"House of the Dragon": When the best action in the finale is mud wrestling, that's a problem

“Game of Thrones” took an Alaskan winter’s worth of shade for its poor decision-making, but ending seven of its eight seasons well was its saving grace. Missteps notwithstanding, we could depend on that much.

"House of the Dragon" reminds us of this by flashing back to one of the series’ most magnificent moments: Daenerys hatching her three dragons, generations after they’d been thought to have disappeared from the world. Season 1 cut to black with Drogon’s screech cutting through that darkness.

Much more happened in that hour that set up the next season, but that dragon call announced Daenerys, an exiled royal none took seriously, and drastically altered the stakes overnight.

“House of the Dragon” teased something similar by having Rhaena Targaryen (Phoebe Campbell) abandon her nanny post and run for the hills in search of a wild dragon, and without even a water skin or a power bar in her purse!

Finally, she catches up to her quarry. Dragon sees girl, girl sees dragon. And . . . that's all we get until 2025? Maybe 2026?

This is intercut between scenes of Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) staring out her doorway on Dragonstone, Alicent (Olivia Cooke) staring at a sunrise, Daemon (Matt Smith) staring at his army – and hosts of Driftmark, Stark (yes, the wolves have entered the chat), Lannister and Hightower men on the move, the Hightowers accompanied by a dragon we haven’t seen before. (But one you would recognize if you read book.) Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) is getting back in the fray too, I guess.

Editing these into a montage weights all these developments equally. In terms of their emotional gravity, they simply aren’t. Rhaenyra, Alicent, Daemon and their bannermen represent the inevitable. Rhaena’s mad desire diverges from the plan, much like Dany’s rise from the ashes. But that encounter never culminates, submerged in the chess pieces flooding the board one, possibly two years before anyone makes a move.

Seriously, how long will it take “House of the Dragon” to figure itself out? It gives us new dragon riders in the penultimate episode only to have the most despicable ruin the mood; it annihilates the key tension between two key characters by shoving in a “come to the blood of wood Jesus” moment; and it makes Prince Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett) look like a whiny punk.

The second season finale’s empty soul repeats the same mistakes as the first, compounding its flaccidness by setting up consequential conflicts without sufficiently establishing the groundwork for caring about anyone. Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) loses control, lights up a town for no good reason, and roughs up his clairvoyant sister, who helpfully tells him he’s going to die.

Whatever I feel for Rhaenyra is a credit to D’Arcy's heartfelt performance, especially in this hour’s second major confrontation between her and Cooke’s Alicent. The tossed-aside dowager queen sneaks out of King’s Landing to Dragonstone to say, “Know what? You were right; I was wrong, I’ll do the peacemaking thing now,” only to be shocked when her ex-BFF brushes her off with, “Beech, please – I have seven kaiju now, and all you have is a weird daughter and couple of angry incel sons, and one is burnt up like bad KFC.”

It isn’t fair to put all this on the finale’s writer Sara Hess, since meaningful plot progression has been a casualty of this show since the start. Showrunner Ryan Condal and his team are squandering the relatively open slate George R.R. Martin writes in “Fire & Blood” in terms of character specifics.

They appear to be aware of this, indicated by the spirited writing for Oscar Tully and this episode’s saving grace Sharako Lohar. Barely mentioned in Martin’s texts, the Lyseni pirate (Abigail Thorn, who dominates in her performance) explodes onto the scene by cutting Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) down to size and making the lion debase himself for our pleasure.

Thorn’s Admiral Lohar adds something this show desperately lacks, which is a sense of humor that costs them nothing and cuts one of those stodgy lords down to size. Since we’re praising this pirate leader – introduced using he/him/his pronouns – now is as fine as time as any to break down what worked in the finale (fire!), and what didn’t (tired!).

Fire: Mud wrestling and pirate-on-Lannister snu-snu.

All told, the Triarchy pirates negotiated a crazy deal in their favor by forcing an outmatched Tyland to give the Stepstones, contested territory off the coast of Dorne. Unable to give them the fortune they demand, instead Tyland weakly agrees, but isn’t prepared to fulfill the final condition to seal the deal. “You’re thin,” Sharako Lohar says, adding, “I will not sail with a man who cannot best me.”

“At what?” Tyland asks . . . and the next thing you know, he’s taking a beatdown in a filth pit while Lohar laughs at him. This only ends when he slams the pirate with a low blow and follows that with a crack to the jaw, hard enough to impress the Admiral. Lohar laughs, invites him to a banquet, makes him sing for his dinner and, in a last demand before he retires, says. “I wish to have children by you,” demanding that Tyland smash with their wives.

“Uh, how many wives do you have?” With that, it’s settled: death by snu-snu! (Kidding. He lives on to sail to war against the Velaryon blockade.)

Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen in "House of the Dragon" (HBO)

Tired: Daemon’s haunted spa getaway.

Yeah, yeah, it’s in the books, but Daemon’s poorly timed men’s empowerment retreat at Harrenhal was this show’s version of Hershel’s farm. Lasting too long and dragged through too many dream sequences, it asked a lot of us while trying to sell a half-hearted flirtation with going hustle bro.

Now that he has an army, he loudly brags that his niece-wife and the true heir to the Iron Throne could join him and sit at his side after he single-handedly takes King’s Landing. Then Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) slapped that out of his mouth by leading him to the godswood to feel up its heart tree, which shows the past, present and future, including Rhaenyra on the throne.

That, finally, sets him right. When Rhaenyra shows up to Harrenhal unannounced, Daemon ends their marital spat by kneeling before her in front of all of them – including Ser Alfred Broome (Jamie Kenna), who Rhaenyra trusted as her emissary only to tell Daemon he’d back “a king.” So: that’s all settled.

Fire: Rhaenyra and Alicent, Part Two

I speak for a lot of folks when I say this show could ease up on the dramatic chatter, but the midnight tête-à-tête between Rhaenyra and Alicent perfectly captured that “I was wrong to steal your boyfriend” energy with which many high school girls are familiar. Alicent played the part of the mean girl who realizes her mistake after her dude gives her the clap and wrecks the car daddy gave her while driving drunk.

Rhaenyra, cross-armed and righteously indignant, does not feel sorry for this traitor, even after Alicent offers to hand over King’s Landing to prevent bloodshed. Alicent smoothly tries to negotiate an easy out for Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) which is, of course, an additional insult. Rhaenyra demands Aegon’s head as a price for her former confidante’s betrayal, and Alicent, craven as she is, agrees.

All she wants is to disappear with her daughter Helaena (Phia Saban) and her granddaughter. “I cast myself on the mercy of a friend who once loved me,” Alicent says, agreeing to set up Rhaenyra to take King’s Landing three days (and for us, possibly a year or years) from now. Then she tries the whole, “So, friends?” gambit, which never works, and that’s that.

Tom Glynn-Carney as Aegon Targaryen and Matthew Needham as Lord Larys in "House of the Dragon" (HBO)

Fired: Aegon the Grilled and Larys “Footsy” Strong (Matthew Needham)

Larys, at the King’s bedside: “Look, man. Your brother's gone ham and made Vhagar light up Sharp’s Point like Three-Mile Island, just 'cause he’s salty. I’ve defrauded Harrenhal and hid the cash in Braavos. Let’s ghost this place.”

Aegon: “Braavos. Stinky. Ew. Hard pass. Also, did you know Vhagar’s fire made my gherkin into jerky? I can’t even whiz right.”

Larys: “Aemond’s gonna kill you too, you know.”

Aegon: “Braavos, you say?”

Tired: Rhaenyra’s hesitancy

The queen struggles to have the men surrounding her take her seriously, including Daemon. But she doesn’t exactly give us a reason to disagree with her. First, she obtains three new riders for her riderless dragons, including one that desperately needs to be stabbed, Ulf (Tom Bennett), bringing her arsenal to seven.

“I had hoped my advantage may be a deterrent,” she tells Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint). “Vhagar is overmatched.” But even after he counsels her to make a move, she can’t even take control of her own house, with Jace giving her lip and having to put up with Ulf mouthing off and touching Jace (!), and Ulf’s general rudeness.

Tom Bennett as Ulf in "House of the Dragon" (HBO)

Also tired: Ulf.

Seriously though, why hasn’t anybody stabbed this man? Stab him. Rhaenyra already has Hugh (Kieran Bew) and Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty), and four more dragons aside from theirs. This loser will not be missed.

And that’s a factor of bad acting and writing. “Game of Thrones” had plenty of backstabbing boors, Bronn being the best of them. Who didn’t love Bronn? Even Tyrion couldn’t help sidling up to the old scamp after Bronn betrayed him.

Whereas nobody likes Ulf, and while Martin wrote a reason for that, Bennett doesn’t lend any subtlety to his coarseness that would explain Rhaenyra’s patience with his disrespect. She's the queen! Why does Silverwing’s terrible taste in men have to ruin all our lives? Ditch this fool and hold a new round of open auditions.

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Fire: Episodic symmetry

Props to director Geeta Vasant Patel for the visual redux of Rhaenyra landing Syrax on the long walk to the front gate of Harrenhal with Daemon’s Caraxes on its tower, recalling the character’s similarly situated Season 1 confrontation with Daemon at Dragonstone. In that second episode, the child Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) persuades Daemon to renounce his claim to her birthright, which he renews, along with his devotion in these scenes. It would be downright romantic if he weren't also Rhaenyra's uncle.

Fire: Alyn of Hull telling off Corlys his father

Whatever compelling moments lurk in this episode are carved out by a few outstanding performances, and Abubakar Salim’s scathing monologue is one of them. Corlys spends the entire season strutting around his remaining boys without finding the stones to directly acknowledge them, forcing Alyn to bow when he suddenly raises him up without saying why, although they both know. That confrontation was eight episodes in the making and legitimately earned drama, which is more than can be said of most of the nattering that fills these hours.

Well done: Ser Simon Strong, castellan of our hearts

Simon Russell Beale's restrained humor is a welcome respite from the season's gloom, and Harrenhal and without. He is a Westerosi national treasure that must be preserved at all cost — with fire and blood, if need be.

Tired: Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), soft boi

Now he chooses to wax philosophic after watching dragons roast his companions and betraying Alicent? Indeed – as Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox) holds a sword on the man sniffing his sister’s favor, Criston mourns his poor choices. “The dragons dance and men are like dust under their feet, and all our fine thoughts, all our endeavors are as nothing. We march now to our annihilation. To die will be a kind of relief. Don’t you think?”

Agreed. At least that would mean something worthwhile happened.

All episodes of "House of the Dragon" are streaming on Max.