Actually, we should have a new episode of House of the Dragon tonight. Unfortunately, Season 2 was cut short by two episodes as Warner Bros. made cost-cutting moves following its merger with Discovery – a merger that was questioned by many at the time and sent shockwaves through HBO’s programming schedule, including the cancellation of popular series such as Raised by wolves And Westworld.

If we had gotten a full 10-episode season, we would almost certainly have something special to watch tonight: The Battle of the Maw. Instead, last week ended with a season finale that felt more like a set-up for a major showstopper at the end of the season. The aforementioned battle will have to wait until season three. As showrunner Ryan Condal explained in a press conference:

“We wanted to give Gullet, probably the most anticipated – well, I would say maybe the second most anticipated action event of the Fire & Blood– and tries to give it the time and space it deserves.

I know everyone wants this to come out every summer. But the show is so complex that we do multiple feature films every season. So I apologize for the wait, but I’m just saying if Rooks Rest and The Red Sowing were good, then with the team we have together, we’re going to have a blast on The Battle of the Gullet.”

While it’s a shame we have to wait two years for this fight, I believe it will blow everyone’s minds and be worth the wait. Fans were very unhappy with Season 2, but at least the upcoming fight – or fights, actually – will be worth the wait.

And that’s the point: Condal isn’t just talking about the Battle of the Maw. In the post-finale featurette, the showrunner said that Season 3 will be the war we’ve all been waiting for.

“While this season was very much about the build-ups of an early medieval war, season three will clearly be about all-out war,” Condal said. This is undoubtedly good news. Season one was excellent, fleshing out the characters and power dynamics and introducing the various players and circumstances that would lead to a war of succession. Season two, while it had some very good moments, felt like too much time wasted. Rhaenyra and Alicent in particular just seemed to take up space. The former was too indecisive and couldn’t really develop beyond where she was at the end of season 1; the latter was pushed aside and it seemed like the writers didn’t know what to do with her.

If season 3 is truly about all-out war, that’s exactly what this show desperately needs at this point. The second half of season 2 would have been much better if we’d sped things up a bit and seen a few battles. I say this as someone who likes slow, character-driven series. The problem with season 2 is that it felt aimless, like it was slowed down to fill space rather than for a real narrative reason. And I can empathize with all the obstacles the show’s creators faced: COVID issues persisted, writers’ and actors’ strikes caused problems, and it’s a big production even at the best of times.

Nevertheless, it is good news that “total war” is imminent (I would Total War: Westeros game!), but there is also bad news. You have to read between the lines to find it, but it’s really quite ominous. I discuss this in the video below, but I’ll also touch on it briefly in this post.

Basically, it seems that certain members of the House of the Dragon The team decided to really make the story about Alicent and Rhaenyra, even now that we’re at war, so we have this very awkward scene where Alicent somehow manages to visit Rhaenyra in Dragonstone and offer her her son’s life in exchange for a relatively bloodless surrender of King’s Landing – something I don’t think Alicent would do for a second.

Ryan Condal made it clear from the beginning that the idea was to build the series around the experiences of these two women, and while I think that was a very smart idea for Season 1, I find it hard to see how they can continue to do that in the future and remain even remotely faithful to the books – which often present a very different version of these characters. In fact, even in Season 1, Alicent was portrayed as a much more ruthless character: she wanted to steal Luke’s eye, forced Rhaenyra – after she had just given birth – to walk all the way through the Red Keep to show her the new baby, planned to seduce Viserys and create this whole green faction in the first place, etc.

So it’s very strange to hear that this is actually a “love story” between these two women who by now hate each other passionately, or at least should no longer be trying to make peace. It seems Rhaenyra has forgotten that Aemond killed her son, and Alicent has forgotten that Team Black had her grandson murdered. They just want to be best friends again! Decades after they were last friends. More time has passed as bitter rivals than as childhood friends, and I’m sorry, but I have a teenage daughter and I know how girls can fight.

So when I read director Geeta Patel saying that this is a love story, I’m very confused. “Alicent feels very alone,” Patel said of the final episode of season two. “She feels like she doesn’t have a real partner in her life, not even her father. She feels like her father pushed her to the point where she is now. And she can’t hear her own voice. She can’t feel her own heartbeat. So when Rhaenyra comes in, that’s exactly what she wants. She wants love in her life, and in some ways it’s a little bit of a love story of these two women.”

No, it really isn’t. But wait, here’s writer Sara Hess saying the false story of Fire & Blood

was written by these unreliable narrators and nobody really knows what happened in those rooms. They know the big historical events, but they don’t know what people’s intentions were. And history is often written by men who dismiss women as crazy or hysterical or evil and scheming or money-grubbing or sex bombs. Like in the (book), it says Rhaenyra had kids and got fat. Well, who wrote that? We were able to step back and say: The history tellers want to believe that Alicent is an evil, scheming bitch. But is that true? Who exactly is saying that? That’s part of what we’re playing with this season and in season two.

I’m sorry, but is there anything wrong with a woman who has children gaining weight? Is that just something the patriarchy would say, or is that a normal experience for countless women (and many men!) after having a child? You don’t fight the patriarchy or put notches in the belt of feminism by making your female characters “strong” instead of human and complex. And the show’s writers made Alicent a “devious villain.” beep“ even in season 1. It is inconceivable that she is now miraculously all nice and good.

The more I think about her character in season 2, the less sense she makes. She wants to sue for peace now that she’s out of power, but even in the final season she treats her own son horribly. She’s still just as horrible, but the creators of the show want us to sympathize with her and see this as some kind of love story between two women just trying to figure it out together? I’m sorry, but this is ridiculous. It crosses the boundaries of believability.

If you want to tell a story about the dangers of patriarchy and the atrocities of war, and how it can all spill over into the powerful women of the empire, look no further than the source material. Fire & Blood needs to be fleshed out to be a satisfying television series, but it doesn’t need to be radically changed. The path that Rhaenyra takes is – without giving too much away – very dark and serves as a great critique of power and patriarchy and all the rest of it. It’s really dangerous to build these characters up to be people they weren’t – to make them “heroes” or to soften their rough edges to make them more likable. You risk turning a complicated, authentic character into someone who is flat and uninteresting. I hope the writing team realizes this as they work on Season 3.

Suffice it to say, George RR Martin’s somewhat confusing blog entries make a lot more sense to me now that I’ve watched the entire second season.

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