'House Of The Dragon' Trailer Takes Us Back To Westeros In A Time Of Dragons
The 'Game Of Thrones' spinoff is landing in 2022.
Well, it’s finally arrived. The first teaser trailer for HBO’s House of the Dragon is out this morning and while there’s not a lot here, it’s still kind of exciting to be back in Westeros—200 years before Robert Baratheon overthrew the Targaryen dynasty.
We’re treated to some elaborate sets and costumes and a rather more diverse cast than the flagship show. There’s some jousting, some sword-fighting, many regal folk walking hither and thither.
“Dreams didn’t make us kings,” the trailer’s narrator intones. “Dragons did.”
House of the Dragon will tell the story of the rise of House Targaryen and the bloody civil war that almost undid everything known as the Dance of Dragons. Much of this is covered in George R.R. Martin’s history/prequel to ASOIAF, Fire and Blood.
Expect lots of Targaryen names like Jaehaerys and Aegon and Maegor and Aenys. If there’s an ‘E’ following an ‘A’ you’re probably dealing with a Targaryen.
The series stars Matt Smith as Daemon Targaryen, Olivia Cooke as Alicent Hightower, Paddy Considine as Viserys Targaryen and Emma D’Arcy as Rhaenrya Targaryen, just to name a few. Expect another sprawling cast and story.
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Game Of Thrones ended with a whimper rather than a bang, somehow managing to fall from grace more profoundly even than Bobby Baratheon, so despised was its final season. Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss rushed the ending, bizarrely giving up on a show that needed at least one (if not two) seasons to really stick the landing.
Of course, you have to feel a little sympathy for the poor bastards. Martin never did finish the books (and it seems depressingly unlikely that he ever will) and so they had to go on without him. Still, I can’t help but wonder about what could have been.
It seems doubtful that House of the Dragon—or any other TV show—will reach the cultural significance of Thrones but I’m still excited to watch and review. The teaser trailer certainly looks damn good, with HBO clearly spending big to make this a hit.
What do you make of the trailer? Are you looking forward to House of the Dragon or did you sour on all things Thrones after Season 8? Let me know in the comments.
I definitely soured on HBO's Thrones series after the wreck of Season 8 (and Season 7 didn't exactly hit it out of the park either). That would be hard to get past no matter what.
But I think I've overdosed on A Song of Ice and Fire in general and I can't get back into it. I read all the books (most twice), watched every season of the show, bought and read that atlas/history thing where GRRM named some of the characters after muppets, read the Dunk and Egg novellas, and embarrassingly spent years listening to two (two!) podcasts on the books. Nothing can live up to that kind of over-saturation. Shit, I'm not even interested in clicking on that TRAILER. The idea of watching it makes me queasy.
I tell myself that I'll still read Winds of Winter when and if it's finally released, but I probably won't. I read Dance With Dragons years ago and don't remember any of it. I'm sure not going to invest the time to reread the series, and whatever else it does, the series requires and rewards close reading. Trying to squint my way through the WoW chapters that George released online didn't exactly fill me with excitement either.
So definitely not going to watch the show, particularly since we'd need to resubscribe to HBO to do it. I'm genuinely not being cynical when I say I don't imagine it could be very good: the series fell apart when it went past the novels in the timeline and House of Dragons will have the same lack of solid source material. More, prequels are just rough to begin with. We already know how the story ends.