House of the Dragon Episode 1 Review: Game of Thrones spin-off gets off to a flyer with more fire
House of the Dragon: With the sun shining bright in Indian skies on the morning of August 22, 2022, Game of Thrones fans woke up to a visual spectacle, a visual treat that turned back time as memories came flooding back. After a long haul of 3 years, the iconic Iron Throne is up for grabs. The times are different, the people in power are different and so is the politics that is destined to go around it.
Game of Thrones fans, who invested almost a decade of their lives in the iconic TV series are no strangers to the tales of the Targaryens and have an extended amount of affinity for the bloodline. Courtesy of Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) and her character, the makers of GOT have successfully built an aura around their family tree. The show starts on a pitch-perfect note with a mention of the mad queen, Daenerys, the mother of dragons who for some reason succumbed to her ego and lust for power. The makers do an amazing job of emphasizing the point that the current storyline is set 172 years before the birth of Daenerys.
The new franchise, in the very first episode, wastes no time to establish the fact that the audiences are going to witness a tale of a dysfunctional family that consists of the father-daughter duo Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), and Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey). With some subtle use of dialogues, grim lighting, and tight frames, the makers try to communicate that Alicent has more to her than her looks and can’t be trusted. Young Emily Carey does an excellent job of portraying the character and by her looks, you just can’t guess the storm that the character beholds.
But what stands out most is Matt Smith’s Daemon Targaryen who just gives you all the scary frames and bad vibes. Game of Thrones fanatics certainly know when someone is going to flood other characters with suffering and Daemon as of now certainly looks like one of them.
The show does a good job especially in communicating how ambitious the characters are, exactly how they were in Game of Thrones. Viscerys I has his claim on the throne and ascends it leaving his sister Rhaenys behind. Just like Daenerys, we already have a name for Rhaenys who is going to be referred to as “the Queen That Never Was”. Viscerys is wise, someone oozing with wisdom but reveals his true side when he takes a few inhuman decisions during his wife’s painful labour. This one instance in particular sets the tone of the show and showcases the fact that everything is going to be about that one heir to the throne.
As of now, after the first episode, it is quite tough to predict the route the show will take, but as far as the first episode goes, GOT fans will have loads of things that will bring a smile to their face along with a hope that the makers don’t mess it up as they did with the original story.
The first episode of House of the Dragon is streaming on Disney+Hotstar and is around 65 minutes long.
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