The Fantasy Review‘s Review of The Winter King, Season 1, Episode 2.
After the fantastic introduction to this show last week with episode one, The Winter King, episode two was a bit of a disappointment. It is over fifty minutes where nothing much happens except setting up later episodes.
Performances all round were great, with the highlight being Eddie Marsan’s incredible portrayal of a very sick Uther Pendragon. This performance reminded me strongly of Paddy Constantine’s Viserys I Targaryen in House of the Dragon.
You can tell where the story is going to go this episode after the first ten minutes, with reveals and twists which are obvious and you spend nearly the full fifty minutes waiting for them to happen. If the reveal had been done quickly towards the beginning of the episode, we could have saved a lot of wasted time and gotten on with the rest of the story we now have to wait for.
Episode two of The Winter King also suffered from a lack of focus on Arthur and Merlin. These other characters are alright, but they are not the drawing factor of the TV series, so their stories should be experienced alongside scenes with Arthur or Merlin.
Overall, the pacing fell off a cliff after episode one with this second episode focusing more on setting up episode three instead of telling an interesting story in itself. Hopefully later episodes will make me forget the disappointment of this one.
