Second of His Name

Masterfully written & directed episode, accompanied by multiple standout character performances, and a truly haunting soundtrack.

So reminiscent of early-mid GoT in terms of quality, pace, and writing, that it's actually scary. Everything was on point. The tempo didn't feel too rushed nor too slow, the story was seamlessly immersive and real, despite being set in a fantasy world where dragon sightings are an everyday occurence. Only complaint would be that, at times, it felt like tiny bits of the plot were missing ever so slightly. Some things that happened off-camera might've been decent additions to the already great episode, but that's really nitpicking.

All in all, a great display of screenwriting & execution.

The politics and family drama is very intricate and intriguing. The same can not be said about the big battle sequence. It's very well made and it looks phenomenal but it's way too predictable which honestly makes it underwhelming. Spectacular things happen on the screen but there is no tension or stakes which makes it kinda meh. A good fight scene is only as good as the writing.

It is still a great episode. The relationships are very intricate and it's understandable why every character acts the way they do. Everyone has their own agenda and they can't please anyone without hurting someone else they care about. The ancient norms and rules are questioned and the discussions regarding duty and love are thought-provoking and interesting. The stakes are immense and the air is full of tension.

9/10

Solid third episode. Started kinda slow but ended really strong. King Viserys Targaryen is slowly becoming my favorite character in this show. His development in this episode was S tier. Rhaenyra's arc this episode was also beautiful. The imagery with Rhaenyra being the one to find the white stag was great. And to top it all off, we end off the episode with a great battle.

The War for the Stepstones is great. Daemon and the Velaryons are struggling to subdue Prince Dahar the Crabfeeder for over three years. But with one letter from his brother, Daemon commits war crimes to get victory over his enemy. Great episode overall. Definitely better than episode 2 but still isn't as great as episode 1.

Let's start with what's good: visually the series is amazing. The costume design is on point, the sets and The CGI look amazing and the actors are generally doing a good job as well. But the show still fails to suck you in the same way the earlier seasons of GoT did.

The story in general has been pretty predictable thus far, but I guess that's not the fault of the show runners since the story is already set in stone.

The two biggest problems are probably that the characters aren't very interesting and that the dialogue is pretty bland. Writing good dialogue is hard, the earlier seasons of GoT excelled at this due to GRRMs writing which they were based on, but the dialogue in HotD reminds me more of the later seasons of GoT after they run out of material.

But this is just episode 3 after all, maybe it gets more interesting and complex as the season progresses.

Regarding this episode specifically, the last battle was pretty bad in the sense that it didn't make much sense, I hope that's just an outlier though.

Actually, the director of this episode doesn't seem to be very good at directing battle scenes on the battlefield. They should let Miguel Sapochnik direct the fight scenes in this episode. Personally, the battle scene at the end of this episode didn't convince me. Just all the blood and killing each other, so disturbing and uncomfortable, instead of giving the viewer a sense of drama and fear when the characters rushed into battle. When I saw Daemon hurling himself at the pirates and getting a rain of arrows, I was pretty sure he would survive, so what's the point of that scene? Even the fact that the crabfeeder was killed so easily and without saying a single word, this unsurprised me no more than a Velaryon riding a dragon and shouting "Dracarys!". Wow what a not-so-interesting scene. I was waiting for the climax at the end, and I was disappointed. Actually the detail at the end could develop the Daemon character, but the beach fight scene is really boring. GOT has a lot of interesting battles, but this is not one of them.

Speaking of what happened before that battle, wow I must say I'm so satisfied. King Viserys is so well developed and as a viewer and know many interesting GOT characters, I'm starting to get interested in this squishy and soft king. The emotions and thoughts that Viserys has experienced and felt in more than 10 years of being King, I can personally understand through just over half an hour in this episode. And including the relationship between father and daughter, the disagreement between generations, I believe this episode has messages for real-life families, in today's modern generation as well. And once again I would like to commend the team of costumes, setting design, so beautiful, so dreamy. Through this episode we also get to know many new characters, and hopefully they will join this game in a larger role.