(Warning: Spoilers ahead for House of the Dragon.)
Westeros needs dragons. With Rhaenys and Meleys gone, there’s only one big dragon left in the skies with a rider, and the looming threat of Vhagar has brought the steadily amassing armies to a standstill.
The western forces of Houses Lannister and Lefford won’t march for the Greens unless they have a dragon above their heads. Criston Cole (Fabian Frankel) is reluctant to march on Harrenhal because of the threat of Daemon (Matt Smith) and Caraxes. The Blacks can’t spare more than babies, since their riders also happen to be heirs and aren’t expendable. Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) must somehow find more dragonriders to claim the unridden beasts in their lairs on Dragonstone, but her plan doesn’t go the way she’d hoped.
Rhaenyra bustles into her Small Council meeting with the kind of enthusiasm you only see from college students who pulled an all-nighter in the library before an exam. She’s studied the family records, and determined that there is a distant Targaryen-Velaryon ancestor right under her roof.
Ser Steffon Darklyn (Anthony Flanagan), Lord Commander of Rhaenyra’s whitecloaks, is more than happy to take up the challenge of claiming one of the big guys napping under their feet, but Rhaenyra is honest with him: “To claim a dragon you must also be prepared to die.” It almost works—Seasmoke, Laenor’s lonely dragon, comes at the keepers’ call and gives Darklyn the eye before changing his mind and roasting him on the spot. We’re honestly kind of sad to see him go, he seemed like a nice guy.
We don’t know why a dragon prefers one person over another (George R.R. Martin has said he’ll clear that stuff up in the next two books), but even if you have some Valyrian blood, it’s not a done deal.
Princess Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell) had no luck hatching the egg she was given as a young child, and when her mother died, Vhagar was technically hers to try to claim before Aemond stole her. She’s currently stuck in the Vale babysitting Rhaenyra’s children, but perks up when she discovers a blackened field with the barbecued corpses of sheep.
Jeyne Arryn (Amanda Collin) tells her that there is a dragon hunting livestock in the Vale, but alas, it’s wild and can’t be ridden. Sure, Jeyne. (In Fire & Blood, this dragon is called Sheepstealer, and he was eventually ridden by a young commoner known only as Nettles. In the book, Rhaena rides a dragon named Morning, but it seems like her character is being streamlined into Nettles for the show.)
King Regent Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) is stewing in King’s Landing over being “summoned” to provide support for the armies in the west with Vhagar, and has quickly found out that being king is more frustrating than anything else. He (rightly!) fires Cole as Hand and sends word to Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), asking him to reclaim his former position on the council. But Otto’s not answering, which, frankly, everyone in Westeros should be worried about.
To combat the Sea Snake’s trade blockade, the king regent has asked the Free Cities for aid as well as the Greyjoys, though attempting to ally yourself with a bunch of pirates is just begging for trouble. He has just enough time left in the day to torture his little brother into not revealing what went down at Rook’s Rest.
Alicent (Olivia Cooke) is never beating the bad mom allegations, we fear. After getting fired from the Small Council by her evil son and finding out her slightly less evil son will take a lot longer to recover from his dragonfire burns than she thought, she practically asks her brother Gwayne (Freddie Fox) point-blank if her third son Daeron, who has been fostered in Oldtown, is as awful as her other two. Gwayne tells her no, that in fact he’s a really nice kid and all the local girls have a crush on him. Surely that has nothing to do with the fact that he was raised far, far away from his immediate family.
To everyone’s relief, Daemon is finally blessed with his first non-sexual dreams in Harrenhal, this time about his late brother Viserys (Paddy Considine), reliving the moments in their relationship where he felt the most shame. The vision of them both trapped in the Throne Room is particularly chilling.
Daemon gets very close to totally snapping and threatens Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale) at knifepoint, before finally asking Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) for help. Their hostile companionship has been very fun to watch over these last few episodes, and though it’s unclear what Alys’s game is here, she does end up helping him. It’s heavily implied that she ushered the sickly Grover Tully to his death, allowing young Oscar (Archie Barnes) to take up his seat as Lord Paramount of the Riverlands and deliver an army of rivermen into Daemon’s desperate hands.
By the end of the hour, the smallfolk are taking this episode. Riots in the streets of King’s Landing as Rhaenyra’s little emergency supply boats wash up on the shores of Blackwater Bay. Rhaenyra’s handmaid Elinda Massey (Jordon Stevens) and her bestie Dyana (Maddie Evans), Aegon’s ex-servant, successfully stir up some risky anti-Aegon chatter in the one tavern where anything ever happens.
A rogue Seasmoke offers himself as mount to Velaryon bastard Addam (Clinton Liberty), proving Rhaenyra and Jacaerys’ dragonseed theory correct. Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) tells Rhaenyra she looks hot carrying a sword, and then a couple minutes later they FINALLY kiss—throwing the Rhaenicent ship into chaos—before Rhaenyra mounts Syrax and swoops into the sky to battle whatever Green sonofagun stole Seasmoke. And that’s what you missed on House of the Dragon!
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