House Of The Dragon Fans All Have The Same Complaint About The Dragons
In many ways, "House of the Dragon" is currently surpassing its predecessor, HBO's massive juggernaut series "Game of Thrones." Based on the way that "Game of Thrones" ended — disappointing fans to the point where they actually started a petition to redo the final season — this isn't, at this point, a difficult bar to clear. Based on George R.R. Martin's novella "Fire & Blood," the prequel and spin-off focuses on a bloody civil war waged amongst members of the Targaryen family, whose royal heritage is related to the fact that they, alone among the Westerosi houses, have the power to bond with and ride dragons. Coming into the show, fans were already familiar with the three miraculous dragons born to Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) — Drogon, Rhaegal, and Viserion — seen on "Game of Thrones," but thanks to the fact that "House of the Dragon" is set 172 years before Daenerys' birth and during the heyday of dragons, there are plenty more to meet in this series.
There's one problem, though. The dragons in "House of the Dragon" are, according to some fans, too small.
As user @rrhaenyraisms pointed out on X (formerly known as Twitter), Syrax — who's seen in the Season 2 premiere "A Son for a Son" and is ridden by Emma D'Arcy's Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen — is sort of... tiny looking. "I can't deal with Syrax being so small, she was a bigger dragon than Drogon, Viserion and Rhaegal," they wrote. In the replies, they're met with agreement; one user, @AlizeMeg55338, even makes the point that Syrax was roughly the same size years prior within the show's timeline. This is correct — so what's going on here?
The dragons in House of the Dragon are a much bigger part of the overall story
It is certainly puzzling that the dragons in "House of the Dragon" appear smaller than their descendants in "Game of Thrones" — particularly because we've been watching the former for nearly two decades in the show's timeline. Season 1 of "House of the Dragon" leaps through several years across its ten episodes; after the fifth episode, "We Light the Way," the show moves forward by ten years, and after the seventh episode "Driftmark," it jumps ahead by another six years. These time jumps are largely illustrated by casting changes and not necessarily dragon size — Emma D'Arcy plays the adult version of Rhaenyra, but she's played as a teenager by Milly Alcock, in just one example — it is definitely jarring that the dragons in the narrative still look a little puny compared to their "Game of Thrones" counterparts.
Some fans on X, though, have praised the new show's superior effects and approach to the dragons — understandably, the dragons in "House of the Dragon" are a much bigger part of the narrative than they were in "Game of Thrones," because this time, basically every character has one. As @JohnnySobczak pointed out, the effects in one scene in "A Son for a Son," where Rhaenys (Eve Best) dismounts from her dragon Meleys in a massive chamber at Dragonstone, look incredible. "It's a brief moment, but this is one of the best images I've seen in live-action fantasy," they noted. "Love everything about the design of this shot, from the lighting to the sense of scale through great VFX. Few (if any) comparable images in 'House of the Dragon' S1 or even 'Game of Thrones.'"
Daenerys' dragons in Game of Thrones are the first in several generations — and should be smaller
Let's go back to the relative size of the dragons, though. It's true that, in "A Son for a Son," as Rhaenyra slides off Syrax on an isolated shore, the dragon looks relatively small; this was never the case in "Game of Thrones." At the end of the original show's debut season, Daenerys steps into a massive fire holding three dragon eggs in an era where dragons are believed to be fully extinct; when she emerges the next morning, she's clutching three baby dragons who end up growing at a somewhat alarming rate. As the series continues, Daenerys' dragons get larger and more powerful, and in the show's seventh season, Viserion, Drogon, and Rhaegal are all fairly enormous (though Drogon does appear to be the largest).
Viserion is taken down by the Night King (Vladimir Furdik) in the penultimate episode of Season 7 and Rhaegal is shot down by Euron Greyjoy (Pilou Asbæk), and in the end, Daenerys is left with just Drogon ... by every time we see him on screen, it's striking just how enormous he is. During the Season 7 episode "The Spoils of War," Drogon is so massive that his mere presence crushes Lannister soldiers — to say nothing of the dragonfire he rains down upon them — and Daenerys always has to work pretty hard to even make her way onto his back. Still, there is one dragon in "House of the Dragon" whose enormity cannot be denied, and she also happens to be one of the oldest and most infamous dragons in the history of the franchise.
Still, one dragon in House of the Dragon looms above them all
Vhagar, who's only mentioned as a legendary beast in "House of the Dragon" Season 1 before she makes her screen debut, is one of the biggest dragons in the entire "Game of Thrones" universe ... and whenever she's on screen, she definitely does look pretty huge. (In "A Son for a Son," Matt Smith's Daemon Targaryen refers to her, winningly, as a "hoary old b*tch.") When we do first see Vhagar in "The Princess and the Queen," the sixth episode of Season 1, it's during an extremely tragic moment as her rider, Laena Velaryon (Nanna Blondell), is experiencing a deadly childbirth — and chooses to die by dragonfire rather than succumb to her injuries. After that, Vhagar is supposed to pass to Laena's eldest daughter Baela (played as a child by Shani Smethurst), but she's stolen in the dead of night by young Aemond Targaryen (Leo Ashton); in the altercation over the dragon, Aemond loses an eye after being struck by his nephew Lucerys Velaryon (Harvey Sadler).
This is all to say that, years later, Aemond and Lucerys — now played by Ewan Mitchell and Elliott Grihault — meet again on dragonback, and it's quite clear that Vhagar is drastically larger than Lucerys' dragon Arrax. The two end up locked in a dragon battle that abruptly ends when Vhagar, burned by a blast of fire from Arrax, goes rogue and fatally attacks Lucerys and Arrax, killing them both.
Vhagar is certainly a massive behemoth, but so far, the other dragons on "House of the Dragon" have to measure up, according to fans. The show airs new episodes every Sunday on HBO and Max at 9 P.M. EST.