In fantasy combat, dragons are a difference-maker. Aegon the Conqueror and his sister-queens Visenya and Rhaenys united six out of seven quarreling kingdoms by lighting entire castles and armies on fire from the backs of their beasts. Daenerys Targaryen effortlessly torched the forces of House Lannister — then of the people of King’s Landing — with a single surviving dragon at the end of Game of Thrones. If you wanna get really nerdy, none other than Gandalf the Grey reveals in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings that he helped Thorin, Bilbo, and company kill Smaug the Golden so that a revived Sauron could never use him as city-killer against the Elven kingdoms he himself couldn’t touch. From middle-earth to Westeros, these creatures are no joke.

That’s what makes the prospect of a full-scale Targaryen civil war in season two of House of the Dragon so frightening — not just to the defenseless small folk but to the wiser members of the opposing Team Black and Team Green themselves. It also makes the question of who controls what dragons as crucial to the conflict as sizing up your enemy’s nuclear stockpile. A dragon’s size, age, temperament, temperature, combat experience, rider, and perhaps even their relationships with other dragons all play a part in determining their effectiveness in battle.

So in preparation for this Sunday’s premiere, here are all the dragons in play at the start of the so-called Dance of the Dragons, the civil war between the Blacks, led by Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen and her king-consort Prince Daemon, and the Greens, ruled (sort of) by King Aegon II Targaryen and his mother, Queen Alicent Hightower. Each side boasts its own dragons, while some are still up for grabs. Considering the magic and might of these monsters, this could wind up as important as knowing the Targaryen family tree itself.

But brush up on these sky kaiju while you can: This war promises fire and blood, so best not to get too attached.

I wrote a field guide to all the dragons available at the start of House of the Dragon Season 2 for Vulture. IT BEGINS.

Spectacle is the language through which art communicates when the vocabulary of the everyday fails us. Fantastic fiction, an inherent trafficker in the unreal, says as much through spectacle as any art form this side of musical theater, in which excesses of emotion transcend dialogue and emerge through the eruption of song and dance. That Act Two showstopper speaks to us (or rather sings to us) because we recognize what it is to be so in love; so enraged, so bereft, so drunk on the possibilities or vicissitudes of life that mere spoken words could never capture it. Only an explosion of sound and movement will do.

So it is with genre. The dragon, the android, and the vampire embody fears and dreams either too delicate or too overpowering for realism to express. Ratcheting up the scale and stakes of ideas and imagery like these to the level of spectacle renders them capable of handling even more intense feelings and fantasies. A trip beyond the infinite, a monumental horror-image like a wicker man aflame, a last terrible battle between good and evil: Such spectacles describe our desire and capacity as people to do things so great or terrible—or so great and terrible—that they stagger the mind.

Before they assayed updating a country’s biggest pop-cultural icon and helming the first large-scale battle on what was rapidly becoming television’s biggest show (respectively), Hideaki Anno and Neil Marshall were past masters of this technique. Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion pitted giant robots against increasingly bizarre godlike beings in battles that directly reflected the titanic scale of its protagonists’ adolescent angst. Marshall’s The Descent plumbed the depths of its heroine’s grief in a literal bloodbath.

Importantly, they each recognized the role of beauty in such spectacularly grim visions. From Anno’s awe-inspiring animated angels to the firelit scarlet of Marshall’s subterranean charnel pit, the gorgeousness of it complimented and enhanced the terror rather than canceling it out. Beauty is the sea salt in the caramel of horrific spectacle.

Both filmmakers applied these lessons to the biggest assignments in their careers. In 2012, “Blackwater,” his directorial debut on David Benioff & D.B. Weiss’s blockbuster fantasy series Game of Thrones, Marshall depicted the horror of war with an explosion that beggars anything seen on television before, and most of what has come since. In 2014, Anno and co-director Shinji Haguchi’s satirical but harrowing update Shin Godzilla destroyed Tokyo with an alien dispassion that reignited all the majesty and menace felt by filmgoers when the king of the kaiju first emerged decades earlier. And despite their differences, the techniques used by each to convey the magnitude of these unnatural disasters and the people they befell are strikingly similar.

I wrote about Hideaki Anno’s Shin Godzilla, Neil Marshall’s “Blackwater” from Game of Thrones, and the horrible beauty of spectacular violence for Blood Knife.

But the problem with Secret Invasion’s AI credits isn’t just one of ethics, or of ugliness. It’s a waste of some of the most valuable creative real estate any television show has. Throughout television history, thoughtfully crafted opening title sequences have set the tone for the shows to follow, conveying valuable information about everything from the mood you can expect to the plot of the show itself. Some are woven so deep into the fabric of the series they kick off that the two become synonymous. The best function like short films, artistic statements on their own. Speaking plainly, AI just doesn’t have the juice.

When Cheers wanted to show you a place where everybody knows your name, they relied on a carefully curated and edited selection of illustrations and photographs depicting nostalgic good-old-days revelry created by James Castle, Bruce Bryant, and Carol Johnsen. Monty Python member Terry Gilliam established his troupe’s style of surrealistic inanity with animation that would become a staple of the show. David Lynch and Mark Frost used second-unit footage and the evocative music of close Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti to transport you to Twin Peaks.

I wrote about the ethical and, above all, artistic failure of Disney’s decision to use AI to “create” the opening credits for its new show Secret Invasion for Decider.

The final iteration of my increasingly enormous House of the Dragon character guide is up at Vulture. This takes you all the way through the entire first season. Thank you for playing along!

We experienced technical difficulties, but now the latest episode of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour is up! Listen to Stefan Sasse and I discuss the season finale of House of the Dragon right here or wherever you get your podcasts!

Much of the finale’s storytelling is conveyed through largely silent close-ups of people’s faces, particularly Rhaenyra’s. What was the thought process behind that?
I think about the amount of craft and hard work that went into getting that set built and those costumes made and those wigs put on everybody’s heads, just to get to a space where I can have two people talking to each other at a table or by a fireplace. Those moments are a testament to everyone’s work.

I tell the actors to take their time and live in those moments of silence, to not feel they have to rush through those scenes. I call it “the mud” — those complex, human, partner-on-partner scenes. I cut my teeth in network television, and I think silence scares people; I appreciate a show where the silences are deliberate choices to make it more cinematic and emotional.

One of my favorite moments is when Rhaenyra comes in and she’s just been crowned queen. Emma and I talked about this: “Sit and wait until you feel you have something to ask or say. Think about your dad: What would he do? Look at all those faces looking back at you. Where do you start? What are your first words as queen? Just be there until the line wants to come out.”

I interviewed Greg Yaitanes, the director of House of the Dragon‘s excellent season finale, for Vulture.

That seems to be the case most specifically with Prince Daemon. Much of the fandom wants to see him, as you put it, wearing a white hat or a black hat, to the point that many of them criticized Sara Hess, a writer and executive producer on the show, for her less-than-glowing assessment of Daemon. Did you see this coming?

I’m having trouble understanding it. We established right out of the gate, in the pilot, that Daemon is a fascinating guy, but he’s not Ned Stark. So I didn’t see it coming.

To me, Daemon is the antihero of this story. He’s a character with a real darkness to him, who’s dangerous and charming in equal parts. I knew people would be fascinated by him and latch onto him, but I figured they’d do it in the way they did with Jaime Lannister or Bronn or the Red Viper. I did not think they would oddly apply this sort of super-fandom to him and try to justify every single thing he’s done as being intrinsically heroic. It simply isn’t. It’s not the case. Nor will it be in the future.

Nobody in the show writes in a vacuum. I’m the lead writer; I oversee everything that happens on the show; every choice comes through me. If it’s on the screen, it’s because I either wrote it or approved it being written. Sara Hess and I wrote 85 percent of Season 1 together. We did not set out to write villains and heroes in this. We set out to write interesting humans and complex characters who are hopefully compelling, but compelling doesn’t always mean heroic or unimpeachable.

I see Daemon as having heroic aspects to him, and I understand why people would. I mean, he’s incredibly charismatic, he’s handsome, he looks great in that wig, he rides a dragon, he has a cool sword. I totally get it. But if you’re looking for Han Solo, who’s always going to do the right thing in the end, you’re in the wrong franchise, folks.

I interviewed House of the Dragon co-creator and co-showrunner Ryan Condal for the New York Times.

Which brings us back to that torn-out page Alicent sent to Rhaenyra as an olive branch. The two girls were just 14 when Rhaenyra was declared heir and Alicent was sent by Otto to “comfort” a grieving Viserys, putting an end to those carefree days. Luke was just 14 when he died. And so a war set up long ago in the names of two children, who grow into women whose shared childhood memories nearly prevent that war from breaking out, becomes inevitable when a child dies. None of these poor kids asked for any of this, but the system — the monarchy, the patriarchy, the violence underpinning it all — turned them all into cogs in the war machine anyway.

Dragons, incest, one-eyed princes, ancient prophecies, etc.: They’re the flashy, occasionally sleazy adult-fantasy stuff that have made Dragon blockbuster material. The arresting visuals — the meeting between Rhaenyra and Otto at sunset, Luke’s flight through the stormclouds, all those hulking dragons — help as well. But it’s that central tragedy, of two well-meaning women slowly made into realm-destroying monsters in a world where actual monsters still take wing, that elevates the show above its genre counterparts. Forget dragons for a moment; there are other ways to soar.

I reviewed the season finale of House of the Dragon for Rolling Stone. Heck of a show!

Stefan Sasse and I are back with our latest weekly BLAH, this time focusing on House of the Dragon Episode 9! Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

The latest iteration of my House of the Dragon character guide is now up at Vulture, covering the events of episode 9. Brush up before the finale!

Perhaps it’s too late at this point to ask, but does some part of Ser Criston still love Rhaenyra?

[Smiles ruefully.] First love is first love. I think everyone will always love the person that they fell in love with for the first time. From the first time you hear a beautiful piece of music, you’ll always love it, even if you’ve heard it a hundred times, because you remember that first time you heard it. So yeah, he will always love Rhaenyra.

I interviewed House of the Dragon star Fabien Frankel for the New York Times.

Okay, so: Why didn’t Rhaenys just torch the royal family and the whole Green crew?
[Laughs long and hard.] I know! The temptation is there, right? In the end, she makes a bigger choice. We see that at the moment with what’s going on in Ukraine; to choose not to destroy is the better choice. That’s an important thing for us all to remember right now.

It’s why she would have made such a great leader. She had, in that moment, all the power. Yet she has respect for Alicent as a woman and a mother. They understand being in the grip of other people who might torch them. They know the only right choice is not to go there. Furthermore, it’s the intelligent choice, on her part, not to torch a whole bunch of innocent people in the room. What’s to be gained? In the end, it’s not her battle.

The escape she makes on the dragon is something that’s been brewing since that very moment she was passed over wrongly, unjustly, for the crown. It’s this yearning just to get the hell out and get away from the whole ruddy lot of things. When she bursts out of that arena, she’s internally saying, “Fuck you all.” It’s more about that than a need for revenge or destruction that the men might’ve jumped onto. She’s breaking her own glass ceiling.

I interviewed House of the Dragon star Eve Best for Vulture.

Writer Sara Hess and director Clare Kilner give the whole affair the vibe of a tense political thriller, as alliances are forged and broken and various players jockey for position in the new regime. Much of this is achieved through deft character work that helps shore up some of the show’s shakier decisions.

For example, is it a little annoying that Alicent decides to crown Aegon instead of Rhaenyra due to a sitcom-style mix-up involving Viserys’s dying declaration? Sure. But it’s worth noting how duty-bound she seems to feel about it; as far as she’s concerned, she’s doing the right thing and honoring the late king’s wishes, not gleefully screwing her frenemy over. In fact, she fights — hard — to keep Rhaenyra alive in the face of opposition from no less than her own father. Actor Olivia Cooke threads this needle with aplomb.

Similarly, Rhaenys’s decision not to roast the whole royal family comes across as foolhardy, at least at first. But keep in mind that, like Alicent, the older woman is trying to avoid a war, not start one. If she were to inaugurate her former daughter-in-law Rhaenyra’s reign by sneak-attack slaughtering Aegon II, Otto, and Alicent, as well as innocents like Aegon’s sister-wife Helaena, how would that help anyone?

(One quick note: Helaena appears to have foreseen Rhaenys’s dragon attack, muttering about “a beast beneath the boards” earlier in the episode. Pay attention to this one, folks.)

Then there’s Aegon himself. He’s a thoroughly contemptible person, and he both knows it and hates himself for it, as conveyed through a remarkable performance by actor Tom Glynn-Carney. He has no desire to be king, and says so; he thinks his mother’s claim that his dad declared him the heir on his deathbed is bullshit, and says so too. But once he hears the roar of the crowd, he begins to change his tune, holding his legendary sword Blackfyre aloft and pumping it to pump up the people. Given that his only hobbies appear to be drinking and making weaker people suffer, that’s not a good sign.

I reviewed last night’s episode of House of the Dragon for Rolling Stone.

Stefan Sasse and I review House of the Dragon episode eight in the new Boiled Leather Audio Hour, available here or wherever you get your podcasts!

I’ve once again updated my weekly House of the Dragon character guide for Vulture to reflect the events of the most recent episode. Check it out!

Olivia, I’ve seen a lot of debate over the end of this episode, when Viserys mistakes Alicent for Rhaenyra and tells her about his ancestor Aegon the Conqueror’s prophecy of a messianic “Prince That Was Promised.” She mistakenly believes Viserys is referring to their son, Aegon. Does she fully believe it, or is she hearing what she wants to hear?

COOKE We spoke a lot about this. There was a massive amount of relief when Alicent told Rhaenyra, “You will make a great queen.” She’s so over the fighting and having this ball of bitterness and anxiety in her stomach: Just let it go, Rhaenyra is the heir, this is fine.

When Viserys says that, I genuinely think she thinks he’s talking about Aegon, her son. And I think she’s furious. She’s like, “After all that?” But Viserys is on his deathbed; that’s what he requested, and so she must follow it through. Whether that’s unconscious wishful thinking, I don’t know, but that’s how I played it.

Emma, this is shifting gears pretty dramatically, but there’s a video clip of you telling Olivia that your favorite drink is “a Negroni Sbagliato with prosecco in it” that went viral on TikTok and Twitter and inspired a numberofarticles. Is this something you’re aware of?

D’ARCY I thought it’d be quite funny to be drinking one right now, but I’m not. [Laughs.] I keep thinking I should tell my mum that I’ve become a meme in the hope that she’ll be happy for me, but I’d have to explain what a meme is, and I’ve decided it’s too much effort.

I feel so embarrassed. Because in those interviews, when we’ve been at it for six hours, I’m honestly only trying to make Olivia laugh.

COOKE [Laughs.] Is that right?

D’ARCY No, I’m obviously doing Campari’s next campaign.

COOKE I’d be like, “Ten million pounds, please!”

I interviewed House of the Dragon stars Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke for the New York Times.

Yet the show’s decision to utilize the Ice and Fire prophecy to once again weaponize Alicent against Rhaenyra, mere hours after they reconcile, is a much tougher sell. It’s possible Alicent is just hearing what she wants to, deliberately ignoring her dying husband’s obvious confusion and dementia because his garbled words match what she still desires. But if it turns out that she sincerely believes she and her son are the chosen ones, it replaces so much of the show’s careful character work with the blunt force of fantasy, a shaky foundation for the divided House. We’ll steer clear of issuing our own prophecies on the matter, though, preferring instead to just stay tuned.

I reviewed tonight’s episode of House of the Dragon for Rolling Stone.

I love Laenor. He’s a wonderful guy in a terrible situation. I was thrilled watching him get away. I’ve had so many lovely messages from people; someone told me they whooped when he escaped. Like, they cheered.

I did, too!
I’m so pleased! I remember Miguel saying, “No one gets to be happy in Westeros for very long.” It’s amazing that there’s this moment of relief.The escape was one of the first things I did. It was a really stormy day, and we were out in the ocean in this massive hundred-year-old boat, which was both exciting and terrifying. To see it in the context of the episode was really gratifying.

But, of course, this is Westeros, and there’s no such thing as a completely happy ending. In order for Laenor to get away, that poor Velaryon servant had to get murdered by Daemon so they’d have a decoy.
[Laughs] Oh, God. You’re a very moral, empathetic person. And now I feel deeply ashamed that I did not grieve for that poor member of the working classes who was collateral damage so that Laenor might have a shot at a decent life.

I interviewed House of the Dragon‘s John Macmillan for Vulture.

My HotD Character Guide for Vulture has received its biggest update yet! Come check out who the hell all these people are and what the hell all these people are doing!

A CHILD RUNS across the moonlit sands. As the stars shine down into the ocean nearby, the boy approaches a dragon asleep on the beach — Vhagar, massive and ancient, the largest and oldest animal in Westeros. Determined to seize what he feels is his birthright, he braves the beast’s searching eyes and fiery gullet, climbing up the rope ladder to its back dozens of feet off the ground. Commanding the creature in an ancient tongue, he drives it into the sky, taking flight at long last. The boy shakes, tumbles, hangs on for dear life…but in the end, he stays in control. A child, commanding the most dangerous thing in the world.

That’s the mythic imagery and power around which this episode of House of the Dragon (“Driftmark”) centers: young Aemond Targaryen, the second male offspring of King Viserys — the son and heir of nothing in particular, as the old song goes — seizing control of his late aunt Laena Velaryon’s legendary reptilian steed. If only it were all this poetic and magical. Unfortunately for Houses Targaryen and Velaryon, Laena’s funeral and the events that follow mostly play out like a slow-rolling disaster. Alliances are formed, old friendships are severed forever, and the realm will likely never be the same.

In other words, it’s a royal family gathering in Westeros. What else did you expect?

I reviewed tonight’s episode of House of the Dragon for Rolling Stone.