I’ll cut right to the chase. This first episode is pretty good. It’s far more focused than its predecessor (or should I say successor… narratively?). We have only a handful of characters we follow at the start, and we get pretty clear direction on their motivation.

It helps that the audience is, likely, already familiar with the universe, so there isn’t a massive dumpster fire of exposition to get things rolling. “Remember the other show? Yeah? Ok, this is that world, but like 170 years earlier, cool? Let’s begin…”

So far, the performances are fine. Nobody seems woefully miscast or confused about their role. The white wigs always look awful, but that’s less to do with the quality of the wigs and more to do with how unnatural that seems to the human eye.

These all sound like bland praise, but it’s hard to get super excited for a show that follows up on an epic narrative that was hilariously botched.

But on to the negatives… WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Continue reading “House of the Dragon S01E01 Thoughts” →