Dragons, Drama, and Dilemmas on 'House of the Dragon' and Its Second Episode

Hey, everyone.

It's the weekly episode of Taking it down.

And this week we got plenty of thoughts on the second episode of the third season of House of the Dragon on hbo.

It's the only show we're going to cover this week.

A little housekeeping.

Next week we will be off.

So no show from us next Tuesday, but then we'll fall right back into our Tuesday routine after that.

Let me get Adam and Donovan into our episode and we'll begin like usual.

A Alabama tape projection.

All right here.

Back again this weekend.

Of course, another aspect that's the same is Adam and Donovan are here with me.

A bit of housekeeping for the three of us.

For a regular listener out there or the five of you who might be regular listeners, thank you.

We will be off next Tuesday.

We celebrate America's founding, usually a couple weeks later than the average man.

Takes us about two weeks to build up.

It took a while to get that letter out.

Yeah.

The whole country didn't know it once.

That is true.

But yeah, no, no episode next Tuesday.

But that's okay.

We will be back on a regular schedule right after that.

Another place we're going to discuss when it comes to centuries, and that's that wonderful, peaceful, beautiful land of Westeros.

Let's go back 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones to dole out some non spoiler thoughts on the second episode of the third season of House of the Dragon.

I only have one.

I'm ready.

Full frontal male nudity.

You got your wish.

Is it sad that I thought about you in that moment?

We had just been complaining.

Olivia cooks.

Allison goes and takes a little visit.

And I won't say more.

It's kind of the locker room.

She goes to the boys locker room.

Little locker room talk.

It's hella chill.

I didn't care.

It's true.

In.

In the context of this show, it really is a locker room talk.

Yeah.

If that doesn't have you raring to watch this episode.

Exactly.

I think for the three of us, I may be the most captivated by this series.

Am I right about that?

Am I gauging?

I think I'm actually pretty high on it.

Okay.

I'm not unsure.

I think they're strong performances and good writing.

I think I feel like I locked in.

I think the first season was so.

So I think the second season improved on a lot of things.

And I think that the second season did well enough that, like, kind of by the end of the first two episodes, I'm like, okay, yeah, I'M locked in.

I remember what's happening.

I remember my favorites.

First one was kind of a roller coaster because you get like four episodes of Young Alicent and Young Rhaenyra and then suddenly a time jump we weren't expecting with Olivia Cook and Emma d' Arcy now in their roles.

It had some shaky moments, I think, in that first season and probably not enough dragon stuff.

Yeah.

I do feel that first season there was an element of like, when are we going to get to the fireworks factory?

Yeah.

Because, you know, we all know it's leading to the civil war.

But the first season is all set up for it and I'm not here to critique or say I could do things better.

Maybe I would have rolled a little more of season one and two, but maybe, you know, if they had kind of smushed season one and two in a hypothetical world where they're starting from scratch, put a little season two in season one, maybe I'd hate it and say that it was way too compressed or something.

You know, it's all trade offs.

The time jump and the actors involved who I all think are very, very good at what they do.

This is not their fault.

It still bothers me on some level that it just like internalized where I'm like, I don't really buy that everybody is.

I mean, you do have like mothers acting with their children that, you know, the actors are only like 8 to 10 years apart.

And I'm like, what if that.

Yeah, what is.

What's happening here?

And that jump asked a lot of the audience.

And I don't know how you really carry on emotional connections when they're being.

I don't know.

This is a season one issue that continues to bleed over when, as I sit here, I'm like, these two episodes that we have so far this season, I mean, I think you could drop them into the regular, the classic show, Game of Thrones classic, if you will.

And we would think, oh, this is great.

This is.

This is.

There's a lot going on, you know, but it still just feels.

Why do I care?

It's fun when it's on screen.

It's very fun.

I just keep thinking, well, where's Abraham Lincoln?

Is that throwing you off?

It's a civil war.

Where's Abraham?

Sorry, I was, I was.

Yeah, you needed to connect the dots for me on that one.

I'm a little slow today.

I'm feeling stupid.

My brains are addled by fireworks.

You're telling me these first two episodes of Let Me Go Back Actually, the last two episodes of last season.

So this is going to be the last two episodes of season two.

A lot of people complained about there were just some feet dragging.

They should have done the battles, some of these battles in the last half of season two, and it would have put a good period on the end of that sentence.

But I see what they're doing.

I mean, you put at the end of season two, this small horde of guys who have never ridden a dragon, and we don't even know if they're really Targaryen blood or not, Valyrian blood or not, and then they get smoked by dragons.

That's a pretty good final episode.

I see and agree with some of the.

The feelings, but I think for the end of season two, but I think they actually made the right choice for the show as far as, like, thinking of how a season is going to work as a season, almost as, like, a dramatic act.

Like, I think looking back on it, I think they made the right choices.

I agree.

And I think that first season had to.

What they were trying to do is really develop some emotional connections between Rhaenyra and Alicent.

Exactly.

And I think, like I said, I'd probably be complaining here that it was, like, too compressed or not believable.

Right.

If they hadn't spent as much time.

As they did, we'd be saying it's a lot of telling and not showing.

Oh, they're childhood friends.

Okay.

I don't want you to tell me that you're gonna marry your hot niece.

I want you to show me you're gonna marry your hot niece.

I did get a chance to watch a little bit of a video series.

I'm assuming because it's a video series.

I think it's a YouTube series.

The name is lost on me.

It's something Royal Court or something.

It's a British YouTube series, and Matt Smith was the guest.

I told you guys about this, but I'll bring it up here because it really.

I'm glad I saw it because it really made me see Matt Smith as a great actor because he was not who he is on screen.

And you love to see that when you have someone on a talk show, whatever, where they're being themselves and they're just the exact opposite.

And you think, oh, yeah, you're an actor and you do a pretty good job at what you do.

I'm forgetting the absolute gulf in the number of hours between me and Donovan and Blaine that have seen Matt Smith on the TV screen.

Thanks to.

Thanks to Doctor who.

Yeah.

Yep.

Great actor.

He's very good, funny guy.

Something else, now that I'm.

Now that we're all praising him, something horrible is going to come out tomorrow, right?

But something else I like about him is he's really pretty humble as an actor.

And.

And by that I mean I've seen him take roles where he's really not the focus, but he's really good.

I'm thinking right off the top of my head, the movie, his house, he's the social worker working with the two.

The two migrants.

And it's.

It's kind of a. I won't say it's a bit part.

It's an important role, but it's not the starring role by any means.

And he just does it, you know, I'm like, that's impressive.

I always feel like Jesse Plemons was kind of like that too, where, like, he's just gonna take a role.

He doesn't have to be the star.

He's just gonn, good job.

Neither of them are very precious about it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Could have protected being beloved as Doctor who and like, tried to parlay that into more of a good guy run of roles.

And in fact, he's on screen here is like this very like, do I like this guy?

At times?

No.

At times you're like, well, at least he's being a badass in the right direction, but certainly not consistently likable.

I really, I mean, like, this is.

He's a bad dude.

He murdered his wife.

But the thing is that Matt Smith plays him so well that you're like, when he's screen, you're kind of like the scamp, you know, like just.

I want to know what's going to happen with him.

A lot of that.

This episode for sure.

This interview series I'm talking about.

He was so funny.

So funny.

It made me think, man, they could really write Damon as a funny person if they wanted to.

But then it got me to thinking, no, he brings that to the role.

There's smirks on Damon's face where you just think to yourself, he is enjoying this moment.

And it's kind of funny that he is.

The bit that I thought was kind of the best common comedy was season two, when he essentially takes over Harrenhal.

And just the way he's playing, you know, the guys are at supper, right?

And the way he plays, I thought.

Those guys like to eat.

I laughed out loud.

And I thought Matt Smith was perfect for like, he played, you know how like cats are, like, if they're Used to something and they know what they're doing, they're fine with it but anything outside of their little realm.

He played it like cat who's come in and like what the hell is going on?

And he like, who do I stab?

That's a good point.

I don't think any of us know the storyline, do we?

I know we haven't read the books.

But I, I actually.

So I, I don't haven't read the books.

Read a little bit today about George I was, I don't know why this came up, but I didn't know this.

George R.R.

Martin is very unhappy with this production.

Very, very unhappy.

Yeah, that I knew.

I didn't know that but I was reading some of the reasons and I think there are things like making Alicent and Renee are the same age.

Things like some characters swapped out things like that.

I'm like, I'm fine.

I don't need to.

I'll read it after I'm done watching the show.

Like I'm fine with the show just being the show.

Do know some major plot points coming up unfortunately.

But yeah, I'm trying to keep myself.

Me too.

Yeah.

But do you know the end game?

No, not well enough kind of.

Yeah.

Oh, I don't.

Do you have a team you're rooting for?

No.

Really, this, the violence has taken on a life of its own at this point and I think that's one of the things that's really doing well.

And then I think not really a spoiler, but I think this, today's episode did a good job of like rule is legitimized through violence.

It's the alien versus Predators tagline.

Right.

Like no matter who wins, we all lose because the choices of these, you know, squabbling families basically are played out and lives and deaths of their subjects.

No one is really just the out and out white hat here.

That was easier maybe to identify in the other Game of Thrones universes even though they famously like nobody's totally a good guy and nobody's totally a bad guy.

This is even more complicated.

We definitely don't really have a Jon Snow.

I think we have characters.

I think they've done a good job, especially with the two women at the center of it, of making me feel sympathetic to both of them.

My wife's completely 100% hates Alicent so we've had some disagreements here but I really think like Rhaenyra I'm sympathetic for her tragedy and Alicent I can see her point of view too and also I Think that Alicent desperately trying to fix what she's broken so that she doesn't lose any.

Anything else is very compelling.

Your point the last two weeks about the violence becomes its own.

You know, you created fire and now the fire is no longer where you started it.

Exactly.

And, like, foreign elements are in this war.

Right.

Like the Triarch.

So, like every.

You know, even if you two stop fighting, there's no guarantee that the foreign.

The foreigner, the foreign soldiers are going to stop their attack.

You know, you just.

It's kind of spilling out of control.

It's great.

And there's.

I don't know if it's because there's so many new people fighting and we're kind of trained to just think of the classic houses, but a lot of the time when a battle's happening, I'm not even sure who's on the field, you know, like, who.

If somebody gets a clean staff, like, is that a good guy?

But I think it goes to your point of, like, I think that's chaos.

Chaos reigns.

The closest that you can kind of get to identifying someone just at a glance is when they're fighting the triarchy soldiers.

And it still feels very, very chaotic.

Right.

I think they're.

I actually think they're doing hell of a good.

I really think these first two episodes have been very good, especially considering how long both of them were.

I felt engaged whole time through.

I really felt I had the.

I saw the.

The person.

It was two women.

Whoever wrote and directed this last episode especially, I think the.

The writing and the directing was.

Was very, very good.

So props to you out there for making a really solid piece of tv.

I agree.

I think maybe if I were to just watch from season one, episode one straight through, I would have a different opinion, you know, because these two episodes on their own are very, very good pieces of television.

But maybe the.

The complexity and the weight of what's happened before, or it's lacking in weight, maybe for me, but on their own, very good television.

Yeah.

Did I mention the nudity?

That's for spoilers.

We'll get.

We'll get into very specifics of that.

Sir Pud.

Break out your rulers.

We'll get into spoilers next.

We'll take a break and then we really will get into spoilers.

We are in spoilers now.

And we'll start in the end with House of the Dragon and its second episode of third season.

It was titled Queen's Landing.

If that doesn't tell you enough, quite the nod to the events that take place.

Get some well played grief from Emma Darcy is.

She did a great job.

Brought.

Brought my wife to tears, which is not always the hardest thing in the world to do, but.

So that's how it starts with Rhaenyra getting her son brought in from the battle and he has died, obviously.

We know that from the week before they make this choice to.

For him to.

Excuse me.

For her to really be angry about his death and blaming it on him as if he's still alive.

That probably helped with the humanity of it.

Which might have been one reason why.

Your wife was touched, I think too.

I like that because I don't know what's going to happen.

Right.

But like, there's an angle.

Like she's now lost two sons for all that's happened.

Alicent hasn't lost any children.

Not really.

It makes me kind of like seeing like the anger too lying under the grief.

Makes me like a little like, like, like if I'm a Hightower, I'm.

I'm a little worried now, you know, like, what is she gonna do?

Yeah, that's a good point.

The Snee, the Sea Snakes is rescued by his bastard sons.

Speaking his sons.

What a funny sentence.

I know that that is technically correct in the universe, but those bastard boys.

Bastard boys.

I get it.

I like their.

Their storyline.

Yeah, it's good.

They adapted to having air support very quickly.

Yeah, they did.

He's very good at search and rescue from the air when he has only been riding a dragon for what, how long should we assume?

Week and a half?

Yeah, it's not a long time.

Yeah.

He learned Valyrian pretty quickly.

Very impressive.

Another good one.

You know, right?

As I was watching the characters together, I said out loud to my wife, I said, I can't wait to say Pyrrhic Victory on the podcast.

And then Sea Snake tells us, you know, may I.

You know, if this is victory, may I never see.

It's like again.

I'm like, ah, I could have written this episode.

That's pretty good.

Run through a few more plot points and then we'll dig in.

Eamon leaves King's Landing for Harry and all where he finds a nearly empty castle, but still makes ways to who's there?

We get Rhaenyra getting the news of that.

And with Damon, she flies to King's Landing as well as the three men who are new to dragon riding, as we mentioned early.

Won't be a plot point that one of them loses the plot later, surely.

No, surely nothing's gonna happen with these.

Guys, you think one?

I'm thinking two out of three.

Really tough to say.

I can't remember their names, but since Matt Damon called them.

Not Matt Damon, but Matt Smith.

Damon called them the.

The Smith and the Sot.

That's exactly helped me.

It's like there's Lord Corliss's son, the Smith and the Sot.

Easy to remember.

Charact.

Well, it's.

It's Adam.

Believe it or not.

One of them's Adam.

He's Lord Corliss's son.

And the other.

It's going to be all right.

The.

The others I remember because of their names are so funny.

One is Ul, which is just kind of funny.

The other is Hugh Hammer.

Hugh Hammer, that's right.

Because he works with a hammer.

Cuz he's a Smith.

Yeah.

I just love that.

It's so literal crap that's funny.

What else happens?

Just to wrap up here.

Yes.

Rhaenyra takes over King's Landing.

It's not too big of a deal as far as getting in there and taking over some slight resistance.

And she makes waste to Otto High Tower in lieu of an absconded King Aegon.

So let's dive in and do some unpacking here.

I tell you what, I think that Olivia Cook was again doing excellent.

Like I.

Maybe I just want to be taken in, but I felt like I was really enjoying the bits as she's.

She's trying to undermine, you know, like she's trying to undermine the defenses and get everyone to open the doors when she does come.

Like there's a, like the fear, but also courageousness where you're.

At least I was kind of rooting for her urgency.

Yeah.

It feels very dangerous.

Right.

Because it's like if any person that she's talked to spills the beans, it's all gonna come down.

Exactly.

Like the more people you bring into this, the more dangerous it is.

But you have to bring more people into it.

That was great.

And I thought that they used the full weight of what we as viewers know about this universe in that moment because you, you understand the stakes of her.

You know, maybe if this, this show has shown that you can get in bad trouble for doing these sort of things, but we know through years of watching they'll kill her.

Yeah, it's.

This is a life or death kind of thing.

And she is.

While Rhaenyra has hard power, she's using her soft power here to survive.

Right.

That says she doesn't have the same maybe chess pieces.

Exactly.

Well, and I think you just made a great point, Adam, because with like the hard power, soft power thing.

Because that is one thing that I think is good about Alison is like, Rhaenyra can ride a dragon.

You know, like Alicent can't do that.

How do you hold serve with somebody who can?

Yeah, right.

Like she's.

I mean, like, she's not even.

Probably not even much of a fighter.

Right.

Like, that's not her world.

That's not her power.

Well, we unfortunately got to see if she can put up a fight and she did this episode and she did her best.

But I think, you know, as tough as that scene was to watch and now to talk about, it reinforces this point of like, she's using what power she has.

But look how quickly that can go away.

And you're talking about the scene where one of the small council members assaults her.

Yes.

Or tries to.

Yeah, well, pretty much does.

This season's already doing something I complain about shows not doing, and that's getting characters to act differently over a while.

People change.

Alicent here is obviously freaked out that Aemond could become king, and she finally says it.

I can't live with that.

You know, she could be having her doubts when she sees her father's head on the floor.

The throne room, of course.

But for the first half, when she's making all these maneuvers, it's basically in response to I can't live with Aemon being the king.

I think they did a good job, enough job of setting up Aemond as, like, he's a scary guy.

The kiss sealed the deal.

Yeah.

Where it's like.

It's like, it really feels, you know, because, like, for a mother to betray her son, she's already basically made her peace with.

Aegon's gonna be executed.

Or maybe if you were told a lot in high school that the civil war was brother against brother.

There's plenty of that here with Jace coming home for a burial.

It is.

It was a sad touch.

I thought that she's blaming him for his own death and his own dying and.

And it is true.

But I think talking to him as if he's still alive was a good directorial choice.

Writing choice.

Acting choice.

Acting choice.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

It's.

They have done a good job of.

I mean, we have seen Daenerys be a ruler and we've seen Cersei be a ruler, but we haven't.

They are so complex by the time that they get to that point, you know, how does within the world of Westeros, like, say, the Men directly around her respond to a grieving mother who's also kind of scary.

Yeah.

You know, like, she.

She kind of.

Not that she needed to be scary there, but to play it both ways.

Like, you're saying is a king you kind of understand, but, like, how are you a mother and also holding the nuclear codes?

You know what I mean?

Like, that's not something we've seen on screen a whole lot.

You know, my wife has her PhD in English and she knows a lot about Elizabethan England.

And last episode, they basically quoted Queen Elizabeth where she says, queen Elizabeth rallying the troops before the armada.

Say something like, you know, I'm.

I have the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too.

And Rhaenyra basically says that.

So I think that that, like, what Adam just brought up, where they've been really.

I think they've been really cool and clever about, like, how can you be.

How do these things fit together?

How can you be a woman, a ruler, a mother, a terrifying warrior on a dragon?

You know, how do all these things come together in one person?

What are the contradictions there?

Especially when the only, you know, Cersei and Daenerys had.

Not that she's lacking plot armor here, but Cersei and Daenerys were in an end game that we understood.

You know, this.

This is a whole different environment.

This was the first episode, too, where I thought her small council really needed to shut up.

And previous versions of their meetings or talking to her, I thought, okay, that's probably something they would say to a king, maybe.

But here I thought, they're saying this because she's a woman.

They probably have done this before and I, being a man, missed it.

But here I thought, man, just tell him to shut the up and get on that dragon.

Just go.

What Damon said.

What.

What was the ambiguity in what she said?

Yeah, yeah.

Speaking of characters who've changed, you just brought that up, Blaine.

And I do think that it's.

From what it seems that, like, Damon has.

Honest.

Like, he seems like he's a true believer now.

I think that's actually really interesting.

I do, too.

Especially as, like, he seems more in her camp while she's increasingly unsure of him.

Though he does tell Alice river to go herself in his own way.

I. I think he might.

I wonder if anyone's gonna regret doing that.

Especially when we have the mirror image of Eamon coming into Harrenhal.

We'll skip to this and jump around a little.

He comes into Harrenhal and is Basically exactly like Aemon coming into Harrenhal.

Except more violent, obviously.

Poor, poor Lord Strong.

And he jumps in there.

They're.

They're sitting down, eating again.

The men love to eat at Heron Hall.

And instead of being the Matt Smith cat like response, he just goes in sword swinging and gets.

Gets a knife in the back for his troubles.

And obviously Alice.

River, I think her name is River.

Rivers.

Rivers, yeah.

Okay, thanks.

Is going to probably help him.

Seems to be the case.

In much the same way she had to help Daemon.

But is she gonna get more out of it from Aemond?

You gotta think.

Yeah.

That's where this is going.

Yeah.

She wants Harrenhal.

She does.

What are the chances that she's a haint?

3 To 1 from the time that she appears.

You're like, what?

Is he actually as injured as he believes himself to be?

You know, we're supposed to question.

It seems like kind of all of a sudden, which could be true, but it seems like as soon as she.

Comes in with a name like Alice Rivers.

She's a sea hag.

Right?

She's got to be a sea hag.

Damp.

Question mark.

Well, the people at Harrenhal.

Right before Damon leaves because he hears of his stepson's death.

I think that he's more than a stepson.

That's pretty complicated family too, you know.

Stepson.

Great nephew.

Exactly.

I think he put some of those troops on a path to Ormond Hightower, who stationed kind of near King's Landing.

Isn't he putting them on a path to that?

He's putting.

He's.

He's putting them on a collision course, you know, Just because he's leaving doesn't mean they're gonna stop marching.

Oh, that was a great scene, by the way, where they're all partying and.

Then that was good.

Since him on his way.

Or since he gets word I need to leave.

Because I have complained about the fast travel that's been happening in this to some degree.

But to be like, y' all gotta keep going.

Here's your rallying instructions.

I'll see you again.

Cause I gotta go do this.

Like, they're almost like godlike people compared to the soldiers that they interact with, Right?

Absolutely.

Like I'm gonna fly through the sky and be hundreds of miles away next time we see each other.

Have fun walking and fighting in the mud.

Some of you have a horse.

Good for you.

Yeah.

No, I think Adam is exactly right.

And I think that's something that the show's done really well.

How does that.

I think we've seen how that changes you.

Right.

Like.

Like look at what Rhaenyra is willing to do to people to get another Dragon Rider.

Just like, well, let's make a line, burn them all, you know.

Right.

Like, you start.

Form an orderly queue.

I bet you start seeing people who can't do what you do as maybe not quite the same class of people.

It would be hard not just thinking of human psychology.

Exactly.

And I think the extra complication that is great is that not only is that it, but all the people who can do what you can do are family.

Right.

It's literally all your family.

I mean, when Daemon is going through once they land in King's Landing and he says the true test is within, or whatever he says about going into the castle and.

And then he kind of just one man bans his way through.

This is like the last week we talked about how great it was.

And the sea snake is like, oh, just give me the wheel.

This is the same.

Like, I don't want any Game of Thrones surprises here.

He doesn't need to get hurt.

He needs to go through barely sweating and just have a very high body count by the end, which he did.

It was great.

And then you have the juxtaposition of Aemond, who goes into Harrenhal very much same way on his own.

He's got a dragon.

Of course.

The juxtaposition is he did it exactly like Daemon, but with such ruthlessness and violence and anger.

And Daemon went in with some cunning and wit.

Yeah.

I think you could make a solid argument that the reason Aemond gets stabbed is because he's arrogant.

Yes.

You know, he's being arrogant.

It also paints a picture that they're.

That they're bound to face one another.

They have to be.

Right.

They're so much the same personality in some ways.

I think when he was going through hair and all this last week, even though he has the biggest dragon in the world, once he is there alone, it's like you're.

You are in many ways a scared boy right now.

Even though you're acting out with tremendous violence, it's.

You are so alone.

I think I was thinking that too.

Just because, like, they.

They have switched things.

Right.

Like he's got the biggest dragon in the world, but he's.

He's alone and he's the last dragon on his side too, pretty much.

Right.

So I think that's.

I think him like bowl bowling in worked exactly with that psychology that, that Adam brought up.

It makes perfect sense to me.

Even physically, you have.

You have a lot of people standing down in King's Landing and in Herridan Hall.

There are people who are on fire, who are still trying to attack him, you know?

Yeah.

That never becomes any less shocking.

They do a great job making that horrific every time.

They have done such a good job of really kind of giving you that ground level.

And I think they've been.

This has been.

I guess, in a way, Game of Thrones is a show that's always interested in aftermaths.

But I think this season especially has been.

There's been some good stuff, but, like, it's really interested in how do we pull ourselves together after these things.

Now I want Larys and Aegon to hit the road some more.

They're having a great time.

They're having a good time.

We hadn't gotten to them yet, but the.

Just talking about the chaos of battle, that was a great glimpse into who the hell knows what's going on when they look out.

Yeah, exactly.

Aegon's determined to put the crown back on and get back to King's Landing, I suppose.

Right.

Yeah.

Who knows what he's up to.

He's also capable of tremendous violence when he needs to be.

Turns out.

I also know that he's not talking to Larys because he's mad at him.

Before we leave, Harry and I. Alys river is probably going to help a dying Aemon.

He's probably going to be more loyal to her than Daemon was.

You have to think that's probably where this is going.

Didn't she get Daemon back to health?

Or am I.

Am I misremembering when he was kind of, like, sick?

Yeah.

She gave him plenty of lsd, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was kind of having those feverish sequences.

Yeah.

She was just wondering.

Yeah.

It's easy to forget that Raina who rode Sheep Stealer last week.

That's Eamon's daughter.

Lord knows I've forgotten it.

Yes, the two older girls are both his daughters.

Right.

Which is why this is also a show about having hot cousins.

Raina's back in the veil to beg for some protection and hiding.

And that lady, I think her name's Jane or something very similar.

Lady Jane or something.

She wants no part of it.

She's perturbed with Rhaenyra anyway.

Apparently for a reason I can't quite remember.

Here's where the plot gets a little too thick even for me.

She was supposed to go with the younger children across the sea so they would be out of harm's way.

Why wasn't she allowed to do that?

She chose not to because she wanted to go sneak out and get that big dragon.

So she should have.

It should have never happened with her being there with the dragon because she was supposed to be in Pentos, which I guess is their version of France.

Oh, we.

There seems to be a theme with this generation on this show not doing necessarily what they're told to do.

Huh.

Yeah.

Teenagers running wild works in some cases and doesn't.

I thought that beheading auto goes to show it doesn't matter the who and the where.

It's just make sure you show people I'm in control now.

And it's violence that does it at this point.

Right.

With the competing claims.

It has to be violence that legitimizes your rule.

Because I do like that so much.

Like, throughout history.

Right.

Like, so many dynastic struggles have been about legitimacy.

Right.

Like everyone who's trying to gather a throne has always.

You know, there's always some kind of claim.

There's always some reason that they're more legitimate than the other person trying to get it.

And I thought that this just coming down to simply, I'm the queen because I can cut your head off.

It was.

Was great.

Right.

It kind of takes it all down to the point.

Well, it's very on the nose that she has to do it.

You know, big, big air quotes there.

She has to do it to legitimize herself.

Yeah.

But the whole point has been to do this nonviolently or with as little violence as possible.

And then the person, of course, they're making this very clear to us.

The person who makes that possible just happens to walk in the room right after this act of tremendous violence happens.

And just like he didn't want to happen, she kind of hacked at him a little bit.

I thought he actually got off.

He actually got off easy.

Could have been.

I thought it was going to be a partial.

She got him on the second time.

Yeah.

Two is not bad for historic executions.

No.

How much of Allison.

Her anger is very much justified.

And how much of it is.

Look, he was in jail anyway.

You probably were never going to see him again.

Come on.

How angry can you be?

Find out next week.

Huh?

Yo, I'm sure she's going to be very angry because it's her friend.

It's someone she allowed to come in.

She arranged all this for her to just waltz in.

Yeah.

That wasn't necessarily part of the deal.

Right.

Although she is Willing to give up Aegon.

Essentially, sons were on the table, but fathers were not.

I'm not saying this has to follow like cold logic, but it'll be interesting to see how that unspools because what, you know, it's like, what's the worth of a life to you?

Right?

I.

We do.

We don't want to, but we do balance in our own lives.

It was auto.

This ball rolling.

Yeah.

He's very responsible in many ways.

What do you think Renera is thinking at the end as she's looking out upon the throne room and she's sitting on the throne kind of haphazardly and that's not quite the word.

She isn't sitting there in comfort, that's for sure.

Not that it's a comfortable seat anyway.

I thought that they did a great job setting up that she.

When she says, is it really worth sitting on that throne when the little children who were hiding in my dresses, you know, were like, now they're.

They're dead, you know, is it worth trading all of that?

So I.

It seems like someone who is now fixed to a track that they don't even necessarily.

She doesn't seem wholehearted about this.

You know, it's back to what Donovan said about like people being swept along by the violence.

Like, she's crying through it all because she understands that it kind of has to happen in a way, but she, like, she's crying because she realizes that life is losing what value it had.

I think they did a great job with.

I think it was Daemon who says about the boys, like, do you want them to die in vain, basically?

Where it's like, because, like, if she gives up at this point, they sort of have.

Even though, like, it's not worth the price that she paid.

It kind of reminded me of the situation right in like the First World War, where you're two or three years in and like, nobody is going to accomplish their strategic gains anymore, but you're fight.

You're fighting not to lose something.

Cost fallacy, right?

Exactly.

Like, at this point, at this point, there's nothing you're going to accomplish, but you just.

You cannot lose.

And she's contrasted at all times with people like Daemon.

And maybe he's an extreme example in that world of like, he has accepted violence so long ago and become so callous to it, like, almost to a comical degree.

But even though she has also exerted violence and used it before, it's like, this is like almost like a normal person reacting to this situation.

Yes.

I Mean, she's never really done it by her own hand, even through the Agency of the Dragon.

Whereas, yeah, Daemon is completely happy.

Daemon is very happy to use violence as a means to an end.

Pretty much any obstacle in his path, he's going to try and bludgeon.

Well, as Roger Sterling said, his dad was in the trenches in World War I.

Could you imagine that?

Poking a man to death?

Yeah, my old man always had that on me.

I thought the episode was here to show us, at least in that last 20 minutes, how fearful and anxious.

Having the throne can make certain people, those people who aren't complete narcissist or head cases like Aegon, Eamon, Joffrey, and on and on.

And it also worked well to display that moment of, you got what you want, now what are you gonna do with it?

The calculations on, like, let's just let her come in.

Because, like, what does this ultimately mean?

They just moved their camp to a new place.

Like, there's still danger at large in the world, and now they have to be.

Rhaenyra and her team have to be worried about.

We haven't really consolidated this power.

It's like, what does this symbolic thing mean?

Donovan, you mentioned Claire Kilner, who was the director for the episode in our non spoilers, but there was no better sign that she had great control of the episode than that.

It was almost like a split screen with.

It really wasn't a split screen at all.

So don't.

Don't count that.

It's.

It was focused on Otto's blood on the floor, but it's the reflection of Rhaenyra getting on the throne and sitting on the throne.

And I thought that that said a lot of different things.

Say, we got a good visual metaphor here, folks.

Yeah.

And you.

It worked well as a metaphor because it didn't just say one thing.

Yeah, agreed.

Even to the reflection, the bloody footsteps that were sitting.

Sitting very awkwardly on the throne.

Because we know the throne is sharp.

Right.

The throne is like a metaphor made real.

Right.

Like, it's sharp and it will cut you if you try.

And like, whoever tries to grasp it will be harmed by it.

So I felt like taking that.

Taking that metaphor that's already cooked in and just making that scene was really great and good, solid, solid writing this episode, too.

This is the thing that's in universe mythos, Right.

That if you sit on the throne and you're not worthy of it, you get caught.

Yes, I've heard that.

Which is sad.

I think it's sad anyway.

Because I do think that Viserion, Rhaenyra's father, is probably like, of the rulers we've seen, like, one of the best rulers.

Right.

Like, it's.

His realm is at peace.

Like, probably made a mistake marrying Alicent after his wife died, but, you know, whatever.

And like, he is completely killed by it because he's not worthy or whatever.

Just.

It's a terrible throne with sharp edges.

But of like, of all the.

Like, he's.

He's.

He really has a good track record.

Like, he's not a bad person.

There is peace.

I thought of him.

Yeah.

When I was making a list of rulers who were narcissistic or head cases, I couldn't put him on there.

He seemed pretty.

He was pretty level.

Levelheaded.

Yeah.

It's.

It's like a. I mean, it's tragedy.

Right.

Like, it's all.

It's all part of the tragedy.

There's definitely some Shakespearean moments of this text that I know that we.

I've tossed that around a bit, but it is.

I think it's true here.

Oh, there are some moments where I think actually, Blaine.

Or maybe it was you, Adam, but I think it was you, Blaine.

The.

The moment.

We've talked about it quite a bit, but with Rhaenyra grieving, I felt like I was watching a stage play.

And that's a compliment because it really, really went right on her to have that level of drama in something that's also got like flying dragons and swords and witches.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Sounds like Adam's maybe more roped in.

Yeah.

I mean, when it's on, it's great.

I just don't know.

It.

It is like a popcorn show.

A very well done popcorn show.

But.

Yeah, I can't fool me once.

Yeah.

I often gauge a show by how much we.

How much we have to say about it when we gather.

I think that the.

The good of this show is kind of what I discover when I talk to you guys is like, when it is on screen, it is preventing things about human nature and violence and all of this that are compelling to talk about.

But I'm not necessarily, like, rooting for any characters.

And if they blub an ending, it's not gonna bother me that much because I'm not nearly as invested.

Yeah, no Jon Snows here.

Yeah, yeah.

Daenerys.

Yeah, no Daenerys.

Yeah.

Well, I think we've reached the end.

I always love that we get to do this.

Love that people listen.

So for Adam and Donovan, I'm Blaine and I think we have to tell you.

If you want the crown, you better know what comes with it.

Have a great week, everyone.