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How House of the Dragon season 2 repeated one of The Witcher’s biggest mistakes

How House of the Dragon season 2 repeated one of The Witcher’s biggest mistakes

Vaseline 1 month ago

The second season of was released earlier this year House of the Dragon televised and breathtaking with its compelling depictions of dragon wars and medieval familial backstabbing. It also left more than a few book fans with complicated feelings thanks to some pretty major deviations the show made from the source material. Unlike HBO Game of Thronesbased on a book series still in progress by author George RR Martin, House of the Dragon has a completed story to work from, as the entire Civil War story of the Dance of the Dragons is told in Martin’s book Fire & Blood.

That made some of the changes to the show a little hard to swallow, not least for Martin himself, who made waves last month when he publicly criticized the effect some of these deviations had on the overall narrative on his blog. (That blog post was quickly deleted, HBO responded to it, and it was generally A Whole Thing. Here’s an extended timeline, if you’re curious.)

Not any change House of the Dragon was bad – there were plenty of them that I thought worked pretty well. But it’s hard to deny that the show has taken so many liberties with certain storylines and characters that they are now completely different from how they are portrayed in Martin’s novel. Part of the reasoning showrunner Ryan Condal has used to justify these changes is that Fire & Blood is not a traditional novel; it is a fake ‘history book’ with multiple, often contradictory accounts of events. That’s why the show needs to thread the needle on making its own version of things that fill in the blanks.

Condal’s explanation makes sense in some places and not in others, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come back to one character in particular whose storyline was essentially the opposite of his book counterpart: Daemon Targaryen, the rogue prince played by Matt Smith. In Fire & BloodDaemon heads to the Riverlands and quickly raises an army, then goes around harassing the Greens’ allies; it’s a stark reminder that the Greens were right to fear him, as he’s one of the most experienced military commanders in Westeros at this point in history. In the show, Daemon hides out in the haunted castle of Harrenhal and messes up one thing after another until he can finally get his army together by the season 2 finale, while going on a vision quest that essentially served as an excuse to to bring back several cast members who are no longer on the show every week for cameos. Those cameos were exciting at first, but by the time King Viserys rolled up and started repeating a monologue from the first season, it was hard to generate much excitement.

While there were things I liked about Daemon’s storyline, I think it fell short overall for many people. And unlike other events such as those of Alicent and Rhaenyra Sister Act meeting on the sept in King’s Landing, I don’t think Daemon’s story is an example of the show filling in the blanks we didn’t see on the page. I rather think so House of the Dragon was tempted to repeat a mistake that another major fantasy show also made in its second season: Netflix’s The witcher.

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As a lover of The witcher books, I believe that Season 2 of the Netflix television series is by far the worst season of the show, mainly because it deviated so far from the source material that it was effectively unrecognizable. The book season 2 is based on Blood of Elvesis probably Andrzej Sapkowski’s weakest Witcher sagaso it’s understandable that the team behind the show felt like they needed to change things up a bit (but they don’t). rather to the extent that they did, as evidenced by the fact that they started season 3 with a whole lot Blood of Elves material that did not make the selection for season 2).

One element that really destabilized the season, however, was the firm commitment to focusing on Kaer Morhen, the castle that Geralt of Rivia and his fellow witches call home. In the book, Geralt and his protege Ciri only spend two chapters there while she is trained by the rest of the witches. The pair then hit the road with Triss Merigold and continued their adventures. That’s the only time we see Kaer Morhen at all in Sapkowski’s novels.

However, the show expanded Kaer Morhen into the most used setting of Season 2. Geralt and Ciri arrive there in the second episode, and virtually every episode after that for the rest of the season features some character at Kaer Morhen. The season finale even revolves around a battle with monsters at the witch’s tower, which has no basis in the source material at all.

I held on to that part of the reason for a long time The witcher made those changes is because they just really, really liked the Kaer Morhen set. And who can blame them? It may not appear much in Sapkowski’s books, but Kaer Morhen do play a major role in CD Projekt Red’s video game series, which brought millions of new fans to the series. Those fans were understandably excited to see Kaer Morhen on the show, and probably would have been disappointed if they only got a glimpse of it for an episode or two. But when a setting that barely appears in the books becomes the entire focus of the season, things have probably gone a bit overboard.

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What House of the Dragon did with Daemon and Harrenhal felt very similar. Harrenhal is Daemon’s base in the Riverlands for a while Fire & Blood as he walks around leading raids, but in the show he barely leaves the castle. I think, like The witcher really wanted to make full use of their Kaer Morhen set, House of the Dragon really wanted to make use of this big new Harrenhal set they built for season 2. And in both cases, I think this led the shows astray.

There are production reasons for this, which are of course reasonable. Building huge castle sets like Kaer Morhen or Harrenhal isn’t cheap, and I imagine it’s hard for a show to justify that kind of investment unless they’re going to make ample use of it. And Harrenhal is an iconic location; Few other keeps in Westeros hold as much history and mystery as the feared castle of Harren the Black.

But if the trade-off to building a huge Harrenhal set is that Daemon Targaryen, previously one of the most interesting characters in the entire series, is stuck there for an entire season, I’m not sure it was worth it. Daemon’s arc was one of the most criticized House of the Dragon second season. I think House of the Dragon followed The Witcher’s footsteps by building a big, cool set and justifying that cost by building entirely new storylines to use it. The problem is that those storylines just didn’t work as well as anything in the source material, and they weakened both shows as a whole.

Now that Daemon has gathered his army, he will finally have to leave Harrenhal in Season 3. But I doubt this means we’ll see much less of that beautiful set. In Fire and blood, another major character later takes up residence there in the Dance of the Dragons, so I imagine we’ll be spending a lot more time in the haunted castle. Hopefully House of the Dragon can find a balance that may prevent him from making the same mistakes with that character in season 3 as he did with Daemon.

dark. Next. The Witcher season 4 films a pivotal battle scene from the book Baptism of Fire. The Witcher season 4 films a pivotal battle scene from the book Baptism of Fire

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