‘House Of The Dragon’ Reviewing Slightly Worse Than ‘Game Of Thrones’ So Far

House of the Dragon reviews are in. Quite a lot of them, in fact. HBO has gone wild with screeners, which has resulted in 344 scored reviews of the show ahead of its debut tomorrow. I believe reviewers got access for up to six episodes, so these aren’t all just reviews of the pilot.

It’s reviewing pretty well, but TV shows have a higher bar than say, movies on a site like Rotten Tomatoes, where 90% or 95%+ scores are pretty regular (Black Bird 97%, Ms. Marvel 98%, Better Call Saul 98%, Only Murders in the Building 100%, The Bear 100%, just to name a few recent ones).

In contrast, House of the Dragon season 1 has an 85% with those 344 reviews in. That is slightly lower than Game of Thrones season 1 which got a 90% (and a 96% audience score), though it’s not too far off.

That 90% Game of Thrones season 1 got was the second worst rated season of the series, other than of course the disastrous season 8. Here’s how it scored over time:

• Season 1 – 90%
• Season 2 – 96%
• Season 3 – 96%
• Season 4 – 97%
• Season 5 – 93%
• Season 6 – 94%
• Season 7 – 93%
• Season 8 – 55%

Ouch. But as you can see, other than that final drop-off, Thrones was a pretty solid critical hit for its duration. And even if House of the Dragon is ticking slightly below it now, there’s plenty of room for improvement. It remains somewhat unclear what the longer term plan is for House of the Dragon, as its previously been described as a potential Targaryen anthology where they can go back and forth in time hundreds of years, rather than simply carrying on with these existing characters for a second season. But we don’t know the fixed plans for that yet. I am also willing to bet that a few critics are suffering from “Thrones fatigue,” which did not disadvantage the first show.

HBO, currently in a bit of turmoil thanks to the WB Discover merger, has a good amount riding on House of the Dragon with a reported $100 million marketing spend, and the very tough job of making people forget about season 8 of Game of Thrones, as well as pave way for future shows set in the Game of Thrones universe, which HBO considers one of its most valuable brands. HBO is also going up against the billion dollar Lord of the Rings show, which is about to start airing on Amazon, with the timing of release being no coincidence.

These early reviews indicate to me the show will probably be “good enough” at release here, though I do wonder if audiences will break more positively or more negatively, as these days critics and viewers rarely agree.

We will all find out for ourselves tomorrow, at least for this initial episode here.

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