TV Review: HOUSE OF THE DRAGON: Season 2, Episode 8: The Queen Who Ever Was [HBO]

House of the Dragon The Queen Who Ever Was Review

HBO‘s House of the Dragon: Season 2, Episode 8: The Queen Who Ever Was TV Show Review. The Queen Who Ever Was is hands down the worst episode of House of the Dragon thus far. This comes very close in its last moments to being as bad as the finale episode of Game of Thrones.

The Cost of Budget and Episode Constraints

The Queen Who Ever Was is what you get when you cut the budget for season 2 and cynically reduce the episode count from ten to eight.

HBO made the financial decision to reduce the number of episodes in Season 2 of House of the Dragon to save money since episodes nine and ten would have aired in August 2024 and would not have stopped people from unsubscribing to HBO (i.e., churn) when the season concluded that month. Since the season was going to end in August whether there were eight or ten episode, HBO deleteriously opted for eight episodes.

The Queen Who Ever Was is the result of that decision.

An eight episode season was the stupidest narrative decision that the higher ups at HBO could have possibly made for the series and it shows on-screen during this episode.

Staggering in the Mud

The storylines in The Queen Who Ever Was, save for a few, begin to meander on and on into nonsense because they have been forcibly truncated. By the middle of The Queen Who Ever, the viewer gets the feeling that something is off, right around when the mud wrestling takes place. It is a worthless scene involving a just-introduced character no one cares about, a place holder sequence of turgid events, where substantive moments should have been and would have been if this season had two more episodes. The viewer realizes what the pirate scenes are when the episode concludes – filler. They have no narrative impact and that is why they are there. They are a distraction, up-jumped deleted scenes thrown back into the final version of the episode to pad its runtime.

The Ending Montage Reel

The ending to this episode is a sour capstone to a very promising season. The last two episodes cut from the season would have resolved the events hinted at in the last moments of The Queen Who Ever Was. A montage reel is slapped onto the end of the episode instead, driving the fact home regarding what isn’t present. A poor ending drags everything down with it. It did so with Game of Thrones, it did so with the Battlestar Galactica remake, and it does so with Season 2 of House of the Dragon.

Full circle at Harrenhal

Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith)’s storyline, resolving in a natural way, is good (not great), and is the only storyline that organically finishes in The Queen Who Ever Was. Since the moment Daemon stepped into Harrenhal, his desire for power has been presented to him and tested, as well as mistakes of the past. These confrontations helps Daemon see and escape a larger error in judgement that he is making with Rhaenyra Targaryen. Daemon finishes growing out of selfishness into a state of selflessness by the conclusion of this episode.

King on the Run

Lord Larys Strong (Matthew Needham)’s clear strategic assessment of Regent Aemond Targaryen and King’s Landing is sharp, clarifying, and to the point, spotlighting a mind that is able to pullback and assess all the terrain and facets of a conflict. King Aegon II Targaryen leaving the city, potentially coming back after the war, and picking up the pieces from the weakened victor is a brilliant move. Game of Thrones was at its best when the game of thrones was actually played. In this scene in House of the Dragon, that happens.

Lord Strong’s speech on deformity, new realities, underestimation, slights, and reforging feels sincere, spoken from an internal place open to very few, if anyone. Who else can know the pain of deformity better than someone who is deformed? Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney), as a newly baptized member of that community, finds a kindred ally in Strong, someone that has been there and is still there, a person willing to teach, and eager to hone. This developing bond between Larys and Aegon, this simpatico, will be fascinating to witness while they wait out the war.

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