House of the Dragon Season 2 backlash proves Game of Thrones broke its fans forever
HBOBook purists and wiki-casuals have spat out their dummies after House of the Dragon Season 2; misery loves company, and its so-called fans are having a party.
For seven years, I’ve watched Star Wars decay in the wake of The Last Jedi, a brilliant, bold reweaving of the galaxy far, far away’s mythos that broke its fans forevermore. Even The Rise of Skywalker, a truly mortifying overcorrection, couldn’t live up to their dreams, and the franchise has supplied (and still angered) Reddit-spewing, Legends-pilled acolytes ever since (Andor is innocent).
I thought it was the worst fandom on the internet… until the fallout of House of the Dragon’s Season 2 finale. I’ve read several threads with thousands of the most banal, needlessly pedantic, comically entitled, and media-illiterate comments I could ever dread fathoming; the comparison to Star Wars’ worst viewers isn’t made lightly.
Just remember, your headcanons are dust beneath the pens of House of the Dragon’s writers; you know nothing.
House of the Dragon doesn’t owe Fire & Blood readers anything
HBOThere are legitimate criticisms that should be leveled at the second season; for example, the head-aching decision to cut down the usual 10-episode complement to eight and kneecap its dramatic payoff by ending on a dizzyingly emotional but frustrating cliffhanger. All of the evidence suggests this was mandated by HBO’s higher powers, so don’t point at Ryan Condal and co.
Sadly, most of its issues stem from this; the wilful stretching of Daemon’s Harrenhal arc wouldn’t be a problem if we saw him back with Rhaenyra for more than five minutes. Similarly, the splicing of Nettles’ arc with Sheepstealer into Rhaena’s storyline makes sense (do you really want a listless Targaryen to show up at the very end after vanishing for most of the story?)… so, why did it take so long to get there?
Here’s the thing: these points pertain to the experience of watching the show. As soon as you utter the words, “well, actually” and cite the book, your opinion is null and void.
That’s not just my opinion: George R.R. Martin has confirmed there are two separate continuities, so House of the Dragon’s events don’t violate the book. There’s technically nothing to contradict; it’s the inspiration for the series, not the script.
“We have two canons. We have the show canon, the Game of Thrones canon. And we have the Song of Ice and Fire canon… I always knew that things were gonna be different, but as I’m writing, as the stories are coming alive, and the characters are coming alive, taking me further and further away from the show,” he told The History of Westeros podcast.
“So there’s gonna be some very considerable differences, and the book canon is gonna be quite different from the show canon as we get deeper into it… all of these prequels can lead up to Game of Thrones at the beginning.”
Game of Thrones has left fans more broken than Bran
HBOClearly, the aftershocks of Game of Thrones’ traumatically bad ending are still softly quaking. I won’t defend it: it was an unforgivable bastardization of not just George R.R. Martin’s story, but a pop culture sensation; the TV equivalent of pre-cum masquerading as an epic climax.
But – and this is crucial – its biggest problem wasn’t that it butchered the author’s source material: it deliberately ignored and dismantled the show’s foundations to rush an ending that barely makes a lick of sense. Jaime ditching Brienne for Cersei, Arya killing the Night King, Jon Snow doing… well, nothing, Daenerys going mad, and Bran becoming king! Here comes the migraine again.
Bafflingly, its harshest critics have said House of the Dragon Season 2’s finale is worse than Game of Thrones’ – not only is it unequivocally wrong, it stems from bad-faith viewership.
Ever since HOTD began, it’s been clear that it’s not a straight adaptation of Fire and Blood. Changes include: Aegon’s conquest being contextualized by the “song of ice and fire”, Laenor Velaryon being afforded the mercy of a free life with his lover, the (admittedly weird) circumvention of Daeron, and Aemond’s accidental murder of Lucerys.
Remember, Fire and Blood is a tapestry of conflicting accounts pieced together by an unreliable narrator, not a novel in the traditional sense. The writers should be mining between the lines, and those alterations in Season 1 were broadly well-received.
Something must be in the water this time, because the show’s rejigging and dramatic flourishes have been met with a lot of hostility. Its pacing is hard to excuse, but there’s been endless nitpicking and laughable calls for it to be canceled from two camps: purists who can’t accept any changes to the source material, and people diligently ticking off battles from the Wiki of Ice and Fire who only want to see fire and blood without a deeper connection.
One character has attracted the most unwarranted criticism: Alicent.
Alicent is the most well-written character
HBOAlicent in the show isn’t Alicent in the book; the former is a tragic figure, a complex instrument of power who wrestles with guilt and her own inadequacies as a parent… the latter is basically an evil stepmother.
She’s become one of the series’ most contentious characters in the finale’s wake, especially after she secretly visited Dragonstone and agreed to her son’s murder to end the war. One complaint called it the “worst scene in Game of Thrones history”, while another viewer said, “the notion a mother would hand over her children to be slaughtered is baffling, almost revolting.”
There are two forces at play here: one, the idea of a Game of Thrones show revolving around two women’s love for one another (platonic or otherwise, as confirmed by Geeta Vasant Patel) is simply too much for some people to bear (look inward). Two, people just want her to be Cersei 2.0. – how boring!
Alicent’s turncloak arc wasn’t rushed; it was delicately telegraphed through Season 2… if you paid attention. Yes, she pulled a knife on Rhaenyra in Season 1. Yes, her side already suffered a “son for a son” loss when Blood and Cheese took off baby Jaehaerys’ head. And yes, she stood in front of Rhaenys’ dragon to protect Aegon, the same child whose life she forfeited.
Everything changed when she discovered she lit the fuse of the war: it wasn’t Lucerys’ death, it was her catastrophic misinterpretation of Viserys’ dying words.
Look at what’s happened since she met Rhaenyra in the Sept: Aegon was nearly killed, undoubtedly a result of his drunken courage buoyed by his mother’s lack of faith in him; Aemond’s monstrous streak has intensified as Prince Regent, even removing Alicent from the council; the one son she didn’t raise, Daeron, is seemingly the nicest Targaryen in the Seven Kingdoms; and her daughter is in constant danger, with both stripped of any agency in the Red Keep.
HBOThings have changed for Rhaenyra, too: more blood has been spilled, namely that of Rhaenys and Meleys, and she’s defied the odds and bonded bastards with dragons. The war is her’s to lose, and Alicent knew it by the end of Season 2.
Lest we forget, she was suicidal in the penultimate, somberly lying atop a nearby lake, waiting for her body to sink. But then, as Olivia Cooke explained, what seemed like the end of her life was just the “start… what she’s about to do, and the woman she’s possibly about to become.”
“I do not wish to rule. I wish to live, to be free of all this endless plotting and striving… I would take my daughter and her child and leave it all behind,” she tells Rhaenyra, before tearfully agreeing to Aegon’s inevitable death.
“History will paint you the villain – cold queen grasping for power then defeated,” Rhaenyra warns her (which, if you were a reasonable book reader, should meaningfully appease her characterization in the source material).
“Have them think what they must. I am at last myself with no ambition greater than to walk where I please and breathe the open air, to die unremarked, unnoticed, and be free,” she says.
Frustratingly, those who can’t accept Alicent’s decision are coming at it from a childish angle: they don’t like it because they think it’s wrong. Moral panics over the decisions of fictional characters instantly tell me two things: you can’t see past your sacrosanct version of the story, and you’re probably not good at grown-up conversations.
Then again, as Bronn once said, there’s no cure for being a… well, you know the rest.
Check out our guide on House of the Dragon Season 3, our ranking of the best dragons in Game of Thrones, and a breakdown of every Targaryen king.