House of the Dragon season 2 told a deeper story through its dragons

polygon.com:

Midway through season 2, Ser Criston Cole awoke on the battlefield near Rook’s Rest bruised, battered, and probably concussed. He sought help from a nearby soldier, nudging his fellow man’s armor… only for the camera to reveal nothing inside but a skeleton that crumples under Cole’s touch. The soldier had been obliterated by dragonfire, his appearance reminiscent of victims who were vaporized by atomic bombs.

It’s a striking visualization for House of the Dragon season 2, which often presents its titular dragons as being analogous to weapons of mass destruction. The show stresses, however, that they are not onlyused as weapons against external enemies. After all, the dragons grant House Targaryen legitimacy and shore up their right to rule with the implicit threat of violence for those who step out of line. And yet, despite being used as fearsome weapons against enemies from both within and without, the dragons can also be read as tools of House Targaryen themselves. House of the Dragon wants us to feel for the creatures when they are killed in battles they did not choose, and there are parallels to real-world environmental collapse in this story about a species on the edge of extinction.

To begin, though, the nuclear analogy is vital to understanding the show, and much of the current season features the various players in the Targaryen civil war concerned with who has the most dragon power. Numerical advantage is presented as important, but so is the quality and scale of the dragons in Teams Green and Black’s respective arsenals. Having a dragon ensures strength and protection… until somebody finds a bigger dragon.

And that was a major issue for Rhaenyra this season. As the war that will be known as the “Dance of Dragons” broke out, the show played out its nuclear metaphor by presenting her as severely behind in an arms-race with Team Green, with her in-play dragons out classed by Aemond and his massive beast, Vhagar. Worse still, the powerful dragons Rhaenyra d