Both HBO’s House of the Dragon and Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power have wrapped up their first seasons and I am finally finished making my way through both shows (those are some looong episodes). Both shows definitely delivered on the epic fantasy front, but both also certainly have fans who think their show was the best. I have read some of the Song of Ice and Fire books and seen all of Game of Thrones, and I have read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, parts of the Silmarillion and seen all of the Tolkien-based movies (including the animated ones). So I am quite familiar with the lead-up to these shows. And I will tell you that it is hard to pick which of these two is the best because both did the fantasy genre proud.
House of the Dragon feels like going right back to the world of Game of Thrones because . . . well, that is pretty much exactly what it is doing. It takes place earlier than GoT and has a different set of principals, but it picks up the torch from the parent series quite handily. The characters from House of the Dragon don’t quite resonate the way that the main players in GoT did because that series had such meaty, well-developed characters and a cast for the ages. Young Rhaenyra (played by Milly Alcock) and Daemon (played by Doctor Who alum Matt Smith) stand out right away, but when you think of characters like Ned Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Arya Stark, the Hound, Jon Snow, Littlefinger, Cersei Lannister, Brienne of Tarth, and more, House of the Dragon does not quite measure up. But that shouldn’t be held against it too much because it is a tall order to measure up to the vast set of characters that populated GoT.
House of the Dragon also gets off to a slow start. It is not so slow that the show is boring, but it takes a while for the story to develop. When they get to the eighth episode and things start really happening at a quick clip, you start to wonder where that pacing was all along. But there is still enough story to carry the show and I rarely found myself bored, though some episodes could get tedious at times. And while House of the Dragon does has the dragons of the title, it has little else in the way of fantasy elements. Like Game of Thrones, its story is driven heavily by political intrigue and interpersonal relationships.
If High Fantasy is your thing, then The Rings of Power is the show for you. It has elves and dwarves and orcs and magic and many of the elements expected from the genre. (Which of course makes sense seeing as LOTR is one of the seminal fantasy works.) I enjoy the backstory that this show is creating that looks like it will lead directly into the movies. I’m not a scholar of Tolkien lore, though, so I don’t always know where the show is taking liberties, and I assume it is doing that quite often. So I understand that some will not be pleased when it diverges from Tolkien cannon. (But for those objecting to the non-white actors used in the show, read my thoughts on that at this link.) The movies took their liberties as well and I pretty much expect that, so I don’t count that against the show because it is very much in the spirit of Tolkien’s work. The characters in this one stand out quite well and I like pretty much all of the principals, though I don’t know that they had to make Galadriel into a superhero-type badass.
My biggest complaint with both shows is the bloated episode length. The episodes were an hour or more (sometimes considerably more) in most cases, and they really seemed to drag out. In House of the Dragon, they seemed to spend a lot of time brooding, especially Daemon who I feel was not fully utilized. In The Rings of Power, they lingered on their exquisite CGI shots, which was nice eye-candy but got tedious after a while. I believe that both of these could have been trimmed down to under an hour for most episodes and that would have helped the pacing. That is mostly a nitpick, though, and I wouldn’t say it completely dragged down either show.
So which of the two is best? For my money, I enjoyed The Rings of Power more, but then I am a lover of High Fantasy. The political intrigue of House of the Dragon is still interesting, and I think they did it quite well. But I found myself looking forward to each episode of The Rings of Power more (I binged it over two weekends), even if the ending was a bit unsatisfying (House of the Dragon, on the other hand, went out on a high note). I am definitely eagerly awaiting the second season of The Rings Power (probably won’t arrive until 2024, though), but I will watch the next batch of episodes from House of the Dragon as well (again, likely in 2024).
Really, we should be glad to have both of these shows because they are quite excellent with high production values, and they really bolster the fantasy genre. Considering that we also have The Witcher, The Wheel of Time, the upcoming Willow, and more this is a great time to be a fan of epic fantasy. We should enjoy them while they last because there is no telling when the Peak TV bubble will burst and we won’t have nearly as many shows to choose from.
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