'House of the Dragon' Season 2 finale is a big anticlimax: Recap

Spoiler alert! The following contains details from the Season 2 finale of "House of the Dragon."

That was it?

No battles. No deaths. Just a whole lot of talking, hedging, visions, meaningful glances and (of all things) mud wrestling.

That's what fans have to contend with in the finale of HBO's "House of the Dragon," (now streaming on Max), which wrapped up an uneven but often rousing second season of the "Game of Thrones" prequel series. This year, the characters fighting for the Iron Throne of Westeros spent a lot of time puttering around, but also delivered a really good dragon fight and even a surprising death. But if fans expected the current war to reach a crescendo in the eighth and final episode, they would have been sorely disappointed with what transpired – or rather, with what didn't.

The episode seemed more like a penultimate installment than a big finale, ending on a "to be continued" note on a par with some other disappointing finales this year, including FX's "The Bear" Season 3 and Netflix's "3 Body Problem." All the pieces are in place on the board, but no one wants to play yet.

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The finale featured incremental developments in various plot threads and character arcs. Tyland Lannister (Jefferson Hall) gets the Free Cities on Aemond's (Ewan Mitchell) side to break Corlys' (Steve Toussaint) blockade of King's Landing. Daemon (Matt Smith) has a magic vision and finally comes back to Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy), with his army of river men. Rhaenyra gets the bastard dragon riders ready for battle. Larys (Matthew Needham) convinces the injured Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) to flee Westeros and the wrath of the ambitious and unhinged Aemond. Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) is stuck in somebody's prison. Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell) finds the wild dragon. Alicent (Olivia Cooke) gives up on her sons and offers Rhaenyra the throne. Ser Criston (Fabien Frankel) appears to throw in the towel, too.

Perhaps the biggest development is that Daemon abandons the idea of making a play for the Iron Throne himself, a reversal of where the story seemed to be heading this season for the bratty man-child. It would have been preferable for Daemon to achieve this massive character development in more earned ways besides some deus ex machina visions about the white walkers, who won't be a part of this story for three centuries. But at least he's back in Rhaenyra's fold, and now she has seven dragons, one land army, one navy and potentially an eighth wild dragon out in the Vale. She seems unstoppable, no? Yet there would be little point to continuing the show if she could win the war in one fell swoop. Something has to give in Season 3.

Maybe that something is Helaena (Phia Saban), who has been predicting the future all season. She shows up in Daemon's Harrenhal visions and is called upon by her brother Aemond to ride her dragon, one of the oldest and largest, into battle for Team Green. But she's a gentle soul who is adamantly against it.

We don't know which of the armies, dragons and navies will prove the strongest, as the episode ends with a montage of its main characters merely on the precipice of battle. It's certainly a stirring scene – did anyone else catch "The Rains of Castamere" playing as the Lannister force marched into battle? – but it leaves us wanting. There was so much potential this year! The midseason Rook's Rest scuffle was such a good battle scene. Would it have been so hard to give us just a little bit more?

TV shows can certainly end seasons with cliffhangers in masterful ways; "Thrones" did it many times during its eight-year run. But while the "Dragon" finale had a lot of worthy moments, its ending was frustrating, not tantalizing. It doesn't leave you wanting more; instead, you're annoyed that you put in eight hours watching only to be delivered an anticlimax.

We'll have to wait quite a long time to find out if Season 3 delivers enough to make it all worthwhile.