This is the 'House of the Dragon' you've been waiting for — or at least, the beginning of it

• "House of the Dragon" season two picks up immediately after season one. 
• Unlike the first season, however, the first four episodes given to critics don't feature time jumps.
• Ultimately, the show is better for it: The characters get more room to breathe.

In season two of "House of the Dragon," Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was, tells Rhaenrya Targaryen that eventually, no one will remember when the war started.

Was it when Alicent Hightower placed her son Aegon II on the throne? Was it when Alicent's second son, Aemond, killed Rhaenyra's son, Lucerys Velaryon, on dragonback? Or was it, perhaps, when Lucerys took Aemond's eye as a child?

Season one of "House of the Dragon" took us back even further, to the moment when the Great Council decided to install Viserys as the heir to the Iron Throne over his cousin Rhaenys. It was devoted to setting the stage for the eventual war, sometimes to its own detriment. In those first 10 episodes, treading through the series of betrayals that led to the Targaryen conflict was frequently prioritized over cohesively developing the show's characters. It's more evident now that season one, despite its grand scale (and sometimes indulgent dragon sequences), was the setup.

Season two is the beginning of the payoff.

Gone are the rapid time jumps from the show's first season. Now — at least, in the four episodes provided to critics for review — we're more firmly anchored in the action of the present. The series picks up immediately in the aftermath of Lucerys' murder. Lord Corlys Velaryon has lost an heir. Aegon's side, the Greens, has drawn first blood. Rhaenyra has lost a son.

"House of the Dragon" is still built on the pain of Westeros' most powerful mothers, but now it's more nuanced than the gratuitous and gory childbirth sequences that plagued season one. Emma D'Arcy's vulnerable, razor-sharp performance as Rhaenyra continues to be riveting, particularly as Rhaenrya mourns Lucerys' death and does her best to avoid plunging the continent into all-out war. On the other side, Alicent (an excellent Olivia Cooke) grapples with the implications of the path she's set her son on and its effects on her immediate family.

The ensemble cast benefits greatly from the comparatively slower pace.

In season one, the heirs to the Targaryen and Velaryon dynasties were mostly deployed in service of greater narrative purpose and their parents' political machinations. But by season two, they're real players in the war: Aegon (a delightful Tom Glynn-Carney) preens and buckles under the pressures of ruling, while his brother Aemond (Ewan Mitchell, both slippery and vulnerable) uses his own cunning — and his very big dragon — to find a foothold in court.

In Rhaenyra's camp, her eldest son Jacaerys and Daemon and Laena Velaryon's eldest daughter Baela are increasingly given further chances to prove their worth. And even Matt Smith's Daemon, who has always been entertaining despite his inscrutable, seemingly inconsistent motives in season one, finally gets the chance to parse through whatever's going on inside his head.

The show tends to falter when it turns its eye from the warring families to the small folk of King's Landing, or the minutiae of Westerosi regional politics (unless that's your thing). "House of the Dragon" makes a muted effort to explore the implications of war on the common people — dragons need a lot of sheep, and they have to come from someone's flock. Still, it's a fleeting inquiry that's quickly subsumed by whatever the Targaryens are doing at any given moment.

And when it comes to council discussions about which houses have pledged allegiance to Aegon II or Rhaenyra, or the fleeting opinions of Lords who have yet to bear out true consequence, it can quickly get bogged down in the details.

Still, "House of the Dragon" certainly delivers on sweeping spectacle when needed. However, it doesn't bring out its dragons willy-nilly, and that's for the better. As the closest thing to a weapon of mass destruction in this universe, both sides of the war understand that you can't take back a dragon on the battlefield. That hesitancy translates into a greater degree of restraint when it comes to actually throwing the dragons on screen, and makes the moments where they do come into the fray all the more impactful.

Season two ultimately makes the show's first season feel like a prelude, and course-corrects some of the show's earlier impulses to cover vast swathes of history rather than dig into the characters driving it. Only time will tell if those characters still get a chance to shine and grow (or in some cases, devolve) as the war drags on.

But for now, the first episodes are a good start.

"House of the Dragon" season two premieres June 16 on HBO.