SPOILER WARNING

The culling continues. After first dispatching Eärien, the non-canonical daughter of Elendil and sister of future kings Isildur and Anárion whose best material by far was her last, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power makes similarly short work now of Arondir, the all-new wood-elf it contributed to the mythos. It also kills Marnûkh, the rogue orc whose machinations dominate this opening salvo of four episodes, effectively a four-part season premiere. 

They’re hardly the first TRoP originals to go. Bronwyn, the human healer played by Nazanin Boniadi, left between Seasons 1 and 2, and her character was killed off offscreen. This no doubt hamstrung many plans for both her love interest Arondir and her son Theo, giving the two characters a kind of aimless feeling on screen. The fact that all they’re ever given to do is grumble or glower doesn’t help.

It’s tough to say Arondir will be missed, but it’s still sad to see his stricken face as he realizes he’s dying at the hands of his own adoptive son, Theo, who also strikes down Marnûkh. All this to rescue an elf-smith whom they find lying in her cell, a weeks-old corpse. Woof.

Meanwhile, Adar, the first orc and Marnûkh’s hero and inspiration, was recast when his initial actor left, unlike Bronwyn, but still met his maker last season. The earth-children proto-hobbits who accompanied Gandalf appear to have wandered away from the storyline. Other than Theo, the human teenager turned future Ringwraith, and Kemen, the Númenorean prince who I assume will also be a future Ringwraith, there aren’t many TRoP originals left standing, at least not outside the walls of Khazad-dûm.

Are you gonna miss many of them? Maybe they were necessary to get the show to the place it’s at now, but particularly during the endless wheel-spinning of the first season few of these characters did much to endear themselves to me as a viewer. Now that the show has the confidence to really play with its most famous characters, I’m not sure the junior varsity squad is needed.

I reviewed the fourth episode of The Rings of Power Season 3 for Decider.

Is it weird that the less this stuff feels like Tolkien — in tone, anyway; you have to remain true in spirit — the more I like it? It’s shocking to hear Anárion, future founder of Gondor, say the word “arse,” just as it was shocking to watch Isildur kill a sex worker while attempting to assassinate the king of Númenor. Sauron displays a torture-porn villain’s level of innovative sadism. Dwarves sexually harass their sisters-in-law. Call it J.R.R-rated. I’m calling it fun as hell. 

I reviewed episode 3 of The Rings of Power Season 3 for Decider.

Just two episodes into what amounts to a four-hour premiere — Season 3’s first four installments are all being released simultaneously — The Rings of Power has clearly leveled up from its already much-improved second season. Its unique blend of shades-of-grey espionage, scary sword and sorcery, and familiar Tolkien ideas and beats cleverly recontextualized makes it stand out in a crowded epic SFF field. You just have to leave your Silmarillion at the door. But if you’ve ever read The Children of Húrin you know Tolkien could do dark with the best of them, too.

I reviewed the second episode of The Rings of Power Season 3 for Decider.

Needless to say, The Rings of Power is a very, very loose adaptation of the source material. Like, “introducing a love story between Dracula and Mina” loose. But I emphatically do not think it’s “doing a version of Carrie where Carrie doesn’t kill anyone with her mind” loose. Rings is working with material that wouldn’t be particularly adaptable if it weren’t handled with a lot of creativity and invention. All the rebellious orcs, the Dwarf stuff, the Galadriel/Sauron will-they-or-won’t-they business, wizards making power plays, compressing centuries of events into a few years — it’s all brand new. 

But novelty in an adaptation, change in an adaptation, is value neutral, neither automatically good nor automatically bad. Payne and McKay have chosen to change The Lord of the Rings‘ Second Age into a sword and sorcery saga, a frankly insane idea I can’t help but admire, and one which at the very least delivers one gonzo moment after another. Your mileage may vary, as trite as that is to say. For me, this brand of go-for-broke fantasy filmmaking is a road that goes ever on and on. 

I reviewed the season premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for Decider. Good show imo!

I get very emotional at the beginning of this episode on HOTD‘s finale and third season generally. Enjoy!

SPOILERS AHEAD

Tragedy ends the episode, and the season. Depressed, alone, confined to her quarters and cruelly force-fed after refusing to eat, the pregnant Queen Helaena throws herself from the palace window onto the spikes below. Her suicide is crosscut with footage of Tumbleton’s casualties as meanwhile her mother, Alicent, somewhere far away, watches as a flight of moths takes off around her — one last visit, perhaps, from a daughter who loved the beauty of insects and hated the ugliness of people. An achingly mournful piece by the composer Ramin Djawadi accompanies all these images. The sadness of it all, the sights and sounds of pain and waste, made me cry.

The episode is aided by some of the cast’s strongest work to date, with Matt Smith exploring the outer limits of Daemon’s tolerance for violence, Freddie Fox’s Gwayne emerging as a desperate voice of reason and Phia Saban embodying Helaena’s anger and misery. But this is Emma D’Arcy’s episode. Resplendent and imposing in Rhaenyra’s evil-queen get-up — a visual makeover that echoes her psychological transformation into a much more frightening kind of ruler — D’Arcy all but physically vibrates with the Black Queen’s barely contained fury and self-regard.

I reviewed the overwhelming season finale of House of the Dragon for the New York Times. I watched this a few days ago and woke up with the music from the final sequence stuck in my head the next morning. This one lingered with me.

Our new Boiled Leather Audio Hour podcast on this week’s House of the Dragon is one of my favorite episodes we’ve done in a while. Really meaty stuff, and Stefan makes some fascinating connections. Give it a listen!

With Corlys in Ormund’s clutches (his severed finger is sent to Rhaenyra as a macabre warning), Mysaria has become Rhaenyra’s right hand. Constantly at cross purposes with her ex-lover Daemon and rejected by the common folk for whom she is a self-styled champion, the former prostitute falls back on the familiar. Just watch Rhaenyra during their last scene together — see how magnetically her gaze, and her desire, is drawn to Mysaria. Even though Rhaenyra knows the White Worm has manipulated her against her own husband, the two fall into bed together. I’m sure it’s a pleasant diversion for Rhaenyra, but make no mistake, it is a diversion.

I reviewed tonight’s House of the Dragon for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

The Boiled Leather Audio Hour review of this week’s House of the Dragon is up for our subscribers! We’re talking Rhaenyra’s management style, Ormund’s awfulness, and why no one will be singing A Song of Criston Cole.

The last we see of Daeron in this episode, he’s asking about his mother. Is he making decisions based on what will reunite him with his family?
He’s imagined what they might be like now, but he hasn’t seen his brothers in years. When he hears that Aegon is dead, he’s not able to process it in that moment. It’s just a passing piece of news in Ormund’s strategy. But he has this connection with his mother. There’s hope for his mother, because he hopes that there is a love, and a way out.

If they were reunited tomorrow, what would he say to her?
He’d have a lot of questions, but more than any question … just to see her. Just to hear her talk, to get a sense of her as a real human, a real person. That would be it, I think. Just to see her, and be in her presence, because she’s been an idea for most of his life.

I interviewed actor Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, who plays Prince Daeron Targaryen on House of the Dragon, for Vulture.

Just before he embarks on his final, fatal campaign, Criston daydreams of Alicent singing songs of his death. He wraps her favor around his sword hilt as he makes his last stand. I was surprised she was still so close to his mind.

I don’t know, man. I’ve been in love a small handful of times, and it’s very hard to think about anything else. The people you think about when the end is near are the people you love. He doesn’t have a father, a mother, siblings, a wife, children. What has this man loved? Alicent is the only true thing he’s loved. It doesn’t feel surprising to me that she’s so prevalent in his final moments.

I interviewed actor Fabien Frankel, who plays Ser Criston Cole on House of the Dragon, for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

Rhaenyra Targaryen has the better claim to the Iron Throne of Westeros than her rival half brother Aegon. She is the better human being, not that this is a high bar to clear. But is she any better at the job?

This is the trick “House of the Dragon” has pulled, on both the realm and the audience. Everyone’s focus, including Rhaenyra’s own, has been on the fact that she is a good person (relatively speaking) with a good claim. Neither, however, guarantees she will be a good queen. As it turns out, she’s kind of terrible at it.

I reviewed last night’s House of the Dragon for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

Normally our Boiled Leather Audio Hour podcasts on House of the Dragon are subscriber-only, but we made our review of episode 5 free for everyone! Get it here or wherever you listen to podcasts!

“Nobody ever wins a fight.” Dalton, the philosophical bouncer played by Patrick Swayze in the 1989 cult classic “Road House,” offers these words of wisdom when he checks himself into the hospital with a knife wound. He knows whereof he speaks.

When it comes to the Dance of the Dragons, it seems Dalton is right. In this week’s episode of “House of the Dragon,” the war is not going well — not for the Blacks; not for the Greens; not for gold cloaks, white-armored kingsguard or blue-eyed princes; not for anyone. Knowing that the dragons are all long vanished by the events of “Game of Thrones” has given us a clue about the end result already, but right now, it truly does feel as if nobody were going to win this war.

I reviewed tonight’s House of the Dragon for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

The oldest continuously running A Song of Ice and Fire podcast on the seven internets is back again, baby! The Boiled Leather Audio Hour goes to Tumbleton for our latest episode on House of the Dragon — it’s a special Patreon exclusive, for our special patrons <3

Daemon Targaryen is a hard man. He has left a trail of dead enemies across the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and done it with a smirk on his face. His preferred tactic of negotiation is “take it or leave it.” It is exceedingly rare for him to display any negative emotion at all that doesn’t end in violence or its implied threat.

It’s with this Daemon in mind that we watch him encounter his daughter Rhaena in the wilds of the Vale. Daemon’s dragon, Caraxes, leads him right to the cave where Rhaena’s own dragon, Sheepstealer, has made its lair. Sheepstealer’s disastrous rampage through the Battle of the Gullet helped drive Queen Rhaenyra’s son Jace to his death, and she wants its rider brought to justice. Now Daemon knows the horrible truth: To avenge Rhaenyra’s child, he would have to sacrifice his own.

“No,” he gasps, doubling over. The reaction staggered me nearly as much as the revelation staggers the Rogue Prince. He has displayed a devil-may-care attitude all season long, but it turns out the devil does care after all. 

I reviewed this week’s House of the Dragon for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

The oldest continuously running A Song of Ice and Fire podcast on the seven internets is back with another weekly installment on House of the Dragon. We disagree more than usual this week! It’s behind our Patreon paywall, so subscribe to listen!

The composer Ramin Djawadi has been working in Westeros since 2011. First on “Game of Thrones” and now on “House of the Dragon” — which now uses a souped-up version of its predecessor’s famously rousing opening theme — Djawadi has crafted hours of music tailored to the setting’s many disparate cultures, characters, environments and emotions. His work so far this season bears special attention: He has given each of the three episodes its own sonic signature.

In the season premiere, a low, threatening synth line conveyed the horror-movie horror of the Battle of the Gullet. In the second episode, insistent strings built in a swirling crescendo that never seemed to resolve, adding tension and dread to the fall of King’s Landing to Rhaenyra’s invading dragons.

Now Rhaenyra sits on the Iron Throne, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms … and her sonic signature is a repeated, percussive, distracting sound, an ominous bong halfway between a bell being struck and someone punching the strings of a piano. In this episode it can be heard again and again, when Rhaenyra is faced with an insurmountable challenge, an unexpected obstacle or a reminder of the fragility of her rule.

As if to reinforce that this “music” represents the tumult in her head, at several points we see that Rhaenyra is straight-up hearing things. Murmurs, whispers, the roar of a distant crowd or the low voices of a nearby one — these, too, provide an auditory window into the mind of the Black Queen. She even has a full-blown hallucination of her dead son Jacaerys, bong included.

… Is that good?

I reviewed last night’s House of the Dragon for the New York Times. (Gift link!)

Stefan and I are back with another look at HotD — subscriber-only this season, so you know what to do!

“What have you done? Jace. Jace! What have you done? How could you? How could you do this to me? Answer me!”

Like the bereaved King David crying “O Absalom, my son!” repeatedly in his despair, Queen Rhaenyra is facing a grief so total that her brain short-circuits and runs on a loop. As she looks at the corpse of her son and heir, Jacaerys, all she can do is upbraid him over and over, like the disappointed parent she is. But disappointment doesn’t come near to what she’s feeling. Devastation is more like it.

Rhaenyra is bedridden with sorrow when her husband, Prince Daemon, returns from the Riverlands after hearing the news. To him, she spells out the grim absurdity of her situation: “The boys who clung to me, who hid their little faces in my skirts, dead, so that I may sit upon a throne of swords?” She has lost two sons, Luke and Jace, to her cause. To fight on seems pointless.

“Will you let them die in vain?” Daemon responds.

I reviewed tonight’s House of the Dragon for the New York Times. (Gift link!)