Spoiler alert: This review contains spoilers for the final episode of HBO's House of the Dragon Season 2, “The Queen Who Ever Was,” available now on Max.
“The Queen Who Was,” the final episode of the second season of HBO's “House of the Dragon,” is a television episode largely set in 1991. He doesn't do it. The series takes place over a runtime of about 70 minutes. There are no major battles between the Greens and the Blacks, the two Targaryen factions currently vying for the Iron Throne. There are no major deaths — Unlike last season's finale, where ambitious Queen Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) lost her young son Lucerys (Elliot Grihault) to the vengeful intent of her half-brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell).
House of the Dragon differs from the multi-generational hit Game of Thrones, of which it is a spinoff, in the nature of its source material. Unlike George R.R. Martin’s seminal series of novels, which remain unfinished to this day, the fictional history of Fire and Blood is a complete and intentionally ambiguous work. Rather than a real-time account of events from the perspective of its characters, Fire and Blood is a composite of multiple flashbacks, none of which are official—even with certain milestones. This quality has given House of the Dragon producer Ryan Condal the freedom to choose which version of the truth the show will settle on, as well as giving fans the ability to feverishly speculate about the imminent arrival of major developments they knew were coming, if not when or in what context.
The Queen That Was — written by producer Sarah Hess and directed by Geeta Vasant Patel, who also directed the third episode — didn’t stop these impending disasters, partly because of its compressed schedule, which wrapped up the season with eight episodes instead of 10. There was no showdown at Harrenhal, where Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) spent months raising an army and confronting his demons. Nor was there a payoff for the rising tensions in the capital, King’s Landing, where Rhaenyra’s lowly advisor Mesaria (Sonoya Mizuno) was sowing the seeds of rebellion among the common people.
Instead, the episode’s climax was mostly personal: Daemon finally accepting Rhaenyra as his superior after a lifetime of lusting after the crown; the bastard sailor Alynn (Abubakar Salim) finally confronting his father Corlys (Stephen Toussaint) after decades of neglect; and Rhaenyra’s childhood friend Alicent (Olivia Cooke) finally shedding the self-righteousness she’d clung to like a security blanket and admitting that she was wrong to help start a war. And there was no bloodshed compared to last week, when dozens of Targaryen sons were burned as part of the so-called Red Seed.
Many fans will no doubt find “The Queen Who Was” disappointing, especially as a final glimpse into Westeros before what could be years of waiting for a third season. (The first season premiered in August 2022, though at least a second spinoff, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” is already in production.) In another light, however, the ending reads like a statement of intent. “House of the Dragon” may have a premise that demands high-octane dragon battles, but the show doesn’t want to be defined by those battles. Instead, the ending confirms that the show’s true focus is on the lives and relationships that are destined to become collateral damage to those battles. The more “House of the Dragon” can delay gratification through glorious blood, the more it forces the viewer to sit in the grim fatalism that has increasingly become its preferred mode.
Surprisingly, Cassandra in this conflict is Ser Christon Cole (Fabian Frankel), Rhaenyra and Alicent’s former lover and a first-rate snob. But watching the only dragon encounter in season two—the fire at Rockrest in episode four, which killed Princess Rhaenyra (Eve Best) and permanently crippled Rhaenyra’s usurper brother King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney)—has humbled the bitter, vengeful knight. “The dragons dance and men are like dust beneath their feet,” he complains. “All our beautiful thoughts and all our endeavors are nothing.” But for House of the Dragon, they are something. In fact, the show reverses Cole’s hierarchy, placing human thought, emotion, and effort above the spectacle of fire-powered carnage.
“History will make you a villain,” Rhaenyra tells Alicent in the final scene, after her former friend offers to surrender King’s Landing to an invading army. House of the Dragon as a whole is deeply concerned with history, in part as a nod to “fire and blood.” In “The Queen That Was” alone, the final shot of Rhaenyra is framed between a wall of scrolls containing thousands of years of past lore, while Alice Rivers (Gail Rankin) convinces Daemon to commit by showing him a vision of the coming existential conflict in Game of Thrones, more than a century in the future. The events of House of the Dragon are framed as mere blips in (to borrow the opening credits’ visual metaphor) a much larger canvas, the motivations of its characters unknown and inevitably misunderstood by future generations. Everything we see will eventually be lost to time. Ironically, this perspective only heightens the emotional stakes of the game. Before these Targaryens became just names in a history book, they were the focus of their own narrative.
This focus is far from universally rewarding. While its conclusion was relatively satisfying—Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes), I’ll give you my sword any day—Damon’s time at Harrenhal seemed interminable, leaving the character sidelined in hallucinations for the better part of the season. And the candid conversations between Rhaenyra’s heir Jacaerys (Harry Collett) and his family were a long-overdue reckoning with his adulterous heritage, a retrospective attempt to make up for the first season’s hurried pace.
But while it’s fair to blame “House of the Dragon” for mishandling the pacing of these domestic journeys, it’s no shame that the season ends with armies on the march rather than on the battlefield. And when the action does come, “House of the Dragon” either cuts it around, like the outbreak of hostilities between longtime rivals the Blackwoods and the Brackens or Aemond’s burning of a small castle in this particular episode, or makes it unpleasant to watch. If you were looking forward to facing dragons, “Rook’s Rest” probably nipped that enthusiasm in the bud. Season 1 felt like a necessary, extended setup, with chess pieces arranged before the game began in earnest. By the time it concludes, season 2 feels like an extended setup as much as a deliberate thematic choice.
The sense that disaster is always coming helps illustrate the slippery slope of armed conflict. The Dance of the Dragons has already witnessed war crimes, the murder of children, and the demise of majestic creatures once revered as gods. It’s hard to pinpoint the precise moment when combatants have passed the point of no return, but war has arrived, even if it may get worse and more destructive. We know that more death is coming, a certainty that imbues every interaction and every scene with a sickening effect. Why should we be so eager to see death arrive?
