no mourners, no funerals

I mean I haven’t actually decided if I’m watching season 2 given some of the information that’s come out and I have serious concerns with how they’ll handle blood and cheese and the trauma of women during war but I actually did like season one despite the issues I have with the writing. I still care about the characters like Alicent, Rhaenyra, etc which is why I post about them and why I still care enough to criticise the show and vent about how they are treated by the show and fandom alike. You can still enjoy a show, like engaging in discussions of said show and still criticise the way it’s written especially when the writers claim they’re writing from a more pregressive, feminist perspective.

I agree and I think a lot of people have the same opinion. I think they could have done 16 episode first season would have been a good idea, 8 with Milly and Emily and then another 8 with Emma and Olivia airing after a hiatus. With more episode they could have included more in both parts including Rhaenyra and Alicents fight after the betrothal, the wedding and aegons birth in part one and generally less time skips and more development all around in both versions and giving more time to the kids who need to actually be seen as main characters for the dance to work.

With a hiatus as well the transition would have been easier, a lot of people missed Milly and Emily especially those who were unaware that they were not the “main” actresses playing Rhaenyra and Alicent. They could have shown adult Alicent and Rhaenyra at the end of episode 8 and released teasers and trailers getting people excited for the next part of the story with the new and old cast members

That being said, I do understand that the budget and the time it takes to do all that CGI work but they could have done more scenes of just the actors interacting in one location, setting up the politics of a show that is literally about politics without need for CGI or more cool shots of dragons taking up time. The dragons are more important during the dance itself whereas developing of court politics and character building were most important during the build up and we easily could have had six hours of well written and acted content on that without a dragon flying around.