House of the Dragon Finale Repeats an Already Familiar Mistake
The finale of House of the Dragon Season 1 featured what many fans expected and waited for – the beginning of the open civil war, and the first dragon fight of the show.
In fact, these events were rolled into one. Well, calling what happened "a dragon fight" might be an exaggeration. Prince Lucerys Velaryon (Elliot Grihault) and his mount, the young dragon Arrax, never stood a chance against Vhagar, the oldest and biggest of living dragons, ridden by Prince Aemond (Ewan Mitchell). It was a chase and then a swift slaughter.
The book readers, of course, knew in advance what was going to happen, and waited for this event with grim anticipation. But many of them were disappointed by a small, but significant change to the scene. You see, George Martin by now had written several versions of the story, on which House of the Dragon is based. And all of them are written in a fashion that leaves plenty of room for interpretation (they are framed as in-setting historical records).
But they are fairly clear and insistent that Prince Aemond hated Lucerys, wanted revenge for his lost eye, acted on his desires, by calmly asking Lord Baratheon's leave so that he can lead the mightiest dragon in the world on a sky chase for his victim, fed both Lucerys and Arrax to Vhagar, and never once exhibited regret or made excuses for his actions later. This is in line with how young adult Aemond has been portrayed in the previous episodes as well – a dangerous combination of ability, reckless youth and bloodthirsty ruthlessness.
The show preserves the part where Aemond offers Lucerys to put out one of the latter's eyes as a payment for Aemond's own and the boy refuses. The divergence comes at the end of the aerial chase, when Vhagar, enraged by Arrax' attempts to fight back, slaughters both the dragon and the rider, despite Aemond's attempts to hold her back, repeatedly shouting: "No, no, Vhagar!" Instead of a deliberate murder, the whole business is portrayed as an attempt at childish bullying gone horribly wrong.
Which perhaps could have been fine on its own. After all, "people losing control of dangerous circumstances their actions have created" is a fine setup for a war, where both sides are supposed to be colored in grey. Except that's not how the show presented it.
The change to Aemond's actions is a part of a trend very noticeable in the last two episodes that goes roughly like this: "The civil war preventable if not for childish actions of a few dumb men!" Yeah, right.
The clash between the two parties, which have declared their antagonism way back in Episode 5, which have mutually incompatible views on the order of succession, which key members have previously demonstrated willingness to murder for noticeably less than the throne and/or egocentric disregard for everyone but themselves, this clash totally could have been avoided, if not for a cruel prank going too far! Never mind that bloodletting already started one episode ago.