This review contains spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 1.
Last season, House of the Dragon wrapped up with a spectacular dragon battle amid flashes of lightning and peals of thunder. It might be unfair to expect this new season to open on such an arresting note, but then again, a sense of the stakes for these characters would not be a bad thing to establish. Instead, we get an episode that for much of its running time feels like a lengthier “Last season on House of the Dragon” montage before a tiny bit of real action gets underway after the midpoint.
We start at Winterfell, as the Starks go to deliver volunteers to the Wall to mark the start of Winter. Harry Collett’s Jacaerys is with them, trying to win the North’s loyalty to his mother’s cause; Cregan Stark (Tom Taylor) offers him older troops for back-up, all he can spare because – sing it with me – Winter is coming. Alas, that’s all we get of the plain-speaking Northerners because a raven arrives and Jacaerys learns that his brother is dead and must fly home to Dragonstone.
There, he’ll eventually find Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy). She flies south first, to scour the coastline for Lucerys’ remains. She retrieves something to burn, and demands that her council bring her Aemond – but otherwise she’s lost in grief, missing in action just when her Blacks need to move to secure key allegiances and fortresses for the coming conflict.
Matt Smith’s Daemon is left in charge of the war effort, but without the authority to be effective: only a prince consort and not a king. He tries to order Rhaenys (Eve Best) around and is rebuffed; he challenges her on her failure to just incinerate all the Greens last season, but she is unrepentant. Daemon believes that he and Rhaenys together – or rather their dragons Caraxes and Meleys – can take on the huge Vhagar, and maybe he’s right. It looks like we won’t be finding out any time soon though.
Helpfully, Rhaenyra’s knight, Ser Erryk Cargyll (Elliott Tittensor), finds the spy master and plotter Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) aboard a ship and brings her to Daemon. He soon turns to her for help in killing Aemond. Ser Erryk counsels against assassination, and shows his pain at the Targaryen divide. His oath as Kingsguard, he says, was to defend the Royal family. “What were we to do when they turned against each other?” It’s a plaintive note and a welcome little bit of character insight for the sometimes underserved Kingsguard; remember that his twin Ser Arryk (Luke Tittensor) serves Aegon.
Back in King’s Landing, Olivia Cooke’s Alicent is hooking up with the awful Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), still sour-faced despite the hanky panky. She tells him this is the last time they’re going to do this; by the end of the episode she will have already gone back on this promise. After a clash in council as Alicent suggests peace overtures to Rhaenyra and her father shoots her down, she and Ser Otto (Rhys Ifans) meet privately and agree to work more closely: he finally accepts her as a true co-conspirator and not merely a genetically convenient reproductive system. Yay girl power?
We also get a glimpse here of Aegon as King: his fawning frat-bros-turned-courtiers call the lazy, disengaged sod “the Magnanimous”. He momentarily tries to live up to that during a public audience but quickly tires of the effort. In council, he’d rather allow his little son, Jaeherys, to distract his advisors than listen. He tolerates, barely, his sister-wife Helaena (Phia Saban), a slightly otherworldly girl who was something of a simpleton in the books but who has strange insights here. She says she’s afraid of “rats” and by the end of the episode it’s clear why.
That’s because Daemon has set about getting Rhaenyra her head. Sneaking into King’s Landing, he recruits a disgruntled Goldcloak and a ratcatcher – known, respectively, as Blood and Cheese in the book; unnamed here – telling them to infiltrate the Red Keep and bring him Aemond’s head. When they, reasonably, ask what to do if they can’t find him, he muses silently – but it later becomes clear that he must have told them “A son for a son”. When they can’t find Aemond, therefore, they find the King’s kids and put a knife to Queen Helaena’s throat to force her to tell them which is which. They kill the tiny heir to the throne, cutting off his head to bring to Daemon. These are irredeemable bastards, underscored (unnecessarily) by Cheese kicking his own dog. As if killing an infant wasn’t enough.
How does the end of the premiere differ from the book?
As an aside to this deeply upsetting scene: In George R.R. Martin’s Fire and Blood, Helaena has a third child, 2-year-old Maelor, as well as the 6-year-old twins Jaeherys and Jaeherya (they’re younger here). Forced to choose which to sacrifice, she points to Maelor, perhaps thinking he’s too young to be terrified – but Blood and Cheese murder Jaeherys anyway, just as they do here, and Helaena can never bring herself to look at Maelor again, tormented by the choice she made. It’s a bonus bit of grotesque – but then how much torment do you really need to pile onto this horror show?
The episode finishes in silence, to leave you haunted by the sound of butchery; the murder itself is heard but not seen, because even Westeros draws a line somewhere. But there are a few other things to note. Characters mentioned in the book arrive onscreen for the first time: in the Sea Snake’s shipyards we meet a shipwright and sailor called Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim); he’s only a young teenager in the books, and the fact that they’ve aged him up may mean he’ll see some action. One of Aegon’s petitioners is a smith called Hugh, played by Kieran Bew; he’s given a fraction too much attention to be a one-off character.
We also get a reminder that Ser Larys Strong (Matthew Needham) is a deeply creepy dude who scares Alicent even as she uses him; Larys also tries to turn Aegon against his grandfather and Hand. Aemond has had enough waiting and wants to fly to war. He tries to enlist Ser Criston’s support and like Daemon, he sees Harrenhal as a key stronghold. Could be trouble in the future!
These Targaryen squabbles are a distraction from the real threat.
It’s a well-shot episode, without some of the dim lighting that made some conversations last season almost invisible. Sure, there are dark moments, like Mysaria’s below-decks hiding spot, but there are also beautiful scenes, with beams of moonlight illuminating Rhaneyra and Jacaerys’ reunion on Dragonstone. The intercutting between Alicent’s candle-lighting (for her mother, Alerie; her late husband Viserys and – after some hesitation – Lucerys) and the Blacks burning what remains of Lucerys is effective too.
But there’s a downside to that opening scene in the North. The Wall must remind us of the wider stakes of the battle for Westeros: a genuinely world-ending threat lurks out there under the trees. These Targaryen squabbles are a distraction from the real threat, and in fact risk Westeros’ ability to meet the threat of the Night King. All this plotting, and this horrible murder, only weaken the dragon riders who should lead the fight against the ice, and that’s a frustrating truth at the heart of this whole show. Alas, now that both sides have taken heartbreaking losses, all hope of peace seems lost. Surely the war must now begin.
