Watching House of the Dragon, the biggest strength season one had was that it took a huge risk, being probably the most unique show ever when it comes to telling a story in just one season.

The first five episodes take place over a period of four years, where it lays the bricks of the main focus of the show, but in episode six, they jump a decade into the future, to replace two of the main characters with older actresses and introduce a new cast of child actors, only to replace them by the eighth episode with another six year jump.

This is probably why they cast Matt Smith, who played Prince Phillip in the first season of the Crown, which also did the concept of replacing cast with age, but doing it every two seasons.

There’s mainly pros, but a few negatives to this.

The pros being that it allows for a 20 year story to happen and it builds things up well, showing wars are normally built over long periods of time with gradual tension and not just over days. It also helps show the characters at a younger age, so even though the main cast are adults, seeing them as kids gives a better sense of what they are made of. This is sort of similar to the book, IT by Stephen King, which showing the main cast as kids for a long part of the book helps build them as adults later on.

The negatives are the changing cast doesn’t always feel right and the age of the other actors makes it a little weird.

For the cast members that were changed, Olivia Cooke plays an older Alicent Hightower, where she does a great job and feels very similar to Emily Carey and how I’d imagine that character would grow up in a 10 year time skip. This isn’t even just looks, it’s acting as a whole, where they showed the character get gradually angrier as a teenager. That worked, but not sold replacing Milly Alcock with Emma D’Arcy translated the best. Reason being that Milly Alcock played her role of Rhaenyra with intense confidence and adventure. Emma D’Arcy plays the character much weaker and less intense. This didn’t seem to have a real moment to connect those dots and I don’t even blame the actress, but more the story.

There is something here where both characters were manipulated by commitment and it tore them apart gradually, but I think Rhaenyra’s storyline could have showed that better.

The other issue with the time jumps is not all the actors/actresses being recast is a little weird.

Fabien Frankel is 28 in real life and plays Cristen Cole throughout the entire 20 year run, so it’s a little weird seeing him not change actors, when the others did. Also weird knowing that actor is the same age as cast members who play characters not even born in the first episode.

Eve Best is another example, playing Rhaenys, who from the first episode looks like she’s old enough to be a grandma, despite the actress being only 51. That character becomes a grandma later in season one, which shows they clearly had that vision for her, but introducing her that way feels strange.

That said, these aren’t really a huge deal, for what wins.

The show has an amazing cast with Paddy Considine having some of the best scenes ever filmed in episode eight, Matt Smith really being kind of the life/tension of the show in the first half, Olivia Cooke doing amazing as Alicent and Ewan Mitchell doing amazing as Aemond, despite only three episodes. Those were also just the best in my opinion, no one gave a bad performance.

Story wise, every episode nails it and unlike some other shows, the budget felt worth it every single time, never feeling cheap. The flight scenes are great, it had one of the best battle sequences ever, the landscapes are cool and the story backs it all up. Pretty much every episode shocks me.

Finally, the big reason this season beat Game of Thrones for me.

Ambience

In episode five, there’s an engagement party, where for several minutes, it’s just dancing and experiencing this culture/world built. There’s the feeling something is about to go wrong, which it does, but those moments felt fairly relaxed and created an atmosphere which Game of Thrones didn’t do enough of.

Another scente was episode eight, with the dinner, where it’s just the family trying to enjoy a meal calmly before a fight eventually breaks out.

Final one that really stuck out was episode seven, with Aemond riding his dragon the first time, where it felt more like Harry Potter in that scene, only for the next scene to show it’s still Westeros.

This season had a lot of scenes which focused on ambience over war and the constant tension Game of Thrones felt.

For the finale, I can’t really give it a fair review. The episode was leaked and even though I tried to avoid spoilers, so many hit youtube, tiktok and articles, I had almost all the important scenes in House of the Dragon spoiled.

It would have been a really cool episode and it was, but the leak took away part of its luster.

For this season though, I’d say episodes one, three, four, five, seven, eight and nine all really are amazing and the big winners. Which writing that, that means only three episodes I thought were just regular good and not amazing good.

So well, I hope season two lives up to this as well as the other spin-offs!