None. Sir Simon summarizes this
episode, at least the beginning of it, when he tells Damon that
each side has suffered great loss and will be unsure of
what's to come. There's a lot of truth to that,
but others see it as an opportunity.
There's a lot of grief, and much of what we saw in episode 5 is
seen heard, done through that heavy emotional filter.
But at the same time, Rooks Rest created a power vacuum, and
those who were not weighed down with grief will be quicker to
take advantage. Those who keep their eyes
regular or sapphire. We don't discriminate here on
the prize. Those types won't be taking any
breaks. As Damon says it's the best time
for a show of strength. Again, Damon and Amon having a
similar reaction to things for doing similar things.
But as Elena says to Amond, was it worth the price?
Because the wrong show of strength can backfire, as it
does for both of them and for Sir Kristen Cole.
Tensions are flaring all over the Riverlands and in King's
Landing and we got to meet quite a few new characters in this
one. There's more dreams, more
references, more delving into Targaryen history and some
exciting set up for new potential dragon riders.
It's a true mid season episode, getting us ready for all the
rest and so much more to come. And we've got all that and more
on this episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome everybody. Another episode History of
Westeros podcast here for you today.
It's episode 5. Here we are on Monday at 6:00
Eastern. That's when we do these
Wednesdays. We're here at 7 Eastern
Saturdays at 3:00, and we do game streams over at twitch.tv
History of Westeros on Fridays at six.
Did I say it's six at six? At six at six, twitch.tv history
of Westeros. That's right, and I want to
remind you all that we are going to be live at City Winery, New
York City on August 3rd. Come see us.
We'll recap the season, make a few predictions, and have a lot
of fun in a live environment. And then those of you can't make
it there, well, we'll be posting it up so you can catch it after
the fact. If you have any questions for
us, send them to westeroshistory@gmail.com or
type them in the chat here if you're live, and maybe we'll
shout you out or answer your question or refer to it in some
way. And yeah, well, following in the
footsteps of many a mid season episode, this one sets up the
second-half, right? Expanding story, existing
characters taking on new roles, new phases of their arc, new
characters from a variety of locations, powers, a big theme.
Also questions of leadership, who the leaders are, whether
they deserve to be. Some of this is replacing what
was lost. And of course that huge element
of grief that I mentioned. But it's really all the way
throughout. Overall take favorite scene and
performances. That's how we like to start.
Sean, kick it on over to you. And also, hey, say hello while
you're at it 'cause this is the first thing.
First time I've referred to you in the episode so far.
We're like speeding speed running through the intro here.
One, I'll say you did have a good bit of alliteration in your
intro there, however much you intended.
I appreciate it. I try.
You know, I I really love this episode.
This is it, you know, it didn't have any kind of like big
climatic reveals or action moments.
But I appreciate all this sort of nuance and set up and the
aftermath of the the huge episode we had last time.
I have a hard time picking a favorite a favorite moment or or
performance here, but not because there wasn't a good one,
because there are so many good ones.
Did you vote in our Facebook poll or did you abstain?
I abstained because I was too uncertain.
I, I, I, I I don't like to vote unless I'm confident, unless I'm
sure about it. Does that make sense?
You know? Yeah, that's what I thought.
That's what I was guessing. That's why I asked.
I usually end up making multiple choices that makes it easier for
me. It is sometimes hard to pick
one. Although I I didn't have a hard
time this time, but we'll get to me.
If I'm being honest, it might be Damon and I just don't want to
admit it. Oh my.
God. Well, I might cite Kristen Cole
for the second episode in a row. So you know what?
A role reversal we have. Today, hey, well, it's
performance, not just and story, not just, you know.
It was, it was a really good one.
Like, you know, like I said, I have a hard time naming one, but
I think I'm, I'm pressed. I might name the one at that
meeting with Allison when that the council meeting when she's
looking for support. She may be assumed poorly
assumed that she was going to have, you know, four out of
seven people on her side, but it turned out she only had one on
her side. But, you know, she, she looked
at Lara's and Lara's kind of deflected to Christian.
Christian was reluctant to to answer her 'cause he knew it
wasn't for a bunch of reasons. I don't think there's one simple
reason he was reluctant to answer, but it was good.
It was a very quick, nuance rich moment there.
Right on. The another good line, maybe my
favorite line of the episode, was when Damon is talking to
Alice Rivers. He says Surely you've mistaken
me for an upright. You haven't been there, right?
Yeah. I was like, Yup.
Nope. She's like, no, yeah, I haven't,
but still. I'm going to make you feel bad
for it. I'm going to make my attempt to
make my case. Right, and we'll dig deeper into
all those scenes. What about you, Shaya?
I'd say my favorite performances I voted for in our Facebook
poll, which I love seeing what, what, who, who takes the lead
and what people vote for and all that.
I love seeing that. I voted for Bethany Antonia, who
plays Bela Targaryen. I felt like it was finally her
real big moment to shine. She did a great job.
I was a really moving, powerful scene.
Both her with Coralise and her with Jace were both good scenes.
So I, I voted for her and I voted for Fabian Frankel,
Kristen Cole, because I did feel that he played his role very
well in, in showing how tortured and kind of traumatized he is
and how he couldn't look Allison in the eyes.
And there's just so much to, I was very impressed by his
performance. So yeah, I voted for those two,
and I think my favorite scenes were the Bela J scenes, Bela
scene, Bela Corley's, all of that stuff just deepening these
characters I've been really dying to see.
My favorite was definitely the Bela Corley scene that like
usually I have a struggle to pick a favorite scene.
It was easy for me this time. I love how well she just cut
through the grief to argue with him without shaming him and just
said all the right things. It was like an expert, like
lawyer saying all the right things to convince a difficult
jury. You know, it was just so.
But it was way more meaningful than that.
And I thought the performance was as good as the dialogue
there. So for once, it was easy for me.
And she is winning our poll also when it doing quite well.
Our Damon, Matt Smith is doing pretty well, and Olivia Cook
doing quite well. I think she might be in 2nd.
And then Coralis is doing quite well.
I think he might be in 3rd. But also Bobby the dog, AKA
cheese dog got added to the pole and he's doing well because,
yeah, I mean, that's loyalty right there.
And he really sold that performing that dog.
Like she showed that loyalty really came through.
I mean, it's very convincing the dog wasn't acting right now.
Can I point out something maybe a little humorous?
No. Yeah, there was a a a motif a
couple of moments here. I I guess I also wanted to point
out that I usually don't watch the next time on.
I usually wanna be able to speculate on the next episode
without extra. Unsullied, yeah.
Yeah, last week I did if you hadn't watched the the the next
time on the imagery of Aegon cometh the street in that box
might have been a little bit more mysterious.
So we know what was going on here.
I'd still think I probably would have pieced together.
I still think I would have speculated he's still alive.
Just the nature of how they present deaths on screen.
I I I think he was going to be alive and it what else would be
in the box? But there still was this what's
in the box 7 thought that came again when out when Ranera
handed the little box Yeah, they have the the pin for the hand in
it, but. What's in the box?
And give it twice. Yeah.
You know, that box reminded me of the box that Varys had
shipped to him in the original Game of Thrones with the
sorcerer that he had been hunting forever with, with no
explanation of how he was caught or any of that stuff.
Whatever. I was like, oh, that's a similar
box. Yeah.
So in an episode full of resets and redistribution of power and
responsibility, leadership challenges and waiting to see
how the realm reacts to such a big event, it's good to see we
start with a little passage of time.
That cart with the head on it can only travel so many miles
per day. And I know like this show and
lots of shows aren't super tight with their timelines, you know,
and but still, this couldn't have been quick, right?
It it might have been just a week or so, but it definitely
wasn't just a few days. That crowd reacts the exact
opposite of how Cole maybe hopes or expects.
And you can see why right away. Of all people, Freddie Fox, who
plays Gwane Hightower, said it best because we have so many
times likened Dragons, nuclear events or nuclear weapons.
He says it's like seeing the first nuclear bomb dropped.
You know, there's gonna be more. And where would they likely drop
the next one on the people parading the head of their enemy
around of their of their ally around, you know, like, of
course they're gonna hit that. So people are like, let's get
the hell out of here. And so This is why this wasn't
kind of an obvious mistake on Kristen's part and why he's
maybe miscast as Hand to the King.
He's not, he doesn't have a political mind.
He's like he's thinking victory, battle, we win, let's show that
we won. It doesn't really go that much
further in his mind probably. And oops, 'cause it doesn't go
well. People have a very like
hallowed, sacred, almost deific view of the Dragons.
Like you see them. One person actually says, I
thought the Dragons was gods and they're named after gods.
So this really makes sense. They've never seen a big one
killed ever. And when they've only they've
heard of small ones being killed and it was by another dragon, a
much bigger one. So they don't even believe what
they're seeing. There's, there's, there's
disbelief even though it's right in front of their eyes and all
sorts of muttering. What's funny, they call it a
black omen because yeah, it's like, yes, the black faction is
mad about this and that's who you're worried about.
But one exception here is huge. It says, ah, it's just meat.
You know, he doesn't think it matters that much.
He's he's very much the minority, though.
Everyone else is muttering and and complaining and worried is
the biggest emotion. Probably fear is is the is the
dominant thing here? Well, him saying it's just me, I
kind of took that as a disillusionment with the Dragons
in general. Like, Oh my God, that's.
Just me, yeah, I'd say a lot of people in that crowd are having
that same reaction and other people are having a different
like, you know, there's a a a myriad of reactions, all of
which are negative and not really good for the Greens.
Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, maybe that is just maybe I
just kind of miscast how what that meant, like the way he was
viewing it, what what he means by me.
But either way, you're right. Like it is, it's dismissive,
which is not what they want. The mystique of the Dragons is
so important. It's it's the fear of them that
keeps people in line. And without that, I mean, we
have a thing called the Doctrine of exceptionalism that was
established in the time of Jeharis and it was enabled
Targaryens to be above the law because of these semi God like
powers they had and these semi God like creatures that they
rode. So yeah, and by the end of the
episode, you see that they're starting to talk about doing
something else that maybe lessens the mystique and lessens
the Targaryen hegemony over that nuclear weapon of sorts.
So we'll get back to that. But yeah, Gwain calls it a
strange victory if it could be called one.
So that's 2 battles if you count the Battle of the Burning Mill
and two Pyrrhic victories at or two draws.
Just something along those lines.
No clear wins yet, right? You know, another thought about
the dragon head coming through is it two things I wanted to say
about it. One is I really appreciated that
it had flies buzzing around it. That was like an element of
realism that easily could have not been included.
That I really appreciated. But it also adds to the
perception of the people around it, like it wasn't this God like
you imagine even like a dead God might still glow and have this
home about it. And it's listen, you know, but
no, it's rotting meat. You know, it is not.
It is not this sacred pristine thing of beauty or or even
threat or whatever it might have been before.
It does kind of bring the mystique of the Dragons down a
notch and therefore the people that control them too.
Yeah, yeah. So there's a multiple, multiple
things that are happening there. There's the loss of mystique and
the overwhelming fear of what's coming next, what kind of
reprisals coming from an era. And on top of that, we have the
the starvation starting, not starvation, but getting to that
point of, of look at the orange here.
We got a rotten orange. People are buying these things
and and that's the food that's available.
And the greens don't have a lot of money.
They can't buy their way out of this problem, not in the short
term. It's been pointed out a few
different times that money is tight, so it's not like they can
buy a bunch of food and distribute it even if that
occurred to them. Kat and Hugh argue about what
they can do. Hey, that rhymed.
Hugh already did this work for Aegon.
It said somewhat that's taught to us or told to us during the
conversation, and he still hasn't been paid.
He was told he was going to be paid in advance, but now he's
getting stiffed, it looks like. So it's it's not just a reneging
of the deal, it's being stiffed on top of that.
So Kat's like, look, you can we got to go like you got to stop
holding out for this promise, this king, like where even you
heard from him, like where is he, you know?
And so she finally talks him into leaving.
But then they go to the gate and it's too late.
They're trapped inside and what are they going to do?
It's so this is kind of where we're left with them.
And they are our eyes and ears to all the common folk of
Westeros and their peril, their crisis is a lot of people's
crises. And now they're in it, they're
in the thick of it. And who knows what's going to
happen next? What do you, what do you have to
say about that, Sean? Yeah, that was there was a lot
going on in that council meeting where this decision was made.
Yeah, we'll come back to that in a minute, of course.
Yeah, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but it's connected because,
you know, Allison is kind of absorbing everything is going
on, and the camera's kind of focusing in on her as the
conversation is going around. And Amon immediately kind of
stepped up with these questions and decrees, one of which was to
close the cities. And she seemed for a moment to
kind of snap out of her bewilderment at that particular
one. Like she knew that was a bad.
Call she was I like that you're totally right.
She was like disassociating the the the way the camera like
focused on her and she was mostly just like and she starts
breathing heavily and you're right.
She was like almost like a reverie of disbelief.
But that command was like, this is exactly like, this is what
I'm talking about. You guys are idiots like.
And I I've got a lot more to say about that scene when we get
there, but it does tie into the moment when Kristen tells
Allison, like, on one hand, I see his argument, right?
He's like, at that battle, man, what I saw, this is the word
Dragon's now we need a dragon rider to lead us.
Like, OK, maybe in battle, but for this political decision of
how to manage the city. No.
Exactly. Yeah.
Dragon rider, clock one in. It's awful.
Like who knows how many? I mean, just got.
It's like also it was said it's 1000 thousand people.
How many of those people had like their nephew was out
getting corn and now we can't get back into the city for
dinner tonight or on and on and on.
The food that was going to be thin or out.
Like at some level they're trying to like, control panic,
but I think this is going to create more panic as we saw.
I'm guessing there's a system in place for that farmer to get
back in that night. They yeah, maybe there's some
bureaucracy and he's out on the gates overnight or some hassle.
Yeah, people can go in and out. They just get checked.
You know, there's, there's a you're right.
It's not just completely locked down.
Probably not, and I would tell you.
No, it's definitely they said that like that's what they like.
That's how Linda got in, for example, Yeah.
Well, but she got in basically through.
But other people were being let in too.
Still. Yeah.
But yeah, they were checking. People to is what this is going
to lead to is corruption. This is going to give a bunch of
random guards the power over people.
Oh yeah, like we saw with three and they can.
Choose their friends and everything.
Else at Maidenpool. Yeah, you're totally right.
That's a good point. Like it it, it gives authority
to people who have not been vetted for being able to handle
authority. Like, are you, are you going to,
what are you going to do with this authority over people when
you have it? OK, You're not.
You shouldn't have authority over people 'cause you can't.
You're, you know, that kind of thing.
Yeah. So they're just giving power out
to all these gate guards that some of whom will probably be
decent, but a lot of them will be crappy.
And you're right. And there's a lot of set up for
the council scene in the eventual ascension of Eamond
before that. One of them is during this scene
of the head being paraded through the streets where Eamon
and Allison stand on the battlements together.
They are the two options to lead, though that isn't
necessarily clear at that moment.
It becomes clear very quickly. Neither of them talk in that
moment, but she's still kind of looks at him, and he doesn't
really look at her. And she notices the dagger.
The camera focuses on the dagger, which is sort of like
foreshading of where things are headed.
And then we go to the sick bed because the box is part of the
procession kind of, and it's, they show quite a bit of the box
passing through a few different spots, through the castle,
through the streets, etcetera. Helena sees it.
And with her it's always, you can't read her expression kind
of ever, you know, except unless it's like really extreme, like
Blood and Cheese. But she tends to have not a
typical reaction to things. You know, if she's on the
spectrum, you wouldn't expect her to have necessarily standard
reactions to stimulus, especially when we consider that
she maybe knew this was coming or something like that.
Like maybe she knows this already.
So kind of inscrutable. Also kind of like Aymond is, but
for very different reasons. So Orwell starts to work on him.
It's pretty gnarly. We're told in the behind the
scenes that like the metal, it's Valyrian steel, so it doesn't
melt, which might have been worse.
And that is what happens in the book version.
But. It still was really bad because,
yeah, it didn't melt into his flesh like it would have if it
was regular steel, but it was so hot and it continued to stay hot
that it like burned an ear off the side that was hit more like
he that ear is missing. His flesh burned into the
Valyrian steel rather than the. Steel coming into his flesh.
Good point. And like, there would have been
cloth under that army and I was wearing that against your bare
skin. But that's obviously all gone
now. It was just burned away.
It was just incinerated completely because of the
extreme heat. They talk about broken bones and
internal injuries, that knee snapping together.
That was entirely unnecessary. But.
But, but I guess it really shows how bad he's in.
And it's, it's so touch and go because like, you feel for
Allison for a minute there. She looks over and she sees the
silent sisters and is like, oh, well, they're only there to
dress the dead. And they're just like standing
there waiting as if they might be needed any moment.
So that's pretty ominous if you're a mother.
And. Yeah.
It's almost like seeing the grim Reaper in the room.
Oh yeah, yeah, it really is. And they have their masks on and
everything. Yeah.
It's like, yeah, that's pretty. That's pretty dark.
So Orwell does his work, you know, he's focused and, you
know, carrying on the way he does.
And it's, I love how the the maesters, when they're in doctor
mode, they have that hood up like, you know, it's like keeps
the hair out or something. I don't know, but we come back,
he passes the buck to the gods, which is again we pointed out
how this is a smart grandmaister.
He didn't answer Allison last week when she asked about the
succession. He's like, I don't know here
He's like it's in the gods hands now, like you do not.
That's the downside of being the doctor to a king or like a
powerful person like you get blamed for something going
wrong. I can easily scapegoat you
'cause they don't know better. Like politics can make you can
put you in the in the crosshairs of the blame game.
So he's a media like it's in the God's hands now.
And he says, I don't know if she's ever he's ever going to
wake up. Just setting the expectations
very low, which smart choice. And probably true too, because,
yeah, internal injuries, all those burns.
Yeah, he's in bad shape now. The the perhaps the most forward
moment of this episode or the scene rather, or the one that
affects things going forward the most is when Eamon comes in and
it's notable how much deference there's everyone.
It's like the parting of the tan and Gray sea, 'cause people are
dressed very plainly, 'cause they're, you know, medical and
and priestly people. And he just stares down at the
bed and then he says someone will need to rule it instead.
Camera focuses on him for a SEC, then it focuses on Allison
again. Just showing us the two options.
Right. That was pretty interesting
there, but but fairly straightforward.
I think in his execution, they're telling us what's to
come. But I think a little more
importantly, we have Cole talking to Allison about
Sunfire. Now we're going to focus a
little more on Cole and Allison's conversations, but I
want to select this moment to talk about it separately because
it's a little ambiguous and but yet in some ways it's not.
I want to get your take on this, Sean and and other people if
you're listening, especially if you're live, but even if you're
not, I want to hear from you on this as well.
Cole tells Allison that Sunfire quote was a long time in the
dying now he didn't wait though to find out clearly.
Like what's he do? We'll sit here with the badly
wounded king and wait for this dragon to pass or not and then
we'll go home. Like clearly.
No, he was going straight home to get the king medical
attention. So maybe a rider caught up to
them on the road was like, yeah, Sunfire is dead now.
But you know, like it's just a little awkward there.
I'm not sure. What did you how did you take
this moment, Sean? What did you interpret from
that? How did you read that?
What did? What did it communicate to you?
I took it to mean that some fire is dead.
That's what I got from it. I, I, I was uncertain, but that
I, I, I pay particular attention on my second watch to exactly
what he said. And it sounded to me like it
when you add other contexts like I left guards by the dragon or
we sent a maestro to nothing, nothing else.
Just he was slow in the dying. That was it.
So. I don't think there's any way
they took so long to to wait there for Sunfire to die.
If Sunfire was truly long in the dying, they didn't wait.
And I think you could say Aegon is long in the dying too right
now and he's not dead. So I just don't.
I think if if no one stayed there with that dragon, I don't
assume that the character is dead unless I've seen them dead.
Well he did say he left people with the dragon.
He said he left the Garrison and and people to guard the dragon
who was who was a long time in the dying.
Yeah, who was long in the dying? He.
Didn't say the dragon, he said the city, the castle.
He said he left a small Garrison at the castle.
Yeah. With the and to match the
dragon, he said he left it for both.
He he specified both. So I I just personally I would
not assume that Sunfire is dead unless I saw the dragon dead.
OK. Yeah, we'll see.
Yeah, I, I will say maybe he is alive just like Aegon, but also
he's effectively not a dragon anymore.
He's not about to take off and breathe fire or anything.
Sure, surely in horrible shape, if alive at all.
Yeah, so later in the episode Aegon does wake up, which is
meaningful. Not necessarily a sign that he
will survive, but it's a better, it's more likely than not that
it's a good sign, right? It's certainly the the fact that
he wakes up at all, and it's a little sad.
He calls her Mummy. He didn't hear it.
She was like on the way out the door.
Let's talk about the council scene.
This is pretty huge, right? This is where Orwell begins
saying Aegon is in their hands now.
And this is one of the the passing of responsibility theme
of the episode that comes up quite a lot.
And Allison brings up the Regency and like you said, Sean,
only Orwell supports her. It's two against seven, roughly
her and him, and that's it. And she's kind of embarrassed.
She didn't, like you said, she didn't see it coming.
Maybe she should have, probably should have, but maybe not quite
in the way it did because neither Cole nor Larry Strong
support her. And I think she thought they
would be on her side. And Lars's argument is like,
look, we're team elect the man. We can't.
Like whether I agree with that or not, that's who we've made
ourselves out to be, you know? And he passes the buck to call
really brilliantly. He's like, you speak with the
hand, speaks with the King's voice, you know, And he's like,
he looks like he would rather be in egg on's place than answer
that question right there. He is so embarrassed and
despondent and like Shaya said, will not look her in the eye.
Look at the you've got the picture ready, just refuses to
meet her gaze. He's embarrassed about a lot of
things and traumatized and just kind of doesn't think he has a
choice. I think in a lot of places
wasn't isn't necessarily a defense, but I do think that's
his state of mind, right And I. Wondered if one thing he was
thinking among all this sort of turmoil in him.
I think that he is trying to honestly trying to be quote UN
quote the hand of the king who would should like their role as
it do what the king would do. And he knows if Aegon was in the
room right now, Aegon would pick Eamon, not Allison I I think.
I'm not sure that's true, but I agree with your logic.
Like, I'm not sure that he would pick his brother over over
Allison, but you think he. Would part of what's going on in
Kristen's mind? Absolutely, yeah.
I should do what the king would do.
What would the king do with the king would pick Amon?
I agree. What would the king do?
Is the question he's trying to answer.
His man. He, he's trying to go by like
the standard system, like this is what would do.
We wheel, we put the air in charge 'cause he's next in line.
That's how the system works. Yeah.
He's just doing what's expected of him or what he thinks is
expected of him. So Amon says nothing during the
whole debate, just waits for it to play out 'cause he can see
how it's going. He doesn't need to say anything.
Stands up, collects the King's orb, moves to the front of the
table. And he places it very distinctly
in a way that's different than all the ways that Aegon was
always playing with the ball, rolling it around, you know,
slamming around, moving it, aiming very calmly, disciplinly,
you know, And it's decides, says it's decided then, and then just
starts issuing orders. And it's like, wow.
But we know what she says before this is true.
She says, look, this guy, he looks calm and disciplined, but
this is the guy that lost his temper with Ara as a diplomat.
You know, he, he's not actually as calm and collected as he
seems. You know, he just puts that,
that face on really, really well.
I mean, if we're being honest, he does put that face on
extremely well, but he's actually quite emotional
internally. He just hides his emotions.
He's just guarded with that. His one of his first.
Phoenix is really good though, I tell you.
Everyone wanted those rat catchers down.
That was his good command. That was the one really good
command, like thank you. Finally cut down the rat
catchers. That was good.
Can I say by the way, in the opening credit with the
tapestries, how are we still getting the rat catchers
featured and not the dancer Dragons featured?
Because they haven't, we haven't seen the aftermath like we have
it with the the malice's head is probably what they're gonna show
Todd. I'm guessing.
That's just my theory. Haven't seen the episode or
anything like that. I'm just guessing that just like
we don't see the actual blood and cheese and killing Jaharis,
we see the aftermath and the the the rat catchers.
I think we'll see the body of the dragon Mellies in the
streets. Too early for the history to be
told. Whereas we, yeah, like when we
see, we see Veigar, you know, and Arak see them together, I
think that that is the fight, that is the ball.
Like that's what's remembered. So I don't know.
Well, what what a sham saying is that they didn't change it right
away after Blood and Cheese. They waited till after till
after the rat catchers, which was episode 2.
Blood and Cheese was episode one and it didn't show up the taps
until episode 3 till they had, like you said, the aftermath was
included anyway. So that is probably what will
happen now. So as we progress through the
scene, there's Allison's disassociating, but it's
interesting what happens while she's disassociating.
And we talked about that, but not what was said.
Besides the order to close the gates, the other thing that
comes up is that Eamon comes after Larry's like right away.
Like but not and not in the same way that Aegon did.
He's like, it's your castle. You know, you let him have what
Aegon said. But in this case she's like, why
would I trust a man who let the jewel of the Riverlands fall
into our enemies heads? It's a very different approach.
And Aemon doesn't or Larry's doesn't say anything.
And remember Sean, this guy hates Strong's.
It's a very different vibe. It's it's personal to him, which
Larry's might be very wary of. You might be like, Oh yeah, this
is bad. So a developing situation there.
There's not much we can say about it now other than
guesswork, but it's a, it's something to keep an eye on.
Did you catch that? Was that did that occur to you
at the in the time that it's a strong thing or?
I didn't think of it in that way, but I did think of it in
the I don't know. I think Larry's knows the
potential trouble he's in, right?
I think he, I think he's got this plotted out.
Maybe I'm giving him too much credit, but he seems to be very
aware and forward thinking. And he probably knew he's got to
put his tail between his legs, both Aegon and Amon, and just
let his work speak for itself. That that's what I think he's
going to do is like, look, I know you distrust me, but I'm
going to get XYZ dump for you and you'll appreciate it and.
That's his MO. I think you're totally right.
That's a really good way to put it.
I wonder, I mean you brought up him distrusting Lauris because
of whatever the strong connection.
I'm curious how much Aymond is aware of his Allison connection.
Because Aymond does have some distrust of his mother and
certainly of of people having other agents.
If he he might have some suspicion of Lauris's connection
to his mother, especially if he know has any suspicion of
anything untoward ever happening between them, then he would
really not like Laurie. So I mean, extra Laurie's really
needed to support Aymond there in addition to you would be he.
He's right for the reason he said.
He gave a good reason when he said that it wouldn't look good
for them. But I think he was also right in
that he has to really support Aymond so that he's not just
like removed from the council. Yeah.
Allison didn't perceive that that was his problem.
He has to be suck up to Aymond or or he could be in big
trouble. She didn't catch that.
Yeah. Right.
I think that was Laurie's probably had everyone on the
council pegged pretty well about how it was going to go.
And even if it turned out they wanted to put Allison in charge,
he still needed to be on Amon's side.
And then if they choose Allison, fine, it's easy to go back to
her. But.
Yeah, I agree with that. So Amon thinks he's smarter than
his brother 'cause he's like, well, I wouldn't make that rat
catcher mistake or do all this Kingsguard, you know, nonsense.
But he closes the gates like a dummy.
And Allison Otto would not have done that and would not have
done that. So let's talk about Colin
Allison's conversations. There's two of them, plus their
interaction during the council session, which of course colors
it all. But the first ones before that,
The first was before she's ousted.
And this is when she comes to talk to him about what happened
during the battle. He's cleaning his sword, another
great sign of guilt. He's wiping the blood off his
sword. It's still there.
It's hard to clean off, just like it was hard.
She was scrubbing the guilt off of herself a few episodes ago.
Also in futility. It's very similar the the two
moments I think. I also think it's indicative of
he's doing what he knows right now.
He's got a lot of uncertainty and confusion and frustration,
but he knows how to be a knight. He knows how to maintain his,
you know, the, the let me just do the one thing I know I can do
right and clean my sword. You know, he's trying to, like,
find some sort of comfort and control over his life.
I like that. Yeah.
Populated right now. Like a simple task to kind of
center yourself. Yeah, it's a little slightly
meditative, I suppose, but it's it's still stained with this
blood of of his thing because he talks about she comes in and
he's like, yeah, 900 casualties at Rooks Rest and that's they
they turned it up 1 notch from the book, which had 800
casualties. And they're like, take that
George. We're a little bloodier.
So but any and it's he's not the kind of man that like tries to
hide his emotions. He's already a little stoic, but
he's less stoic now after what he's seen.
And when she's like, well, what happened in the battle?
And he's like the king fought valiantly.
It's a very just diplomatic, straightforward what about
Eamon? And then he just stops.
He's like, I couldn't say. And you know, he surely has his
suspicions, but this is, yeah, it's hard to tell what's going
on in the air. He also realizes probably in
that long walk home with the dragon head behind him, that
Amon's going to be leading them from now.
And he already knows that. And he's not going to as a
knight. Like you said, Sean, he's a
hand. He's Lord Commander, the
Kingsguard. He's not going to speak
disloyally to the guy about the guy that's leading them now.
Like it's like we're all, it's like calling out the president
during war time. Like, you know, you just don't.
That's the thing you just don't do when you're on, especially
when you're higher up on the same team.
I also think that this conversation it reminds me of in
a certain way. It reminds me of the
conversation Allison had with Orwell when he brought her the
the moon T Kristen isn't giving her direct answers, but he is
effectively still answering her questions.
The fact that he doesn't answer is answering the questions that
makes sense. Like she knows what she he's
asking, he knows what she's asking, and his avoidance of the
answers is the answer. Yeah, she tells him everything.
Yeah, you're totally right. That tells her everything she
needs to know, which confirms her worst fears.
Like, yeah, I think he did it on purpose, but she's he's not
entirely sure. But the fact that it might be
true is is bothersome and worrisome enough.
And this is part of the conflict of being Lord Commander in hand.
These these roles don't always fit together.
If you're the Hand or the Regent, you speak with the
King's voice. But the Lord commander is
supposed to keep the King's secrets.
And those two things right now are very much at odds in this
moment of what happened at the battle and what was the Regent
doing? You know, it was his intention.
So, yeah, now the second time they have their conversation,
it's after she's basically ousted from the council and Cole
is taking down the rat catchers and we got cheese dog, AKA Bobby
the dog right there. It's great, you know, But
Kristen is no longer Allison's lap dog.
He's amons. He's not happy about it, but
doesn't exactly resist. As we just as we just said, she
sees it as not just a personal betrayal, but a moral betrayal.
Like you were supposed to be my ally.
Like this is part of why we were banging, you know, we'd we'd
help each other, But that's that part's kind of simple.
Like you betrayed me on a personal level, but the morality
is like, look, we you, you just told me without telling me, as
you expertly pointed out, Sean, that you know what kind of man
this is, that you know what we're dealing with, yet you
still elected him to be in charge.
You know, like you said, Sean, this guy good general probably,
but like, look at he's already made a bad decision.
His hand and and Eamon did too, but he doesn't recognize that he
made a bad decision. She doesn't point that out
directly. And I mean, it would be, it's
too late to like, it's not going to change anything.
You know, I think you asked the shale last time if I thought
Kristen and Cole could read and write.
He's walking around with like a notebook and.
He got a letter last time too, last last episode.
Yeah, he he's, it's been proven that he can.
Which makes me glad that that he's more competent as the hand
than he might have been. So Cole thinks he's saving her a
bit by like, look, we're going to have to do terrible things.
And he's been traumatized by those terrible things.
He doesn't want her to be traumatized by that too, or to
be responsible for it. Now, again, he doesn't have the
best thought process here about everything.
His heart might be sort of in the right place, but it's it's
not the it's wrong from what she wants.
She finds it insulting. She's like, no, I'm a leader.
I can handle it as much as you can.
And she repudiates him on both counts.
The again, the personal and the professional.
I wonder if their relationship is over.
I don't think they've hooked up since he's been named Hand and
it doesn't look good for that right now.
We'll have to see. There's more eyes on him, he's
got more duties bringing him to more places.
He's out in the field like there's this 1,000,000 reasons
in addition to like the emotional ones, the the physical
situations that they find themselves in, the political
responsibilities, everything. Yeah, I feel like he, he just
can't be the companion to her that he was before.
He just can't. Yeah, this is this is a major
fall for Allison. She has lost almost all of her
power in a flash. She has no position on the
council anymore. She no longer has personal power
over her son because Aegon was at least somewhat malleable,
somewhat. Listen to her.
Doesn't have that with Aymond. Larry is no longer really on her
side and Larry says well at least he might not be visiting
her anymore with his creepiness 'cause there's less reason for
him too. She doesn't have the power for
him to exploit and she doesn't have power over call anymore
there's no personal power there He's not listening to her.
He's not doing what she wants. So it's like, wow, that's just
all of her influence is gone really quickly.
Come kind of like 2 episodes ago, she and her father were
planning, well I'll stay here and continue to make pave a way,
maybe you can return. Well, that's gone in completely
the opposite direction. Regarding whether the
relationship is over or whatever, I took her saying
don't call me Allison, keep my name out of your mouth,
whatever, as being like we're no longer together.
Yeah, I agree. I always gave it, left it open
'cause you know, sometimes people say things and get back
together. I don't, you know, but and of
course not a book plot, so we have no idea.
I really love this scene, though, by the way.
It was one of my favorite scenes because I did feel that it was
so nuanced with, I mean, Christian has kind of a pretty
noble intention with what he says to Allison.
And I don't think he's wrong. And I don't think she's wrong
either that she kind of wants to be given that choice and that
ability, but I think she's better off not.
Being intimately aware with the atrocities of war.
Everyone is better off not knowing.
So like, you know, like I, I, I see his point here really.
Like any any half decent person would try to save someone they
care about from being party to that right.
She doesn't fully know what she's turning down or saying
you're saving me from. She didn't see the battlefield.
She didn't see what he saw. So that's part of his, if you
want to argue a little bit in Kristen's favor.
And I agree with you, It's very nuanced.
No one is completely in the right here.
No one's completely in the wrong here.
And I also agree it was an amazing scene.
This is part of why I picked Fabian Frankel as one of my top
actors. Again, Olivia Cook was also
fantastic. But yeah, yeah, they're both.
Yeah. It's just really complicated.
And one of the horrors of war. I put some of these situations
that the best you can do is horrible.
Like your best option is still a horrible one.
I want to point out there's a parallel in that scene with the
council when she's kind of just like kind of reeling back from
having lost her position and the camera's kind of focusing on her
while all these other conversation decisions are being
made. It was very similar to what
happened in the Black Council with Ranira.
And she ends up saying it to Missaria, but she's like,
they're talking around me, you know what I mean?
That's was exactly what was happening to Allison.
The same thing was happening to the.
Yeah, you're totally right. Leader and woman, the matriarch
of each of the councils, were being treated pretty much the
same way by the men around them. And the side that it was more
open to women leadership in the 1st place is the side where
that's kind of working itself out a bit, or at least seems to
be on a decent track, where here Allison's just out.
She's just out of power now. Like there's not a woman on that
council anymore. They have like that.
That influence is gone, and it kind of Harkins back to Rainey's
telling her that. Like, you know, you didn't, You
don't want to. You don't have freedom.
You want to carve a whole window in your prison.
And that window has been shut. And like, if, if Alice.
Yeah. If Allison was over on the Black
side, she'd still have a voice of counsel, probably.
So throne room on the opposite end of the power spectrum.
Allison's falling the farthest this episode.
Ayman has risen the most, almost certainly.
That's a fact. He stares at the throne like
many before him, including Damon or Littlefinger.
Therefore, a lot of characters have just kind of stared in
silent reverie at the throne. It's a kind of a classic Game of
Thrones way to show somebody's ambition or they're considering
the nature of power or their power.
But there's a few tweaks here to to the vibe, to the usual
approach. At one point, it angles up at
him, which makes it look like he's looking down on the throne,
which is sort of like he's not the king.
He's the region, he's in control of the king, he's in control of
the throne. He's looking down on it.
But also he was looking down on his brother in that sick bed,
right? He was looking down on him and
kind of looking down of him metaphorically because he thinks
he's superior to him. We actually, First off the scene
would be a dream we first saw in trailers and stuff like that,
had that vibe Damon's also had. It was like, oh, it might be a
parallel to Damon's dream, but no, it was not.
But there is a dreamer present, A twist.
Not a dream, but but features a dreamer.
Helena kind of sneaks up on him like that.
Like did she know he was there? It's like, this is cool.
How did? Very interesting moment.
She asked if it was worth the price.
But of course, like so many other times in this episode, he
keeps his thoughts and feelings to himself, even though this is
maybe one of the few people he might open up to a little bit.
Can I say I I love the phrasing? It wasn't worth the price here.
It's such a loaded question. It made me think of the price
for Veigar of losing his eye with like that like that.
There's one price, like how many price Amon paid, you know, you
think about like the death of of Luke.
You know, about the price of the obvious thought is Aegon the
price of being, you know, being another kinslayer potentially of
taking him out Because then it immediately cut from this scene
to Aegon to make you put that in your head.
But I think because it's Elena, I think it can't just be about
Aegon. I feel that it's when she says
something like this, I I feel it has layers and the the first
layer I thought of was Veigar in his eye.
I like it. I wonder if it might be, I don't
know what word he's exactly betraying Allison, betraying his
mom, Because it seemed like Helena does still have a strong
bond with her mom. And now she's going to Amon, who
just kind of stepped all over their mom.
And was it worth the price, you know, is it worth the training
your family as a whole, you know?
It's a very good point. Yeah, I guess I love, I just
love the phrasing, how you can see so many layers to a single
phrase like that, Right. Yeah.
And she there are a lot of layers to her phrase.
I I felt like when she said the boy is dead like sure her
wording. Like but they killed the boy.
Allows for a lot of interpretation.
Yeah. Shot.
They killed the boy. Yeah.
Thank you. Sorry.
Yeah. Yeah, I loved your breakdown.
If they killed the boy shot, that was really the more I
thought about it, the more I liked it.
Just way back to two weeks ago. 3 weeks ago.
Her phrasing does allow for a lot of interpretation.
Yeah, it really does. And I just like there's a lot of
interpretation as to Amon's actions and part of his
inscrutability makes it even harder to tell.
And I think he's channelling Aegon the Conqueror a bit here.
He he was also unscrutable and wasn't a man that liked to show
his emotions or let people know what he was thinking.
He sort of projected a vibe. It's a, it's a, it's a different
sort of power vibe. Like I don't owe anyone answers.
That's how above you all I am. I owe you nothing.
You know, you are beneath me. It's a, it's a different kind of
power. It's a stone face.
But but again, we know it's a facade with Aegon the Conqueror.
It might have been legit with Aemond.
He's a rage of emot. He's a he's a, he's got all
sorts of things going on in that head, right?
He's got a temper, but at least he goes to therapy.
But but so does Tony Soprano, you know, Now here's a question.
Otto might look a little better in retrospect in some ways, not
in others. In saying that, keeping Damon
off the throne the way Damon's been acting as well, of course,
we'll get to. It's like, man, it's making Otto
look more and more right about avoiding a King Damon.
But is it really better with this effective King Amon?
Yes, Regent technically, but effectively King Amon.
Is that any better? I don't, I don't know.
It's six of one, half dozen of the other.
And right now Amon is more capable of doing damage than
Damon is because he has a bigger dragon and he has more absolute
power over his faction. Right now, Damon is a rogue from
his face. He's literally the Rogue Prince.
Like his book character name or title or, you know, nickname.
Rainier has less control over the blacks that Ayman has right
now, even though she's a queen and he's, you know, a region.
And they're also more scattered and not in possession of the
throne or capital. So Ayman is probably the most
powerful character at this moment.
Of course, that's subject to change within two minutes of the
next episode, or it could last for several more episodes and in
the next season, we'll we'll see.
But I think that's a fair statement.
What do you think, Sean? You think that's about right,
Ayman, the most powerful right now.
I think so. And I will say, even though
we've seen Eamon do some, I don't know, unscrupulous things,
I I still feel like he has more. I can't think of the exact word
I want to use. Honor, integrity,
predictability, even maybe than Damon or some other character.
More of a code, maybe you know, but maybe it's not a maybe not a
moral or, you know, I wouldn't call, I didn't say a moral code,
but a code. 'Cause I don't think that he
seems to have this I I guess it's interesting that I don't
exactly know what his goal is. He, he, maybe he feels like he
should be king. Like I prepared for this better
than anyone else. I am more skilled, more
knowledgeable than Aegon or most of these other people, right?
Like I and so maybe he feels like he should be it, but I
don't think he's like, I want to be king so I can go take over
Essos or I can tax the poor or I can rape a bunch of women.
He doesn't seem to have a bunch of like vicious, scary
motivations beyond ambition for the throne where Damon Damon
just seems like he just wants to do whatever makes him happy,
whoever might suffer in the meantime.
He doesn't seem like he wants to be king to being peace to the
land or something. He just feels like it.
I don't know how to say. You see what I'm saying?
I. Don't think we know why Amy does
either, but you're right. Yeah, he seems more
unpredictable with the power that he might have.
I, I, I think you know that. My, my best guess is if we flash
forward and Amond is king and the war is over, he will have
relatively good policies. He will listen to his counsel.
He will, you know, be prudent. Perhaps Damon will be wild and
crazy and go off and be literally absent.
He'll just be gone and people won't even know where he is.
You know that's. Entirely possible I.
Still, imagine Amond would be a little bit too much of a hard
liner with some things. I mean, even as we saw him
closing the gates, I think he might make some drastic choices
that might lead to some heartache.
But I think you're overall right that in a time of peace, I think
he would be 1/2 decent king. And I think with time and
experience he would probably learn better and take counsel
and stuff. But this is a time of war, and I
don't think in a time of war he's going to be as prudent as
you're talking about. Well, I maybe not, but he's not
going to be. He can't be much worse than
Damon. Damon just started a terror
campaign, you know, so I maybe Ayman would do that too, but I.
Well, yeah, he did. I mean.
Ayman did this in a time of war I'm more likely to forget.
Ayman has, let's be clear, Ayman has already done this to just to
correct you slightly here, Sean, I do agree with most of what you
said, but Kristen Cole and Ayman planned together.
He wasn't there to do it, but it was part of his plan.
He signed off on it to sack Duskendale.
They did despoiled families, took loot, raped women.
All that happened there too. Maybe not quite as bad, maybe
there wasn't. There's probably less abuse of
women there, but it was still houses looted.
Despoiling, yeah, despoiling for sure, But it's it's the same
thing. They're they're forcing
conscripts to charge into a dragon and you know, it's not
that different. I do agree with you, though,
overall that Damon is more certainly a problem.
Aymond, he doesn't wear his emotions on his sleeves.
Damon does. That's a big difference.
That's a big difference between the two of them is that you know
more about what Damon's about. He is does not hide his.
And when he tries to hide it, it comes out anyway.
He's not. He's kind of bad at that.
Amon just just very keeps it in. I just, yeah, I don't have as
much faith in that. I think it's like I see the
darkness there. And that's got nothing to do
with what I think is coming in the books.
Just this version of the character just seemed like the
way they frame him, the way they're trying to make him look,
they make him look pretty villainous and but they
definitely leave doubt anyway. Maybe I'm still too hung up on
the moment when he killed Luke that he seemed to regret it and
then they brought it up again when he was talking to Sylvie.
He he seems to have regret for that moment, but it sort of just
accepted his role like, well, we're at war, I killed him.
I can't, it doesn't matter if I apologize.
I just have to own it. And for better or worse, I feel
like that's some of the dark things he's doing are just
acceptance of this conflict, not that necessarily makes it OK.
Whereas a lot of the dark things that Damon do just because he's
greedy and selfish and you know, inconsiderate or whatever.
So Sean, something I I realized recently was plenty of things
happen off screen off off TV screen or whatever.
But Ayman, I think as far as we have seen has only killed
someone via his dragon. We have not seen on our TV
screens Aymond kill anyone like with via sword or or he hasn't
had a personal. Kill he.
Stomped on tons of people. He's definitely killed people.
He killed Luke in a little bit more of a personal way and he
felt regret. I, I'm super curious if it's
possible he has just killed someone in hand to hand combat.
But I don't know. I don't know if he has, you
know, And I, I, I wonder. I don't know that I expect to
see him feel awful about killing someone in hand to hand combat,
but it's interesting to me that he maybe hasn't.
If he has, they haven't showed it to us.
Definitely showed us Damon do it over and over again.
One thing I disagree with you on there, Sean, is we clearly are
seeing Damon does have guilt and he does have remorse.
That's a big part of what his dreams are about, like showing
that he does have these emotions.
It's just that his ambition over is is stronger than his guilt
for now. Maybe it's how it's going to
stay, but it's those dreams prove that he's not entirely a
sociopath. He does actually care and Damon
maybe does too. It's just less clear with him
because as we keep saying he's, he's more guarded and that it's
harder to to perceive what's on his mind.
My friends, if you are enjoying our content, we sure do have a
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We have what's called the Large Council, where y'all vote on
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There's all sorts of weird things in that game, but that's
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that. In that game, it's called a
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The generic version is called a massacre wedding because the Red
Wedding is a very specific one. So yeah, I wish I had more time
to deep dive into the music. It's one of the parts of the
show that is one of my favorites yet.
I like research the least. I just kind of enjoy it.
But I've been noticing this season there's a lot of
variations on songs that we've used before, which is a normal
thing to do. It's, you know, it's like a
light motif kind of returning to a theme, but doing it a little
bit differently. And I rely on my phone a lot to
identify songs with some of these.
These, even though they're similar to existing ones, the
phone doesn't know that it's it's different.
So it doesn't recognize that similarity.
It's not like, hey, what is this similar to?
That's not how it works. So I can't wait for those to be
published so that we can identify them and have them have
those names going forward. Cause occasionally it's very
telling. Like remember at the beginning
of the season with Goodbye Brother, how meaningful that was
to that song choice. And part of the reason we knew
we, we noticed that is because it's such an iconic song, the
Stark theme song basically. But some of these other ones are
like that one's familiar. It sounds sort of Targaryen.
It's one of those Danny songs, but I don't know exactly which
one it is. And I bet there's more going on.
I bet there's a little message here and there that I'm missing.
You know, I want to make a similar comment.
The lure of this show is so thick and the the the plot and
the characters are so rich that that's enough to like take up
all our attention and our discussion.
But jeez, the cinematography is freaking beautiful.
I think this episode especially is a couple unique things about
it that that those opening couple shots with Ranira, you
know, looking out on the ocean. And there was a scene when they
kind of showed Damon, he's laying down.
But the camera kind of turns the angle and, and even the just
the, the backdrop, the setting there, the just the engraving on
the wall behind him. Like there's so many things that
segue when he leans against the fireplace and it cuts to Ranira
leaning. Against the fireplace.
Is a lot of like, yeah, cinematic and editing decisions
that I just love about the show that understandably get over
shadowed by the great performances and the great story
and everything, but I just wanted to bring all that stuff
to light real quick. Absolutely, yeah.
I mean, and if we're being honest, that's like me
personally, I'm just not as good at talking about that kind of
thing. Like, I noticed these things,
but I have, I don't, I don't always have the words for them
and I don't know what to say about those.
Like, that was really cool, you know?
But yeah, we're all enjoying it. Same thing with the music.
OK, I, I pay attention to it, but I have less to to say about
it. So we go over to Dragonstone.
The quote women aren't trained in war point comes up over here
as well, and it's handled a little better.
Now, this is interesting to me. I've been thinking about this a
lot and I've been trying to figure out how to parse the
misogyny from the gist. Well, yeah, you don't have war
experience, which is a fairpoint to a certain extent.
And I think it comes out very clearly in the scene where that
distinction is right here, is very, very calmly explains it.
Like, yeah, you're right. I don't have experience in war,
but you don't either. You only have theoretical
training, which counts for something.
It definitely does. You know, you spent all that
time in the saddle and hitting each other with your swords.
Even though it was practice. That counts for a little
something. All those time reading books and
studying strategy, that counts for something.
But the laughing at her, the talking over her, you would not
do that to a man and you would not.
And it's not because she's not good with the swords, like, oh,
that's why I'm talking over you 'cause you're bad at fighting.
That's not a good reason. Like, Can you imagine the master
of coin talking? I was like, oh, you don't
understand finance, my queen, let me tell you how it really
is. Like let me or the master of
laws, like you don't understand laws, my queen, let me tell you,
Ha ha, that's so dumb, you know, like that, that's not going to.
So it's not a good reason to treat her like that.
But when it was distilled in this moment when she brings when
she like, corners him, he does say, OK, yeah, like, he does
break it down a little fairly. And it's it's not quite so
misogynist. And they get to the bottom of it
kind of. And I kind of like that how that
went, even though it was so awkward for as many episodes.
Like, dude, come on. Like, back down a little.
Like, don't laugh at her. What the hell are you doing?
Do you think? Mazaria told Renira.
Like, do you think they had that meeting?
And like, like, they gabbed it up?
And then I was like, here, I got an idea for her to get this guy
out of your hair. Like fluff them up.
I like the idea. Yeah.
I do like the idea because it's that's the kind of thing they
might talk about in private because she needs like a a
female ally that understands these things, you know?
Do you mean as far as sending him off to treat with Damon?
No, just just that approach. Well, that separately, I think
she was talking about, but she's talking about just the approach
in that council scene just then like they were talking.
About sending him off just to go to trade Damon specifically.
Oh, you were talking? My bad.
OK. I'm sending him to Damon.
Yes, the way which? Is important I.
Think it's a brilliant strategy because, yeah, I mean, like,
it's risky because, I mean, you definitely risk him betraying
you or whatever, but ideally, really what you're doing is
you're trying to make him feel honored and important and use
his pushiness in your favor to go investigate Damon basically.
Like I see him smart unless it backfires, in which case it's
really dumb. I think that Missouri might have
given her some pointers and like, here's some little bits of
log can throw at them when they insult you or whatever.
But also, I absolutely think that Missouri had her send him
because she says have you know things that you cannot do
yourself, have others do for you.
And I think we are mostly reading that as like.
Send Elinda to the city to spread propaganda.
But it was that happened later. It was almost right after when
she tells her that, that she sends Alfred to go talk to
Damon. I think that's the very point.
That's what she was. Doing so, there's a there's a
little undertone there. The Shaya brought up the
potential of like a betrayal or something.
He's like, oh, I would never join the Hightowers.
Like, OK, so that's not on the table probably unless he's lying
or something. But Damon's like, I'm making my
own claim. And he's like, he wouldn't dare.
And she says you he would, you know, Damon to lack for daring.
So yeah, that's the person he could flip to.
He might go to Damon's side or something like that.
And, you know, who knows? That's that's not necessarily
something we think is coming, but it's it's said here as a
possibility, so we want to mention it.
And the fact that she is trying to get Damon back on her side is
interesting in and of itself. If they weren't at war just like
you talk about Eamond, she wouldn't be trying to repair her
relationship with him 'cause he's just a bad husband and all
those others. She's like I don't like she
needs him as a military ally, not as like she wants to repair
their relationship cause two are related, but she more needs him
as an ally than she needs him as a husband and she.
Needs a dragon. Yes, and this is itself one of
the many tragedies of war. It's it relentlessly and
repeatedly pushes you to break your own code of ethics, the
things you wouldn't do that you're doing for survival or to
win or both that you would just wouldn't do otherwise.
Like in a time of peace without war hanging over you, these
these decisions would be framed massively differently.
I also wanted to add another angle to the the the gender
thing here and how people are raised.
It's a open question how Viserys would have raised his son if he
had had one 'cause he's was diplomacy first throughout his
life. He wasn't a sword first kind of
guy even though there's plenty of flaws in how his he had one.
While he was healthy. Yeah, yeah, to be.
Clear because he obviously had many sons.
Right. Like, sorry, you're right.
Like if Baylon had grown up the young, the one that he wanted at
the time, before he was infirm. Yeah, you're right.
A good correction. Because he right here is like,
oh, he gave me a cup instead of a sword, you know?
And it's like, well, he himself mostly wielded a cup instead of
a sword. This.
It's partly a gender thing. Yes.
Society always does that. But that's maybe the way he
would have pushed his son too, his first born, the one that he
expected to inherit before he got lazy about all that.
Or maybe he just would have been lazy in the 1st place.
But I think that's an interesting little thing to
consider is just Viserys himself wasn't really a sword first kind
of guy. And that's an important thing to
point to when you have not many examples of the the peaceful
men. I think Lionel Strong was
another one, for example, But they're the most of those people
have been pushed aside now. It it is worth noting that while
she had the cup, you know, and maybe Thesaurus would have
better trained a son at all, a diplomat, warrior, whatever, you
know, to whatever extent. He would have wanted his son to
be a cup bearer in the council room so that he could learn the
goings on in politics. When Weniro tried to speak up,
he shut her down twice. Have you done that to his son?
I don't know. She did speak up saying send a
dragon, so maybe he would have shut the sun down if you'd know.
I don't want to send a dragon to be diplomatic.
That's true. It's hard to say, but.
So just to reference A Song of Ice and Fire, but that's one
last point on the whole male female dichotomy and war.
It's handled so well in The Song of Ice and Fire, in the twins of
Jamie and Cersei. Nothing expresses that better.
They're the same family, born at the same time, and you see all
the precise ways they're treated differently only because of
that, Right? Cersei frequently thinks about
how unfair it is. She's like, if I had a sword.
Actually, she often thinks if I had a cock, but whatever.
Safe, safe difference. In her mind, she's kind of drank
some of the kool-aid herself and also comes up with Catelyn and
Edmuer to a lesser extent. Like, she was raised to be heir
until Edmuer was born. Ed Muir was trained for war as
soon as he was born, but Catlin never was really.
And that comes up in a few other places throughout the book.
But that's probably a great topic for a greater discussion.
But for now, I'll just tease it 'cause I think it's a great
parallel. So Mazzari, one last thing about
Damon or about Alfred going to see Damon?
I guess this is going to happen next episode.
But what wouldn't it be interesting if he gets there and
Damon's like somewhere else? He's out in the field.
He's like over at stone. He's like, no, this place is
huge. Oh, the work is going well.
What's your name? Alice Rivers.
OK, what's your, you know, no, they're not going to do that.
But it would be it would be neat if they had more time for things
like that. I one thing I wonder if Alfred
on the way there might get in trouble with the Riverlanders.
They made a point of them doing it under a Targaryen flag right?
And so if if Alfred is riding through the Riverlands with
Targaryen flag, he might face some kind of retribution.
Based on what? Well, we saw him riding and he
wasn't carrying a flag. They were, they were banner list
when they were riding. So I doubt they're doing that
'cause you're right, that would be, that's not a good idea.
That would detract the attention of the Greens too.
So yeah, that's not a not a good idea.
They said they would try. He sent some, some men with him.
But yeah, it really is again to to consider the whole betrayal
possibility, meaning that Alfred could flip to Damon.
Damon says basically the same things that that some of the
others are saying. He's like she says to Alice.
He's like, look, they won't accept her as a leader, the men
of her council, He's saying. He's kind of predicting how
Alfred and and Bartimus and the other members were going to
going to respond. It's not quite as bad as he
thinks, though. They're they're accepting her
more than he thought they would, but.
It's also a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy.
If everyone says we can't accept her because no one's going to
accept her, well, what if you always just accept her?
Especially Damon, if Damon takes the lead in that.
Like he would set such a great example, but he he didn't.
Since they won't accept her, I might as well not either.
Why not? Since they won't accept her, I
need to make sure they do. Why isn't that his take and and
amaz? It's not rhetorical.
The answer is 'cause he wants the power.
He. Doesn't want them to accept her.
Yeah, he wants at least as much power as her, if not more.
He's definitely like that's at best.
But we'll come back to that. Let's talk about Mazzaria.
She expresses the same frustration.
Like, yeah. She's like, yeah, Alfred
actually has kind of a point. I didn't want to fully admit it,
but we we worked it out a little bit, you know?
And she, she says the path I trod has never been walked.
She is. And that's true.
There's a few ways to take that. But if you just think of it as
the simple answer, there's never been a ruling queen before.
Which, by the way, relates to Damon's arguments about king or
king consort or Prince or whatever.
There's no precedent for that either.
In this Kingdom. They've never had a king
consort. I actually kind of think Damon
is technically correct that, but Simon is also right in a way,
because people usually do just say queen when they mean dowage
or queen. They usually do just say queen
when they say queen region. But very often the full title is
spelled out. Damon's like, oh, it's
unnecessary. So well, yeah, it depends.
It's something. Yeah, well, they don't say.
They don't say queen consort though is is also the point.
Like, yeah, they'll say queen region or queen Dowager, but
they don't say queen consort. And they are setting the
standard for, they're setting the standard currently for
what's going to be, you know, normal.
So I think he's right to push up against it, except then he just
takes it too far to be like, no, no, no, we're going to rule
together. It's like, no, it's like,
whereas at first it makes you think that he's just saying like
the word is it doesn't isn't necessary.
You're like, no, he thinks that he should have all the full
rights. Yeah, Simon's reading into.
He's a little worried what Damon's actually saying there.
Which he may, he probably is, but doesn't mean he's not
technically correct. Can I also say you were talking
about how Rainier has no model to work off of as a ruling
queen? Which is why I think this scene
happening here in the decision to have Miraxi's skull at
Dragonstone is so brilliant because it gives her all these
scenes where she can ruminate and stare at the skull of the
dragon of like the previous like the, the closest that you know
she's had to ruling Queens are Rainey's Visenia, Allison,
right? Like, and they had a lot of
power as Queens, more than you would say Emma or Allison.
Maybe Allison had a good amount of power 'cause she was Regent,
but regardless. Yeah, that's yeah, you're
totally right. And you know, we've seen her be
interested in Visenia since season one, episode one.
So yeah, that's it's been it makes sense that she carried
that forward even more when she was in a position of more full
leadership. You know, there was some
question when Damon and Simon Strong were first interacting
about what what quite the etiquette was.
Is Damon pushing too far or is it a power grab?
Or is it But, and in this episode, again, it's clear
beyond just like what you call him, like he's told Alice
Rivers, he didn't say he wanted to rule with Renera.
He said, I'm going to take the throne.
She can join me if she wants. You know, clearly at least at
least right now. Like some of this might be him
building himself up, but he clearly has it in him.
You know how however much if you might sing a different tune if
Renira was in front of him, and we'll see, but he clearly has in
him to be just grabbing some power.
Right. The the biggest Damon apologist
would say something like, oh, he's just pretending that it's
all for him because that's how he he thinks everybody will
follow him if it's for him, and then he'll just turn it all over
to her. Yeah.
I mean that's that's not very likely.
This woman in a castle who has no real role like.
You know what I'm saying? Like why is he?
Pretending to her. Yeah, so Mazzaria sticking with
her, she's a pretty Gray character.
Her pro commoner attitudes were praiseworthy, especially 'cause
there's not a lot of people doing that.
But she's done some kind of heinous things too.
Here she asks for free hand to unleash her talents on King's
Landing to stir up the populace, to do propaganda to take
advantage of Kristen's mistake regarding Meili's.
This probably isn't near as dark as Damon giving William
Blackwood license to quote do his worst, which we'll talk
about later, but it's certainly a parallel to that.
It's on a similar vibe, especially cause the people of
King's Landing are already in a very sorry state.
They're already in a desperate state.
Like any sort of using them for political means.
It's probably going to get some people killed.
Some innocents are probably going to get caught up in it.
At least they aren't the targets like the hapless Bracken
commoner. So yeah, that's why it's it's
pretty pretty sure that's worse. But still, she wants permission
to do The Dirty things that Rainier herself might not want
to sign off on directly. Like, like Damon says, there's
certain things the crown must not be seen to do.
This is very similar to that. Yeah, lots of parallels here.
This is one of them. We moved past Aegon Lane in that
bed, but I feel like that was a clear harken to Viserys laying
the bed, his face all emaciated and bandages on.
I think they're throughout the season, I think they're doing a
lot to use one image to remind us or one scene or line to
remind us of another. There's definitely there's this
parallel between what Masari is asking for and what Damon's
doing. Yep.
Well, so it. Doesn't bode well for the
people. No it.
Does not. Yeah.
So Rainier agrees. He's like, yeah, It's also a
little similar to Kristen Cole saying we don't, do you really
want to preside over this part of the war?
You know, maybe, maybe you don't want to know about some of this
stuff. You know, she's like, no, I do
want to know about it, but it's the same sort of it's a similar
vibe. Like it's better if you don't
know about these things. You know, we're going to do
these for you. But yeah, let's let's keep your
hands clean as much as possible. So she says, yeah, go ahead.
And though it's introduced in kind of an interesting way, you
see that Rainier is going to bed.
She's, you know, wipe washing her hands of it in a in a way.
And the maid is brushing her hair and she's like, this is a
different maid, though. It's almost like the maid isn't
quite as good at it. Well, we also see a Linda go off
and can I point out, we see a little Linda's House Massey
sigil on her dress. Nice.
Yeah, she's got her sigil. Yeah, she's the Yeah, she's the
daughter of one of the council members.
The Lyseni orgy council member, her Gorman Massey, The Uncouth
1. Yeah, the uncouth one.
Yeah, that's why Linda wasn't brushing her hair 'cause she's
infiltrating King's Landing and this is the, they repeat, the
old pretend to be a prisoner trick that Damon did with blood
to get inside the castle and well, inside the castle in that
case. Here it's just to get inside the
city. Similar or not, pretend to be a
prisoner. Yeah, he grabbed her like she
was a prisoner to to bring her through.
OK, I. Guess he kind of grabbed her I
guess. Yeah, like there wasn't any need
to grab her if he's just going to lead her through the gate.
I think he was trying to make her look like a prisoner anyway.
I could be wrong about that, but it felt similar.
Not important. And so clearly there's some gold
cloaks that still like care about Mazzaria because he just
mentions like I think he may have she must have recognized
this guy or something. I don't know if she.
That was my actually biggest question here was how like she
was looking for some sort of tell that would make it clear
which gold cloak was on Mazzaria's take.
And so I was like, well, did she describe him?
He seemed kind of generic. It was dark and rainy.
I didn't seem to see any kind of obvious like he's got a pin on
like Laurie's had his Firefly guy had like a Firefly pin, you
know, his agents had like, which seems silly to me to be clear,
to have a, a mark marking you as like an agent.
But either way, I don't know how she knew him all.
She has to do is know the schedule the guards are on.
I don't think it's that complicated.
Yeah, you look for, look for go to the.
At this time, we know this guard.
This guy with this? Beard, yeah.
Beard. Yeah.
I agree it's a little not explained, but it's easy to
explain. You know if that makes.
Sense I almost wished it would show sometimes, but he might
have had a certain rank. He might have been like a
Lieutenant or Sergeant or something.
So whatever Sergeant is at the Eastgate at 9:00 PM or whatever.
Either way, she goes inside the Cat, she gets inside the city,
and we see her walking around a bit.
She maneuvers around a few alleys here and there, walking
through the rain, and she goes to see Deanna.
In case you didn't recognize her, that's the same girl that
was raped by Aegon in season one and we saw her working at the
bar where Olf's scene took place.
She got spanked by one of Olf's friends.
I don't know if that's really his friend.
Compadre guy, I don't know. Anyway, obviously Dion is no
friend to the Greens. So it's kind of you can just see
without knowing what's going to happen, you're like, OK, well, I
can see why she's on their side, you know, or, or would be on
their side and they clearly know each other.
Linda is recognized right away. So there you go.
That seems very interesting, but we don't exactly know where it's
going just yet. I didn't take the I did not take
the. Deanna clearly knew Alinda.
I guess she would know from working in the red key, but I
didn't take it that she knew her like through Mazzaria
necessarily. She just knew.
Someone's at my door. I'm going to let the I'm.
Pretty sure she said her name when she opened the door.
She's like Alinda. I'll have to check, I don't
remember. That pretty sure that happened
because she didn't say Deanna. I think it was the other way
around. It was the thing, Alinda.
I didn't think either of them said anything, so I'll have to
go back and check. That's very interesting.
I mean, it makes, if Diana works, you know, around there,
she could know Linda, but it's. Just they both work in the
castle together. You're right.
I mean, it's pretty easy to imagine a connection between
them. They both, yeah, they both work
at the Red Keep. They're both about to find out
one way or the other. Yeah, that's true.
And so are we. And so will we get any
clarification that maybe or may or may not be necessary?
That would be cool to see a scene with just these two.
I kind of expect us to just like see her out doing her tasks, but
I would like them to talk. That would be cool.
Yeah, yeah. And and this episode maybe gave
us more hope for some of that. I think we all maybe thought the
loss of two episodes thanks to HBO making this an 8 season or
eight episode season instead of 10 would would unfortunately
those would be some of the casualties would be some of the
scenes with the least or lesser main characters, ones who aren't
the central characters. So yeah, that that might be
yeah, this scene, this episode actually gave us a lot of that.
You know, we got Jason Baylor and and these care like we got
this scene right here that we hopefully get more of.
And we got Hugh. Yeah, yeah, Through that true
hue, let's talk about Driftmark. I just want to say I'll I'll
save it till close to the end, but I have a, a bold take.
I have a hot take. A bold prediction.
OK, cool. Well, I think that's the, the
right, the we'll have a perfect chance for that at the end.
I, I believe I know sort of where you're going with it.
So we'll see. Driftmark.
Cornelius shows his grief standing in front of the
Driftwood throne. His castle is a tomb.
He says he's he's amongst all his treasures, but none of it
matters without her. Baylor kind of points this out,
suggests that, yeah, you did all this stuff.
You went here. You went there.
You were this great adventurer. Very few people knew it was all
for her, which like gets a reaction out of him.
He starts to sob a little bit, a little more.
And it's this great shot of high tide in the distance at night.
You can see it kind of off, off behind them like those tide the
tide is in probably so you can't walk to it.
It's that great thing there. We've only seen it during the
day before. She offers him the the job and
he at first takes it as a a burden rather than an honor,
which is how Baylor reframes it. And it's really, really amazing.
And like I said at the beginning, she just expertly
dissects his argument, knows exactly what buttons to push to
get him to flip his position. She's like, no, this isn't a a
burden, It's a chance to carry on the goal your wife died for.
What better way to honor her than by carrying the torch that
she dropped, that she was wielding for her queen, that she
died for that 'cause that's the best thing you can do for her
memory is to complete that job that she set out to do.
And Baylor points outlook, man, your grief has been costly to
your family in the past. Don't do that again.
It's a it's it's very direct and very authoritative.
And she's proud of it, you know, or, or he's proud of her for
saying it. She says Rainey's died in dragon
fire as a Targaryen should, as she herself wants to.
And that really moves Coralis. And he's like, whoa, this is
this is a good person to be my heir.
But she's like, Nope, blood and fire.
You need salt and sea for your heir.
So he, I think at that moment he was seeing Rainey's in her, that
fire that speaking along the same terms and saying the the
things that clearly did reflect what his wife was likely feeling
in those final moments. And building up to that, How can
he let his grandchildren and other kin fight while he sits
back and doesn't in an episode where so few people have
experience in war, in an episode where much is made over how war
is a man's game, how is this man going to sit back while the
women and his family go fight and die, especially the one, the
woman that he loved most of all in this world?
So. He's a very progressive thinker.
Yeah, right. So I don't know, there's a whole
lot to say about this scene in terms of lore or or analysis
other than it was great. And it if it said everything it
needed to say. His apparent turn is very
believable given how good her argument and acting was.
And I I do think that's what he's doing there.
The visual storytelling. He closes his hand around the
pin. That's I think that's
acceptance. If he sets it aside or like
tosses it, I think that's pretty clearly like, no.
Is that how you read it too, Sean?
For sure. Yeah.
He didn't put it back in the box, throw in AC or anything.
He embraced it, if you will. And And I think this scene does
a lot to capture the theme of this episode.
The title was Regent. And if a Regent is someone
serving in the place of someone else, think of how pervasive
that is to the whole episode. Like Damon is basically trying
to be the king himself instead of Raniera.
Raniera sent her on on her on her behalf to talk to Corliss
about being the Regent and in her absent you'll be the Hand.
We'd see Aegon or Eamon becoming the Regent.
It it's it's a very constant theme of someone filling the
role of someone else. That's this episode is all about
that. A very good point.
Yeah, Very good, Yeah. So it's a really powerful scene.
I think a lot of people were moved by it and certainly one of
the ones that's been outlined a lot.
But we also did give it a little bit of talk at the beginning.
Shout out Bethany Antonia for sure moving on to her sister,
the veil. We got a brief scene here.
It's our first time seeing Lady Jane.
It's good to have a moment there.
A bit of a debate, more lawyer and kind of like how the I refer
to bail is. Speech to Corley says like an
expert closing argument. This is more of a debate over
the fine print. Like you said you wanted a
dragon, you got one. I said I wanted a dragon for a
defense. This dragon cannot do that, you
know, And it doesn't really get resolved, the argument.
But for now, 15,000 troops probably not marching yet.
Rainier asked for this help, but it doesn't look like it's coming
yet. And she brings up Vegar.
She's like, look, Vegar brought us to heel during the Congress.
This is the one thing where you're afraid of up here.
We're afraid of Veigar again. And I was like, well, I'm not
sure we can really help you with that, but we can.
Even if we sent a bigger dragon, it won't be bigger than Veigar.
But any thoughts on this scene, Sean?
It seems like it's setting up more.
It obviously didn't do a whole lot, but I'm glad we got it.
And I'm and I'm curious what's next.
Yeah, I wonder how long she'll linger there waiting for the
troops to be committed 'cause she's supposed to move on to
Pintos. Is she supposed to just
automatically move on to Pintos no matter what or wait till this
gets resolved? Does she go back home if it
doesn't get resolved as a a lot hanging here so.
Agreed yeah, so it's it's kind of up in the air for now like
the Erie itself AO now I. I will say there was one other
interesting bit here that they seem to be sort of at odds and
and Lady Jane is in a tough spot.
Like you expect me to commit these troops, but you understand
like it could be the end of my people if I do, you know, like a
dragon. My if I do that, a dragon really
might come and burn this castle down.
So I it is a legit concern that she has.
But despite this sort of contention between them, there
was still that moment of bonding.
You know, like, I don't like feeling powerless.
Me neither. You know, I think they have that
in common. And hopefully they can grow
somewhere from that. Yeah, I really appreciated Jane
for not just, like, shooting the messenger, you know, like she
realizes this. This is an emissary.
She didn't make this decision. Which brings me to something I
expected her to bring up, but makes sense to me now why maybe
she wouldn't if Jane isn't the type to just blame this young
girl for something that's not her fault.
Well, we as we mentioned before, Damon is not beloved in the
veil. He killed his wife Raya Royce
and was out like like outright accused of it.
You know what I mean? So like, it's not a, it's no
secret. Like it's a, it's a clear rumor
that he's done it. But Jane doesn't seem to bring
anything about that up to, to Reyna.
If Damon comes up more and like is raising people, then Jane and
Reyna had a conversation. Maybe it will come up then
though. It could.
And another factor here that Sean you might not be aware of,
and I want to clarify for anybody else that doesn't know,
is Jane is Rainier's cousin, but not the cousin of the Hightower
side of the family because it's it's Viserys wife that is the
Aaron part Aaron. So that's the connection.
So of course, Emma is, is Rainier's connection to the
veil. Obviously Allison's children
don't have that because they're high.
They have Hightower on that side.
And yeah, so that's part of it. That's maybe something else
that's helping keep Jane on their side a little bit.
Also the whole women can rule part which is relevant to a Lady
of the veil. Yeah, she's the ruling lady of
the veil. She is like, there's no like
young child that she's Regent for.
She is the lady. Yeah, it's it's an important
clarification cause not only is that the situation at the
conquest that she refers to where there was a ruling Aaron,
there was a Aaron Regent woman ruling for her son who was six
or seven. But that's also the scenario in
the song of Ice and Fire where we have Lysa Aaron ruling for
sweet Robin. Now the twins, a familiar place.
It says this is the the Riverlands is really expanding.
We get quite a few more river Lords, more Alice rivers.
So a rivers lady and more Harrenhal.
And the Twins is one of the most familiar places that we've that
meaning that we've already seen, that we're seeing for the first
time in the show. Doesn't have the most fond
memories, though, does it? Still, it's an interesting
place, Jace. He's much better at this than
Damon's so far, isn't he? At first, he thinks to head to
Harrenhal, to basically do what serve Alfred is sent to do, but
changes his mind when he realizes the value of the phrase
and the crossing, and what that'll mean for the northern
March. A look at the map shows exactly
what he means. If the Graybeards want to get to
River Run, which is where he wants them to go to Block the
Lannister forces that are going to eventually come through, well
they have to go through the Twins crossing and go South just
like half of Rob's army did. The one that was sent to relieve
River Run during the War of 5 Kings.
If they had to go the long way, it's really long.
They have to go all the way around the whole Trident.
It's like 5 times longer, four times longer.
So at the time, Robb Stark paid a hefty toll.
And this is similar. There's no marriage to ask for
this time. There's no hand to give.
Jace has already spoken for. Maybe they could ask for a
little Viserys or a little Aegon.
But you know, little babies getting married.
I don't. They didn't go there.
Maybe they don't have children of that age.
These, these two don't look that young.
They probably don't have young children.
Lord Forrest Frey says it is death to bear steel against
one's Liege. Against one's Liege.
A line also delivered by Robb Stark to the great Sean, who was
last seen captive at the Twins. So like Lady Jane, Lady Frey,
who we'll discuss in a second, 'cause we don't we're, there's
some dispute over who she is, like what her name is, but hang
on, we'll come back to that. Also says they fear Veigar
Fairpoint. But Jase, like I said, good,
pretty good at negotiating, has a good comeback.
He says, look, my Dragon's right over there and yes, I'll protect
you. And so my uncle and they're
like, OK, well, that's good. But what about our price?
You know? And he's like, OK, you can have
Aaron Hall, but it's going to take more than a crossing if you
want that. And you got to be, you got to
send your troops to. Jay's probably overpaid a little
bit, but it's it's good. They really needed that.
It's very valuable to them. And it's worth more to them than
it is to the Greens, probably. So, yeah, a really good scene.
I like Jay. I like seeing Jay's in action.
He's a good negotiator. Again, he's got in the veil sort
of the north and now the twins in the time that Damon has made
things worse for his own cause, you know, right.
So got to like that Jace on the up here.
What do you think about the scene, Sean?
Yeah, I thought it was an interesting scene.
It was. I don't have much to say beyond
what you said, but I do appreciate the, the view that,
you know, the above imagery of the the bridge across and I'm
sitting there at the table. I got a vibe from that woman's
name, Sabatha. Is that right?
Well, we're not sure that's the thing.
Hold off on that. OK, I know the subtitle is
called him Forest Bray. That's correct.
Yes, that one's correct. But anyway, she reminded me of
Elena Tyrell a little bit. She seemed to be very bold and
opinionated, you know? And she did most of the talking.
He, he, he. They exchanged several looks,
but mostly it was her looking at him.
And she did, she did talk. He said a few things, but yeah,
she seemed more in control there, which or more command,
and maybe she's the better negotiator.
But yeah, there was. I agree with you.
There's a little bit of that vibe there.
So yeah, let's talk about the name thing.
This is a little weird. O'Shea, why don't you explain
it? Yeah.
So basically often when characters are credited, it
comes from a variety of sources. Sometimes it's from an actor CV,
sometimes it's like a leak, you know, like someone reports on
something. Sometimes it's from the credits
and, and sometimes it's from the subtitles, the captions,
sometimes it's wrong. All of these things.
Well, yes, forest is credited as forest in the caption.
And so it seems that that is Forest.
If that's correct, Lady Fray before the season was credited
as Lady Serena. The Wiki of Westeros has updated
their listing, calling her Sabatha.
But on the wiki discussion notes, someone asks why did we
change this? Why do we assume that Serena is
a code name and not her name? And there's no response
currently. So I personally can't find the
source for why she is Sabbatha other than that she is a woman
who was married to a Lord Forrest Frey, but she is a bit
older than we would imagine. The book version of her of
Sabbatha, to be clear, is is is a good bit younger.
So This is why we're wondering partly why.
The book version of Sabbatha is a bit of a fighter, and this
woman isn't a bit of a fighter, but she is kind of in control,
like this woman, this lady Frey is.
So I think there's elements that you could see, but for me, the
jury is very much still out on whether A, Lady Serena is Lady
Sabatha and B, whether her existence means there's no
Sabatha, the canonical book Sabatha, who plays a few roles.
And I could see Lady Frey here filling some of those roles, but
not others. And we're gonna talk about this
on Saturday and Wednesday. Yeah, and it's just curious in
general that they would use a code name for.
Like, why would be like Sabatha? That's not some major character
that people are gonna freak out over.
She just is. Lady Serena.
I don't know. Yeah, I have suspicions.
Yeah, Anyway, so that's not a huge topic, but it's, you know,
developing situation, this name. It's part of the history of
Westeros. Yes, that's right, the
uncertainty over this name is part of the folklore of the
show. Shall we say Bracken and
Blackwood? Let's talk about that.
Looks like Stonehedge in the background.
We actually make it to see, which is interesting.
We haven't gotten a shot of that before.
Lord Amos defies Damon and it impresses him.
This actor reminds me of Sean Bean, apparently, by the way,
that Dabos Blackwood, who died at the Battle of Burning Mill,
was Willem's brother. And Damon played this so badly
his his ignorance of Riverlands politics is really on display.
Remember when he asked like, why do the Brackens and Blackwoods
hate each other? Who can tell which is which?
Yet he hears that they both hate each other.
Yeah, he's trying to make one submit to the other.
Like that's never going to have the worst thing 'cause like you
were trying to get an two people have hate or two houses that
have hate each other for thousands of years, one to bend
the knee to the other so bad. It's just never going to work.
And this is a throwback to Raven Jamie at Raven Tree Hall.
Remember this in at the end of A Dance with Dragons, Raven Tree
Hall was holding out. They refused to submit to the
Brackens. But once Jamie shows up, it's
like, well, we'll submit to you. I'll submit to the king, not
Jonas Bracken. They're like, oh, he's like, oh,
I understand. It's like good.
All right then. And that.
And that settles it. So very poorly handled by Damon.
If Damon, if, if everything had been the same except willing
wasn't there, I think you would have got him to side with him.
Yeah, if he said submit to me, he said submit to me instead of
the black. Yeah, you're right.
Even bringing the Blackwood was dumb.
His presence ruined the whole thing.
Yeah, so. But again, he's impressed.
They're like, I go ahead and burn me then and he's like,
Dang, I need guys like that on my side.
It was like, kind of like. Because you're going to get
burned by one dragon or the others.
Yeah, I like I need dudes that are, yeah, strong enough to
stand up to that. Yeah, He I love his line.
He says I'd rather be the Lord of Bones and Cinders.
It's the Lord of Bones. Remember Rattle shirt there?
And it's the maybe the shot of the episode.
Did you think he was going to burn him, Sean?
Yes, I did. I thought that.
He thought he was going to support.
And I just, I feel weird saying this but I I almost feel like he
should have really. Because.
On some level, they might be calling his bluff and if he
burns this guy who this leader and a few others, the other
people might be like all right, I guess you really will burn us.
We have to do this either. Maybe not.
Maybe they still are that against it, but but now there's
no way they will all right. I I don't know what in a world
Damon can do now. I don't he's yeah.
Is he? He's in such an Oval situation.
He's dug himself quite a hole. Yeah, Yeah, you're right.
I I have some ideas on that, on what he might do next.
Well, well, that's another topic for Saturday.
We have too much else. To cover today a notch up for
him and my expectations of him, that he didn't burn him.
I I. Am only for him to turn to
something worse right after. Exactly right.
Like that he didn't burn him and that he realized that it was
valuable, that they were that brave.
But then the plan he comes up with is gone.
That's, you know, it wasn't I don't want him to burn these
guys, but I'd rather him burn these trained soldiers putting
themselves in harm's way, trying to stand by some principle based
on jealousy then these guys, innocent wives and children,
right like. Easy call, Yeah, a terrible a
terrible choice, but an easy choice if if if you're given it.
Yeah, so. So Damon tells Blackwood to do
his worst. Telling the Blackwood to do the
worst of the Brackens is pretty horrifying to imagine.
This is verified later. The scale and scope of what they
do. This is a smaller scale version
of Tywin unleashing Gregor Vargo, Hod and Amory Larch on
the Riverlands. And.
And of course, all four of those men controlled Heron Hall for a
brief stint and died. It's all again.
This reminds me of Dusk and Dale, but we covered that
already. Damon is gonna be upset with the
Blackwoods, though. Like he said, certain things the
crown can't be seen to do and they carry Targaryen banners.
Like, he kind of betrays Damon. It's like, whoa, this guy's like
a scoundrel. Like, what's going on here?
So we this is a developing situation too.
I mean, he killed Gerald Bracken over a pretty mild thing.
He was like 10. Yeah, it was a violent.
He is a scoundrel. He's a he's black of heart.
I would say. I don't know.
I, I, I think this, I think this series has done a great service
to the Brackens to, to leveling out the playing field in terms
of, I think there's more Bracken fans than ever before.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. We did an episode on the
brackets in the Blackwoods not too long before the season
started, right? Yeah.
And, and that was a realization I came to that probably people
who, you know, deep in it, read the books multiple times, came
this realization long ago. But it seems pretty consistently
in every appearance of the Blackwoods, there's somewhere
between honorable and or on the winning side.
And almost every instance of the Black of the Brackens are
somewhere between dishonorable and the losing side.
Regardless, they are both at fault for this ageless feud,
right? Even if one side is the good
guys and one's bad guys, it takes 2 to tangos.
So you, the Blackwoods, have to be doing something wrong to
still be embroiled in this feud. But all the characters that were
presented seem to be presented in a positive light and this is
a big juxtaposition from that from from book Cannon Zone.
I agree with the Shay, even though I favour the Blackwoods.
Even without the authorial thumb on the scale, I grew to share
that I approve of the balancing here.
Cuz yeah, the Brackens just look better.
They look better all around. They're both the victims and the
tough ones at the same time. They look strong and they
suffered for being virtuous. Although that bracken that
William killed in season one, he was kind of a bully.
Yeah, he was a bully. I don't.
He didn't deserve the burner. But yeah, he didn't deserve to
be burner. He was very rude all around you,
right? And his father, like, was
cheering him on. It didn't seem like his father
was really setting a good example.
No he wasn't. I agree with that.
So Damon obviously isn't any better than Will and Blackwood
here. He gives the order to do this,
and it's like his second oopsie, war crime.
He's like, I didn't mean to do. Oh, I mean, Jared, I didn't mean
it would be my mistake. I didn't know.
Yeah. And he tries to escape
responsibility for both and neither work.
He doesn't escape responsibility at first.
He doesn't. And he.
And in trying to escape responsibility for the second
thing, they throw the first one back in his face.
But we'll come back to that in a minute because that's one of the
last scenes of the episode. And we have a lot of Harrenhal
to talk about before that point. Work has progressed, Damon
orders the levying of farmers quote from antlers to high
heart. Which is a fun call out because
high heart is is a nice tie into the lore, especially with Alice
Rivers. Well primarily about Alice
Rivers. Last episode I talked about how
much this castle was turning into a Fear and loathing and
herring hall situation and the bat country aspect of that has
been further explained. Sir Simon Says there's so much
shit in the Wailing Tower that the halls are impassable.
Now, if Westeros were technologically farther along,
they could use this as an explosive.
Bat guano used to be used in the making of gunpowder before
technique got a little better. It's also used in other
explosive items, and it's also great as fertilizers.
I mean, they should just be shoveling that out into their
fields. But there's actually a Texas
town called Blow Out. They got its name from a cave
that was so filled with bat guano that the ammonia build up
inside it exploded when The Cave mouth was struck by lightning.
So that renamed the town to Blow Out.
Yeah, that's right. Isn't that amazing?
Like, where did you find that? Aziz?
You looking up Bat Guano in your spare time?
You're looking up Cave Blowout. What is going on here?
Just a real big fan of Texas, yeah.
That would be quote UN quote funny if that's part of how the
arson of Lionel and Harwin was facilitated with like, yeah,
just pile up the bat guano and set it on fire.
Now Heron Hall is still has the Fear and loathing vibe but it
also has the Field of Dreams vibe.
If you build it, they will come, but the river lands, the river
Lords aren't coming. They did come but they left
angrily after yelling at him so it didn't quite go.
They did come, but then they left right away.
I love how he says, let no man say Damon Targaryen didn't dirty
his hands. Like, oh, we oh, don't worry,
bro, we know your hands are dirty.
Your hands are very dirty. But like the Field of Dreams
ghosts. Let's talk about that some more
again before the river Lords arrive, because AL's Rivers sort
of paves the way for their appearance by saying some of the
same things, like less harshly, but more supernaturally and with
all sorts of mysterious elements throughout.
The Greens have a dreamer, Helena, but not a Green dreamer.
Now, that is a parallel on the Black side, at least in Damon's
corner of the story. She's a dreamer and kind of
leads him into his own dreams. So we're seeing that.
And of course, it's interesting, too, how Simon is often the one
that brings him back out. It's often his voice that Damon
hears to bring him back out of something like Simon's like,
hey, hey, there's a Raven here. Or did you like, is the duck not
to your liking? Yeah, it's it's often his voice
that brings him back out, which I don't know there's anything to
read into that. But, you know, keep an eye on
that pattern. Maybe there's something going on
there. I, I got to say, remember last
episode I I was wondering how aware he was of these
supernatural type things or Alice's connection to it or what
his relationship was with her. And I, I this episode that had a
lot more of her pay more attention.
She hasn't interacted with anyone other than Damon and this
might be a little temporally. I don't really expect this but
it makes me wonder if is this is she's just completely a figment
of his imagination? Is this all just his inner guilt
haunting him somehow? Well, we see Simon look at her
pretty distinctly, I would say to that in a shot I'll put right
here. Also jaw Joe Magician.
I talked about this as Joe Magician, He says there's a
scene where in episode in the first scene in in Harren Hall or
the the second episode with Harren Hall where he also
interacts with her. Also, how does his hand get
wrapped? I mean, you can wrap your own
hand technically. Like, I guess, yeah.
But he can. Still, I mean, if he can wake up
at dinner thinking he was just having sex, he can also wrap his
hand. OK.
That's Fairpoint. Yeah, and.
I'm not, I'm not pushing too hard for this, but I do.
But my other a a slightly more specific thought along is maybe
that not so much that she just doesn't even exist, but the way
he looks at her reminded me a little about how Damon looked at
the serving girl who he saw as his.
Wife and it turned into again. How does Simon Strong perceive
her? Is he also seeing weird visions?
Is he also struggling with his sanity?
Does that make sense? I I don't know.
No, it makes some sense. You're not.
Everyone around her. Since you're not the only person
to have that theory, that by itself suggests they might be
going for that. They might be trying to maybe
make us think that whether it's true or not, of course we'll let
it play out more. But yeah, she's a fascinating
character regardless. And they have multiple scenes
together in this episode, which I love like more.
More Damon and Alice scenes are OK by me.
I have a a question too. Sure, those three guys that
always seem to be at the table with Simon.
Those are his sons. Yeah, his sons, yeah.
We know a couple of their names based on Larry.
Moe and Curly. Well, apparently one is Paxter
and the other is German or. German or German?
Yeah, I don't know how to say that.
I don't. Know how you say that name but.
Then another one. I know there's the third, I
don't know the 3rd, but we know two of the names and I'm not
sure. I also in digging through the
wiki couldn't quite find the source for one of the names.
The other one was from Redanian Intelligence reporting on it and
they often just get like leak stuff.
But either way Redanian has reported Serena and reported
Paxter but I didn't see them say German.
I don't know where they got that name.
Interesting. I love that scene where they're
like up, he's like up, up the one he just doesn't notice, he's
like. You guys are still?
Yeah, he's just eating his food. Yeah.
So one of the cool things about Alice is she's, like I said,
she's a fascinating character on many levels.
For example, she's literally on a higher level than him in the
scene where she's on that balcony.
This is that same balcony that Damon got to when he first
arrived in his reign and armor. And he's staring down over
because that's the overlook of the great Council there.
And this is a really cool shot 'cause you see her POV of it.
And this is such a cool moment. He's chopping wood and he is the
axe lands. He hears that's like he struck
some woman. There's a screaming sound and
it's the the bracken commoners as the implication here.
And he looks up and looks back and it's like he looks right to
her, like he knows that she's there.
And it's like she's sending the visions to him or, or opening
his mind to be able to hear the whispers on the wind that she
herself is hearing, which she confronts him about later.
She's like, I've heard these sounds, which is.
And he's like, oh, news. And he's like, she's like news.
No, I just hear these things on the wind and smiles like, and
he's like, OK, he she basically keeps telling him like, look,
yo, I'm magical, you know? And I'm going to prove it to
you, but give you just enough doubt that you might, you might
be able to believe. I'm not.
He's not 100% accepting it, but he's not 100% rejecting it
either. I think, you know, maybe that's
the vibe, right? So this is the very much in line
with what we know about how the Old Gods work.
They captured the vibe of things that are in the books extremely
well here. There's two connections to Old
God's magic that you're familiar with.
One is that specific language of whispers on the wind, words on
the wind, things like that. That is 100% how Bran hears
things when he's trying to speak to his father and when his
father sort of maybe hears him through the heart tree through
time. And Theon, same thing.
Theon thinks the heart tree is whispering his name and he's
like he's he describes it as a whisper on the wind, rustle and
the leaves. The same language is used.
So it's very much a tight connection to Bran and green
steer magic. The second one is the prior
mentioned High Heart. Ghost of High Heart of course is
the reference there. The Ghost of High Heart which
Arya sees twice. The Brotherhood without Banner
goes there. Without Banners goes there
twice. During her storyline of Clash
and Storm. She lives in a weirwood Grove
that was put to the axe, not unlike what Alice Rivers says
Harrenhal is built on or near. It was a weirwood Grove that was
put to the axe. And that's the reason for the
curse. Same concept, right?
And she's like a news ticker of events when they go to visit
her. Even more so than Alice is here.
It's more supernatural in the book.
The ghost of high heart is drops way more prophecies than Alice
Rivers does here. She's like 15 to 20 things and a
purple made with purple serpents in her hair.
A crow, a you know, a crow perched on a bridge with a Raven
on its shoulder or a a dripping seaweed on it.
Whatever. I'm not getting them exactly
right. But you remember there's so many
of them and they're all accurate.
They're 100% accurate. Every single one of them.
We've been through this, right? It's it's the ghost Ohio artist
doesn't say a single thing was wrong.
You can misinterpret them, but they're all pretty
straightforward and they're all right.
So this is very much a crossover to that.
The trees whispered her and either Damon has been granted
the ability to hear some of those voices or Alice's like
through the drink or Alice's like pushing it into his head a
little bit or a little of both. I don't know.
The supernatural mechanism isn't necessarily the most important
thing for us to to zone in on, but something's going on there.
No doubt. Perhaps the biggest evidence of
her magical ability is bringing up his mother right now.
The fact that she died young is public information, but but how
did she know to say that given he had just been dreaming about
her? That's the part that's like
that's that's not a coincidence, right?
That would be a crazy coincidence.
Maybe there's a chance it is, but that's a big one, right?
So we'll talk about the actual Oedipus dream separately in a
minute here, but I just want to talk about Alice's side of this.
What? What did this mean to you, Sean?
That that mention of his mother. Yeah, it definitely got his
attention. But then they were immediately
interrupted by Simon Strong coming in.
So it it made me wonder. Something I'm not sure about is
how did his mother die? Oh of complications from from
childbirth? OK, yeah, over like a a.
They would have had another brother.
He died too. Thesaurus and Damon, Yeah.
Damon, they didn't have any other sisters or they didn't
have any other siblings. They would have, but not.
Through Alyssa. If Olf is right that he's a
bastard of bail on the brave, then they have 1/2 brother named
Olf. Good point, but not necessarily.
Get out of here. I love that.
So yeah. So that's there is some some of
that, like I said, some of that's public knowledge.
It's crazy that she knows that knows to say that.
Yeah, you're right. You're right that it's a
developing situation. It's it's it's borrowing another
trick from George. Something supernatural happens
and then it's interrupted before it's fully explained.
So they're like, oh, they did that George trick.
Dang it. So I'm sure that maybe, maybe
I'm not sure, but I think we're going to progress with that.
We're surely not done with Alice Rivers, and we're even more sure
we're not done with Damon. It's like not only does she ask
about his mother, but in the scene that happens to me of him
eating there, she looks at him as you see on the screen, like
she looks at him very like as if he is waiting to see if it, you
know, what he's tripping on. Jimmy Pear, Everybody else
appears to be staring at him too in the scene.
But you're right, she stares even more.
She like she she's the first one to look and the last one to look
away I think if I remember right.
I also want to point out the I don't know how much meaning
there was behind it specifically, but when they're
going back and forth between the duck or goose, I prefer goose.
Wasn't that the conversation between Lenor and Renira when
they were being betrothed? Oh, they're debating which which
to serve. Some people prefer duck or.
Whatever, I don't didn't catch that.
That might be a yeah, that's a good catch, I guess, Sean, if
that's if you're remembering. It right, Damon's hiding his
latent homosexual urges. I just thought it was a
reference to Duck, Duck, goose. You know, they were.
That's why the one guy didn't stand up at the right time.
There's. A lot of layers to it.
Yeah, so many layers. Look at the depth is incredible
here, yeah. One other little minor note, by
the way. When, as far as I can tell, you
know, it's hard to know what they intended with the editing.
But when he's talking to Alice and Simon Strong comes in, she
kind of steps away. He looks at her.
She steps behind him. But then they go back and forth
between Simon and Damon. But she doesn't appear again.
I don't know if she left the room or she's just standing in
the corner. She is she Privy to overhear
everything? Simon doesn't seem to be worried
about talking about, you know, messages to the King, I thought.
I thought she was just walking out as he walked in like you.
Just don't see her exit. You don't see her leave.
And, and it I'm extra thinking about it because it's so odd,
the way Damon turns with the axe and points it right at Simon,
but ostensibly Alice is right behind him.
He's pointing the axe at her, too.
I I just don't. See it?
I think she left that room, I think.
We see her walk out and she. Left, I think you're screeching.
She he tells her war is a terrible thing.
He's like, yeah, this is just how war works and sort of right.
But mostly not. She says, this isn't war.
This is, you know, just depredation's on the innocence.
Once again, in the name of power.
It's the weakened women who must endure, she says, and any
upright man would repudiate the deeds that she's hearing.
Of course, he responds that he's not an upright man and passes
the book. Like, as so many times happens
at this episode. He's like, well, you think I'm
bad? Where do you meet Eamon?
You better hope you don't. He is worse, you know, and given
his attitude towards Strong's, Damon might actually be right
for the wrong reasons. But the more immediate point is
she says, well, I heard the same thing about you before you got
here. He could argue that.
Well, I haven't done that. I haven't killed you or done of
these things, but it's not much better.
And then she needles him regarding Rainier.
He's like, surely the queen has approved your strategy, right,
Right. And he's like and that's when
she that's when he again passes the buck.
He's like they won't follow her, they won't, it's not going to
work, that method won't work, blah blah blah blah blah.
You know, So again, he's bad argument that method.
Won't work and I'll see to it I'll make sure it doesn't work.
Yeah, there's a little bit of a parallel here to Baylor and
Corley's winning someone over by trying to get them to look at
themselves. But Damon is.
It's a lot harder to do that with Damon.
He's a lot stubborn or even though he's having these dreams
that are doing all these things, like his conscience is
absolutely barking at him and his guilt is flaring up quite a
bit. But yeah, he is not there.
I don't want to pull anything spoilery out but just generally
speaking I assume in the book there's no way they get into
Damons head like this. There's always some Maester
nose. Alice Rivers gave him someone
Lucinogenic. This is all like A and it is not
a complaint. I love this, but this is.
Yeah, it explicitly says that it doesn't appear that she had much
effect on Damon, which we don't have to read as truth, but it's,
it's like 1 lined away, you know, it's hardly said at all.
Yeah. So, yeah, there's a there's
there's a lot of expansion of this part of the story from the
book 'cause it's, it's just not very well.
It's not very expanded in the 1st place.
It's, it's rather short. It's efficient, shall we say.
It left a lot of room for expansion.
And this is that expansion as Allison is our window into the
escalation of the Greens depredations.
Alice is our window into that side of the Blacks, which for
now is mostly Damon with an assist from Willem Blackwood.
And here come the angry river Lords.
This scene begins as if it's going to be another dream for
like the third episode in a row. He hears or and sees like
marching and light below his door.
This time it's actually a person.
It really is Simon Strong this time, knocking on his door.
This was so good. I love a good inversion of like
your expectations like that. I love that as a style and
filmmaking and anything like that.
It's just, it's just very, very humorous and effective.
Yeah, it just you totally think, oh, here comes another dream.
We've had so many of them. It's like, Oh no, it's someone's
waking up in the middle of the night.
It's it's really happening. And again, it's Simon kind of
that's the pull you out of dream mode, you know, like it can
maybe he's maybe it's a sign that he's kind of immune to
those dreams in the first place. At least one, maybe a couple of
these times when he's in this half dream state, he comes to
reality at dinner, right? It's true.
He's like, how is it time for pudding now?
It's a good joke, Yeah, he's almost expected that.
He's in the middle of another dream.
Yeah. He's like, is this dinner?
Yeah. Am I at dinner now?
Yeah. He doesn't even know where he
is. You're right.
And so a delegation arrives in the night and I get being grumpy
and woken to the middle of the night, and he's like, what are
you doing here? But he doesn't, he doesn't think
at all about why they might be here.
It's not a good reason. So.
But maybe that's maybe he does realize that.
And so he's like, well, I'm going to attack.
I'm going into attack mode. I'm not going to let them come
at me. I'm going to try to shame them
for awakening their king in the middle of the night.
I'm your Targaryen master. Is this really how you treat me?
And they're like, we're not having any of that nonsense.
Shut up and listen to us. Alice was kind of the good cop.
Like, you know, you're doing bad things here, man.
They're just like, you suck. You are awful.
And we have the following River Lords.
Lord Dairy. Lord Peter Piper.
Yeah. Lord Peter Piper.
That's from the book Peter Piper picked.
No, we won't go there. But that's the name.
Lady Malaster and Wallace Mouton.
Wallace Mouton, also directly from the book.
Seems like they've swapped Lord Jora Malaster to be a Lady
Malaster. Sometimes genders get swapped.
Happened in Game of Thrones. Here we have that here again,
yeah. You're right, that does happen.
I'd I'd forgotten about Jorah Malister.
Good call. So they accuse him of sending
Will and Blackwood to commit atrocities against black and
commoners. He's like, I didn't like I
didn't do that. And they're like, yo, they had
black and red Targaryen banners. How are you going to deny that?
He's like, oh, what the hell? That surprises him, which is
surprising to us too. He's very back footed by that,
but he still tries to like get the upper hand in the
conversation, but it's just not happening.
He's like he's like you're a baby killer and he's like who?
Whoever said that I want to have them brought before him.
He's like, well, the whole half the realm saying it, man, and
he's he's he just says that with absolutely no conviction, right,
And they call him a tyrant to his face and storm out.
I bet you just really appreciated that, didn't you,
Sean? Well, they're kind of indirectly
calling Ranira a tyrant. I I wondered how much they meant
to be calling him a Ranira. How much do they know or believe
that he's there? Good point on behalf.
Good point, I know. Either way, it's not good.
Either way, it's it's a really bad situation.
And his his, I don't know, his defenses.
You can't prove that. Like I wasn't supposed to get
caught doing these. Bad things, you know, like.
There's not like remorse for the bad things that both both
morally or strategically, it's just crap.
I'm caught. That's his only.
Yeah, regret. He's red handed, you know, kind
of like he was in the dream before.
And yeah, so they, I mean, he's pretty much what they say he is.
Like they're pretty much everything they say is, is
pretty accurate. And as he said himself to Alice,
yeah, he's not an upright man. So like he he has to agree, kind
of has to agree with them. Like, yeah, you got me.
So. And his plan, as he told Alice
was, oh, I'll, I'll treat them fairly once they follow.
And she's like, Are you sure you want an army of people who hate
you who will turn on you as soon as they get a chance?
He's like, well, once they see how I treat them fairly, they
won't turn on me anymore 'cause once we get going, it's like,
but, right? But now they're not even going
to follow you. This is how it looks.
They're not. Even going to get to that point.
Yeah, so. I will point out that even Simon
Strong seems to be wavering a little bit.
Yeah, not only there was like the the the payment thing and he
was like, I'll take care of it. So I was like, all right, we'll,
we'll see. Like, you're not going to have
food, dude, I'm telling you. And then he gets the insisted to
call him king. And now here comes news of what
seems to be Damon terrorizing the pot.
Like, Simon is kind of stuck in the castle with him, so he has
to kind of keep being his ally. But I don't know if he's going
to. When it comes to it, Damon is
not rallying the troops. He's not, no.
He's not. He's not rallying the troops.
He's turning them away if anything.
So an interesting thing to catch here is he actually before this
happens and Strong tells him that the Brackens have submitted
to the Blackwoods. He's like all right, send for
Will and Blackwood. I want to congratulate him.
So he's already on his way apparently, but this is before
he learns that he betrayed him by flying his banners, which we
have to. Maybe we'll get an explanation
on why he did that, but it anyway, we'll have to wait and
see on that point. It's interesting for sure.
As the scene ends, he's like, like I said, back footed and
confused. And then he sees his wife again.
He sees Lena again. And she again guilts him like as
almost as much as anyone else in the room who's actually there.
Says, you know, the realm is at war.
Are you protecting our daughters?
And, you know, I haven't even had a conversation with them
this season. Yeah, I literally ignored Bayla
as I stormed off to come here, didn't say a single word to her
and haven't sent word like, yeah, you're ignoring Rainiera,
but you could contact Raina or Bayla.
Exactly. She's exactly right to call him
out on this. He's been so absent.
That's the one thing we can cling to is that he has the
guilt. The guilt is there.
At least he's not a complete psychopath that just has no
concern at all, which is like, well, hopefully this brings some
good out of him. I don't know that it will, but.
Yeah, Tony Soprano had some guilt, too.
He sure did. Again, that's why I brought him
up. He's a good example like it.
It helped him, but it didn't really necessarily make him a
better person that there be. Not stopping him from being a
villain. No, it didn't.
Let's talk about the Oedipus dream.
Yes, interestingly, that Damon is a Greek word and he's the one
having this Greek moment 'cause even Targaryens don't bang their
moms. Like, that's and and isn't it
weird how, like, incest is creepy?
But this is definitely creepier. Like this is a level of incest
that's like, this is the worst, right?
This is this the worst kind of incest?
Father, daughter, mother, son. Like, I think that's the worst
kind. I mean, you see in this shot how
haunted Damon is by this. Once he realizes who it is,
yeah, 'cause at first he doesn't he.
Is not like, oh hot, what a great wet dream I had.
He's like, no, that was a messed up dream man.
I got some problems. Yeah, yeah, and it's
interesting, like the vibe in it too.
He does. And This is why it's important
that Alice points out. It's too bad you didn't know
your mother. That's why that line is really
big, 'cause he doesn't. That's why he doesn't recognize
her in the dream. He doesn't even barely know.
He barely knows what she looks like.
And there's, you know, there's a few differences here than what
we would have imagined from her book version, which might be
just the the show didn't care. They just made her look like a
Targaryen. But it might be because Damon
doesn't actually know what she looks like.
So they're having sex in the dream, but it's more like him
pleasuring her while she praises him.
Like he's. She's stroking his ego while
he's stroking her. Yeah.
I love the idea to have generic Targaryen as his mother.
I'm like, I've already seen so many tweets of people being
really upset about this. I'm like, you guys, just take a
moment. Like one, I've seen people upset
that she doesn't look like Alyssa looks like in the books.
And two, I've seen people upset that he's screwing his mom in
his dream. And I'm like, that's the point.
It's like the darkest, like most messed up thing he could think
about. And he doesn't even actually
know what his mom looks like. He just sees this idealized like
perfect Targaryen woman. And I, I think it's brilliantly
done right here. I just shout out to them, even
if they pissed off a lot of people by not giving her a
broken nose like Damon doesn't, he's not going to picture her
flaws. Why would he picture that?
Yeah, and yeah, it's just like every show, movie, fandom, and
even in real life, people imagine that when you go to the
afterlife, you're whole again. So her nose wouldn't be broken,
it would be healed. But she also has silver hair and
not dirty blonde hair and also has just doesn't have multicolor
eyes. Again, even if Damon has been
told your mother had those features in his weird like dream
state here, he's not going to think like if you have a dream,
that's not how it works. You're going to picture like
what you picture your silly haired perfect Targaryen mother
looking like. And if we think Alice has any
kind of impact in this dream or knowledge, then that could be at
play as well. I don't necessarily think if.
She's affecting it. Yeah.
He saw how he saw Damon. I mean, he saw himself as Amond.
Like that's not what? He looks like.
It's a dream version, yeah, Yeah.
So yeah, I agree with that there.
I don't know shit. I think this is messed up.
Damon should really be dreaming about having sex with his cousin
and niece. So the thing she.
Said I draw it at the mall. I try to line him up.
She calls him stronger than his brother.
That Viserys lacked the stamina for the throne.
That you're the fearless dragon writer, the best swordsman and
then she calls him her favorite son and that's when he's like
wait what? Excuse me favorite what now was
that SUNI hope so and and his dream self becomes confused and
there's that trail of blood by her neck which is.
Can I tell you what I think about with that?
Like, it keeps being like one hand, you know?
And like, I think some of it has to maybe his guilt about the
beheading of Jerry's. But I think more of what I keep
coming back to is his guilt over it wasn't bloody, but over
strangling Rainiera. I feel that that was the hand he
used to strangle his wife. And I feel that the fact that
it's one hand in particular is really notable to me.
And that's what I keep coming back to is, is Raniera guilt?
It was even when he, when he beheads Raniera.
She's even in the dress she was wearing when he strangled her,
when he choked her out, you know?
And he didn't choke her one handed.
That's why it's important to point out.
Yeah, he. Didn't like if it was two bloody
hands, I'd be like, he feels guilt over all of the the death
and all of that. But I think it's more directed.
You know, when he smashed his wife's head in with the stone,
do you think he did it with one or two hands?
There's. That too.
Yeah, there's that. Too, But I just, you know, he
should feel guilty over that, but I don't think he does I.
Don't see a? Ray of Roy's vision.
I just don't think we will. I love that.
And by the way. I like your take of shade.
To be clear, I wanted to get the digging on his his errand wife
but. By the way, generic Targaryen,
generic Targaryen is spelled GENAERIC.
Generic. Yes, Targaryen.
Yeah, Yeah. So this also is a point though.
Him thinking of, oh, you're the better warrior, That means
you're better than your brother. This is this very much ties into
what I'm saying about Viserys being more peaceful and how it
it goes into that gendered argument of yeah, the.
Well, he's a man, He's more prepared for war.
Well, Viserys is a man, but he's not more prepared for war.
So what are you saying here? Just it's just, it's just might
makes right. Like that's it, That's what it
boils down to. And it's like, well, that's
that's not good, you know, and we can, I don't get behind that.
So Baylor and Ranira, this has a great conversation.
They talk about Alyssa as well. So ties into the the scene with
his mother because they add more detail about her.
And this is this is this is pretty cool.
And then maybe it gets into a little more of Damon's psyche.
Alyssa was the first rider of Melee's and the only other rider
besides Rainey's. And it's pointed that Melis was
really fast, like the fastest beast.
Whoever lived was what Bayless says.
And that might be like, I don't know if she could really know
that for a fact. But Melis was really fast.
And that's part of that enters into the discussion of why she
was ployed the way she was, why Rainey's thought she had maybe
the chance to win and things like that.
The fact that she was rejected, that she rejected Damon is
interesting and might be like part of his psyche, like his
mother's dragon rejected him. That's the one he went for
first. But didn't reject Rainey's
right? Like Oh well, maybe this dragon
prefers women. I don't know.
So two out of two that doesn't exactly prove a pattern.
But you know, that's it's something.
And Alyssa was very interesting in that she maybe this is book
cannon only, but until we're told otherwise I assume it's
also show cannon. When Viseros was like 3 days
old, she strapped him to her chest and flew off on her dragon
melees and took him flying and then did the same for Damon
within a few days of his birth, which was about three years
later. So yeah.
So get them started young. Talk about like, that's that's
that's like another level of like, well, piercing your ears
when you're really young. No, take them on their first
dragon ride when they're three days old.
But I'm sure they were strapped in.
Well, you know. Well, I won, yes.
I love that they referred to Alyssa here.
And I think that you're right, Aziz, that it does give us that
necessary insight into the fact that he kind of always longs to
have a closeness to his mom. Perhaps.
I think that makes sense to me, just makes sense.
Also, I just want to say in this scene, I know what happens.
Read the book. Like, I know that Corliss was
going to be offered the hand pin, you know, But when she
pulls the box out and she like is going to give it to, I don't
know why my pictures isn't loading up, but she's going to
give it to Baylor there. There was like a brief moment,
right? Like my heart was in my throat
and I was like Baila. I was like, no, I I knew that
Corliss was, it was just like this brief moment.
And I'm so curious if any like show only people were like,
what's she giving Baila? Like, what did you think she was
giving Baila? What was happening here Anyways?
I find it to be a little bit manipulative of Rainiera to use
Baila in this method to get Corliss on board.
I think she's right to do it. I don't think it's wrong, but
like it's like she's kind of like having this bonding morning
moment with Bayla just to kind of get her to to take the hand
pin to Coralie's. Like maybe not just for that,
but I don't know. It was, which is maybe me giving
props to Rainier just as much as like saying like it was
manipulative, that's she needs to be manipulative.
She needs to like make things happen that are good for her.
It was a good move. Yeah, and Baila's clearly the
right person to send, even if we're just looking at in
retrospect and she wants to rely on Baila more and more.
So she has to send her into a variety of situations to see how
she handles them. It's like, OK, she did good
there. I'm going to do that again.
I'm going to use her again in a similar diplomatic situation or,
or something, you know, because yeah, she's a young woman.
She doesn't, she doesn't fully know what she's capable of yet.
Even Baila doesn't know what she's fully capable of yet.
By the way, with the mentioning Damon and his mother issues,
another parallel to Amond very clearly has mother issues.
He comes out and says that you and Mitchell does in the
interview that I referred to earlier days like, yeah, this
dude has mommy issues. And yes, what is Damon Many the
1000 and 15th parallel between those two.
And I guess Bayla and Reyna have daddy issues and mommy issues.
They. Don't have a good lot in life at
all and they seem pretty well adjusted.
I will say, like Baylor and Rayna seem pretty decent, but.
Have each other that helped. I mean, do they it seems like.
Well, they did have each other. They've.
Been separated for large parts of their lives, considering
Baylor was over with Rainey's and and Rayna was not, you know,
like they have been separated for pretty large bits of their
life. That's.
True, and they have large amounts of time together too
though. But you're.
Yeah, yeah, anyways. Yeah, they they, they are self
reliant and reliant. Had each other, didn't do too
much good. So our final scene of the
episode is the Jason Rainiera scene where they discuss the
blood of the dragon. Rainiera again reading about
Vesenia. Jason's like, don't be like her.
And it's a little ominous when she's like, well, why shouldn't
I be? And all he has is it was a long
time ago. He doesn't have a good retort
for that. He's kind of.
I liked your comment as these. You're like well he's like no,
I'm not Megor, don't compare me. Your son is not Megor.
Don't be like her in that. I was like, OK, maybe that's the
only valid reason Jace has to balk at the Vicenia comparison.
It's like if you're Vicenia, then I'm.
So I think he didn't want to say it.
I think he didn't want to like attack her idol or accuse her
being tyrannical or whatever else.
You know, I think he's like, it was a long time ago.
Let's not get into this. Yet, and this is the minute he's
expecting to get chewed out for going off by himself too.
So he's also already, like, expecting to be punished or
yelled at or. Yeah, he's he's he's he did the
thing where you ask forgiveness later.
And this is him doing that. He's like, ask permission later.
Do you know, act first? Yeah.
So anyway, so this is part of her frustration.
She lashes out with that answer. But regarding Vicinia, in part
because as she explains to him, she's like, look, even you are
out here doing things for us and you did a great job.
But like, I, I need to be active.
I can't be sitting here doing nothing.
I need to fight for my claim. And frankly, with our situation,
visa visa Dragons, especially with Damon doing his own thing,
how can we sideline me? We can't afford to sideline one
of three Dragons when Jace's dragon is smaller, Bale's dragon
is smaller. She's got the only like medium
sized dragon of the three of them and and Damon's is even
larger. But again, he's not like
cooperating. So she's like, y'all, I'm going
to have to fight, like we're going to have to put take that
risk until the conversation takes a little turn here and it
gets pretty interesting. It's like, well, you know,
there's other options, Jason. While talking about the problem,
they they really hone in on Veigar.
Like, OK, well, it's Veigar is the problem.
Everyone's complaining about being afraid of Veigar.
And I get it, you know, that's Veigar is the problem.
If we could take care of her, our options open wide open.
Well, our options get wide open. Yeah, so Jason says, well, maybe
we could get Damon to take on Ayman, you know, and Rainier's
like, like, I'm not talking about Damon right now.
You can't. Get Damon to do anything.
You can't do anything. Make him part of your plan.
She's like that would be nice if, you know, they just do that
to each other, but like that's not a thing right now, if ever.
So Jace, she's like, OK, moves on, mentions Rayna.
She's like, well, Rayna can take a dragon, right.
And we're reminded that that has trust.
She has tried to mount either Silver Wing or Vermuthor and I
think this was actually mentioned in season one.
It seemed familiar when they mentioned it was like, Oh yeah,
I think they actually said that before and I think I just forgot
about it, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that was this
is the second time that's mentioned, which is a good
mention. It's like, why didn't she try to
mount one of those other big ass Dragons?
Well, I guess she did. Now, Jace, as has been shown
before, he knows he's a bastard. He doesn't necessarily talk
about it. But when when Baylor brought up
like what about Sir Harwin Strong?
He's like, yeah, he loved us. He's like, of course she did
because they were talking to him.
They were talking about him as if he was the father without
calling him the father. They know he knows.
He knows she knows. So he knows he's a bastard and
downplays the Valyrian history. He's like, yeah, the Valyrians
said that only Valyrians can ride Dragons, but look at me
y'all like I'm only half Valyrian and I got a dragon.
How far does this go? How far can we push this?
How much dragon blood do you actually need, if any?
Now, do the Targaryens really want everyone to know the answer
to that question? That's kind of why that's part
of her hesitation. I think she's like, this is a
mad thought, right? That's what she says.
But then they're like, there could be scores, and they look
at the books and the scrolls, like there could be a lot of
candidates here. Maybe some of them are decent
individuals that we could maybe trust.
Whether that's true or not, whether you can actually trust
someone after you give them a dragon, the power goes to their
head. Who knows?
You're just like strapping and giving some random dude a nuke
or some random woman a nuke. What's going to happen?
But again, they're undo anything to win mode.
They're in win or die mode. So it's like, would they bring
this up if it wasn't going to happen?
There would be such a thing to tease and not do, right?
Right, Sean. So my prediction here, this is
my what I'm wondering what I'm piercing together because they
have also presented us this old character who's claiming to have
Targaryen blood. And they really seem to be
focusing on this Hue character who has blonde hair and wears it
just like Eamon and Damon does. I wonder if these characters are
potential dragon riders. I wonder if they're going to get
dug up. Their lineage is going to get
dug up. They Hugh has motivation, right,
to be angry with the greens. He's trapped in town.
He feels like he's got no hope. He hasn't been paid for his job.
So that that's where that's what I started to piece together to
wonder about if that's a direction they're going to go is
to Hugh and Olf. I can't think of another
candidate right now. Maybe they'll introduce all new
characters. But though you know, it seems
like they're looking for candidates to be dragon riders
and to show his presented as some candidates to be dragon.
Riders, there's probably more than that too, right?
Yeah, like you said, there could be.
Jay says there could be scores and scores and Rainier's like
it's a mad thought, like I said. And then Jay says it's better
than defeat and death, which again, that just goes to show
anything goes because that's the alternative.
It's like they'll even these kind of good guys like Jason
Rainier come off as better people, more ethical than a lot
of the people involved in this war so far.
And even there like, yeah, we, we, we got to just leverage and
mortgage other aspects of our existence to get through this.
You know, we got to we got to widen our ethical concerns and
just take more risks and see what happens.
I will say, though, I'm still concerned and suspicious.
Let's say you find someone else who can ride a dragon and they
are, I don't know, like their bloodline is still close enough
to some noble house and they're an honorable person who says
you're going to be good at it. Rainey's is maybe the most
experienced dragon slash dragon writer there is, and she came
close. She took Vegar to the ground but
still could not finish the job. So even if you get a dragon
that's on par with size of Vegar and someone who can write it,
that's different from successfully defeating Vegar.
You know, you're totally right. Yeah.
So it's super interesting, isn't it?
And these are. And like they say, these are
bigger Dragons than the ones they already have.
So you're if it's the whole power goes to someone's head or
if military might angle or both. Yeah, like they're empowering
someone to be stronger than they are potentially in a way not,
not with a stronger claim or a stronger, like, you know, their
place in the hierarchy or whatever, but just like more
physically and martially powerful.
Like Eamon has moved into a more powerful position for a number
of reasons, but a larger one is because of Agar.
He's larger. One is the large dragon, Yeah.
And he seems mostly to be able to control Veigar.
But it seemed like Veigar was a little out of his hands when he
killed Luke, right? And so these new dragon riders,
again, even if they're good at riding the dragon, it still
doesn't mean they're going to completely control the dragon.
That's it. And they haven't been in these
situations. They're like, well, I don't like
well, surely I all the other times Veigar fought a dragon her
size, it it went like this, you know, And so I know exactly what
to expect. No, no one knows.
Like even the Targaryens who have passed don't know.
None of them have seen like two really big Dragons fight each
other. This is the closest they've got
was Veigar verse Meilies, and that was devastating and insane.
And we're talking about Silverwing and Vermothor are
apparently even bigger than that.
Vermothor definitely is. We haven't seen Silverwing yet,
but Vermothor is the second biggest dragon in the realm.
I think Silverwing might be third, but it's whatever.
She's really big, you know, and we'll see what they do with
that. So very exciting.
One little hope I have is it if the Blacks do do this and
realize they can get more dragon riders, then maybe the Greens
will also and they might track down that Kristen Cole has
Targaryen blood. And he gets.
To have sex with 2 Queens, Laura, Commander, Hannah the
King and Dragon Rider. That's more titles than Danny or
John. I mean, damn, that's right.
The truest song of ice and fire. The true the true is Zora highs.
Kristen Cole, You heard it here first, y'all, y'all, That's
right. And I think that does it for
today, folks. Any final thoughts?
We I liked your your theory there, Sean.
We'll see how it goes and we hope to see a lot of y'all for
Wednesday will be it'll be a spoilery episode with Jason
Concepcion. Right now we're planning on
doing AQ and A, so get your questions ready.
It's a good thing to do in the middle of the season.
I think the halfway point is ish is the appropriate time for
getting things clarified and getting ourselves situated for
the next several episodes, which will be a big movers in the
story I think. But we'll have to wait and see.
So thanks to Sean and Ashea and thanks as well to Bran the
Builder for our awesome intro. We love our cool Targaryen fire
and blood intro so very much. Thanks as well to Michael
Clarfel for the maps. That's Clara docs.de KLARADO
x.de. You can get copies of those maps
yourself. They don't have to look as big
as this. They can be smaller, they can be
bigger. You can get them printed in a
variety of ways. All you do is pay for the file
and then you can do whatever you want with it like we have.
And until next time you know what to do, Valar Rereadus.
None. None.