House Of The Dragon “Driftmark” Review
House Of The Dragon “Driftmark” is the seventh episode of the House Of The Dragon first series. As the title clearly tells us, the entire episode revolves in Driftmark just after the death of Laena in episode 6. After the tension filled funeral, the ante is upped even more when Aemond “steals” Vhagar and loses an eye to Lucerys. Viserys wants to put the matter behind them but Alicent is insistent that it should be an eye for an eye so she ends up lashing out at Rhaenyra and cutting her with Viserys’ dagger. The whole thing with the children watching and Aegon openly saying that everyone knows Luke and Jace aren’t Laenor’s sons because of how they look. Rhaenyra and Daemon finally get married after faking Laenor’s death.
Review
This episode was an episode of great and not great. Some scenes were handled brilliantly, some you could see were rushed to get to the drama. Like Rhaenyra’s chat with Daemon by the sea, it’s the first time I’ve ever openly hated Emma D’Arcy’s acting. Sure D’Arcy has never been standout to me and I’ve always felt the praise as a bit forced but anyone saying that was a well acted scene is lying. Maybe because Matt Smith is the only other person around it amplifies just how monotone D’Arcy’s deliverance of the lines are or maybe it’s just me.
The episode has it’s good parts, the fight with the kids is excellent and every single one of the child actors absolutely nails their performance, Aemond’s scene with Vhagar is fantastic as is every part of the scene in the throne room.
Let down a little though by the sheer logic bending of the writing when it comes to Laenor. In the book Laenor dies and is killed by an already scheming Rhaenyra, having an elaborate plot play out simply so that she doesn’t end up with blood on her hands only in gossip just seems odd. Seems a lot like the writers are doing what they can to make Rhaenyra as innocent a person as possible, something that they also did with Alicent which was no less annoying. I do worry about that, the writing seems to be following an ugly trend where writer Sara Hess is involved especially, a trend of having the leading ladies do awful things but not really because they can’t be held accountable and if awful things do need to happen and it can’t be just some elaborate fake out then it’ll be the men that do it and in no way shape or form will the women be just a ruthless as the men. It happened in episode 6 with Alicent not having anything to do with the plot to kill the Strong boys but her male counterpart plotting it for her, she just benefitted greatly from it. The women are having all their personality and agency dragged away because it seems some writers are scared to write a flawed woman. A shame. I really hop this doesn’t become the norm because HotD has been doing relatively well so far.
