived to make it into the earlier TV show.
Matt Smith and Emma D’Arcy
Ollie Upton/HBOHouse of the Dragon, for the most part, sidestepped all of that by being set so far in the past that none of the characters in Game of Thrones (except maybe someone like Melisandre, who was 400 years old when she died in Season 8) could appear in it because they weren’t around. And while minor nods to Game of Thrones slowly trickled in throughout the series, the Season 2 finale lit it aflame. Even if House of the Dragon didn’t use preexisting footage of the Three-Eyed Raven, the White Walkers, or Emilia Clarke’s Dany and put its spin on those elements, the attempt at fanservice mostly proved distracting.
With every purposeful nod to Game of Thrones, viewers can be reminded of several things at once. We know how Dany’s clash with the White Walkers played out. We know what happened to Dany at the end of everything. And we know who ended up ruling over Westeros at the end. Those decisions were so polarizing at the time that over five years later, some viewers are still so angry that even mentioning it evokes those feelings; it now appears semi-frequently on “worst series finales” lists.
House of the Dragon is more than familiar with depicting the futility of its civil war and the increasing amounts of violence now that nuclear dragon warfare is on the table. We’ve seen the series take its time in letting some characters embrace evil tendencies while others are designed to cling to noble (and more passive) aspirations to justify their actions; its character work is often spotty.
The air of fate and inevitability is all over the show: Rhaenyra and Alicent talk in circles about war, peace, and being unable to stop what’s coming for them in secret (and potentially treasonous) meetings, and its controversial final montage teases the senseless violence and tragedy we’ll have to wait at least a couple of years to see in Season 3.
Perhaps, learning from some of Game of Thrones’s criticisms, House of the Dragon threads in the seeds of its characters’ triumphs and downfalls early and often; book readers know where to look. But that message is already all over House of the Dragon. You don’t need to also broadcast imagery from Game of Thrones to get the point across.
