Rad: FYI, I didn’t actually watch [Game of Thrones]. I came into House of the Dragon Season 2 kind of cold. With that in mind, Sean, what did you make of the big finale?

Sean: Well, call me old fashioned, but I’m the kind of person who thinks that when a season of a television show builds to a big, epic battle, it should show the big, epic battle. And so for the second time this year — first with Shōgun, and now with House of the Dragon — I wound up being kind of disappointed by the end. But I understand why they made the decision that they made.

Even a show like House of the Dragon has a limited budget, and doing all those effects-intensive dragon sequences costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. They had a shorter season than they had the first time around; I’d imagine that changed the rhythm around a bit. It’s not maybe how I would have emphasized things towards the end, but I thought that as an episode it was so effective at building that tension. It was almost like a victim of its own success — like, if I hadn’t been so invested in all those fights happening, I wouldn’t have felt so disappointed. So in that way, it worked.

Variety tv critic Alison Herman and I appeared on Commotion on CBC yesterday to discuss the House of the Dragon finale. We both liked it! Click here to read some of the discussion and find links to watch/listen to the whole thing.