The Queen Who Ever Was

House of the Dragon (HOTD) season 2 has been one that has left me very ambivalent about the whole show. After what was a very fine restart for Game of Thrones with season 1 of HOTD, this season has had so many ups and downs, and I'll avoid any clear spoilers.

We have very fine acting in general, but I feel that the jumping around characters gave often little room for proper detail. Matt Smith's character in particular seemed to be trapped somewhere with little challenge, and really was a wasted chance. Alyse Rivers was an excellent character and intriguing but we got to see little development.

I don't want to be over negative but really there were too many moments where I just cringed, the final episode was dreadfully written, and I groaned quite a number of times. Sharako Lohar in particular was possibly the worst & most ridiculous character I have yet seen in the entire Game of Thrones world. I just am not confident for the next season.

There's some modern world nonsense slapped into the show too, which I won't go into as I'll avoid spoilers but it's so sign-posted, and one-sided, I gave up. Whatever happened to the Tyrion Lannister type witticisms, the games of the whisperers, the mediaeval gamesmanship and the fantasy warfare? If anything this show seemed to be like a corporate meeting that was about organising corporate meetings (that's a real thing), as in this was the starting block of the beginning of a war to come which I'm losing interest to follow.

I thought the season 2 started fine, but really have lost a lot of interest. I'll likely keep up with season 3, but really this has lost its way. Can't even empathise with the characters. Each to their own, but I hope the writers can turn this all around.

Combined with the penultimate episode, this was actually, a two episode trailer for season 3. Quite a disappointing outcome from this show.

GoT S1-6, one couldn't fall in love with a character because every episode someone was dying and it kept us on our toes. With HotD mostly everything is painfully slow and predictable, leaving the audience asleep.

This season put a bad taste in my mouth, especially that I gave it so much grace and patience. Came into it being super optimistic, and left like I wasted time from my life that I will never get back, just like the last two seasons of Game of Thrones.

Quite possibly one of the most boring season finales I've seen. The characters are basically all over the place at this point. I debated skipping this episode entirely and truth be told, if I did, it would've been inconsequential.

Why the show runners felt the need to deviate from the source material so much is beyond me. What they failed to realize for this season, was that perhaps the most compelling story, was the actual story! The first season did an amazing job at wiping away the bad stain the ending of Game of Thrones left when it ended. The second season, on the other hand, with exception of maybe 2 or 3 episodes, unfortunately reminded us of what happens when you abandon the source material.

In all was a pretty decent episode with the pacing very good but i cant help but wonder how this episode is worth a season finale.

Its so obvious the show runners want to make more money off this. This series should have been 3 seasons at max, but now we have a very boring season with few highlights and multiple fillers, unnecessary, repeated scenes that we waited two years for, and if anything the fans deserved a way better/ satisfying finale.

In all the expectations/ hype have overshadowed this show and it is very obvious this show cannot tie the laces of Game Of Thrones, At season 2 of GOT, we had Jofferey ruling and mistreating Sansa, we had Arya on the run meeting up with Jaqen H'gar, we had Theon betraying the starks, we had the battle of blackwater, we had Tyrion and Varys with multiple entertaining conversations, we had Bran and Rickon escaping Winterfell, we had Jamie captive to Brienne, Rob winning wars... Exciting times...

Now what we have is poorly written scripts, sub par acting sometimes, with better cgi.

ALL IN ALL A VERY DISAPPOINTING SEASON... If i were to rate this season, i will give it 4 if i was feeling generous.

Now we have to wait some 2-3 years for the next season. What a frustrating season...

It's become more apparent this season (and especially this finale) that the "writers" have no idea what to do with the source material if GRRM isn't holding their hand every step of the way. The filler is blatantly apparent now (those who've read Fire & Blood realize how much they try to add to fill in the gaps) as is the constant transporting and slow-paced dialogue "Like... mist... in... the... morning... sun." They also consistently ignore the logistics of the world to deliver us scenes between prominent characters, much like the latter seasons of GoT. Imagine if Ned Stark was just in King's Landing one episode, then ended up back in Winterfell next episode to have a quick chat with Caitlin, then magically ended up back in King's Landing and nobody seemed to notice or care he'd even left to begin with.

The reason Game of Thrones beginning seasons felt so phenomenal is because there was legitimately so much actual dialogue to reference from in the books to the point they had to cut much of it short, yet it still had GRRM's actual quality tied to it. Same with the characters and their movements, and the attention to detail Martin has in his writing. The moment D&D ran out of actual source material, they also forgot the logistics of the world and the characters immediately started having less intricate and meaningful conversations; instead stuffed with slower paced poetically metaphorical verbiage. The dialogue seemed more to serve the purpose of sounding fancy and cool but lacking actual substance.

Fire & Blood isn't meant to be stretched out in this manner. Season 1 was good, but Season 2 is them getting too cocky with Season 1's success and stretching beyond their means. Overall, this season was definitely a miss, filled with stretched filler material that really didn't need to go on as long as it did. The finale most certainly cemented that.