Like any red-blooded viewer of the Home Box Office, nothing gets me going like some freaking dragons. Sure, I love unpacking all the political intrigue, the careful examinations of patriarchal power, and the class consciousness in House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones, but I also want to see how well all that stuff pairs with giant fire-breathing lizards. It’s right there in the title: House of the Dragon. And in this penultimate episode, the dragons are here to play ball.
This is immediately apparent from the opening scene, a tense standoff on a beach as Syrax and Seasmoke stare each other down while Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) confronts a newly-minted dragonrider: Addam Hull (Clinton Liberty). What could be a very violent showdown quickly works out in Rhaenyra’s favor, as Addam has no interest in using his newfound power to his own ends. Instead, he’s happy to have found a purpose away from the sea, and will join Rhaenyra if she will teach him to be a dragonrider.
So with one week to go in its second season, House of the Dragon gives us its version of a “putting a team together” episode, and it rocks. The revelation of Addam’s bond with Seasmoke has Rhaenyra once again reconsidering her noble family’s longstanding divine claim to dragons, and with some help from Mysaria, begins to consider candidates who wouldn’t be on long-forgotten records of descendants with diluted Targaryen blood. Bastards born of the realms brothels, and nobility’s disinterest in whatever happens once their time in the pleasure house is over.
Yet while the “misbegotten offspring” like Addam Hull are where Rhaenyra will find her dragonriders, that doesn’t mean everyone is going to be happy about this headwind — even if it means a fighting chance against Aemond. The more religious of her followers are incensed at her attempt to bond Vermithor with Ser Steffon Darklyn, and her son Jace, already wounded by being sidelined and having endured rumors about his parentage, is furious that the salvation of his family line may come from the bastards of King’s Landing.
There’s a thematic link here to one of the earliest ideas expressed by Game of Thrones, the way “cripples, bastards, and broken things” can become the fulcrum on which the entire world changes. George R. R. Martin’s fantasy world isn’t the fairest place, but it is one formed by the long tail of consequence, as the ripples from decisions great and small never really stop radiating outward.
Consequence also comes for Daemon this week, as Lord Grover Tully’s death leads to his extremely young grandson Oscar inheriting his title of Lord of the Riverlands. Daemon sees this as an end to the long stalemate over the River Lords’ support, thinking he can just steamroll Oscar and use him to get the River Lords to finally submit.
However, in what’s arguably the best scene in the entire goddamn show, little Oscar Tully (an incredible Archie Barnes) fuckin dog walks Daemon through his negotiation with the assembled River Lords, fully aware that while his stature as a young lord is completely unestablished, Daemon’s need for the Riverlands’ armies still gives Oscar the advantage. Daemon will have the support he seeks, but it will be on Oscar’s terms.
The penultimate episode of this season is full of satisfying moments like this, as the players on the margins of season 2 take dangerous steps towards center stage. It’s a turning point in Westeros, as those who want to wield power — namely, Rhaenyra — learn that the only way to seize it is to not be so jealous over it. In doing so, a foundational myth of this world is continually shown to be the fiction it is: the ruling class are not the demigods they’ve made themselves out to be.
This all culminates in a long, tense sequence where Rhaenyra’s assembled outcasts are tested by Vermithor. For most, it goes badly, but for the long-suffering blacksmith Hugh Hammer (Kieran Bew) fate finally comes knocking. As it does for the hard-drinking shit-stirrer Ulf White (Tom Bennet), who stumbles his way to a big, mean dragon we’ve not seen before, a dragon that accepts the ragged scamp as his rider.
Dominoes are always falling in Westeros.
The post Finally, House of the Dragon gets to the goddamn dragons appeared first on Polygon.
