House of the Dragon critics divided by shock low-key season 2 finale

The dust has settled on House of the Dragon season 2, though there was rather less of that dust than we all expected. Fans anticipating a fiery duel in the skies and a blood-soaked battlefield were instead treated to more talking about war than war itself.

House of the Dragon's compressed second season schedule — running for eight episodes instead of 10 — could be the culprit for this bizarre structure. After all, most of this season has been terrific in showing us how both sides have worked hard to avoid sending their dragons into all-out conflict.

But given how much of the final episode, The Queen Who Ever Was, devoted itself to talking in great detail about the battle to come, it was a surprise when it cut to black without a drop of blood being shed.

It's undeniably a bold choice and one that has split critics, as well as leaving fans upset. Alison Herman, writing for Variety, explained that she felt the anticlimax was not an accident or a flaw, but a feature of the way showrunner Ryan Condal is telling the story.

Herman wrote: "Season 1 felt like an extended set-up by necessity, arranging the chess pieces before the game could start in earnest. Upon its conclusion, Season 2 feels like an extended set-up as a deliberate thematic choice."

She added that the conclusion of the episode "reiterates that the true focus of the series is on the lives and relationships set to become those battles’ collateral damage". Herman reflected that the show wants to "delay gratification via glorious gore" in order to force audiences to "sit in the grim fatalism that’s increasingly its preferred mode".

Read more: House of the Dragon finale's character reveal might've answered a Game of Thrones burning question (Entertainment Weekly)

It's fair to say that IndieWire's Proma Khosla had a different take, questioning whether the episode could even justify calling itself a finale. Khosla wrote that, with House of the Dragon season 3 already confirmed, this episode had "all the complacent symptoms of a finale where the show’s guaranteed return hampers its current momentum".

She further criticised the episode for its "misguided side quests", including Tyland Lannister's attempts to woo the Free Cities to the Greens' cause.

Judy Berman in TIME, though, said she didn't miss the big battle as she was so wowed by what the show gave viewers instead of that. "As talky as it was, this finale served up some of the best plot twists, character beats, and new faces the series has given us to date," she wrote.

She added: "Anyone with a big-enough budget can produce cool-looking digital violence. It’s the characters and their regrets and the evolution of their relationships that give this Targaryen civil war its stakes."

Over at Deadline, Lynette Rice wrote of her disappointment that the finale didn't deliver the promised fiery carnage. She said: "Sadly, the second season finale ends there, without the battle we were all expecting. Instead, we’ll have to wait until season 3 to see if Rhaenyra truly has the upper hand."

House of the Dragon season 2 certainly took a big chance with its audience's patience in how it structured its finale. The genius of the second season has been in laying out the reasons to avoid war, even as it has loomed inevitably in the future. But when the penultimate episode ended with Rhaenyra facing up to Aemond, flanked by her new array of dragons, that fired the starting pistol.

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After an entire season of television devoted to, essentially, putting on the armour of war, it's gutting to watch a show then kick the can down the road. It's unlikely we'll see more from House of the Dragon until 2026, by which time the hype conjured up by those final scenes will have disappeared.

This was a great episode cliffhanger to get you to tune in next week, but a lousy way to sign off for a future season. Anyone who can even remember the names of their dragons and their riders in two years deserves a cookie, quite frankly.