How House of the Dragon saved the Game of Thrones Franchise | Video Essay

Huge respect to HBO for using real dragons instead of CGI. I hope everyone is safe during filming.

Out of all of the seasons of GOT, I never felt as touched and emotional as I did watching an old, dying man slowly and painfully make his way to a throne for his daughter. If there's anything that would really tempt me to put HOD over GOT it would be this.

Everyone is talking about the walk to the throne, but the dinner afterwards was just as impactful to me, such beautiful framing and acting, one of the most emotion-filled scenes I have ever watched

The best thing about the show for me is that it knows that audience is a smart audience and hence knows they don't need to spoonfeed us everything and hence making it a smart series through its subtext and the screenwriting and foreshadowing is just so awesome

Viserys is simply perfect. Such a nuanced character is a rare treat and Paddy's interpretation was absolutely flawless.

The only negative thing about this show is the long ass wait for season 2 :(

Didn’t Paddy Considine do such a good job that Martin has stated he may re-write Viserys’ info in Fire & Blood to make the character more accurate to his portrayal in the show

I love the dynamic between Daemon and Aemond. You can tell Daemon sees a younger version of himself in Aemond, and that Aemond sees the kind of man he wants to be in Daemon. Such a shame they’re on opposite sides. The dinner scene where Aemond calls them Strong boys and Daemon stepping between them with a smirk on his face was so fucking good.

The showrunners have said that after they finish the Dance of the Dragons, they will likely turn the show into an anthology series that covers other parts of Targaryen rule like Aegon the Conqueror and the Blackfyre Rebellion

What Ned Stark was to GOT, King Viserys is to HOTD. Both good men surrounded by scheming people. And when they both die wars get started in their name

Aegons character change was perfect for me. Young looked like a promising badass, then you see what his path and addiction to alcohol did to him

I love the way characters are written 'in the grey'. There are no 'white knights' or 'dark villains'. They all have some black and white to their nature. They are damaged people, like in real life. This is genius story telling.

I don't think Aemond regretted his actions at the end because he's a nice guy inside, I think it's because he knows what the consequences are for those actions.

I love Aemond after that final scene. He’s a deeply traumatized kid who just got his drivers license, not realizing how dangerous it is to use his pickup truck to chase his little cousin who’s fleeing on a bicycle. He wants to make his cousin feel the terror of having your eye slashed, but doesn’t actually want to hurt him. Lots of people don’t understand how dangerous a vehicle actually is until they experience a car accident. This is just like that.

Ramin is by far the most underrated person that works on the show. His scores are absolutely breathtaking. This coming from a person that never even cared about music in films and shows.

Crazy that the picking up the crown and putting it on his head only happened because it accidentally fell off his head irl and they just went with it was a fucking adlib and it crushed the scene amazing

The scene w Daemon choking Rhynera made sense to me. He beat someone to death for simply being a messanger. He slashed someone in half bc they called his wife a whore or something along those lines. He killed his wife of the vale bc she was an....inconvenience? If someones violent in public i think its safe to assume they're violent in private as well.

I thought Daemon choking Rhaenyra was a brilliant and deliberately shocking way to highlight the idea that Dragons are never fully tame. Daemon is 100% Targaryen, a dragon in human skin. His blood and bone is fire and chaos made flesh. I feel Rhaenyra understands this because she doesn’t admonish him or scream for help. Shes not even angry. She’s just surprised that Daemon knew nothing about the Song of Ice & Fire and likely understands for Daemon the fact that his brother didn’t consider him a truly worthy successor is a festering wound on his soul that no sane person should poke. I just feel it’s a deeper moment than just an abusive act.

Man when Daemon helped his brother to sit down, best scene of the whole season imo. Got to admit i shed a tear.

The dinner scene were the team actually used bloopers and the help of daemon to viserys with improvisation makes the show a huge 10/10