A Lesson from House of the Dragon about Revivals

Time to look at the rest of House of the Dragon now the first season has finished. Spoilers may burst from below.

I didn’t end up writing any more summerations and reviews for the individual episodes of House of the Dragon past episode two. So now the season is over, I thought it best to get back to it and talk about the first season as a whole. And when it comes to looking at the project as one entity, an immediate thought came to mind. How shows go about reviving a project and how it is handled. I first thought that it was likely that all revivals likely failed but after thinking on some past shows, I found it was more of a mixed bag. Some changed networks and failed to capture the same magic they used to have whilst some returned to greatness after the creator and fans kept the love adoration alive until they manifested the revival. I thought I would talk about a couple of revivals that failed and a couple that worked, and then finally get around to talking about House of the Dragon and how it has recovered from the ending of Game of Thrones season eight.

The first failed revival I wanted to talk about was a superhero show called Heroes. I’m not sure how many people still remember the show and there might be a number of you that were barely conscious whilst it was airing. The premise was a cast of characters from various walks of life gain superpowers after the world experiences a total eclipse. The show has an arc throughout each season to have the characters work towards their own goals and interact with each other but the primary focus of the show is to explore the characters and their emotional journeys using the guise of superheroes. And this was before superheroes were the easy money that they are today. The MCU had barely started with only two films in the catalogue (with one of them being the failed Hulk film starring Edward Norton. The fans of Heroes would admit the original run of the show had a number of flaws. But the overall tone of the show, along with some great characters and acting, raised the roof and provided a wonderful series that lasted four seasons before it got cancelled by NBC. Fans wanted more and interest perked back up when a so-called ‘spin-off’ was commissioned named Heroes: Reborn. Essentially acting as the continuation of the original show it took a small number of the characters from the original run and introduced a number of new characters. Unfortunately, the revival fell completely flat. Most of the characters were gone, aside from one main character that has no powers and a few guest appearances, and the new ones barely lived up to the show’s predecessor. The writing took an absolute nosedive and the first season trundled along until its inevitable cancellation. It was the case of not being aware what made the first run great and depending on the flashiness of its action which was never what attracted people to Heroes.

Arrested Development is a show that has a dedicated audience. And although it got revived after its cancellation after season three, the new season on Netflix and its subsequent season proved to barely capture the magic of the first three. It was a show about an incredibly dysfunctional and wealthy family and them having to deal with the bizarrities that occurred around them. The show had a fun and snidey take on the regular sitcoms and provided some excellent comedic writing. The characters weren’t anything too special but the dialogue, cutaways and performances from the actors gave the ultimate cherry on top to secure it as one of the best sitcoms out there. Unfortunately, although its audience loved the show, it didn’t garner enough viewership to stop Fox from cancelling it and the project went cold. I had come late to the Arrested Development train so when I started watching, the two Netflix seasons were already out. It is one of the rare times where I end up dropping a television show on purpose and deciding to never return to it. The cutaways and narration that had put a unique spin previously, were now stale and oddly timed. Everything had felt off and I couldn’t stand to watch much more than the first couple of episodes of season four. Now, maybe it does improve as you go into the fifth season (and I have heard of the recut version of season four, though I doubt that would change my opinion on it), but if it could keep me for that comeback from cancellation then I doubt it would be worth slogging through so much to get to what is likely a mediocre ending.

But then I got thinking about what had been revived well and my mind instantly went to, if you would believe it, Star Wars. The Clone Wars television show run by Dave Filoni and helped along by George Lucas himself. The show itself could be seen as a revival of Tartakovsky’s 2D animated show Clone Wars. The new show would take some of the characters created in the 2D show and bring them into 3D with what most call Lucas’ true successor to Star Wars: Dave Filoni. It provided an anthology of Star Wars stories set between Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. Some would simply be a deeper exploration of the relationship between clones and their Jedi generals whereas others would tap into the deeper plots that wouldn’t fully be uncovered until Revenge of the Sith. The show was a great success and, although a few episodes I would happily skip, it contained a great amount of content that helped explain some of the holes in the story that had to be cut out of the prequels. This could be shown as a successful revival itself, as I described just now, but the real success comes in the great final batch of episodes, season seven. After the Disney takeover, the company looked to focus on their own shows, including another show that would be headed by Filoni called Rebels. They claimed the show was ‘winding down’, which ended up meaning that the show received only a tiny amount of money to create thirteen episodes that would go onto Netflix and no more would be made. A few more episodes were planned for that season, but were not made. Luckily most of them would be transformed into other media including the Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir comic, the Dark Disciple book and one of the arcs becoming the first arc of the latter revival. But at the time, no one really expected the revival to happen. Many hints and hopes by Filoni and fans were primarily a continued expression of love that people had for the show. And whenever a show is deemed to be not worthy of continuing, the fans still want that final send off that the show deserved and allows a number of loose ends to be tied up. No one really thought that this would happen until a surprise announcement dropped at San Diego Comic Con 2018. There would be a seventh and final season consisting of twelve episodes. They were split into three arcs of four episodes each. The first being the abandoned arc from earlier about a group of clones called ‘The Bad Batch’, then a second arc to explain where Ahsoka Tano had been after the events of the season five finale and finally, the pièce de résistance that is the Maul/Ahsoka/Mandalore arc. The final arc especially is how they really turn the revival into something to give as an example for whenever you wish to finish a show properly rather than leaving it on an episode that was not intended to be the final viewing. It concurrently takes place and interweaves with Revenge of the Sith as we see Ahsoka’s point of view and the aftermath of Order 66 from her point of view. The story is perfect Star Wars along with the best television Star Wars villain in Maul. Every voice actor does wonders with their characters and the visuals of the last season are pumped up to the max. It’s actually quite crazy how cinematic the artstyle gets in this last season where I have to remind myself I’m watching a television show and not a feature film. The seventh season is a wonderful ending to the show and really displays what a revival can do.

The last I wanted to talk about before we move back to House of the Dragon is a show that has had two revivals and another one in the works currently. Futurama is the perfect place for Matt Groening and David X. Cohen as they worked through the various cancellations and revivals to give us one of the best animated comedies ever. The cancellations of this show made absolutely no sense and the fact that I can’t really point to a bad season or era of the show likely shows exactly why the show has been so easily revived a couple of times and likely to be revived well for a third next year. The show has a constant level of comedy that rarely drops below along with some interesting ideas around future development of the world and how humans would react and adapt around the various progresses of technology. Primarily, though, the show simply found its groove and has never let go. There’s nothing special they’ve added, no extra season just close out on an ending. In fact, the show has managed to have three different endings that all work incredibly well and that there are three episodes that could be perceived as the ending only enhances the themes it puts across. There’s not much else to say about Futurama’s revivals as they are less revivals and more so continuations with the same crew and cast. Why would they change anything?

Back to House of the Dragon and some may even question whether House of the Dragon is technically a revival of Game of Thrones since it’s a prequel and only has a small number of connections to the original show. But House of the Dragon is simply the continuation of the A Song of Ice and Fire television universe and, to be quite honest, I had thought most of these planned prequel shows would never see the light of day. The outstanding mishandling of season eight by D&D not only ruined the ending of one of the best television shows in history, it also soured my desire for any more shows. House of the Dragon was something I was not interested in at all, as I mentioned in my review of episode one. But the more details and screenshots came out, the more it peaked my interest. Again, I went into the first episode thinking I would watch it, it would be mediocre, and that mediocrity would send me away for the rest of the season. But to my surprise, the show managed to completely blow my expectations out of the water and revive the television world of A Song of Ice and Fire where now I am longing for season two now that the first has concluded. The magic has been recaptured with fantastic and complex characters navigating an intricate scenario where both sides of the conflict have heroes and villains. We have finished the first season of the show at the beginning of the conflict they call the ‘Dance of the Dragons’ with strikes and deaths already on both sides. The whole season continued the themes it presented at the beginning of the season and uses the newer characters to re-emphasise them. Like Heroes: Reborn, the show uses completely new characters as it starts 172 years before Game of Thrones, but does what the Heroes revival failed to do and creates more intricate characters that still push the overall themes of your world whilst having them go on emotional arcs that entice the viewer.

Unlike Arrested Development, the show feels exactly the same as the best parts of Game of Thrones. Nothing feels off or odd. Nothing has been changed ever so slightly that it puts you in a weird place and stops you from fully enjoying the show. Unlike Star Wars: The Clone Wars season seven, it’s not coming back for one season to finalise the run. It’s back with a vengeance and continuing on the legacy of Game of Thrones the best it can. And like Futurama, with George R.R. Martin co-running the show, I can only see the show continue to break ground, amaze and enthral its audience, and deliver us a great show that will help build on the universe of A Song of Ice and Fire in the world of television.

Now they see you as you are.

-Boad