Is ‘Season One of ‘House of the Dragon’ As Good As ‘Game of Thrones’?
With seven episodes of House of the Dragon out, it’s about time we compared it to its predecessor: Game of Thrones. After a disappointing end to the much-loved Westeros saga, House of the Dragon was given the task of restoring GOT’s lost success. To find out whether the prequel surrounding House Targaryan is living up to the expectations, the team at PlayOJO gathered the ratings of every single episode of Game of Thrones and compared it to House of the Dragon using data from IMDb, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. The data was then ranked in order of episode rating and season rating to find out the average score season one of House of the Dragon would need to achieve to reach the same level of success as Game of Thrones.
The current average rating of House of the Dragon is 8.6 on IMDb. Season 4 of Game of Thrones was the most successful season with an average rating of 9.1, but Thrones‘ last episode was the worst rated in the entire series with an average rating of just 2.6/10 on Metacritic.
As it stands, House of the Dragon is scoring similar results to the first season of Game of Thrones, with its latest episode “Driftmark” scoring 9.5 stars on IMDb. In fact, 3 out of 7 episodes have even scored higher than the original series, the other three just falling 0.2 stars short. When taking into consideration all 8 Game of Thrones season ratings across IMDb, Metacritic, and Rotten Tomatoes, HotD will need to score 8.3 stars for its first season to be considered successful. After 7 episodes, it currently stands at 8.6 stars, which is right on track for the series.
The best-rated episode of GoT is season 3 episode 9’s “The Rains of Castamere,” topping the list with an episode rating of 9.8. A review on IMDb reads: “This is TV history.” Coming in tied for second are episodes “The Lion and the Rose” (season 4, episode 2) and “The Watchers on the Wall” (season 4 episode 9), each with a 9.7 rating. Five out of the six episodes of season eight made it to the bottom of the list and although the episodes “Winterfell” (6.9) and “The Long Night” (6.8) scored average ratings.
Overall, Game of Thrones had a good run despite its disappointing ending. Now, it’s time to see if House of the Dragon will hold its own as season one wraps up in the coming weeks. Season two of the series has been confirmed by Variety less than a week after its premiere episode.
See a preview of episode 8 below:
New episodes of House of the Dragon air on HBO and HBO Max every Sunday night at 9pm ET.
