House of the Dragon Episode 7 Is the Best Game of Thrones Television Yet

House of the Dragon's seventh episode is, in my immediate reaction, the best episode of the show yet, and I think it might be the best television on right now. It is easily the best show on television, there's no doubt about it, and every week I feel like I keep saying the same thing, that this week's episode topped the last.

I had been curious about how the two actors brought in to replace the younger versions of Alicent and Rhaenyra would handle the transition, and both Emma D'Arcy and Olivia Cooke were phenomenal in this episode. Emma D'Arcy is a powerhouse, someone I had never heard of before this series, and they did a great job carrying Rhaenyra. Olivia Cooke gets a moment in this episode that anyone who watched will immediately recognize, and it is starting to really develop what is happening overall in the story.

By the end of the episode I was asking whether they were really going to do it, and then they did, and there is a lot of that brutal material packed into this hour. The politics in this show are outstanding, and to me this episode is the definition of what Game of Thrones is supposed to be.

Any show can go downhill across later seasons, but right now, one season in, House of the Dragon is fantastic. The time jumps work, the performances work, the politics work, the drama works, and the CGI and the dragons look better than shows that spend more money and still do not look as good. Paddy Considine and the rest of the cast have been excellent, and I was looking forward to this show from the moment it was announced. Right now, it is a can't miss.

What did you think of episode 7, did it work for you or not?