Finally, House of the Dragon gets to the goddamn dragons

polygon.com:

Like any red-blooded viewer of the Home Box Office, nothing gets me going like some freaking dragons. Sure, I love unpacking all the political intrigue, the careful examinations of patriarchal power, and the class consciousness in House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones, but I also want to see how well all that stuff pairs with giant fire-breathing lizards. It’s right there in the title: House of the Dragon. And in this penultimate episode, the dragons are here to play ball.

This is immediately apparent from the opening scene, a tense standoff on a beach as Syrax and Seasmoke stare each other down while Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) confronts a newly-minted dragonrider: Addam Hull (Clinton Liberty). What could be a very violent showdown quickly works out in Rhaenyra’s favor, as Addam has no interest in using his newfound power to his own ends. Instead, he’s happy to have found a purpose away from the sea, and will join Rhaenyra if she will teach him to be a dragonrider.

So with one week to go in its second season, House of the Dragon gives us its version of a “putting a team together” episode, and it rocks. The revelation of Addam’s bond with Seasmoke has Rhaenyra once again reconsidering her noble family’s longstanding divine claim to dragons, and with some help from Mysaria, begins to consider candidates who wouldn’t be on long-forgotten records of descendants with diluted Targaryen blood. Bastards born of the realms brothels, and nobility’s disinterest in whatever happens once their time in the pleasure house is over.

Yet while the “misbegotten offspring” like Addam Hull are where Rhaenyra will find her dragonriders, that doesn’t mean everyone is going to be happy about this headwind — even if it means a fighting chance against Aemond. The more religious of her followers are incensed at her attempt to bond Vermithor with Ser Steffon Darklyn, and her son Jace, already wounded by being sidelined and having endured rumors about his parentage, is furious that the