In this op-ed, culture writer Austin Williams argues that the time jumps utilized by Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon hurt the show's secondary characters rather than help effectively tell their stories.
A challenge showrunners often face when their scripts span multiple timelines is how to tell such ambitious stories in succinct, 60-minute installments. There’s a few different methods that can achieve this: setting each episode of a season to fixed periods in the protagonists’ lives (as seen in True Detective), flitting between past, present, and future (This Is Us), or frequent flash-forwards to the narrative endpoint (Better Call Saul).
The adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood seemingly requires a method far more mechanical than any of these devices, as the book features little dialogue and centers about a dozen characters with similar-sounding names who are all somehow related. Yet, the way House of the Dragon reckons with its scattered timeline does a disservice to its secondary characters who could have otherwise felt fully realized and wholly unique.
By Dragon’s season finale, which takes place about 20 years after its pilot, the first Targaryen blood is spilled in the family’s civil war and the camera cuts to black as a mother’s worst nightmare becomes Rhaenyra’s reality. While Lucerys and Aemond’s fatal dance of their dragons provides enough punctuation for a season of Targaryen strife, something about it feels unceremonious given how little we know about anyone else who’s contributed to the conflict. This is mostly a result of how single-mindedly and ungracefully the show’s frenetic time jumps discarded other houses in pursuit of its finale.
Thus far, House of the Dragon has omitted two types of writing that defined the best of Game of Thrones: small moments that would animate the motivations of the side characters influencing the central plot, and interactions between those characters before and after their arcs become opposed. The most frustrating examples of these lapses in storytelling lie in how the series has depicted House Strong.
With Larys Strong meant to be this show’s Little Finger, Dragon graphs all of the scheming smarminess of Thrones’ most textured villain onto a character who seemingly wants for nothing other than to indulge his foot fetish. In the original series, Little Finger’s childhood obsession with Catelyn Stark inspires a political ambition that sees him betray her husband, marry and murder her sister, and manipulate and barter her daughter. This happens slowly over the course of seven seasons and many scenes of television.
Contrarily, the first bit of meaningful time we spend with Larys Strong comes midway through Dragon, as he unsubtly aligns himself with Alicent by passing along gossip about Rhaenyra. Only one episode, a ten-year time jump, and a single on-screen conversation with the queen pass before he arranges the murder of his own father and brother to stay in her good graces. In the lead-up to Lyonel and Harwin Stong’s Harrenhal home going up in flames, there’s no indication of what Larys’ relationship was like with either man, how he came to be capable of such cruelty, or what exactly he’s gotten out of his closeness to Alicent.
Ser Harwin himself received even less character development between flash-forwards than his inexplicably murderous brother — the captain of the City Watch shared little screen time with his secret lover, and never had a material conversation with his eventual killer.
With Breakbones being the biological father of Rhaenyra’s first three children, further hurting her claim to the throne in the eyes of those who already considered her an illegitimate heir, Ser Harwin’s sparse appearances and sudden death on the show are truly confounding. One could argue the couple’s extramarital affair is one of the most consequential relationships of the series thus far, yet we never see its complications or repercussions outside of its abrupt end.
Moreover, Rhaenyra’s previous lover, Ser Criston Cole, felt so scorned by her political marriage to Laenor Velaryon that he beat the prince’s boyfriend to death on their wedding day. How deliciously tense would it have been to watch both knights police the realm together once they realized they have both satisfied similar desires for the princess outside of her royal duties? Instead, Criston and Harwin only collide for a single scene, which ends in a fight that feels mostly unearned.
Even more puzzling is how unaffected Rhaenyra seems by the loss of Harwin. Throughout the taunts, insults, and inquiries she suffers as a result of her children’s brown hair, indignation is something she seems to have more time for than mourning. Aside from Aemond once again speaking Lucerys’ true surname in the season finale, the presence of Harwin Strong is as quickly forgotten as it was introduced.
As Daemon now fights for the Blacks as Rhaenyra’s second husband and third lover of the series, House of the Dragon is so tightly focused on its titular family that it’s sucked the life out of the world around it. No one suffers more from this bulldozing of chronology and character than the siblings of House Velaryon — particularly Lady Laena.
Coincidentally (or perhaps not), House Velaryon is the only noble family from Fire & Blood to be portrayed by Black actors in House of the Dragon. This racebending makes the creative casualty that is Laena Velaryon’s abridged character arc that much more disappointing.
The book, an anthology outlining the history of House Targaryen, manages to celebrate Laena’s spirit as a dragon rider even as it details her obligations as a noblewoman. Upon King Viserys inspiring turmoil and treason throughout the realm in his decision to join houses with the Hightowers instead of the Velaryons, Fire & Blood describes Laena as feeling indifferent: “Only Lady Laena herself seemed untroubled. ‘Her ladyship shows far more interest in flying than in boys.’” On-screen, the character was afforded no such nuance — at least not in any visible way.
Viewers are robbed of the opportunity to witness a Black girl claim Vhagar, the world’s biggest and oldest living dragon, at the tender age of 12. The feat is demoted to off-screen lore, briefly mentioned during a fireside chat in which the show ages her up to 15. Instead, the first time we see someone claim Vhagar is when a white child takes the beast for himself on the night of Laena’s funeral.
A case could be made for why it makes more sense to depict Aemond’s claiming of Vhagar than Laena’s, especially given the way the events of that evening are echoed throughout his final confrontation with Lucerys. But that logic falls apart when considering the dramatic weight of that initial theft is meant to be anchored by Laena and Vhagar’s bond, which begins during the years that the show skips over.
Admittedly, too many things happen to too many characters in Fire & Blood to expect House of the Dragon’s time-hopping to be as elegant as that of True Detective or This Is Us. And unlike Better Call Saul, this prequel carries the burden of being set 200 years before the events of the show we know and love — not six. But if there’s any series the creators of Dragon should have referenced when deciding how to pace its story, it’s Game of Thrones.
When working on the novels that inspired the original show, George R.R. Martin once described the idea of a time jump between books three and four as “anticlimactic.” He ultimately decided against it, noting it would seem like “nothing much has happened” in the intervening years. For as much flack as showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss got for rushing the conclusion of Thrones, they plotted out the early stages of their adaptation with similar patience.
When thinking back to the slow burn of Thrones’ beginnings, one could imagine a version of Dragon in which this first chapter of its story is split into two separate seasons. Of course, 10 episodes a piece would have made more room for the already excellent performances of Milly Alcock, Emma D’Arcy, Emily Carey, and Olivia Cooke — who respectively play teenage and adult versions of Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower.
But, crucially, that much time spent with smaller characters like the Strongs and the Velaryons would have also shaped the show into something more recognizable for fans who thought they wanted back into Westeros. Without those moments, House of the Dragon runs the risk of making this fantasy world uninhabitable for people made of more than just fire and blood.