Okay, can we not compare ‘The Rings of Power’ and ‘House of the Dragon,’ please?

Like clockwork, as soon as The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 arrived, it was battle of the fantasy shows, with fans comparing season 2 of HBO’s crown jewel House of the Dragon with the second outing of Prime Video’s marquee title. 

It would be fair to pit the two against each other when the parameters of comparison are worthy. There are the technical aspects, of course. How are the special effects? The hair and makeup and costumes? The prosthetics and practical sets? And then there are also things like episodic and season lengths and performances that can be compared; although with performances, it’s hard to deny that both shows have made some excellent casting choices with newcomers and established actors.

But then some want to say that one show is better than the other. I read one article that says The Rings of Power was a better high fantasy series. Another claimed House of the Dragon raised the stakes with its tragedy while The Rings of Power remained too wholesome. And that’s where the real problem lies, because other than their genre, which is a rather broad space to exist in, these two shows are vastly different. To pit them against each other then is a fallacy. Let’s examine why.

For starters, both shows have different settings. Tolkien’s Middle-earth and George R.R. Martin’s Westeros don’t have much in common. Their periods, societies, customs, and traditions are nowhere near similar. Even their themes don’t exactly match. At the heart of Tolkien’s work are existential themes like death, immortality, and how the fires of industry fuelled by greed ate into what was once good and fair about our natural world. As for GRRM’s works, they revolve around the lust for power, in which nature itself is a player through the Children of the Forest and the White Walkers. The Gods still work in mysterious ways in Middle-earth. In Westeros and Essos, the Gods have no power because as Cersei Lannister proved, tangible power is power.

You’ll notice how their storytelling styles and intent are different too. The Lord of the Rings and The Rings of Power are more concerned not with the ‘what’ but with the ‘how’. We know the light will defeat the dark; the journey is about how it will do this, with a deeper study of Tolkien’s themes. In Tolkien’s world, heroes exist and they do break the wheel. There’s estel (hope) and healing. And in today’s world, that certainly feels like a fantasy.

Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are cynical, like the world we live in. They explore how far their characters are willing to go for power, and how badly the best-laid plans can go wrong because of human weaknesses doomed to repeat tragic history. In GRRM’s stories, the heroes who break the wheel don’t get a happy ending or sail off to paradise. The tragedy rooted in reality is the appeal. With every scene of violence or political strategy, a strong undercurrent of shocking its audience and jolting it back to reality with the unexpected is present.

If Tolkien’s works are a leisurely stroll in your favorite park on your day off, George R.R. Martin’s works are a peak-hour morning commute to work, where despite all your meticulous planning, things can go wrong, and your day is colossally effed-up. The pacing of both The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon reflects these two different sentiments. 

To be able to compare these two series, then, the way most people do on social media would require one to draw some similarities between them, and whatever we’ve seen so far feels forced. For example, one fan compared the political turmoil for the throne which is at the center of the Númenor storyline to that of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. It’s frankly a ridiculous statement; not every story about politics is Game of Thrones. 

Interestingly, George R.R. Martin makes this stark divide between his works and those of J.R.R. Tolkien even more prominent because he was critical of the latter’s writing. GRRM didn’t like the clear dichotomy of good and evil in Tolkien’s work. As we know, most of GRRM’s characters cannot be so easily sorted into light and dark or good and evil—they’re morally grey. This ideological difference, coupled with all the other factors, I believe, makes it a futile exercise to pit the adaptations of their works against each other. 

The only way The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon intersect, IMO, is that both shows have rich world-building (credit to their authors), lots of lore to build on, some truly interesting characters, and themes that are timeless. Both series are doing a fantastic job of contemporizing their themes like destruction of nature, war, greed, and power to modern world problems in an organic fashion, such as HOTD’s brilliant anti-war statement or The Rings of Power showing what a toxic abusive power dynamic in a relationship would look like through Sauron and Celebrimbor’s collaboration in season 2. And the best part? There are audiences for both these shows who watch them for their respective offerings.

So how about we take each of these shows as they are, and instead of comparing them or pitting them against each other, enjoy the diverse offering and the fact that we get to see these worlds brought to life on our screens so fantastically?