I guess, this show should be very glad to have Rings of power as the main competitor. Comparing to that steaming pile, it indeed looks very good.

But judging by its own merits it is pretty meh, and on par with the final season of GoT. It is poorly thought out and lacks in details. No punishment for the stupidity.

Lead characters has insane plot armour. I'll give a couple of minor examples, that don't spoil the plot. Daemon wears open helmet on the jousting tourney - at the very list his face should be severely scarred by the lance splinters - nope, not a scratch. Rhaenyra - like a 40kg girl - gets attacked by a wild boar for like 30 seconds - half of her bones should be broken - nah, she is fine. And so on.

At the same time background characters are killed with no reasons or consequences at all. The same tourney is a good example - the participants should be very wealthy high profile knights, sons of the most powerful houses of the realm. Like 5 of them got killed, and nobody even mentioned it. And there are more examples of such pointless deaths, that only serve to entertain the audience. Member how GoT brutally killed the leading characters? - look we can do it too, right? Yeah, well, not really.

Most of the characters are lame. There are a number of exceptions to that: Otto Hightower and king Viserys did good. And the guy with the injured leg is the highlight of the show, and actually felt like the only true GoT character. The moment, when he talks to Alicent, and his words are absolutely innocent, but imply the worst - is likely the best scene of the series. At the same time Rhaenyra is absolutely unbearable and annoying. Her dumb erratic actions is the main reason of all the troubles. Daemon is not much better.

In the end it felt like a chore, and I don't think I'm coming back for the future seasons. All of this characters kind of deserve to die horribly, and I don't care.