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House of the Dragon had its first season finale this week. The first season of the prequel was paced quite differently from its predecessor, Game of Thrones. There were frequent time jumps and it spanned two decades in just 10 episodes, with some characters being recast multiple times to keep up and some characters showing nary a sign of aging (based on Crison Cole, evil doesn’t age). And despite extensive source material and some pretty potent foreshadowing throughout the episode, the last scene was somehow still shocking and sets the stage for the wars to come. Ryan Condal, one of the creators and showrunners, did an interview with the New York Times about following GoT, the complexities of the characters, and all those time jumps.
He’s whisked the characters of “House of the Dragon” through a sweeping pseudo-historical narrative, in which entire decades speed by from one episode to the next. Now Ryan Condal, a creator and showrunner of the series, is experiencing a time jump all his own.
“It’s so weird, after spending so long making the show, that the finale is airing already,” Condal said in a phone call from London, just hours before the show’s first season concluded. “It felt like it took years and years just to get that first episode aired. Then, very quickly, everything airs, and that’s it.”
On the overall reception to HotD: “I was surprised in a happy way about how quickly everybody embraced it. I really thought it was going to be more of a hill to climb because we were following the Beatles, and how do you do that? You don’t. You just try to do your own thing, and hope it connects with people. But I was shocked that people came right out the gate and accepted it, generally — this massive fandom, and tens of millions of people watching the show, and writing about it and talking about it.”
On the thirst for Prince Daemon: “I’m having trouble understanding it. We established right out of the gate, in the pilot, that Daemon is a fascinating guy, but he’s not Ned Stark. So I didn’t see it coming. To me, Daemon is the antihero of this story. He’s a character with a real darkness to him, who’s dangerous and charming in equal parts. I knew people would be fascinated by him and latch onto him, but I figured they’d do it in the way they did with Jaime Lannister or Bronn or the Red Viper. I did not think they would oddly apply this sort of super-fandom to him and try to justify every single thing he’s done as being intrinsically heroic. It simply isn’t. It’s not the case. Nor will it be in the future.”
On the time jumps and recasting: “There really is no way to tell the story of a generational conflict without spending time with each generation and understanding what happened to make things go bad. But it was very risky. As complex as the original “Game of Thrones” was, they did not do anything like this, so it was a bold choice. But we were standing on the shoulders of a giant that had done a lot of the legwork before us, which allowed us to make that bold choice, knowing we had an audience that was going to lean forward and do the hard work of paying attention to the show. They weren’t just signing up for empty-calories, popcorn entertainment. I’m really glad and proud of and grateful for the audience, who buckled up and came along for the ride. The reward for everybody is that the story from here forward happens in real time.
[From The New York Times]
It’s not surprising that the series has been a hit despite fans’ (correct) dissatisfaction with the truly terrible final season of GoT. The content is compelling and there’s a lot of talent involved. And it truly seems like Ryan and Miguel Sapochnik were mindful of the flaws and downfall of the first series and they’re trying to do their own thing, honor/interpret the source material, and not make the same mistakes as the D-bros who made the first series. I’m not surprised at the thirst for Matt Smith’s Daemon since people also think Joe from You is the pinnacle of romance. Daemon is clearly an antihero, but Criston Cole is a straight-up villain cop and he must be stopped.
I’m glad to hear that we’re done with the time jumps and the story will be happening in real time from here on out. The recasting worked, especially for the two lead actors, but there was no need to have three sets of actors for the Velaryon twins and I don’t think they needed to swap Aegon at all. The platinum blonde wigs distract from some aging nuances. And while I appreciate that they didn’t dilly-dally for multiple seasons like GoT, I do think there was a way to split the difference. Like many critics, I agree that the storyline needed to breathe a bit more and we should have spent more time with the characters. It’s Westeros so of course there were a number of sudden deaths, but they’re less impactful when the characters/actors in question have gotten less than an hour of combined screentime throughout the episodes. Things happened so quickly that I’d say there were only two deaths that warranted more than a shrug and “oh damn.”
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