I am, overall, pretty disappointed with the quality of the writing of the 3 episodes of house of the dragon that have aired that can be said to belong to season 3; ie. I am not counting 301-302, as those were meant to be, and are more accurately, the climax and conclusion to the storyline and character arcs for season 2. It feels like a concerted effort has been made in the writers' room to descend to the percieved level of literacy of the audience (piss poor). this is not only a terrible way to make art, but also makes for poor entertainment for those of us who expected that the back half of this 4-season show would begin rendering some of the emotional payoffs of the promises made in season 1 to that same quality.
that sense of broken promises is the strongest unifier I have so far landed on to encapsulate my 'grievances' (lol) with the state of affairs.
it was understandable from a real-world material perspective that there would be a drop in quality between seasons 1 and 2, given the last minute studio interference that prevented the last two episodes of the latter from being made. the writing had been locked in and paced appropriately to contain those episodes, and the writers' strike at the time of production prevented the possibility of any last minute changes that might've ameliorated the lack of conclusion that resulted. i do believe, keeping all that in mind, that season 2 was the best it could've been as it aired, and that, while not reaching the lofty theatrical heights of season 1, it is much stronger on rewatch now that we actually have its intended conclusion in episodes 301 and 302.
the only one of those issues that was still present for the production team at the outset of season 3 was the shortened episode order. and sure, it was an issue compounded by the necessity to use 2 of the 8 episodes given to finish out season 2, leaving season 3 with a mere 6 episodes, but they were warned. it is the job of a television writer to use the time available to the best of their ability to convey a sense of narrative build up and payoff for the characters and storylines previously established.
the justification that there is not enough time to do justice to all the extant narrative threads falls to pieces when the airtime available is being used to develop the storylines of side-characters whose narrative usefulness can be performed by anyone else over continuing that of the main characters, or even of those characters who, while currently "supporting", will survive the events of the story and must therefore be known, valuable, and present entities to the audience for there to still be something to give a fuck about when everyone else has died. Baela and Rhaena Targaryen have been in less than five minutes of the current airtime each, and past episode 1 have not each had scenes within the same 60 minutes. not only is this materially racist writing (only one black dragonriding woman allowed to exist and develop per episode!), it is an execrable redirection of the audience's attention and therefore attachment to people that Dont! Matter!
I refer here specifically to the last minute re-integration of Daeron into a narrative he was intentionally cut from in season 1 for good reason. Aemond was perfectly poised to be threat enough to Rhaenyra's reign after his escape from KL, and could've brought the military might of Oldtown on side by virtue of being kin just as well, without the need to spend valuable time on a cheap retreading of 'young sensitive boy from aristocratic household learns that being a man in this world is to kill and kill and kill'. it's been done.
If we can't have Baela, Rhaena, and Nettles, why can we have Aegon, Aemond, and Daeron?
for that matter, why do I know more about who ormund and gwayne hightower are now and were as children and how they liked to play in the hightower (a place we have not seen and likely will never see in show), than I know about Rhaena's current psychological state as a fugitive from her family, or about the challenges she is facing in trying to remain hidden while riding a dragon large enough to give Caraxes pause? why is Alicent's understandably limited screentime as a war captive not only absolutely devoid of tension but also reduced to info-dumping about these aforementioned men when she has had one single scene with one of them in the entirety of the show, wherein we are shown that what relationship remains between them is distant?
season 1 established a pseudo-feudal, patriarchal world whose laws and customs regarding inheritance were challenged by the then-king of the ruling dynasty's unprecedented choice of heir: a woman. a woman we are shown within those first 10 episodes to be formidable not only as an expert dragonrider (an important equalizing factor between her and her father's former defacto heir, her own uncle; see s01e02) but also a politically cunning mind intimately aware of the social contract between the crown and its vassals, with actionable and concrete ideas of her own for what it means to rule those vassals effectively (s01e06); a noblewoman with literal entitlement who is implied to have the administrative capacity to rule the lands that entitlement endows her with ( S01e08), who is ruthless enough to scheme for the consolidation of her power at the cost of the lives of the lower classes (s01e07) and to order the deaths of vassals who interpose themselves between her and her rightful position, kin or no (s01e08/s02e01).
the beginning of season 2 opens in the wake of a quick succession of catastrophes for Rhaenyra: the loss of her father, her usurpation at the hands of her erstwhile first love/best friend-turned-stepmother-turned-enemy, and the murder of her son Lucerys. She is paralyzed by grief, and yet at the close of the first of those 8 hours, it is rage that returns her voice to her, and issues forth her first royal command: the death of her brother Aemond in vengeance for her sonâs murder.
we know how that pans out.
season 2, we are meant to understand--through the progression from a Rhaenyra that has been made redundant by the all-male council that seeks to rule through her, who questions her father's belief in her (s02e03) and how far she is willing to go to reclaim the throne (s02e05/s02e06) to the Rhaenyra as priestess-queen that looks down from the safety of her balcony at the blood sacrifice of dozens of her kinsmen which she has remorselessly orchestrated to secure the overwhelming military might of dragon fire--is the crucible that forges Rhaenyra into the kind of ruler she is set to become, the one who will be remembered in history as The Cruel.
Where in the world, then, is that Rhaenyra Targaryen, five episodes into season 3? Who is this meek and malleable woman who dithers in the face of deliberate insult and a mounting counter-insurgency? Why doesn't she seem to know that taxation and war loot are the methods by which a feudal ruler replenishes their coffers, nor understand the necessity of a paid and loyal police force in an authoritarian state? why is she suddenly preoccupied by a popular conception of legitimacy that she has never once cared for? Why has she been defanged, declawed, and seemingly lobotomized?
Should this trend continue, despite promises to the contrary made two seasons ago, what they are in effect showing us is NOT that Rhaenyra lost the war bc of in-world misogyny. It's that she lost the war because when push came to shove she was incompetent, and the biased misogynist maesters behind the in-universe history Fire And Blood were right.
