HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon returns this Sunday for a second season. GQ’s Culture Editor Alex Pappademas talked to regular GQ contributor William Goodman about what we can expect as we return to war-torn Westeros.
William, I was a big Game of Thrones fan, and then, like a lot of people, I wasn’t. So I resisted House of the Dragon when it came along. I was like, Didn’t we just do this, and didn’t we all end up pretty annoyed?
But by the end of season 1, I came around. Part of that was the cool narrative tie they created between the two shows—this idea, which you remind us of in the House of the Dragon refresher you just wrote for the site, that the Targaryens are motivated by a prophecy that says winter is coming and humanity is doomed unless there’s a Targaryen on the Iron Throne when it happens. I love that, because we, the audience, know that’s true, but that it’s not going to be the Targaryens or their descendants who save the world.
Yeah. The showrunners teed up this cool bit of lore very early on, about the Song of Ice and Fire prophecy. So the audience knows what it means, and the significance of that lingers over the show and gives it this propulsion.
For a spinoff, the first season asked a lot of the audience. Instead of gallivanting all over a huge map and introducing us to a continent’s worth of colorful characters, like Thrones did, it was pretty tightly focused on a specific corner of Westeros and this specific group of upper-class blond people. And it seemed like every other week there’d be a pretty significant time jump, sometimes leading to actors being recast.
That’s one of those things I know some people got kind of hung up on that during the first season. It didn't bother me as much. It could be a little disorienting, but I think at the end of the day, especially as we move into season two, having that history associated with the characters makes it all feel a little bit more lived in, because in theory, by the end of the first season, we’ve been with these characters for 20 years.
So those little things that were maybe slights in season one are coming back, and now they're not fresh wounds or scabs—they're scars. They’re deep-seated things, petty or not. And the show can then turn around and reference its own history. I think the fact that they were able to establish that within the course of a 10 episode first season is a really cool feature, even if some people thought it was a bug.
Also, in season two, they do find ways to show us small moments where we get the perspective of ordinary folks. People that actually live in King’s Landing, blacksmiths, people who go out drinking on the Street of Silk. Having that ground-level perspective on this larger civil war helps show us the stakes of what’s happening.
You’ve seen the first half of the new season. Without spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t, including me, what else can we expect?
I think if season two is all about setup, then this is really all about execution. One of the criticisms I had about season one, especially in the finale when they kill Lucerys, Rhaenyra's son—that death didn't feel like there was a ton of weight to it, because we hadn’t spent a ton of time with him. And so the first four episodes of Season 2 do a really good job, I think, of better establishing those kids, especially on the Hightower side, the “Green” side. We get a lot of insight into how Aegon II is ruling, Aemond's mental state after what happened with him and Luc, and we get to know Rhaenyra's kids a little bit more as well.
The battles are the other thing. There’s a big set piece coming up, I won’t say exactly when, that is up there with some of the great battle sequences in Game of Thrones history. It's very, very impressive—and well-lit, so there's no concern about you not being able to see what's happening. But the kicker here is the dragon aspect of it. Everyone involved has their own dragon, and these things are basically walking nuclear weapons with a mind of their own. The real fear and scale of the dragons, and how they come into play, is one thing the show picks up on this year that is different.
And then just how propulsive the season is—with so much setup having been done in season 1, they can really just go pedal to the metal here and get into the war aspect of it. Those are the things that I think really, really pop.
Read William’s guide to who everybody is and why they're fighting.
