House of the Dragon First Episode Review — Heirs of the Dragon

There are plot spoilers for episode 1 in the following review.

The much awaited House of the Dragon roared on to TV screens this week filling a Game of Thrones-shaped void that has existed in many people’s hearts since the original series ended with an eighth series back in 2019. You will remember that the last series of game of Thrones was not universally welcomed by fans — almost everyone had an opinion on why the ending was bad and it suffered the fate of many popular TV series before it, by disappointing a large slice of its fans. Was this fair? Maybe — the biggest flaw in the last two series of Game of Thrones was that they no longer had the narrative from the books to follow. George RR Martin has famously STILL NOT FINISHED THE BOOKS despite publishing the last novel in the series, A Dance with Dragons, in 2011 (yes that is more than 10 years ago). Series 6 of Game of Thrones ends at the same point the novels finish with a great deal to resolve in the story of Jon Snow and Danaerys. They made the rest up with fairly middling results.

What has he been doing in that time you might ask — well enjoying the financial fruits of his collaboration with the TV folk at HBO, his newfound fame (even popular fantasy authors aren’t mainstream famous) and I imagine obsessing furiously on how he can bring the many and…