The following contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 1, Episode 6, "The Princess and the Queen," which debuted Sept. 25, on HBO.
House of the Dragon has begun the second half of its first season with new actors replacing the younger ones and more children taking up the Targaryen mantle. Episode 6, "The Princess and the Queen" is meant to be a significant moment for the fight to come, but it just leaves fans with a bunch of questions about what happened between the last episode and now.
Game of Thrones wasn't a stranger to time jumps either; many seasons jumped months or even a year after the previous season's finale, but the show did it in a way that felt natural. Relationships or conflicts weren't formed in the off-screen timespan, unlike in House of the Dragon. The latter show has taken the liberty of using massive time jumps to tell its story in a way that has so far been detrimental to the story they're telling. The first significant time jumps were mostly okay, even if they were pushing their luck. Now the 10-year time jump has taken place -- shown by Rhaenyra and Alicent's actors being replaced by Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke -- and House of the Dragon is depending on viewers' own knowledge of the series to fill in the gaps.
The first indication that these time jumps are taking their toll is with Rhaenyra and Harwin Strong. For those who can't recall -- and shouldn't be blamed for forgetting as he's slipped in the background so many times -- Harwin is the son of Lyonel Strong, the Hand of the King. House of the Dragon first introduces Harwin in Season 1, Episode 3, "Second of His Name" as the only spectator impressed by Rhaenyra's bloody appearance at Aegon's second nameday festivities. He is also seen on Rhaenyra's wedding day protecting her from the fatal fight that broke out.
Ten years later, Rhaenyra and Harwin have developed a friends-with-benefits relationship that replaced Rhaenyra and Criston Cole's could've-been relationship -- and thank the Old and New Gods for that. Harwin is much more comfortable being Rhaenyra's side-piece, as long as he can keep a watchful eye on his biological children. Rhaenyra even allows him this, and the two have a pretty healthy relationship. The problem that remains is that it's hard to tell how this relationship came to be. At what point did Rhaenyra and Harwin start this relationship? Were they ever worried their secret would be spilled? These are all questions left unanswered, and with Harwin's death, it's likely they'll remain that way. He finally had one episode where he actually had a role to play, but he's swiftly thrown out to move the plot forward.
Halfway around the world fans find Daemon and his wife Laena Velaryon, raising their two children Baela and Rhaena and soon-to-be third and fourth children. Shockingly, this family is -- on a surface level -- more put together than the families in Westeros: Daemon has retired from his casual murder ventures to read by the fire and raise his two children. But it's questionable how Daemon got to this serenity in the first place. The last time viewers saw him, he was so enamored with Rhaenyra that he was willing to expose their affairs at her wedding. He was also taken by a younger Laena as well, and it was enough to abandon his pursuit of Rhaenyra to settle down and start a family. Mind you, this is the same man who orchestrated his first wife's death to make himself available for Rhaenyra.
The decade-long time jump is a reasonable enough excuse for Daemon's change in character, but it's a shame that the audience isn't privileged enough to see it. Laena finally seems to be coming into her own as a significant character but dies at the end of the episode. She and Daemon's time together on-screen really isn't enough to justify their marriage, much less how their marriage is much better than his last. There are definitely moments where the audience sees they're not a perfect couple, but it simply isn't enough. Laena was wasted as a character, as is her brother -- a man still alive and well, but with Daemon newly single, that might not last forever if his niece is still his prized possession.
Put quite plainly, Harwin and Laena feel like wasted characters. Their relationships with Rhaenyra and Daemon are left to the viewers' imagination, and it's looking like fan-fiction writers are the only ones who will fill in the void the writers clumsily left open. For better or worse (much more on the "worse" side), these time jumps are instrumental in moving the plot forward -- but by skipping over principal character moments, House of the Dragon is skewing growth for the prize of wrapping up this story in only a season or two.
New episodes of House of the Dragon air Sundays at 9:00 p.m. ET on HBO and stream on HBO Max.