House of the Dragon is bringing back Game of Thrones’ long travel times
Among the many infamous failings of Game of Thrones’ last two seasons on HBO, one of the most illustrative and important to the fandom was how long it took characters to get from place to place. Early in the show, when they had the books as guides, journeys around Westeros would often take weeks, if not months, especially if someone was traveling with a large group. As the show dragged on, however, travel time started to get more and more reduced, with characters traversing most of the continent in mere seconds of screen time, and teleporting armies across land in what seemed like moments.
After its outstanding first season, House of the Dragon didn’t really need too much to continue setting itself apart from the lackluster final seasons of Game of Thrones. But if there were any lingering doubt, the travel times we’ve seen in season 2 should prove thatHouse of the Dragon is definitively more like Game of Thrones at its best.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 2 episode 4.]
No character in House of the Dragon makes the show’s long journeys more apparent than Rhaenyra. The head of the Black contingent has spent the bulk of season 2 away from her seat at Dragonstone for one reason or another, mostly flying around on her dragon Syrax, grieving the loss of her son. But the tipping point for all of it was when she decided to sneak her way into King’s Landing.
Other characters, like Daemon or Arryk Cargyll, may have a fairly easy time zipping across Blackwater Bay to move between King’s Landing and Dragonstone, but in any version of Game of Thrones, smuggling the single most important person in all of Westeros into the continent’s biggest city was always going to be a slow, careful process. We see her approaching the city via a tiny boat, in full disguise as a Septa, something that had to be done patiently and methodically so as not to raise suspicions.
But rather than just letting her jump in and out of the city, House of the Dragon
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