House of the Dragon: S2, E6 Smallfolk Review

“Do nothing now. In three days’ time, the winds will shift.” – Alys Rivers

“House of the Dragon” Season 2 Episode 6, “Smallfolk”, is very much a wheels-spinning kind of episode. If you’re a fan of what this series does best, political intrigue and schemes, then you’ll be at home with this week’s episode. Aemond’s at work to maintain his position as the regent and Rhaenyra has concocted a treat with Mysaria. Unfortunately, “Smallfolk” has some cracks in it’s armor that are starting to show.

We take some time this week to examine the weaknesses of the Blacks and Greens, plus their probability of winning this war.

As regent, Aemond is in a desperate situation. He doesn’t see Aegon as a strong or knowledgeable king; there’s no telling where the king may take this war once he’s fully recovered. Due to this Aemond is attempting to speed-run this civil war before that can happen. The Greens currently hold advantage as Rhaenyra’s largest dragon is gone and they still lack a land army. The Red Keep sets their eye on Daemon at Harrenhal and the Velaryon shipping blockade.

In an attempt to patch these weaknesses, the Blacks attempt and fail to make Ser Steffon Darklyn Seasmoke’s new dragon-rider, at the cost of his life. Rhaeynra is so discouraged by this that she begins to question if they can even win this war. Their attempt to rival Vhagar blew fire in their face while Daemon, who was supposed to muster the Riverlands, is playing with ghosts for the third episode straight.

This is the point at which I’m beginning to see through the cracks in the armor. “Smallfolk” is serving as excellent setup for the final two episodes of the season. Mysaria’s plan is giving Rhaenyra some goodwill to the people of King’s Landing and Seasmoke claiming a new rider on his own is exactly what was needed to turn this bleak season around for the Blacks. However, this setup is coming at a cost.

Daemon messing about with visions is feeling pretty drawn out at this point. Forcing him to relive the consequences of his own actions to reconcile with it is excellent character work, but it’s made me almost long for the shows creators to play around with the format a bit more. Season 1 did an excellent job at playing with storytelling in this universe between the time skips and the delivering two episodes focused solely on the characters within each faction. It frankly doesn’t feel all that necessary to try to recreate the pacing of “Game of Thrones” when we’re left with all this idle time.

Previously, the focus of my criticisms with “House of the Dragon” centered on the Blacks not being near anywhere as morally gray as the Greens. This still stands, as I believe this complexity has led to making characters far more interesting, such as Alicent’s arc this season being far more interesting than Rhaenyra’s.

Rhaenyra happens to be the main draw of my criticism for this season so far as it doesn’t feel like her idleness is being used effectively. It’s entirely understandable that events unfolding will need to take their time to build up, but it’s beginning to feel like Rhaenyra is being given the bare minimum while we wait for the plot to continue to unfold.

“The Red Dragon and the Gold” should have been an end to this passive version of her. Instead she’s continued to do so in her handling of finding new dragon-riders. Furthermore, throughout the course of this episode Rhaenyra’s dialogue has begun to just restate relationship dynamics and her desire to be in the action. This has already been communicated quite well to the audience over the course of this season. Ultimately, it felt like she was written to do nothing until Seasmoke took the initiative to find a new rider.

While I’m sure it’s almost entirely the point to have Alys tell Daemon to “Do nothing now” and as a result Daemon and Rhaeynra’s problems are solved by doing nothing, their time could have been better spent.