Meet the old Targaryens, same as the new Targaryens, in HBO’s trailer for House Of The Dragon

If you were curious what the point is of doing a Game Of Thrones prequel series, set long before anyone you know from the original series is born, when the end of Game Of Thrones was so poorly received that it effectively soured the entire show, this trailer for House Of The Dragon sums it up nicely. As someone informs the young Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen: “Men would sooner put the realm to the torch than see a woman ascend the Iron Throne.”

Huh, is that a specific reference to something? What could it beeee? Maybe the thing in 200 years where the whole world goes to war to stop a woman from taking over? So yeah, it seems like at least one of the goals of House Of The Dragon is going to be recontextualizing or mythologizing the events of the original series, turning the things that seemed like bad or lazy writing into acts of destiny itself, as if the whole arc of this universe is meant to lead toward Daenerys going hog wild on King’s Landing and ultimately being murdered by her nephew/lover (and then the question of who gets to be the king is determined by “whoever had the best story” or whatever the hell that was).

It could work, though “the original show was good, actually” is always going to be a tough sell for those who felt burned by that final season. But hey, Matt Smith in that awful wig should be fun to watch for a while, right? (We love seeing that wild, Geralt Of Rivia-esque mane, though we will concede that it looks a little better in context, which is to say that a lot of these characters have ridiculous hair.) In addition to Smith, House Of The Dragon stars Paddy Considine, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Fabien Frankel, Sonoya Mizuno, and Rhys Ifans. It premieres on HBO and HBO Max on August 21.