House Of The Dragon's theme song feels a little too safe

In our second episode of House Of The Dragon, we finally got to hear what Westerosi music sounded like some 200 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen—and, much like the fashion and patterns of speech, it’s pretty much exactly the same as it will be two centuries later.

That’s right, the theme song—and the entire opening credits sequence, basically—for House Of The Dragon are exactly the same as the one for Game Of Thrones. Look, it’s a fun, cute piece of music, and this author is big enough to admit that he went off to bed whistling it after last night’s episode. If Twitter is any indication, the reaction across the fandom has been a bit more mixed; at least one person opined that the original theme song was perfect and didn’t need to be changed, while New York Times reporter David Itzkoff offered a decent counterpoint:

Let’s give HotD and HBO the benefit of the doubt for a minute (I know, I know); let’s assume this wasn’t a decision made from laziness or a time crunch. It’s hard to conjure a spinoff in recent memory that has begun with less goodwill than HotD, and it feels likely that a decision like this can be chalked up to one thing: fear.

Everyone behind HotD is certainly aware that they have an uphill battle in winning their audience back over after the clusterfuck that became the final season of GOT. While HotD should hopefully be insulated from the worst of that as long as they continue to have George R.R. Martin source material to pull from—it’s no secret that GOT declined the further away from the books they got—the series still walks a fine line, desperately trying not to piss off the fans who have (cautiously) returned to Westeros. They’re hoping that the recycled theme song reminds us of the Westeros that we loved, not the one where the dragon lady went crazy and burned thousands of people alive because they kind of liked her boyfriend-cousin better than her.

HotD is (somewhat desperately) trying to remind us of the things that they think we loved about GOT—with mixed results. On paper, we have the classic Westeros ingredients; in the first two episodes, we’ve been witness to an incredibly brutal caesarian delivery, skull crushings, incest, child brides, and crabs eating people alive. Yes, Game Of Thrones was frank in its fantastical depiction of medieval brutality, but that’s not all it was. As The A.V. Club’s Jenna Scherer noted in her review of the latest episode, House Of The Dragon has been rather humorless so far, lacking a character like Tyrion or Olenna Tyrell who can offer a wry, tells-it-like-it-is perspective. Those characters, that tone, are integral parts of Westeros and made it feel like a real, lived-in place.

It’s still early, and it feels unfair to judge House Of The Dragon too harshly after just two episodes. But, so far, one can’t help but feel like they’re playing it safe, recycling the well-known elements of ice and fire that fans expect. The theme song is hardly the biggest issue, but it does seem to be symptomatic of the type of thinking going on. It’s easy to forget now how much of a risk GOT was when it premiered in 2011; while it always had a dedicated fan base, the idea of a high-fantasy series having such mainstream success was hardly a given. Game Of Thrones became Game Of Thrones because it was willing to take risks and subvert expectations. If House Of The Dragon wants the same, they may start having to sing a different song.