House Of The Dragon Should Have Started With Episode 6…

I really enjoyed Milly Alcock and Emily Carey as Rhaenyra and Alicent, but their story was unnecessary. With how great Episode 6 of House of the Dragon was, I’ve come to the conclusion that the first half of the series was completely unnecessary in telling the story of the Dance of the Dragons.

Okay, this take may get me A LOT of pushback as Milly Alcock and Emily Carey were fantastic as Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen and Queen Alicent Hightower, respectively, but their involvement in this story was simply unnecessary.

I wanted to see how Episode 6 went, with the introduction of the older versions of actors/characters we’ve already seen, such as Laena Velaryon, Rhaenerya Targaryen, and Alicent Hightower, as well as the inclusion of the children: Aegon II Targaryen, Aemond Targeryen, Helaena Targaryen, Jacaerys Velaryon, Lucerys Velaryon, and Joffrey Velaryon (and hopefully Daeron Targaryen is added at some point!), before I wrote this.

If the child actors and older actors felt completely new to one another/had little to zero natural chemistry, then adding the entire 15-20 year+ backstory that we see in Episodes 1-5 would have made perfect sense.

In that case, it would have been smart for the showrunners and writers to add the teenage/young adult years of the older actors/characters so that the audience would bond with them a little more.

Yet, with how compelling and interesting the child actors were in Episode 5, I think that it’s almost criminal that we won’t be getting a more detailed look at the backstory/character dynamics between the young Targaryens and young Velaryons.

You can’t tell me the relationship between Aemond and Aegon, with the cocky, nonchalant older brother belittling and demining the younger, more brooding brother wasn’t super fascinating and relatable. We have all dealt with annoying, mean younger or older siblings at some point of our lives and have either grown close with them as the years went by, or have drifted even further apart

It would have been intersecting to see the path of Aemond and Aegon’s relationship over an entire season.

How would Aemond have reacted and developed to the bullying from someone who was supposed to take his side no matter what (as Tywin Lannister would have one believe)? And, how would Aemond have reacted to the bullying from the Velaryons, or his father’s willful ignorance, or his mother and grandfather’s schemes?

I fear we’ll never know as the show is going to jump ahead in time again and replace this cast of younger actors and actresses with their older, more cemented and assured selves. Thus, given how different Aemond is during the Dance to what we saw last Sunday, I find the lack of character investment into him is a missed opportunity.

Plus, Alicent’s seemingly troubled bond with her distant/socially awkward teenage daughter Helaena could have been nice to see develop and explore as it would have given this series something that it has never seen before: a true mother-daughter bond.

The bond between Catelyn and Arya in Game of Thrones was nonexistent, while Catelyn and Sansa had exactly one scene together (which was a throwaway hair styling scene that didn’t really establish any deep bond between the two) before Catelyn’s death.

It would have been really nice if we could have seen 10 episodes of a socially confident, authoritative Alicent Hightower struggling to understand the curious and ‘weird’ interests of her reserved, socially awkward daughter. That would have given both Alicent and Helaena much more characterization than the pair had in the original source material.

And it’s the same for the Velaryon children. How would they react to 10 episodes worth of scrutiny over their un-Valyrian appearances and how would this have affected their relationship with Laenor Velayron (their supposed father), their mother Rhaenyra, and Harwin Strong (their actual father)?

Lastly, it would have also of been nice to see a 10-episode arc of Laenor Velaryon and his struggles with his identity, sexuality, and his duty to both the Iron Throne and his own, ambitious lord father, Lord Corlys Velaryon.

What makes this creative choice to not show these bonds even worse in my view is that, by sticking with the same characters and actors for an entire season, it would not only have allowed the audience to grow attached to said actors/characters, but it also would have given them all a few years to grow and mature in between the seasons into the older versions of their characters for Season 2.

Unfortunately, we have not got any of this as Ryan Condel and Miguel Sapochick have admirably decided to be EXTREMELY faithful to the novel, Fire And Blood, and have adapted its rather dry history book-esque storytelling mechanics into House of the Dragon.

In hindsight, all of the doubts and worries about Prince Baelon’s birth and Daemon’s status as heir from Episode 1, Daemon stealing a dragon egg from Episode 2, the war in the Stepstones from Episode 3, Daemon, Rhaenyra, and Ser Cristion Cole’s romance in Episode 4, and the breakdown of the relationship between Alicent and Rhaenyra in Episode 5 have played out just like a history book.

A condensed, quickened retelling of past events that hold importance to the present day but could easily just have been explained though passing lines of dialogue or short flashbacks. And that’s unfortunate as Milly Alcock, Emily Carey, and all of the rest of the ‘young actors and actresses’ were really great in their roles.

To be honest, House of the Dragon is kind of like if Tudor, a Showtime TV show telling the history of how Henry VIII ruled over the throne of England, started with the story of Henry VII (Henry VIII’s father) and his fight to win the throne against Richard III, the last Plantagenet before the Tudor dynasty, and then preceded to skip ahead 2-3 years between episodes until it at last makes it to Henry VIII’s reign by Episode 6-7 of the show.

The backstory is nice to learn through dialogue and succinct flashbacks but is too cumbersome and plot-derailing to cram into the first 5 episodes of the series.

Nonetheless, this major structural issue I have does not diminish my enjoyment for the show. It’s easily one of the best shows on television now, but it could have really competed (in my opinion) with its ground-breaking predecessor if it didn’t try to be a historical retailing of the Dance of the Dragons story as the Fire And Blood book is.

Images Source: Featured Image: (HBO) (House of the Dragon Episode 1: “The Heirs of the Dragon”)

In Text Image 1: (HBO) (House of the Dragon Episode 6: “The Princess and The Queen”)

In Text Image 2: (HBO) (House of the Dragon Episode 6: “The Princess and the Queen”)

In Text Image 3: (HBO) (House of the Dragon Episode 3: “Second of His Name”)