Hey folks, just a little note here.
At the beginning, this episode cut out twice while we were
recording it, we had to restart the live stream twice.
We had power outage and a storm and an Internet outage all kind
of at the same time, so we had to edit it all together.
It should be mostly unnoticeable, but just in case
you were there during the live stream or if you notice anything
a little wonky, well, that's why.
Other than that, it should be a perfectly cromulant episode.
The sewing has occurred, and it was red and terrible and red.
That's of course a line written about Melisandre's first
appearance from Crescent's point of view, the 1st chapter of A
Clash of Kings, but it clearly fits nicely here in my opinion.
Relore is the God of fire and shadow, but Vermithor
Vermithrillor played that role today or yesterday or whenever
you watched it. The sowing of the seeds was
epic, an achievement. Another example of this show
looking more like a series of movies than television.
I guess that line is starting to get blurrier and blurrier, but
still, it looked like it belonged on the big screen, and
I would love to see it on the big screen someday.
Maybe we'll all get that chance. But it wasn't just a spectacle.
Of course, in terms of the story, this is a bona fide game
changer. Every strategy employed by the
Blacks to this point was conceived with Vergar in mind.
Getting around her, dealing with her.
She's the big threat now, apparently.
They can match her, outnumber her.
The tables of turn. The characters who claimed
Dragons did so in a variety of ways and possess a variety of
personality traits and background and bloodlines, not
all of which are fully known or understood.
Not to mention who they were pales in comparison to who they
are now that they are dragon riders.
It's quite a power to invest in someone.
It's quite a power to receive as if from nowhere, something you
wouldn't have expected to be possible.
And a major theme of the episode is faith.
Faith in the gods. And the Dragons are gods in this
setting, But they aren't the only gods, of course.
The Seven are omnipresent, and we have an execution in front of
a Werewood. One could easily see that as an
offering or sacrifice. We're the many victims of
Vermithor, not also a form of blood sacrifice and offering to
a God like being. You can certainly look at it
that way. And who the gods choose, what
the gods provide, and how the humans perceive this.
When you speak for or go against the gods, there can be
consequences. That goes just as much for
dragon keepers as it does Riverlords and many others.
Along with those higher powers. We've got the action, the blood,
the plotting, the Dragons, the seeds, the questions to carry
forward in our minds because this was the penultimate episode
of the season. So we've got all that and more
on this episode of History of Westeros Podcast.
Hello and welcome back to our review of episode seven.
We will not have any spoilers today as we always do not have
on Mondays. Well.
Said. I could have written that a
little better, but I think I got the point across.
And every Saturday we do preview episodes filled with spoilers
from the books, from trailers and all that.
And well, we'll be doing that over in New York this Saturday.
If you're in the New York area, come join us at City Winery,
where our episode will be live. And of course, we'll be back
this time as well next week for the finale.
How's it going, Sean? How you doing?
You enjoyed that episode, I'm sure.
I did it was great. I it might be on the lower half,
but even the one I like least I still love.
So that's not too negative. And sometimes I wonder how much
it's the episode versus the things that happen in it.
I'm I'm I'm frustrated. They were nearest send all those
people to their deaths. So I wish I could have been
handled differently but. Yeah, that's something we'll
talk about today for sure. If you've got questions, send
them to us live right now and we might answer them.
Or if you're catching this later, send them over to
westeroshistory@gmail.com and maybe we'll answer it on a
future stream or just respond to you via e-mail as well.
I will be mentioning some other things during this episode that
relate to a lot of things during the season.
So we are basically turning into look back mode as much as we are
looking forward because the season is getting close to the
end and we want to see like connect the storylines from
beginning to end and and look at these things as whole arcs.
But of course, there's so much to come.
And of course, a lot of what will happen in the final
episode. We'll just set up a lot of a lot
of more things to come. Pita chick says I love how
Silverwing said if my husband gets a rider, I want a rider
looks at all Well you're here. So I guess I mean, Sean as a cat
owner and Shay and I are cat owners, you understand that you
just some animals just pick what they like and there is no
accounting for it. Yep.
And I'm sure we'll talk about that more, but I think they're
specifically trying to keep it inconsistent.
What or if there are rules for riding a dragon?
Absolutely. In fact, they said that in the
behind the scenes content that Ryan Condall didn't want.
Wanted to give you some ideas, things that could maybe make you
think about. Maybe this is a connection,
maybe this is but. But they're never going to
reveal the whole answer, just like George never would.
It's supposed to be an object of mystery that will remain an
object of mystery. Assuming there is a quote UN
quote whole answer, like right, how do you how do you train a
dog? All right, there might be some
general guidelines, but every dog is exactly the same.
I don't think so, right? Like it depends on how old it
is, what breed it is, what the owners like, all these other
factors. And I'm sure it's the same for
Dragons. And if gods were dogs and dogs
were gods, I mean, the name of the word is just reversed,
right? The letters, they might behave a
little differently, but your point is the same in general.
Let me clarify something. When I say behind the scenes, I
mean generically all the behind the scenes content they give us.
That generally means two things though.
There's the inside the episode that follows immediately after
the episode. And then there's the House that
Dragons Built, which is a separate program that goes into
detail about production and other stuff that's that's that's
listed separately and is usually about 20 minute episodes.
I would say if if you don't watch the BTC because you don't
like hearing what the cast and creators say about the
characters. Like if you don't watch the
inside the episode afterwards, you might want to still give
House that Dragons Built a shot because it's very much more
about the technical side of things and not really as much
about like Eamon thought this, which kind of spoils the the
mystery of you wondering. So maybe give it a shot.
I agree, yeah. Yeah, that that 10 minute, 10
minute ish behind the scenes one is a little bit more an analysis
of the episode. Whereas the House of Dragon Bill
is a little bit more of a showcase of film making
processes, right. The kind of scenes and cameras
and how they let people on fire, stunt work, all that kind of
stuff. Edgers important questions.
Think queen things you don't even necessarily know.
Like everybody knows the dragon stuff is really, really
expensive to make, but you might not have known that that
weirwood was actually quite a project.
And that that surprised me. I looked at him like, that's a
tree. They just modified it.
So I was like, no, that's not just a tree.
There was a lot more that went into it than that.
So like, yeah, that was very. Including the fact that the
Harrenhal weirwood is George RR Martin himself.
If you didn't watch The House the Dragons built, you might not
have realized that they used his face as the model, which is
really sweet. That's right.
You didn't expect George RR Martin to be a model, but he is
one. A tree model.
Well, just a face tree model. So Sean, that was your you.
You gave your basic take on the episode as a whole.
What about your favorite performances?
Let's talk about that. I once again have a hard time
picking out a favorite performance.
I'll tell you my My favorite scene was Damon and the River
Lords, and based on that, I'm tempted to pick Damon or maybe
even Oscar. That I think that kid stood out.
He reminded me of Liana Mormont in the original Game of Thrones
series, so it had that energy. I think if I'm pressed to pick,
that's what I pick. Nice.
That's that's a great take. And I love that you said that
because I'm I'm currently spacing out on who it was, but I
asked somebody else about about that.
And they also said that Liana, they got Liana vibes from from
young Oscar. Which is great.
That was you. I'm sure someone else has said
it to you too, because I've seen a dozen people say it online.
We're not alone. It's a young, precocious, you
know, leader of their house that is standing up against, you
know, someone older and more powerful.
Presumably it's it's a natural comparison to me.
I wonder in a situation like that or like this, how much that
is just sort of a coincidence is bound to happen.
Or if there was any intention. I wonder if that actor was
coached, you hear? Watch Leanna Mormont do it like
she did, you know, if the writers were were feeling that
vibe when they put it in the script, you know?
Well, we did our usual weekly poll for best performance in our
Facebook group, and currently the winner is the SFX team for
the Dragons, but Oscar Archie Barnes, his name is second.
So yeah, he's doing really well in the poll, and I would not
argue with that. He's certainly up there for me
as well. But as Shea, what were your
favorite performances and your overall take on the episode?
I would say I really loved this episode.
I did vote for Archie Barnes. I am somewhat biased.
I don't think I've said this on the podcast yet.
I don't think I've actually announced it or said anything
about it. But at Dragon Con this year, I'm
gonna be wearing Oscar Tully. Muppet costume listener and
friend Chuck has made Kermit Tully, Grover Tully, Elmo Tully
and Oscar Tully, so I was really excited to see him be so, so
popular, I suppose. Keep an eye on our social media
around early September to see photos of that.
Yeah. And so, yes, I liked his
performance. I liked the layers of how they
were kind of playing up the grievance that he had with
Damon. I thought you could really tell
that layer, which was good acting, But I also really,
really liked you and ulf I, I think that they did a good job
throughout the season of building up two characters.
I was really invested by the time they were on Dragonstone.
And like when I saw them in the Cradles, like there he is, there
he is. You know, there's the ones we
know. I don't know.
I just loved it. I'm I'm really excited to see
more of our dragon seeds. Heck, yeah.
I have a similar take. I really, really liked Archie
Barnes. Well, my favorite was probably
ulf I had AI had a hard time. Like you, Sean, it's really
difficult to pick a single best performance.
I've only been able to like, clearly do that once or twice.
I'm like, OK, this time. I know this isn't one of those
times. Although I think I would pick
ulf just so many good performances.
A lot of characters that only had a couple of lines or one
line, and still some of those really stood out.
So yeah, just another, another win for the show.
Overall. The music and sound design,
though, I think I would say it's been the best episode this
season in terms of that. The the just the all the
roaring, the flames, the different use of familiar music
that we've had in the past with different takes on it, like
modified versions of that with that was really amazing.
And I loved the sound of the distant Ravens when Damon was
executing Willem, which might have been hard to catch.
It was like a disassociative moment.
So that was really good. So just elements beyond acting
and story, I thought were among the best as well.
I I. Do want to say that I feel like
whenever Emma Darcy is featured, they're my favorite.
Yeah. They just haven't been as
featured as much as these past couple, so I'm having a hard
time deciding. But whenever Raniera has more of
a focal point to the episode that this season, at least
that's been my favorite each time, I also want to say that.
Olf. Yeah, that olf was, I don't
know, I was dismissive of him, frustrated with him early on.
But I, I like him a little bit more this episode because I feel
like he kind of had to face himself, his lies, his his
integrity or whatever it came into question.
And he had a little growth here and they got a little humor out
of it too. But I'm sure we'll talk about
that more as we get through here.
Yeah. I just really appreciate the
range of emotions he expresses, like the just different.
His face just says so much. Yeah, I just love that.
We'll talk about it more later, but I don't know if I would say
that I think it's growth for ulf to fake it till he makes it, you
know? Like, is that really great?
Is that learning your lesson about being a liar?
Not really. That's saying, yeah, keep
guessing everyone. But I still love ulf and I'm
enjoying him, so, you know. Yeah, yeah, we'll, we'll see.
OK. Yeah, We'll talk about him more
later. So Jenny P sends a super chat.
No question. Thank you, Jenny.
I appreciate that. We'll start where the episode
starts, with Dragonstone on the beach.
Not a vacation, but it goes pretty well for Rainier.
Clinton Liberty pointed out that's Adam pointed out this
shot, the scene was shot the day after he did his sea smoke
bonding scenes. And it's the same beach, but the
weather changed a lot, which worked out really well for them.
Like it was this a nice sunny day when he claims sea smoke and
this day it's stormy. And that really fit the vibe of
the scene cause Rainier is wary at first.
He's no idea what the Hell's going on.
Like who the heck is this guy? Why does he have my husband's,
my ex husband's dragon, You know, And she's really used to
people using her power as leverage for their own power.
She's been betrayed a lot, people talking down to her.
She hasn't had a lot of people that just kind of fall in line
and obey. And so she's wary of that when
it happens, like, wait, you're just kneeling to me really.
So she doesn't, she doesn't really believe it at first, but
he's so convincing and earnest. And so she starts to accept it.
And and he has a line that just spells out a lot of what the
episode has, which is he says, if the gods have called me to
greater things, then who am I to deny them?
That becomes like a touchstone of this episode, letting the
gods decide whether the gods are Dragons or just fate or destiny.
And a lot of the actions taken by a lot of these characters
should be seen through that light, whether they're a dragon
seed thinking I've got a chance, maybe I'm chosen by the gods, or
whether it's Reyna out there thinking why the heck else is a
dragon here? I'm the only Targaryen here.
Like, doesn't this seem like the gods have sort of intervened?
It it can be interpreted that way in a world that has more
belief in the the the gods above and deities and the
supernatural. Yeah, I don't believe in that
sort of thing. And I can't help but see how how
you would make that jump, right? Like, it seems so wild for there
to be a dragon with Raina in the Veil when she needs a dragon.
I, I Yeah. This just like this the dragon
just chose like Rainier had never heard of such a thing.
Like maybe. Yeah.
So it just seems like, like Missouri said, something has
changed. You know, Rainier I can see
being a little quicker to jump to the I don't know, destiny
conclusion because she knows there's this fire and ice
prophecy, right? Good point.
But it it reminds me that she should have freaking told that
to Bayla. It's Raina, Raina.
Raina, sorry I get the mixed up. It's so funny because I made it.
We were making jokes after the episode about like when they
when all the kids looked around for Raina, you know that they
were like, where's Bayla? But anyway, it seems like
Raniera should have given her the prophecy too, before she
sent her off with these eggs. And they're like.
Oh, 'cause she has the. I can see that.
So that's a pretty good point. That's a good.
Argument, I think. Rayna.
She has the egg, she has the children.
She should have the prophecy, I think.
She has all that. Yeah, that makes sense.
That's a good call, Sean. So I like how the Dragon's
attitude is present here, like when Rainiera is upset and wary
of who this guy with the dragon is before he introduces himself
and all that. Cyrax is yelling and screaming
and making a lot of noise and is angry but and Sea Smoke is
probably picking up on that too and is reacting because Adam's a
little calmer, I think maybe. I mean, he's probably a little
scared too, but he's calmer than Rainier.
He's not like aggressive feeling towards her.
He's not like, about to get her. Roar at each other.
Yeah, but this is just how I interpret it.
This is, I could be wrong, but this is just how I see it.
And so when Rainiera calms down because she realizes this guy's
not a threat, Cyrax calms down and so does Sea smoke.
All the Dragons calm down when the humans calm down.
I'm sure Adam had a lot of emotions going on too, and Sea
Smoke probably picking up on that.
But I don't think he was mad or aggressive, which I think maybe
Rainiera did have some of that in her, at least the the the
stirrings of that, because she was wary.
Isn't it interesting, Sean, that he doesn't say who his father
is, and neither does Corley's tell her that she's in the dark
about who he really is? Isn't that interesting?
It is very interesting and I can see why he might not want to do
it. He's got maybe he doesn't want
to embarrass Corlis or he wants to have done this on his known
and not be in his father's shadow.
I could see the different motivations he might have that
that make a lot of sense. Corlis maybe also doesn't want
to be embarrassed or embarrassed.
Rainey's legacy. I can see the reasons he might,
but I don't know if they realize how valuable it would be for
Raniero to know. She's trying to track down how
do we get a dragon rider who has this blood?
Why did this happen? It would be such a revelation
for her and might have saved some lives.
If they had known, they might have approached it a little bit
differently. One of the little note I want to
make here is I really loved that they really had to raise their
voice to communicate that they were staying in a quite a
distance. Because it was stormy outside.
Yeah, the actual wind. That's a A level of it's, it's
minor, it's a nuance, but it's a level of realism.
Sometimes it isn't there that I roll my eyes at.
Sometimes it takes me out a little bit.
But I was rather further engaged.
I further believed this scene with two Dragons.
You know what I mean? Harder to make that look real,
right? But it does look so real
because, man, they move. So, like, realistically, the way
they just pad along the beach and Cyrax's tail, like flopping
in the sand. Yeah, it was really good.
And one thing I don't fully agree with you on is maybe they
could have done it differently. I think this example is what got
her to do it the way she did. Seeing that the dragon is
capable of choosing is why she did it that way.
So I don't know that learning who he was would have actually
changed anything, because those other folk are just as similarly
related. Just because they don't have a
connection to Coralie's doesn't really matter.
It's hard to say, but it might have led her to keep digging
down the. Well.
Mazari is the one who's told her not to do that because hey,
look, I know where all these bastards are.
There is a more direct connection, but that causes
trouble with Jace. And right, it would have sent
her in the wrong direction because as Corley says, we're
not actually like he was confused.
So she would have been like, she would have been distracted by
the misdirect of like Corley's being related to the reason and
not focused on the fact that it's very possibly their mother.
Also, there's more to it than this, which is that the the
Annals, the books will not reveal people who are only one
generation removed. These are direct bastards of
Targaryens. You're not going to find that in
the Annals. So you're not going to find that
going back. Yeah, which will be less.
And that's, that was what she was down on that because it's
like, well, Stefan Darkin was so distantly related.
If we find someone that's just a grandfather, grandmother, that
might not be good enough either. But we have direct descendants
and that's what Mazar I was giving her.
So I think they they still would have gone with that probably
because those are the closest descendants they can find and
they're and they know where they are immediately.
Whereas this this research might not have dug up much at all.
Anyway, we're getting a little ahead of ourselves here.
Let's bring it back to the scene.
So she says, it's something I feared impossible and I'm
pleased by it. So it gets her a dragon rider
and it reveals to her how she might get more.
As flawed as the idea is, it's certainly workable, certainly
has success despite all the casualties.
So the council is relieved that Rainier is OK.
They were a little worried about that, but they're upset,
understandably. It's again, she's run off
without telling anyone, and this time they know she's going to
confront a dragon rider. It's not that she just
disappeared and like, well, where did she go?
She specifically went to confront another dragon, which
is like, wait, what? That, that sounds very
dangerous. So then she upsets them even
more by just not meeting with them afterwards and not treating
Adam like a thief, like they expect this person to be given
justice rather than dinner and, you know, a seat at the table.
So this is when we get into the prejudice against the low born.
It comes up pretty big here and it's something that permeates
the entire episode. You have and probably will
continue going forward. I mean, you can imagine there's
some nobles out there that are going to look real Askew at a
bastard on a dragon. They are not.
I mean, they already do with Jace and which is part of his
issues that we'll discuss shortly.
So and trust is not a permanent state, right?
You can, you may trust somebody now, that doesn't mean you'll
trust them later. Like what?
What are they going to do? I really think this was such a
misstep for Rainiera to just go right to meeting with Mazaria,
not go to her council. Like they're all here waiting
for her. I really, really didn't like
that she did this. I found it to be short sighted.
Like go to the meeting of like, Can you imagine a work meeting
where the person who's supposed to lead the meeting just doesn't
show up? I'm sorry, I don't know.
It bothered me. And you can see why Jace is
extra bothered. He's like, where is the queen?
She's not coming. And even like when he when he
hears about what they're doing, the way that Baylor looks over
is Jace. You can tell they've had private
conversations where she knows that this is going to make Jace
like extra mad. And he's not wrong, I just don't
think he's. Wrong.
Yeah, I agree with you. I do agree with you, don't get
me wrong, I completely agree with you.
I've been frustrated multiple times in the past when she's
like not let the council know what's going on, but I can see
how she might justify this time more so than the others because
she has a hand now. Corliss is there, that is his
role to lead in her stead. So I still don't think it makes
it OK, but I could see how she might be justifying it.
And he says the right thing. He says we'll reserve judgement
until we actually talk to this person and meet them and see
what she what the queen says. But I'll.
But yeah, it's frustrating that that she's not there.
It's frustrating that she doesn't explain herself.
I do kind of understand as well why she doesn't go, not again.
I, I wouldn't necessarily agree with this logic, but she knows
they're it's going to be really hard to convince them that this
is the right way. So I think she may be trying to
prove something before convincing or letting the proof
do the convincing. But again, that's that's there's
a lot of flaws with that idea. So she starts looking, she
starts digging into the annals right away.
She's like goes right for it. She's like, I'm going to start
looking for more candidates. Mazari comes in and says, do you
trust this guy? And she's like, what choice do I
have? He's a dragon rider now either,
which is basically saying I can either trust him or I can have
him killed. Like what else is there?
I'm not going to let him go, you know?
Then he might join the other side or something like that,
which she would be less worried about if she knew he was
Corliss's son. But she doesn't know that.
So he's just some guy. And so yeah, she doesn't really
have a choice. He either has to make use of him
or have him killed, which is kind of crazy considering she's
he's controlling a dragon that they really need.
So Mazari giggles at her. She's like, look, yo, you want
to look for Targaryens? I got that covered.
She knows where to find a whole lot of them.
This is a woman that not only has worked in brothels, she's
owned one. She's been keeping tabs on
Targaryen bastards for years, kind of like maybe how virus was
keeping tabs on different Roberts bastards.
And it's a, it's a sensible thing to do when you're a person
in power. These these potential these are
potential claimants to the throne if something crazy
happens. And in this case, it's coming up
for a different use. It's not just claimants to the
throne. This is for dragon claiming and
her. So her past work is really
paying off big here. Shout out to lady Gwen, by the
way, who we had on this Saturday for our preview episode.
She predicted the use of mushrooms line here under the
sheets, under the wood piles. And yes, that is a line for
mushroom in fire and blood. So a good taste by Mazaria there
Mushroom Mazaria. I think I joke that Mazaria is
High Valyrian for mushroom. Yeah.
And so, yeah. So she knows exactly.
She knows how all these people are.
And she also says this was, this is an easy line to miss.
She says there's got to be some bastards here on Dragonstone,
too. In the book, they pretty much
all come from Dragonstone. Same difference.
I mean, I think that was a little bit of an oversight on
the on the book's part to say to not have any from King's Land
because, yes, there's been Targaryens living there for over
100 years. And of course, some of them go
to the brothels, like, duh. Yeah, of course they do.
And that's been said in the show, right?
Damon and Vasaris talked about it.
Vasaris joked about all the time the Street of Silk when we were
16, you know? And there you go.
We saw Amon, Aegon going. Yeah, we saw Amon go.
You're right, he is Sylvie as. A.
He goes all the time. We've even seen saw one of
Aegon's bastards in season one in those fighting pits.
So, yeah, so Rainier has got a little bit of, you know, royal
prejudice that's very common among the nobility and is going
to be probably worse amongst royalty rather than just
regular, regular nobility. They have such a distance
between themselves and the low born in their day-to-day life or
their entire lives that and they've been taught to not trust
them. The fact that they're they
aren't trustworthy because they don't have honor, because they
don't belong to a house that gives teaches them things That's
she's right to be wary, but that's not the right reason to
be wary. It's just you should be wary of
giving any unvetted person a lot of power, regardless of what
family they come from. Power can go to anyone's head.
So yeah, it it unfortunately, the let the Dragons choose their
riders method doesn't include any personality vetting.
It's just the Dragons just choose who they like.
So how is that any better? Right.
Like you know, but. You could do like a a couple of
levels of phasing people out. Like I think it would've been
smarter to do like some interviews, just get like a
personality sense and just make sure someone isn't just like
despicable. I think you probably could have
ruled out a dozen people easily, right?
Quite possible, yeah. You would hope that Mazari took
that into account. If she knows these people, maybe
she'd just like, well, don't, don't bring that.
Guy don't, he's a rapist. Still don't bring.
Him don't bring that one. Yeah, there's a couple she just
left off her list. So maybe that was accounted for,
but it wasn't in the book either.
So we're just they're just going with what was there in that
case, But I I could see why you that's a sensible suggestion
that that no one thought of like, you know, maybe we should
vet these people a little more. So moving on from there.
Well, obviously you have plenty to say about this topic in
general, but moving on to Corlise and Adam, quite the
surprise how he turns around like, oh, hi, dad, you know, but
he does. He keeps it professional, like
you said, Sean, and he he it's not his place to be the one to
break that to to break the spell of silence on what's really
going on here. So he's like he's so duty bound.
He's like, I request leave from my duties.
It's so it's almost absurd, like you're a dragon rider now.
There's no way he's going to make you stay as a shipwright.
That's just insane, right. But he's and and I can.
Imagine if he did. He shows up.
The work on his dragon hammer is the word.
He has the lunch. That's like, yeah, that's like a
get through the dragon. Can you imagine the guy at the
construction site and he's like, everybody pulls up in their work
cars in the morning and one guy just pulls up in a stretch
Hummer, you know, and was like, you work at the construction
site, you know, as a day laborer.
That's strays. That's that's a little your car
is a little out of place there, man.
You know, so Carly's kind of struggles to find the right
words to say. You can see him like start to
form a sentence or two and then he just says, well done.
And it actually meant a lot to Adam.
And I'm not projecting. This is what Clinton Liberty
said in the behind the scenes. It's just two words.
And Corley owes him so much more than that.
He hasn't parented him at all yet.
It's just this is a this is a man that's like in the desert
that hasn't had a drink of water and this drink of water.
This is that drink of water. He's wanted his whole life, his
father, to acknowledge him, even though it's just those two words
that they mean a lot, you know, from the sidelines, we could
say, man, you owe him so much more.
But to Adam, in that moment, it was it was a very big deal.
And it could be the start of what he owes him.
It's that the ice has been broken, you know?
Yeah, that's a good point. So Carly's then goes to Allen.
After getting the mission set up by Mazaria and Rainier and to
how to collect the dragon seeds, he goes to Allen.
Allen's a pretty stoic fellow, doesn't show a lot of emotions
on his face. But this news, he can't help but
look a little astonished. Like what?
There is very like. It's hard to imagine a thing
that he could say that would be true.
But more, far less, more far fetched than that.
You know, like how like my brother did what now?
Like how is this? Your brother's the king now?
Yeah. Wait, what?
That would be a little crazier. Yeah.
So I was. That's just really great.
And then so Crawlers is basically like, look, you know,
I don't know. I don't know who, you know, I
didn't look that much into your mother's history.
But if he claimed a dragon in Rainiers, but not a call for
more, what do you say? And he's like, Nah, I don't.
I don't want to do that. I don't want to go try for a
dragon. I'm salt and sea.
Nice phrasing there, right, Sean?
I'm salt and sea. Yeah, I think this is a a follow
up for sure to when his daughter he offered his daughter.
Granddaughter. The seat of a granddaughter?
Yeah, of drift Mark. And she's like, I'm firing
blood. You need salt and sea.
And here's Alan saying I'm salt and sea.
And this is also in the wake of the the the plot line with Damon
and his vision of his Sarah saying, you know, the person who
seeks the power is probably not the right person for it.
Alan is like, I just want to be a sailor.
I don't have, I'm not not lusting for something greater.
I, I hope Corliss takes that as you'll be a good reader, you a
good leader. You're not ambitious, right?
You're not going to. Or he has the right kind of
ambition. You'll accept it as a duty, you
know. Yeah, his ambition might be to
be a good leader, you know, for example, which is.
That's a good ambition. Yeah.
So he goes and delivers the message to Alinda, which
presumably contained instructions and names, though
he didn't deliver it directly to Alinda.
He gave it to some agent who took it to another agent who
took it to there, took it to several go betweens here.
There's a lot of agents in Kingsland.
Missouri's got a web right, And Linda's just near the center of
that web, but not quite at the actual center like Missouri is.
Stannis Baratheon says the way Rainier sets aside Jace is a
huge mistake. He's the Crown Prince and is
being dismissed by Rainier in the same way.
He, he, he, he. She dismisses her counsel.
Yeah. Strong.
Words from Stannis Baratheon, yeah.
Stannis would know a thing or two about how to treat your
counsel and being a second born son and all that.
So yeah, no, I I agree. I think that they're the tension
between Rainier and Jace is, is real.
He's not. We'll get to it a little more in
a little more detail, but his concerns are fairly legitimate,
and I don't think she really addressed them all that well.
Well, yeah. Let's come back to that, though.
For my people, says Rainier, giving her best Lord Farquaad.
Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.
Yeah, It's true. It's true.
Very much true. So here we go.
Jason Rainier, This is the next section.
He's livid, like so many people, or like people, like a lot of
counselors and stuff. Just the idea of lowborn having
Dragons is just. He hates it.
And this is where we see this behavior that makes us not like
them as much. We see we see they're mongrels.
It's like, oh, Jace, don't. The audience didn't like that.
None of us wanted to hear him say that.
He's definitely projecting a little bit, but he's got a point
despite the the prejudice there. And to be fair, he was taught
this prejudice. This is given to him.
It wasn't something he was just born.
He wasn't just like I decided that common people are terrible.
But it is still, that doesn't make him not responsible for it.
Still, he's concerned about his place in the succession, which
is a problem unique to him, like people always have.
There's always succession issues here and there.
Rainier doesn't fully understand it though.
It seems like she doesn't grasp exactly what he's saying.
He's still the heir. She's like, what do you mean
you're still the heir? What is that?
What does that matter? Like, well, first of all, you
saw how much shit people gave you when you were the named heir
because they challenged who you really were, whether you were
were deserving of it. In my case, it's not just about
me whether I deserve it. It's whether I am who I say I
am. And everybody knows who I am.
Really. Like, it's an open secret.
Come on, Mom. I know who I am.
I know I'm Harwin's strong son. You really think this is a a
secret? You really think people are
going along with it? No.
If if I can, I can easily be kicked out.
I can lose my claim because of the truth of who I am.
The thing that made me, the thing that proved I am who I am,
despite my dark hair, is the fact that I claimed a dragon.
That's what proved it. Now if other people have Dragons
and they also have like blonde hair and all these things, well,
what's gonna stop if they have a bigger dragon than him, what's
gonna stop them from saying, hey, I come before you.
What if one of them really is Viserys son?
That is actually would could be considered higher in the line of
succession, you know, things like that.
So it's a it's a real concern. I loved this scene.
I really liked the arc they'd given Jace here.
I think it is is very believable.
Like it makes sense that he would be very disturbed by this
and and shake him to his core. I think as much as it hurts to
hear him call it people mongrels, I'm sure he heard
someone say that about him, thought it about himself.
He's projecting, he's feeling anything he negative he says
about any of these dragon seeds. You got to realize he's thinking
it about himself. And it's really painful to me to
think about just. Yeah, just the way that he's
self hating, I guess. And I think Harry Collette did a
really good job at showing this like pain that he has deep down
that he's. Betrayal from his mother.
Yeah, and but like, I'm glad he's expressing it to Rainiera.
He's being emotional with her. He's not purely bottling it up,
but he's also not blowing up at her in the front of everyone
else. I think he's Jace is is doing
pretty good at at dealing with a hard situation.
Hopefully he's not, it's not a he's doing good till he isn't
thing like Aymond, you know. I kind of think so.
I think he's going to snap. I think it's going to be too
much. I think these dragon seeds are
going to do something. I think he's going to be very
sensitive to any little snark from any of the dragon seeds,
you know? A couple comments here, I I felt
in that moment when he said they're mongrels, the look she
gave him was you're a mongrel like you.
How can you say that you're a mongrel?
And but, but the thing I do agree, another thing I think
she's not getting is it like you were saying she was the heir
because Viscera said so, but it was still kind of questioned.
But it was still at least ostensibly upheld until Viserys
died. After that, he wasn't there to
enforce it anymore. And that's what Jason's worried
about right now. She's saying you're my heir, but
when she dies now who's saying it now?
He he can't necessarily stand up for himself, especially if
there's other people with Dragons claiming that they are
the error, or could or should be.
Bigger dragon. Bigger dragon.
Yeah, true, Yeah. Yeah, it's not like a lot of
other people are just like Jace's defender.
He doesn't have like some retinue of, of friends.
He doesn't have a drinking's guard that's like, there to back
him up. Like, yo, when the time comes,
we got your back, you know? Yeah, he's got bail, which is
something that's something that's a big deal, but that's
still just one person. Now I do think, by the way, that
there is at least a potential answer here that might be hard
for them to address in this time of war and are kind of removed
from the continent and all this other stuff.
But I think Jace and Renera need to do the same thing.
The thesaurus and Renera should have done is prop him up as the
heir. Visit all the Lords in the land
with your Dragons and remind them like become a good leader,
meet with the other leaders, have a good tax policy.
To be fair, they did do. That every tower people might
not accept. It to be fair, they have done
that though, like he did go all these diplomatic missions by
itself, which is so that is the you're right, like that's a good
way to do it and it was his idea to do that and he wanted to and
he was that was part of his thinking at the time He's like,
look, this will prove, you know, we have Dragons.
This will prove that we're who we are and we can show them and.
Yeah, it was also his idea to do this with the dragon seeds.
Yeah, maybe not. He liked the nobles, the idea of
nobles, but yeah, he doesn't like these lowborn.
Yeah, yeah, you're right that that was the the tipping point
for him. One last thing, I gotta tell you
that someone made a post about how, uh, Jace, they, they put
Jace and uh, Ben Stiller from Zoo Lander next to each other
doing Blue steel. I can't get that out of my head.
It's been in our breakdown video, Sean.
Yeah, I have had it in there. Yes.
Jace is always serving face in Blue Steel, yes.
Well, I think now at least sometimes it's blue seed.
Blue Seed. Oh, I like that.
He's Jace the face, right? Yeah.
So yeah, Rainiera ends this conversation basically saying,
like, I don't, we don't really have a choice here.
And Jace sort of made the same point himself.
It's like, hey, it's better than defeat and death.
But to him losing his spot in the in the succession is is
defeat and perhaps death because of you know, if you're a rival
claimant, you usually end up dead if you don't win.
It's the Game of Thrones, right? You win or you die.
That's the scenario he's imagining.
So she's developing. Maybe this is the beginning of
maybe a little bit of a God complex here for her or she's
getting a little above the decisions and not listening,
maybe a little bit less. And that's familiar to us
regarding, you know, someone like Daenerys who also had a lot
of bad counselors around her and didn't give great advice.
There were some that were very good too.
But even the ones who were had some flaws and some
shortcomings. Just maybe like Barristan, just
there are certain things he just didn't know about.
You know, Barristan's not a a cunning man, you know, and she's
shown the best temperament. A lot of us would look at at
Rainier and be like, she's probably the the best leader,
you know, in terms of the one that we would want to see sit
the throne in terms of taking care of the realm properly.
But that doesn't mean she's anywhere near perfect.
And that doesn't mean she can't become corrupted by her own view
of herself and her own power. So let's continue to the
bringing of the dragon seeds. Alan goes with that message and
the the the go betweens are utilized and Linda receives the
message. Word spreads.
Posters are put up. You even see Elinda, it's like a
montage. Elinda is seen speaking to a lot
of different people. And one thing that's important
to notice that throughout all the Elinda scenes in this
episode and prior scenes, she has free run of the city when it
comes to the gold Cloaks. That's supposed to be very we're
supposed to notice that and be like, OK, well, the gold cloaks
are clearly on their side, which makes sense, right?
Damon was their commander, and we already saw blood just refers
like, oh commander, you know she's not.
Exactly being that sneaky, she's literally in the Massey sigil on
her dress and like a bright red dress.
I just like she's the opposite of sneaky.
Yeah, yeah, I guess she does. She knows she doesn't have to be
sneaky because. Be suspicious.
Yeah, this. All the cops are on her side.
She doesn't have to hide. Yeah, it's funny, but you wonder
like how much is Laris really aware of this?
I mean, some of this happened so quickly.
Like I get I can buy Laris not knowing about the the call for
dragon seeds because it happens really fast.
Like they deliver the message, she starts gathering them up and
it's like a day or two that they leave.
So like, I don't know if Laris could have reacted anything that
quickly, but the very idea that these bastards existed in the
1st place. And maybe some of the other
stuff like is he keeping this from Amon?
Like the sea smoke news, something to think about before
we get to that second. Let's not talk about that.
No, I just wanted to set it up by laying this out.
Now that's a big deal. The the town is on alert.
A lot of the people are hearing about this gathering of dragon
seeds and ulf is afraid he's like, well, I would go, but you
know, my leg so funny. I love that.
He's like, you know, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity, but
you know, I just, I'm not feeling right.
You know, I'm just got out of the bed on the wrong side today,
you know, So he started backing off his whole like life story a
little bit, isn't he? And then but his friends are
like, Nah, Nah, this is you got to get it.
You got to get back at Eamond. And this is like you.
You can't let everybody know that you've been lying all this
time, you know, And he's like, I just the.
I love how his face just goes through so many emotions.
He's like, should I? No, I can't.
Well, maybe. Well, what if I Yeah, you could
just, like, feel all the different.
The ticker going across his brain.
You can understand why he at first doesn't even believe it to
be real and why he's not eager to try to ride a dragon.
It seems like a very dangerous thing to do.
But of course, he's reminded if they could stick it to Amon,
which is important to them after the rumors that had been spread
through the city before. And his friends just pump him
up. They're like Olf, the dragon
Lord Olf Olf. They shout him up.
You know, he's like, he's pumped up by their support and how
could he say no at this point? Can I just tell you how excited
I am to see, oh, stroll back through his bar, an actual
dragon Lord? We're going to see Samson Ko
there. Allawande from our flag means
Death is going to hopefully be part of his drinking's guard.
Like he's gonna have a little crew of friends.
I don't know. That's.
Right. They might be his retinue going
forward. Yeah, his entourage, like you
said. I think his name is Maja, and
the other guy's name is Clay, by the way.
Oh. Very cool.
Thanks. Yeah.
MAJJAI think it is, and Hugh and Kat on the other hand, their
discussion is much more somber. We learned that their child has
passed, and he admits that he's been lying to her about his
heritage because he's been ashamed of it.
He says he's the son of Bailon's sister.
This should be Sarah Targaryen, the 9th child of Alison and
Jairus. It's a very interesting
character, a very unusual Targaryen.
You might, you might have gathered that like, wait, this
Targaryen with the name Targaryen was working in a
brothel? Yeah, Yeah, that happened.
Yeah, that really. Also might explain why she had
all these bastards. I saw someone in the live stream
chat asked about that. Like wouldn't if that was your
job wouldn't you take moon to? Wouldn't you take steps to make
sure you don't have kids? Well, if you're privileged and
you make lots of money, you might be like, I want to have
kids. I want to keep a few of them.
Yeah, she maybe she liked the dad.
That particular guy, like I want his son, would be fine to have.
Or like he said, she had she it was afforded more, you know,
rights than than most because of who she was.
Right. And what she wanted as a
Targaryen and Prince, this is a person who is defined as someone
who always got what they wanted and what they wanted changed
constantly. So this is this is just a real
chaotic person full of desires and no shame about getting what
they want and just a very selfish individual.
Hugh is real conflicted about it.
You have to wonder how old he was when he struck out from his
mother's. You know, like how long he lived
with her before he was like, I can't be with around my mom, my
hot mom. Yeah.
And his anger over these failures is and the anger that
his own place in life caused him when he was young, the shame
that he felt is what caused him to work so hard.
And now he's at the place in life where all that hard work
is. He's got nothing to show for.
He's got his wife and that's good.
But they lost their child and they're they're disagreeing on
their future. And actually, as it works out,
the anger is part of what makes him a good match for Verbithor,
AKA the bronze fury. And that might be something that
they have a little mind melding over something they have in
common, something the dragon recognized in him.
But Kat's still against it. She's even with that reveal.
He's still like, still sounds really, really dangerous.
And I don't want to be a widow. I, I, I want to be a, a lady
less than I want to be a widow. You know, more than you know,
you know what I mean? So she's but he's I got to do
it. He just, he's compelled from his
mind. He doesn't have a choice.
He thinks he has to go do it and he does.
So I also wonder about her as much as we wonder about what
about ulf's friends and how they're going to react.
It's going to be great. It'll be hilarious.
What what's Kat's reacting going to be?
Is she just going to be troubled or actually, oh, actually OK,
you did it. Well, now that's good.
I don't know, like any any thoughts on this, Sean?
It's hard to know. We don't know this character
super well, but it's very different than the ulf right,
right. Like this is night and day the
the the vibes here pre and post. Yeah, I can.
I can see her still being mad. Like a a lot of times people are
results oriented and she might be like, well, what's done is
done, let's make the best of it. But sometimes people are like,
hey, it happened to work out, but it wasn't what I wanted.
I'm mad that you took this chance.
I don't want you to do it again. And it's not over.
Why you want this dragon to go fight other people on Dragons?
Like it's not over, you know, I still don't want to be a widow.
So good. Point yeah.
And it might go. He might change him, who he is
like this is, how would that not change you as a person?
So like, is this still the person that she fell in love
with and is he still going to be interested in?
Her even said that it changes you right?
Good, very good point. You're right, She did say that.
So again, I'm I wonder about Laris and learning about stuff
like this. Did he know?
Like it's one thing for him to know that the dragon seeds thing
was happening because that was really fast.
Like I said, I got to understand him missing that.
But all the like the stuff about Amon going against Amon and and
the stories being passed amongst the commoners, like that's the
kind of stuff I think he might know about and I wonder if he's
just keeping it from him. Is that is that being hidden?
It's what did you get that vibe, Sean or shed?
Is that how you saw it? Yes, absolutely.
I don't think Laurice is just incompetent.
I think there's two things going on here, right?
One is Laurice does not support Aymond.
Truly, he is backing Aegon and it's better for himself, right?
That's 1-2. Eamon has proven to his counsel
that you have to be careful sharing information with him or
you get in trouble, right? And so Eamon both isn't
receiving information because not everyone supports him, but
also because he hasn't given a a very conducive environment to
people sharing with him. So that's why Iron Rod isn't
sharing this with him. Yeah, that and that's an
interesting way to look at leadership.
If you are if you are bad to your own subordinates and that
that causes to them to treat you a certain way that doesn't give
you the information you need to lead, then you're you're in big
trouble. A little a little tangent here,
but that is a trope that I just can't stand.
It happens in movies and TV shows all the time.
Do you have some sort of mob boss or whatever and he treats
his subordinates like imbeciles? Now, maybe there are imbeciles,
but why does this mob boss has imbeciles as his as his close
counsel? Or, you know, maybe they're not
imbeciles, but he treats them that way.
Well, how did someone who treats their counselors, their close
confidants, like imbeciles get to this position?
It just doesn't make sense. You just can't be a successful
leader. You can't get to this level of
this menacing villain with this type of behavior.
It just doesn't make sense. He doesn't know that.
Yeah, right. Well, but the way you might get
there is if you're someone's son and you suddenly get put in this
position, which is what's happening here, and we're seeing
the repercussions of of treating your subordinates.
People were supposed to be helping you poorly.
They get scared to help you. All that said, I still think
it's possible that Dolores doesn't know.
I don't think that he's necessarily incompetent or
withholding it. He might be overwhelmed.
He might be spending all his time on agents outside the city.
He's trying to find information about the movement of troops or
Dragons and stuff that's going on.
And he and he may even have heard whispers of it, but it
might be now again, maybe a problem because Eamon is so it's
scary to bring stuff to him. But remember when he asked Iron
Rod's like, how do you know about this by the way?
Oh, my Squires brother's dad's friend said so like you're
stretched. Loris might have heard some
whispers of Reniero's looking for dragon riders in the city,
but it might be too new and too awkward for him to trust it
enough to report to Amon. So I can see how he isn't.
He may or may not be holding it back, we'll get to in a minute,
but I think what he think he is holding back is Aegon's
progress. I think he doesn't want Amon to
know how far Aegon is long. That's possible.
And that would be why they had the door locked or whatever.
Why he's like, you know, give me a minute.
Because they, they had, they didn't want people to see.
However, I, I tend to side with the Shay on this.
I think I, I seriously doubt Laris isn't aware of what's
going on in the city. He's the one that told Amon
about the food shortages and how that had to be handled because
it's kind of hard for him to be aware of that and not some of
these other things. And it's not like the same
agents he has are the ones in the city are the ones that he
would send elsewhere to do other things.
These are people that are already in positions that have,
that can't really move around that much.
It's like I, I've, I have, I, I have bribed the shipmaster.
That's I can't send this guy over to scout the reach.
It's, you know, the spies are in invested in where they're
invested. Counterpoint, these are agents
of Massaria who might not tell Loris or his.
Well, I'm not saying they have the same agents.
I mean, some of them might be working for both, but I'm
assuming they each have their own set of agents, but some of
them are probably double. That's that's a good point.
And so Iron Rod and Larios, let's talk about this
conversation they have. It's Eamon just dispensing
justice of his own at the time. It's a bit like Damon and
Harrenhal, but the roles are reversed.
Damon doesn't actually want to execute Will and Blackwood, but
as we'll discuss, he kind of has to in this case.
Eamon never liked Aegon's drink Kingsguard, and they weren't
qualified to be Kingsguard in the 1st place, but I kind of
feel like he ginned these charges up a little bit.
I don't recall the other two, these two that got sent to the
wall, I don't recall them drawing their swords.
I think it was just the one, the one guy that did that, and he's
the one who got stomped to death and killed by the mob.
So I think he's to blame. And these others who just are
guilt by association and Eamon, just like, well, this is my,
this is an easy chance to get rid of them.
And so he's pinning pinning the riot on them a bit like they're
the scapegoats. I mean, he's kind of right
though. They they already were talking
about how they're going to break their vows and stuff like they
should. They were.
Agree they're bad at their job, they didn't deserve to be there
but he the riot was not their. Fault my point well, my point is
I think he did a great thing here and that these were not two
people that should be in the kingsguard.
He didn't just kill them, which he could have and instead he
sent them to the wall and now the wall has two more able
bodied men. So like I, I kind of.
It was a good choice. Yeah, I.
Respect Eamon for this call. Like he could have killed them.
He didn't. I't.
I'm glad. I think executing them would
have been a bit much and I the setting of the wall is better,
but yeah, I'm just saying that they did they aren't to blame
for the riot. I think that was, this is where
ginned up charged. But yeah, they didn't deserve to
be Kingsguard in the 1st place. There's no doubt they sucked at
it. They're terrible.
And yeah, not just because they were going to break their vows.
They're just not just not competent in other ways.
So yeah, Lars calls it merciful that they're going to be sent to
the wall. Like, yeah, yeah 'cause they,
they deserve death according to that take.
So. But Iron Rod then pauses.
He kind of looks at Lars for a minute and he's like kind of
decide how he's going to say it and kind of stares for a minute.
And like I bring to you a matter of great importance.
You know, it's like this, this look right here.
Thanks for having that Shaya. Perfect right at the ready.
So it's it is kind of difficult to parse exactly what's
happening here because there's a lot of subtext like is Iron Rod
like setting Lars up for some news that he's not sure, but
he's like, I don't know if this is true, So you should tell him.
They're both kind of afraid of amons and neither of them really
want to approach him in general, especially Lars.
Lars probably more so than Iron Rod and but neither of them
could know this. Like even if Lars is whispers
even his network is extremely good, he probably is being
truthful when he's talking to Iron Rod.
Like who else could this rider be?
Like Reyna tried to claim a dragon sea smoke when she was 14
and it didn't work. I saw the funniest meme about
this. It was like, man if I was Reyna
and the whole realm knew I had failed that hard I would be so
embarrassed I'd leave for Pentos right then.
I was like, that's so true that like everyone's just gossiping,
like she just failed. Why can't you claim a dragon?
All these other Targaryens like first cry like she just can't do
it. She's synonymous with failure.
So, yeah, so they are perplexed at the whole idea.
So it's not just an intelligence because it's, you wonder, like
the intelligence could be right or wrong, but it's hard to to
figure out why it would be accurate because they're both
aware of this small pool of dragon riders that they can't
conceive of how this pool has gotten larger suddenly as it as
it has. So yeah, it is a little tricky
to interpret the scene because you can't tell.
It's hard to tell if they're just like one of them is trying
to sell the other one out or if they're genuinely not sure.
I think it's all of the above. I don't think, I think all these
things are in play. Yeah, I think on on one hand,
Iron Rod, maybe there's like a lot of win win here, right?
Like if I give Lars this information and Aegon receives
it well and it turns out to be true, da da da.
OK, well now Loris owes me a favor.
If I give this Loris information and he gets it Aegon, it doesn't
go oh hey that's on Loris, not me.
Exactly. Yes, you're so right.
And he gets to feel Loris out either way.
Also, you know, Loris can even if Loris is clever enough to
figure out what Iron Rod's doing, Iron Rod still.
Yeah, that's sure. You figured me out.
It's still up to you if you want to give me information or not.
Like he's still, even if Laura is suspicious of him, he still
has a hard time losing here. And another factor, too, because
he probably knew the thing that Laura said that it, you know,
maybe keep this to yourself. That's kind of weak evidence.
You heard from someone, heard from someone.
It's especially when you consider that it could just be
like the telephone game. Someone just misunderstood or
saw the wrong thing. Every random fisherman knows
exactly what every dragon looks like.
Like they maybe they just saw bail on her dragon.
Or is it you know? Who knows if the information was
even correct, even if it was honestly told.
And here you have Silverwing showing up at the end, which is
like, is that the dragon they saw?
You know, like maybe that's maybe they thought it was sea
smoke, but it was it was Silverwing instead.
I mean, it's harder to it's a little easier to make that
mistake, especially from a distance, like when Vegar at the
end is flying towards Eamon. Like is Eamon know which dragon
that is? CC It's clearly a dragon because
he can make the color out. Vegar flying towards Eamon.
Sorry, Vegar playing towards King's Landing.
Like, can you tell what dragon that is?
Probably not. He may have been able to tell
before he even got out there, but it's never been.
It wasn't clear at any point if he knew what dragon that was.
It was just something he had to do something about.
But we'll, we'll discuss that scene at the end because that's
at the end. Yeah, I feel like specifically
sea smoke and silver ring could be confused with one another
because both the kind of blue, grey, silver color, you know, I.
I similar size. Similar size.
Yeah, exactly. And that's us.
We might confuse him knowing exactly what they look like and
what their names are. Every random person in a realm
doesn't know that information, so.
Now Larry's egg on in our while. So like you said, Sean, there
may be some, you notice some evidence or some hints that
maybe he's trying to conceal Aegon's progress and the
progress, you know, I'm sure Lars is trying to pump him up a
little bit, but he said your progress is impressive and you
know, he's walking. Now, something important to keep
in mind here, we're doing these scenes in a different order.
But when the scene starts, it's right after we see the dream of
Viserys. So the Damon's dream with
Viserys ends. And then it cuts to this scene,
which is Aegon walking with a cane.
He's completely channelling the father he didn't want to be
like. In his room.
In the same room. Yeah.
Good point. Yeah.
So why is there the rush?
I think that's pretty straightforward, right?
He's a Aymond. That's the thing that's already
been established. But also, now there's new dragon
riders to be concerned about. Like, oh, oh, like, maybe the
not only are are your, is your own side a threat to you, your
own brother, but the other side is gaining some steam with their
military strength. And you might.
There's various reasons why you might need to be mobile now.
Two big reasons. I, I think this is, I think this
rush is coming from Loris. I think I'm more confident when
I watched it over again, when I started, when I had this idea.
The moment that the door opens and Orwell's Orwell sees that
it's Loris, he's like. Yeah, he knows it's somebody
else. Across his face, he was worried
that damn Amon or someone else was going to see that.
He's pushing Aegon to recover faster.
He wants Amon to think the Aegon is laid up in bed and it's just
going to be there indefinitely. But Loris I think wants to
suddenly present Aegon. Almost like when Visaris walked
back into the throne that day. Like I'll, I'll, I'll handle
court today. Otto, you.
Know I will sit the throne this. Time I'll.
Sit the throne, right? I think we're going to get a
moment like that with Aegon. And I think that's also why it
it seemed confusing at first because Loris is telling Orwell
you should be more careful. But then he says, keep pushing
him like, well, I'm confused. What he means is when you're
pushing him, be careful about who might come in.
He even says, I'll have this sentry give you more warning.
He'll give you a a bigger head start if someone's coming to get
him back into bed to hide what we're doing here.
Yeah, he says you shouldn't do that alone also just like well
who's supposed to be helping me here but yeah, I agree.
I agree. That's a good that's a great
point about the idea of of presenting him as healthy all of
a sudden. But I do think that the the
reasons for him to be concerned are part of this.
Like he also, that is part of why he has to hurry.
But I think he's hard because he's worried he's going to get
in trouble with Eamon. He's worried.
All the things, yeah, getting caught, the greens and the
blacks, yeah, all those. Things.
And I think that you shouldn't be doing this by yourself.
I think that might have been for the guard's sake, that he might
have wanted the guard to hear that statement.
Maybe he doesn't think. Yeah.
Well, he's. Happening all the time or
whatever, yeah. Tom was really good in the scene
too. His his pain acting just so, so
good, very authentic and it's his one scene of the episode,
but he really really took really took a lot of attention with
that. It really, really caught note of
that is really. Heart rending Amon had his own
orb at council. Now whether I don't think he
took it back from Aegon. Yeah, I agree.
I don't think he took it back. Yeah, that would be that would
be strange for him to take it back.
So yeah, let's take a short break here.
I hope to see a lot of y'all in New York.
The time is growing short. It's next Saturday, Saturday the
3rd, we're going to be live at City Winery in Chelsea.
That's Manhattan. You should come out and wear a
costume because we will give you prizes and if you have the
coolest costume, we'll give you more prizes.
But either way, you can hang out with us.
In a relatively intimate setting, there won't be a whole
lot of people there and we'll get to talk about the season.
Look forward to Episode 8 and just hang out like y'all.
A lot of y'all have never met us and we probably haven't met you
with a few exceptions, and we would like to do that.
So Michelle, please tell them where to find the link.
Bit dot LY slash how live NYC? Hell yeah.
We hope to see you there this Saturday, August 3rd.
City Winery, NYC. OK, Lee Hughes says, calling it
now. Adam's mother is a daughter of
Sarah. I like to think Sarah had a lot
of kids and Lee said sent them to live near Dragonstone in the
hopes of some of her descendants would claim Dragons.
Well, it's certainly possible. Book version of Sarah had did
have multiple bastards. They could have tweaked who they
were for the show because, for example, in the book, all three
of those bastards are sent to the Great Council to make claim.
And here, that's not what happened.
I don't think any of them showed up to make claims with Grain
Council on the show version. One of those bastards should be
Hugh. So he, he obviously wasn't
there. So yeah, that's, that's entirely
possible. And I wonder if they will fill
some of this out more and they'll explore it.
It would need for Hugh and ulf to have a conversation about
their parentage or or Adam and Alf, for Adam and Hugh or the
three of them to just dinner with dragon seeds, you know, see
what kind of conversations come up, talk about their past
drinking contest ulf would win. You know, that kind of thing.
Divine Miss the Z. They referred to mothers at one
point in the episode. Was that Sylvie's brothel?
Yes, I think so for sure. Yeah, 2 girls from the mothers.
There was like a barmaid from the seven maesters.
I just threw out some names there.
Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, I think Madame Sylvia's
mother. Yeah, that, that's the, that's
the there. Yeah, I think you're right.
So you look up the orb. Looks the same, huh?
You have it on screen, Doesn't it look like the exact same as
as what Aegon's orb look like to you?
Kind of hard to tell. It does look similar.
I don't know if it's the it's hard.
It would be too difficult for me to say it's the exact same but.
It's the same color. It definitely looks very
similar. It does look similar.
Yeah, that's kind of odd. Bogsy sends a super chat and
says the look he gave Vermithor was in Hue, man.
Oh, I see what you did there. Very good, Very good.
Oscar and Damon, let's talk about Harrenhal.
Let's go there. That was this was a great scene,
Sean. You said it was probably your
favorite. We get the relentless dripping
to start this, this whole sequence of scenes here of the
the dripping from the ceiling. It's enhancing Damon's
irritability, his impatience, and it's kind of like the
ticking of a clock. Does that all those things for
us, Damon, kind of like Corley's when meeting with Oscar, he
congratulates him on something that he really didn't have much
role in. He's like, you're you're the
head of your household now. Well done.
He's like, well, I didn't do anything.
It's the exact same thing that Corley says.
Well done. You know, it's like, yeah, so
this kid has a real spine, but also keeps his cool and manages
to to walk a tightrope here. He's he's it's a difficult spot
he's in, but he handles it super well.
I love that he says you've made rather a mess of of this.
You know, he's like, yeah, that's that is putting it
mildly. And I'm green in this matter.
That's a great little. It's like green, you say.
What kind of green? Green, yeah.
Oscar Green or the Greens? Like I'm siding with the greens.
Yeah, Yeah, that's true. Too.
But I will say in the book, there's a great line where
they're referring to his brother Kermit, who's cut from the show,
who they call him Green as Summer grass and say his brother
Oscar was still greener and had a prickly pride common in second
Sons. So yeah, it's a nice little
Easter egg. Love it.
That is really good. So he ultimately decides, and
this is before going outside to say that he's basically telling
Damon, yeah, I'm with you because, you know, our oath is
more important than anything else.
But justice also matters. And that part he doesn't say to
Damon. He waits till they're outside
and then kind of drops that part on him.
So Oscar says he's not sure the river Lords will follow him,
though, before they go out because he's so young.
He's like, I can't just tell them what to do.
In other words, I'm too young. I don't know if they'll obey me
yet. Like my authority has yet to be
tested. This will be the first time I
tell them what to do at all. And it's a really big thing to
be telling them what to do in the midst of this, this other
drama. So it's a reasonable thing for
him to say. And it also kind of gives him,
allows him a little more leeway. He's like, well, Damon, I can't
just go out in there and and order them around, you know?
So I'm going to have to play both sides a little.
David doesn't fully get it. I think he gets it, but I don't
think he understands just how far Oscar's going to go with
this. Like, he definitely doesn't
expect to execute Willem. He didn't see that coming.
Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I think that's correct.
He didn't expect to execute him, but I think he knew that he was
going to get roasted. He was, yeah.
He knew that he was going to get talked down to a little bit.
I don't, I, I think some of it was he was playing it up like
you suggested. I'm open to that.
Some of it he maybe still his pride is so overwhelming that he
had to rein it back in even in the moment when he knew he had
to on his be on his best behavior.
And he says, yeah, you know, I may have been a little too
enthusiastic in pursuing my aims.
That's that's about as much of an apology as you'll get from
him. You know, he's a king in this,
you know, I think. Damon knows he has to let Oscar
look like he got the best. Yes he does.
He has to. You're right.
Yeah, I, I even suspect that Oscar might have been counseled
by a couple of these other lures, but before he went there,
they're like, look, we're not going to do XYZ unless you and,
or Damon do XYZ. Like, you know, we're going to
commit our troops and our our our safety drags might burn our
homes. Like, we got to really believe
in this. And I think that Oscar knew that
he was going to have to publicly put Damon in his place to win
these people over. And I think Damon realized that
he Damon realized I'm just going to have to suck this up, aren't
I? He for him to be the leader.
I can't snap back at him for me to win these.
I want their army. Like he even said, I don't want
their love. I want their swords.
So all right, well, I'll go out there and be the the punching
bag for a minute, as long as I get the swords in the end.
And I do think that was maybe the the one up he didn't
anticipate was having to execute Willem there.
But I think that was something that the other Lords let Oscar
knew they needed to have happen. Yeah, I don't even think Oscar
went out there knowing for sure he was going to have to.
Willem would have to be executed, but it may have been
on his mind. And he probably knew it was a
possibility. I mean, maybe Willem Blackwood
might have just said, I renounce you, Oscar Tully.
And then, well, he doesn't dispense justice on him at all,
right? Like, he doesn't know how Willem
was going to react in that moment.
Even that was he was kind of a wild card.
Yeah, and it played really well. He waited once.
Willem knelt to him. He's like, OK, now I've got him.
You know, like now you're, you've submitted to me now that
means you've submitted to my authority and my judgement here.
I like your idea that he may have been coached.
It makes sense that a young man would ask for some advice,
especially a guy like this who doesn't seem arrogant.
He seems like he would ask for advice.
And that's, he also plays it really smooth.
He's like, look, I'm too young to, to just go off in some other
direction. So the best thing I can do is
just carry forward my grandfather's oath.
That was so smooth. It was perfect.
Yeah, exactly like that. I'm torn here.
You guys are torn, too. So when you can't figure out
what the right answer, it seems like I should default to what my
father wanted. The oath that we all made.
That's if we can't figure the rest out.
Let's go to that baseline. Right?
Yeah. And it's hard to argue against
that. But the one already made against
that might be the terrible things that Damon Slash Willem
did. OK, well, let's address that too
then. And they addressed it, so now
everyone's all on board. Yeah, you're right.
I like the idea that coaching. Also, I wrote in our notes that
if maybe it was Alice of all people that did the coaching.
But it wasn't present in this episode.
Or not she was not, by the way. But we get this great overhead
shot of the Lords and the Heart tree, which could be kind of
like her view of the event, like the bird's eye view, the owl's
eye view. Yeah, Owls I.
Think I feel strongly that she was observing.
Yeah, yeah. How would she miss this?
Like, yeah, she has to. This is the culmination of
events that she's been partly guiding.
And it's such a a striking image because it's, it's from amidst
the branches, you know, like it's, it's, it's from a perch
type place. It's.
A good point. It really just looked like right
where a bird would be standing. So Oscar is introduced, right?
He says his business. He says, I'll defer to my
grandfather's oath. Enter tradition.
But this is what Damon's not expecting.
Justice is part of that tradition.
Like Lady Mallister points out Will and Blackwood kind of gets
the vibe. And he's like, uh oh.
And he says, look, justice was done.
The Brackens were traitors. They needed to be punished.
He's not entirely wrong about that.
The Brackens did go to the other side and that deserves
punishment. But yeah.
That all the all the wives and children of the Brackens decided
to support the other side. And so you had to go to Spence
Justice. Yeah.
So exactly, Sean. Yeah, I mean, that's exactly
that. And Oscar points out this wasn't
really your motivation. We all know better than that.
You did it because you wanted to, because these were Brackens.
If it was the Vances and you were tasked with putting the
vances down and getting them in line, you wouldn't have done
this. You would have done it a
different way. You would have done a more
straightforward war manner, like go out there, keep with an army
and put them under siege or something like that.
It would, it wouldn't have been. You would not have treated any
other Riverlands house like this.
It's because they're the Brackens that you did it this
specific way. Yes, Damon told you to do your
worse, but you did even more because you wanted to.
Yeah, if if someone had told whatever the pipers to go do
this to the Blackwoods, would Willem have expected this to be
done? And this is also a little bit of
a a message to the Lord. So like, just because someone
above me tells you to do something, that doesn't mean
I'll be OK with it, right. Like, I I guess if you think you
have to do it because the king told you, go ahead.
But that doesn't mean you'll get off Scott free.
You'll still have to pay the consequences if it's the wrong
thing. And furthermore, this is a
little bit of a message to Damon.
Like, hey, you can't ask us to do the wrong thing.
We just won't do it. This guy did it because he's
crappy, and we cut his head off, and now everyone knows they'll
get their head cut off. You can't ask us to do the wrong
thing anymore. We're held together by an oath.
You have an oath too, right? Well said.
That's very good. Yeah, Damon is kind of put on
notice, like, you know, and that they're also basically saying,
yeah, we're pledging to the queen here.
They refer to Damon as her representative.
You know, it's like, just because there was representative
is so reprehensible, you know, So my feelings on him shouldn't
make me deny my oath and the oath that we all took.
Yeah. It's really, really well done.
I love the excellent dialogue. It all just was like so smooth
and people saying the perfect things to support their
position. Part of why I think he was
coached a little because it was too perfect for.
An 11 year. Old or whatever.
All right. Yeah, I can see that.
Much older than 11. Is he like 13?
Maybe 14? I would guess this kid is like
1516 and 17. Think so.
That old? Yeah, totally.
OK, well, still pretty young. And he's a Sarah, too.
He was. He was called Sarah Oscar.
They called him Sir Oscar. In the show.
You sure? Yeah.
OK, then he's definitely older than 14 or 15 if he's a Sir.
Yeah, he just. He looks younger than that, but
whatever. You know, that doesn't mean
anything what he looks like. I wonder if they have actually
listed his age. We'll have to do a little
digging. In any case, Damon is backfooted
by the realization that, yeah, Willem's execution is required
of him, not just on the table. But if he doesn't do it, this
whole thing might fall apart and you might think, OK, no big
deal. Damon has no trouble killing
this guy. It's just one guy Ray Damon's
willing to kill, you know? But Damon is has this sense of
loyalty. He employed this man.
They had like, a a deal. And he's betraying Willem here.
Damon, you know, it's a Willem's a scoundrel, but it's like Ryan
console describes it as like a mafia code.
Like we, you know, you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
I'll do a dirty deed for you. You do a dirty deed for me.
We both get what we want. So this is a real betrayal.
Even though they were up to no good, even though they were in
cahoots with the wrong kind of people.
It's not a case of, oh, you served your purpose.
I can just take you out. He feels bad about it.
He really does. Whether he should feel about it,
he should feel bad about Reya and doesn't feel bad about that
and does feel bad about this, that's beside the point.
Damon feels bad it, he really does.
And this is relevant to his whole arc in this place.
The fact that the man really does have guilt over things like
this, over betrayals. Whether it's this dude that he
went into villainy with, or whether it's someone that
actually matters a lot more to him, like his brother, who is of
course waiting for him right after this execution in his
room. You know, there could be a
little bit of like, OK, if this guy's a scoundrel, he deserves
to die. Wait, I'm a scoundrel.
Do I deserve to do something to come?
Out right totally. So I think it might be that
Damon swore to himself that he wouldn't cut more than 4 heads
off and now here we go with #5. It's so great seeing Simon
Strong out in the daylight. It was like surreal.
It's like he's this figure I associate with the dark inside
of Harrenhal and here we are seeing like his vibrant purple
coat and. Whatnot serious fit that looks
good. That purple and gold.
Yeah, this. Is where all the money is gone
too. That's where all it's gone.
It's the real curse of Harrenhal is their is their fashion
budget. But also Blue Floor, Blue Floor
points out if Oscar were under 16, he would have a Regent.
He doesn't seem to have a Regent.
That's that's not a universal though.
They don't always have. Regent indication.
Also, I looked at the actor and he's 18.
Actor is 18. OK, cool.
You can remember like even Deron didn't have a region.
There's there's times where people don't have regions, but
you're right that that would at least be a very common thing for
someone in his spot. So it's really an indictment of
monarchy, the fact that Willem takes all the blame.
And I mean, people blame Damon. It's not like he's not blamed
for it. It's just that he has to take
very little of the punishment here.
All he has to do is feel bad about killing this man.
And again, like I was pointing out at the beginning, there
seemed to be like the distant sound of of a cacophony of
Ravens as Damon is approaching him.
And then he swings his sword, kills him, kind of disassociates
a little bit. Next thing you see, he's walking
down the hall. But that might have been like a
blood sacrifice, like the old gods drank that blood.
It was a, a, a man of who follows the old gods too, the
Blackwoods. So a little bit of that vibe,
you know, if, if, if you're thinking on the tinfoil level,
then this was maybe something Alice was, was was arranging
from a very high level to get some power for the, for the
weirwood network. You know that that AL's eye view
might have been a Blood Ravens eye view.
Well, he's not alive with you, but there would be.
People within the technically within the weirwood.
So it would really be a view from the face of the weirwood,
you would think, right, Like from from much lower if if Bran
or Bloodraven or anyone who is tapped into that network saw it,
which I do like to think about all the things that anyone in
the network could have seen Recently.
I was thinking about how the weirwood in King's Landing and
the Red Keep, how it was in the scene where Viserys and Damon
are talking about like their mother and stuff like that.
And the idea that if Alice is tapped in, like all the
conversations that she witnessed in that Grove, you know, in that
little. Yeah.
Anyway, so I like thinking about what people would see, so you're
not wrong. The idea that like, just picture
Bran or Bloodraven or someone in the weirwood watching this
scene, like that's cool to witness, but not from that
perspective. Alice might have seen the when
Cole came to Allison after he beat Joffrey to death.
OK, Yeah, that happened in front of that, and he almost killed
himself in front of that weirwood, Yeah.
Yeah, I love thinking about all the scenes that have been in
front of a weirwood over the years and seasons.
It would be neat to have the camera view from the face of the
weirwood, like the lower level, and it would be explicitly from
the the tree eye view rather from the the base rather than
from the branches. So yeah, let's talk more about
the the dream cycle here. After the execution, he's back
in his fugue state of sorts. Or maybe he's just always in it.
You just never know when he's going to see something.
So he walks back to his chambers.
The black goat is there. Question, do you think Alice has
a skin changer only skin changes into an owl or do you think she
also is in this goat? Probably in multiple animals.
She seems too powerful to be limited to one animal because it
seems like the the powerful skin changers can use multiple
animals. Yeah, so I think this is Alice.
We do see her in this episode then, for sure.
Because she's the goat. She is the goat, right?
Greatest of. All the black goat, she's got
black hair. Alice of all.
Greatest Alice? Greatest owl Alice time after so
also this could be symbolic in other ways.
Well that's not symbolic, that's just trying to identify who the
goat is, which I like a lot like this theory.
So when he passes the goat the first time, it's the 1st morning
where he's having hallucinations.
Now he had hallucinations that night where he saw the the his
first night in Harrenhal where there was like people marching
past his door or what have you. But when he wakes in the morning
that first time with blood on his hands and he walks to the
council chamber and he sees the goat and then he sees the dogs
after the chamber session. So maybe this is the bookend.
He the that was kind of the beginning of his dreams dream
arc when he sees that goat for the first time.
And here he's going back to his bedroom and he finds his
brother, the person that's sort of a culmination of all these
dreams. So I wonder if that's maybe a
hint that the dream cycle's over.
We sort of thought it might have been over last episode, but we
also knew that this scene was in the trailer because you can.
There's a trailer shot of someone handing game in the
crown, and you could see Ashea had noticed that the Hand was
really old. So we're like, OK, yeah, that's
that's a dream. So we knew that'd be at least
one more dream, but this might be the last dream.
One more thing Sean before I get your take on this.
Viserys says all who wear it are crushed by it and it's
definitely true for him just by looking at him.
Technically the throne gave him that horrible disease, but he's
not just talking about the disease, he's just talking about
the sheer weight and responsibility and all the other
stuff. And he asked do you want it
still? Damon doesn't give an answer,
but it feels like after everything he's been through he
might still say yes, but it wouldn't be a quick yes and it
more likely it might be a no. How did you interpret that,
Sean? I kind of think so too.
I think that's the the growth that we're supposed to be seeing
here that is getting past his own personal ambitions and
realizing that he's got to be able to work with people, that
he is a servant to the Queen and these people the servants to him
and you can't just do whatever you want and etcetera, etcetera.
Yeah. So we see it kind of similarly,
yeah. I want to point out another
thing here though, that can you go back a couple images a share
to when they're when Visaris is holding the crown out sitting
next to Damon there that and remember we talked about how the
different imagery represented different people that held Heron
Hall during certain times, like the three dogs or like the
Cleganes and the goat is like Vargo Haute and the bats are
like the Lawson's. And we were wondering if we
might see a flayed man representing the Bolton's
thesaurus is missing some face on his, some skin in his face
and the Red Cross on his robe there is kind of reminiscent of
the, the red body, upside down body of a flayed man.
I'm saying it it, it Harkins to that image to me a little bit.
Right on. So these are definitely
questions for us to consider. Meaning, is this what the Old
Gods wanted for him to see? What is Damon's answer to this
question? Was Alice guiding this?
Is this the end of the dreams? That question will be answered
by future episodes more directly.
The rest we may not get answers on.
And it seems like he has his army now and he will be leaving
Harrenhal. So just from that perspective,
the fact that he won't be at Harrenhal, at least not for a
while, he might go back, but in the immediate future he's
leaving. Will he have dreams when he's
out there in the field? I'm guessing no, but it's not a
confident no. What do you think, Sean?
Are you thinking maybe, maybe still still see some dreams when
he's like? Elsewhere.
I doubt it. They don't have much more time
for it in this episode. Maybe it continues in the
future, but I I feel like this is a Harrenhal thing and we're
moving on from here. Yeah, I tend to agree.
You feel similar, Asia? I cannot imagine a world where
Damon is not in Harrenhal and is having these dreams.
Right on. Someone else, but I don't know I
expect. Someone else to go to?
Harrenhal. Yes, I would like to see someone
else haunted in Harrenhal. Whoever comes to Harrenhal, I
would like them to face this as well.
I know other people might be like rolling their eyes, they
don't want it from anyone else, but I would like that.
I like the dreams, yeah. I saw a really funny meme that
was joking about the idea of Gwain and Gwain Hightower in
Harrenhal and it was like, what? What is haunting Wayne?
He's like, oh, a spider, you know?
Mom always liked you best, you know, like, what is that?
So. And Speaking of, let's talk
about Allison. She gets sewn up by Orwell while
lamenting her fall from power. We were wondering who she was
talking to before this episode was like, oh, yeah, Orwell, of
course. And he's not really.
He's like the psychiatrist. He's just listening.
He doesn't really have anything to say.
He's like, yeah, go ahead and talk.
I'm not. I don't.
I don't really have much to say in response here.
I feel like the thing he said was very symbolic.
You'll have a scar, but it'll be easy to hide.
Yeah. There's a lot of that action in
this show in general. And of course, as we've said
before, that's the exact same spot Rainier's scar is that she
gave her from the dagger. And in a way, Rainier gave her
this one 'cause she, you know, the riot was kind of her
business. Aegon's scars are not going to
be so easy to hide. Amon's scar is not so easy to
hide. It's true.
Allison and Raniera's scars are easy to hide.
I just wanted to say Olivia Cook said that this scar and Allison
realizing that this is the exact same thing that she did to
Ramira is what led her to leave to go out of King's Landing.
Olivia Cook said that she like this, this puts into perspective
the absurdity of it all. And we're just doing the same
thing to one another and all that.
And so that's this, this. Not just are we as as viewers
cottoning on to the parallel, Allison herself has cottoned on
to the parallel. She needs to be able to skin
change into an owl, owl ascent and then she could go flying off
and do whatever she leaves with Sir Ricard Thorne, another
member of the Kings Guard. This is actor Vincent Regan.
You might recognize this guy. He was in the movie 300 and the
movie Troy in in Troy, he was Achilles is second in command.
He he frequently had shocked face like what have you done?
You've flaunted in the face of the gods or whatever.
So and he's a little has a has a minor version of that here.
When Allison's like, I don't know if I want to go back and he
just kind of like, oh, oh. I assume this guy is related to
Alistair Thorne. Same house or whatever?
Same house. So she gets in the she starts
floating around in the lake there and what we're it's not
clear, but another time where the behind the scenes helps
clarify what's going on here. The reason she doesn't just keep
floating, the reason she starts to swim back to shore.
It's not even clear that she's swimming to shore is because
she's had a realization exactly what we don't know, but she's
got a new sense of determination.
So this this was a good reset for her.
She went out into the into the wilderness.
Great music, great cinematography, and a pretty
short scene all together. It's just probably the least
Allison's been in an episode, maybe at all, but very, they did
a lot with that 2 minutes and showing her kind of baptizing
herself, which is a very consistent symbol of renewal.
And then she actually has that renewal, even though we're not
entirely sure what clicked in her mind to make her go all
right, I have new sense of purpose now or something like
that. But that was clarified in the
behind the scenes. Yeah, I felt like the other
times when we saw submersed in water, they were trying to clean
herself, whereas this time I felt like it was more of a
baptism, Rita pointed out. This is very reminiscent of a
famous painting of Philia, a character in Hamlet who was
driven insane by her the manipulative older men in her
life. Hey and he.
Ended up drowning, yeah. I was saying we talked about
this a little bit with Lady Gwynn last Saturday.
I was also comparing it to Lady of the Lake in addition to
Ophelia. Yeah, good catch, y'all.
And Ophelia, that's a great catch.
And yeah, I like the Lady of the Lake thing.
Just like real life John William Waterhouse painting type vibes
when she's standing there. Like it's just a real life
painting, you know? Bogsy says says a super chat and
says Orwell says I don't have a therapy link.
Allison, that's a good point. What color would the therapy
link be? What?
What metal is that? I don't know.
Brass. No, that's that's been used
already. What is the therapy metal?
Silver. Silver is healing already.
That's what I was thinking. But yeah, what to think about
that a little more. OK, the red sewing.
Let's talk about the the prime event.
Oh wait, Sean, you have one more take.
Well, about the Red Sewing I I was a little perplexed by that
title at first, and I realized I'm pretty sure it's a play on
the Red Wedding. No, it's a play on the the
sewing of because they're dragon seeds.
What what? I think they were going to sew
these seeds, but instead a bunch of them died.
I think they were instead of a marriage a bunch of people died
like. I think red is a is a color
attached to anything that's bloody.
I don't think it's a reference to the Red Wedding.
I think they both refer to the same concept.
But you're not wrong to connect them in a way like just it's not
quite as direct, I think. But that, yeah, you could also
call this the worst Targaryen family reunion imaginable.
A Targaryen family reunion without at least 30 burnings is
considered a dull affair, right? So Rainier faces one last
obstacle before the choosing. You see all these people
arriving, She's watching them come up and there's a variety of
types. They're not all silver haired,
There's some brown haired people in there is this little variety,
men and women of course. I like you can see her see an
oaf walk up right here, Yeah. That's right.
Yeah. I love seeing the recognizable
ones. That's my only tiniest, tiniest
complaint. I wish we had gotten to know
some of the ones that didn't survive so we wouldn't be quite
so clear who, yes, the key characters are.
Like, I wish we had gotten to know a little bit of Silver
Dennis or like this this girl that worked at the at the seven
maesters or whatever. Yeah, that would have been cool.
One of the girls, some of the girls who worked at mothers, for
example, the girl that Hugh, you know, saves, that gets away.
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, That girl did
get away, didn't she? Yeah, like we could see her
again. So, but Oh well, you know, it's
very small. Like I said, very small
complaint. It would have been cool, but you
know, I understand that would have setting up other characters
is difficult to do. There's so many people would
like you're using setting up silver Dennis instead of more
scenes with Bayla. Like people would have
absolutely complained about that.
So the dragon keepers are pissed.
The dragon keepers are like a monastic order.
They're very religious and they hated the idea of Stefan
Darkland trying and the fact that it didn't work was kind of
proof to them that it shouldn't have been done and it shouldn't
be done again. And one of their own died during
that. That's that's that's definitely
coloring their opinion here. Like one of one of their people
died. Look at these guys, they they
always have ash on them. They're always like just proud
to be covered in soot, which. I didn't expect a dragon keeper
like walk out strike, it makes a lot of sense, but I I wasn't
expecting them to kind of have solidarity with one another and
stand up against Rainier. Oh yeah, real labor strike, huh?
Yeah, the the Dragon Keepers Union is.
Yeah, they were inspired, you could say.
The writers. Yeah.
Right. Yeah, the writers strike
inspired the dragon keepers strike the.
Anti writers strike. You sees what see, you see what
happens when you go and do all this without the dragon keepers
help, all this. It's it's, it's chaos and a
death. And anyway, one of them says the
only magic. Well, the, the one who speaks
says the only magic of old Valyria left in the sad world,
which is just such a powerful statement on their worldview.
Like we are the the keepers of this fallen empire, this fallen
everything, not just their magic, but this little shred of
what remains. And they called it an
abomination. And yeah, the the the Dragons,
they see more than anyone see the Dragons as gods.
They're named after gods, the Melis, Cyrax, Viserion, you
know, these are these are gods of Valyria, Valyrian, all these
ones. So but they're a respect
doesn't. Stopper, you see.
Smoke in your storm. Those are your second.
Generation, you know dragon name.
Yep, there is a bit of a mix there.
That's right. So she gives a speech to the
assembled. Can I point something out real
quick? Yeah.
But she, she shares a look with Mazari where she, like, they,
they walk out on her and she like, looks up at Mazari like,
oh, I guess we're doing this, you know?
Yeah, Yeah. See.
Yeah. And it was Emma Darcy's idea to
walk amongst the dragon, the dragon seeds to give the speech.
And it was Patty's idea to be in the decrepit version of himself
rather than his regular, just normal kingly Raymond, which
probably added, you know, another few $1000 to the budget.
But he thought it was more appropriate.
He's like, I'll do that scene, but only if I'm in my decrepit
version. And they're like, all right,
fine, go ahead, Patty, You get what you want.
So, yeah, same thing here. It was Emma's idea to do that.
I thought that was pretty effective.
Does Rainier believe what she tells them here?
Is she is she being naive when she says we get all these
Dragons and the greens will just they'll just be overwhelmed and
they'll have to bend the knee like did you bend the knee when
the greens were overwhelming you?
No. So I don't know, does she
actually believe it or is she naive?
I'm not sure if she's just telling them that to pump them
up, like look, you all are going to help create peace here.
Or does what do you think, Sean? Did you Do you think she
actually believes that? She did at least say, you know,
God's willing. She said, you know, if we do
this, we could end the war without shedding any blood.
God's willing. So there at least she was
attaching a sort of hope to it. But I'll, I'll, I'll wait.
I have some more thoughts, but I'll wait till we get a little
deeper. But you know, you had a minor
complaint about this. I have a big complaint about
this. Okay.
We'll get to that, I guess. So yeah, one line I really like
is it must be the dragon who speaks.
It also kind of sums up the let the gods decide vibe of this
episode. Just follow the with the path
the gods have laid out for you, whatever that may be, whatever
your interpretation of that may be, which is the problem with
that, but it still is consistent throughout the episode.
April May sends a message and says the red sewing is also the
red sewing. Dragons of thread sewing Dragons
of flesh. Oh, very good.
That's what Elena said back in episode 7, younger Elena, when
she was cupping the spider over the shell.
And Aegon was like, you're weird.
And Amon was like, don't say that about your, you know.
And that's what her line was. Dragons of seat thread sewing.
Dragons of flesh. Yeah, very good.
The red sewing. Good catch.
So I love the awe and danger that comes into Rainier's voice
when she begins to speak specifically of Vermithor.
The music changes to add gravitas to this.
She's like, he's called the Bronze Fury.
We shall go to him now. I was like, whoa.
And then she calls to him and stands before them like a God
herself, just facing them as the dragon emerges behind her.
A little bit like Daenerys with the with Drogon taking off
behind her but without the like demonic overtones.
But it is still pretty dark. And like the poster from season
one, as they said, right? So Rainier says he's not quite
as big as Vergar, but he's probably angrier, more
ferocious. She also says that, so that's
notable. She communes with him by putting
her hand on his snout, which we saw Damon do back in season one
after singing the song to summon him.
And she closes her eyes and it's like a little bit of communion.
She she has this feeling of great power while touching him,
like as if something passes back and forth between them.
Non verbal communication. It's confirmed in the BTS that
this happens and that's why Rainier has this like look when
she takes her hand off. Like she just felt this power
through him and is sort of exalting in it for a few moments
before she turns back to face the dragon seeds again.
We also see Jon Snow do this with Drogon in in season seven
or eight with Daenerys is actually on Drogon's back and
Drogon's like, And then Jon just like very, you know, holds his
hand out slowly and cautiously, but bravely.
And the dragon, that kind of submits a little bit.
And yeah, definitely some familiar elements here that
we've seen before, but slightly different variations on them.
I like how she once she says, you know, OK, it's time, let the
dragon, the dragon must speak. And then she just gets the hell
out of there, walks back up and goes up on the balcony.
It's like, all right now watching people die impassively
is a little new for her. And it's a little like a little
disconcerting. And it's a part of this whole
like elevating herself to God like status vibe that we've been
discussing on and off throughout this episode.
Let me let me go ahead and bring up my complaint here because it
appears very much to me as though she didn't just like walk
off and observe them dying passively.
They were blocked in as she passed by, the guards closed in
behind her. And when people started to run
out, they were stopping him from running out.
And I don't know if that was her plan or intention or what her
plan was, but, and maybe even on some level she felt like she
needed to force this to happen. Even if a bunch of them die.
And even if that's the case, which is kind of dark, I don't
like it. But it still seems like an
unwise way to do this. Why not send in a dozen at a
time? Why risk I didn't get in them
all burned up and all at once Send a dozen in.
It seems like she's at least maybe willing to mislead them
the way she says we could end this war.
If one of you just drives a dragon and she kind of walks up,
look, see I touched them, now you go do it.
She knows this dragon could open fire and burn them.
I feel like she's giving them some false confidence about this
whole process. Yeah.
I mean, I, I have a lot to say about this, Sean.
Yes. So why not bring 12 in?
Don't let the other people even know.
And if the dragon goes crazy and burns them all, like, all right,
next 12, you know, maybe there's this fear that if they see the
other people get burned, then they'll be too scared to go try
it. I'm not even sure that's true.
But if it is, don't let them see.
It well, she did say that she definitely expressed that fear
before. Like she said, no one will try
again after hearing what happened to to Stefan Darklin,
so I think that at least is consistent.
So don't let them know, keep them in that's.
Dishonest too though. Like wouldn't you have a problem
with that too? Like if they're, if you're
hiding the consequences, like, isn't that just as bad, right?
Well, I, I think they're both, I don't know, immoral.
But this is immoral and unwise. They all could have randomly
been killed. She needs to save a few and
let's just say for example only 14 people had showed up.
Would they have waited till they had 45 to stick out there?
Say 200 showed up, would they have crammed all 200 all the
way? Clearly they could have been
broken into smaller groups. I'm not.
So OK, let me let me interject. Just let me just interject
briefly here. I'm not sure that the outcome
was that predictable, that Vermithor would just go crazy
and kill everyone. I don't think that was that
predictable of an outcome, and I don't know that Rainier could
have guessed that it would. Right.
I don't know if it's predictable, but it's certainly
a chance. Why?
I'm not sure it is. I'm not sure she should expect
that to go to for it all to go that badly.
Like he smoked left, he didn't go in berserk.
He killed the people that were right in front of him, then he
left. Yeah, but that same flame, if
fourteen people have been standing behind those people
would have been hit by it like they were here.
And again. I'm not arguing it's also.
Possible it's also possible that the dragon the the, the, the
dragon keepers, if they have been there, they might have
known better said this is too many people.
The Dragon's going to freak out, right?
They they may have had some counsel that she lost.
Maybe she's not wise because she's not educated in this whole
process. But it still seemed like those
guards were people keeping people in, and that's seems
unforgivable. I think you're right, Sean.
That's the point. She messed up.
Like that's that's the point here.
She didn't take her time. She didn't have the approval of
the administration, the organization to make this go
properly. She specifically had a moment
with Vermithor to make sure that like they would, you know, feel
gassed up. I think it was a manipulation,
but I think it was effective. That was the right thing to do
is to make them see, oh, it is possible to bond with this
dragon. And yeah, you're right, she
should have split it into smaller groups, like slightly
smaller groups, just do groups of five, do whatever, whatever,
Split it in half. She knows she still has Silver
Wing to go. I think you're right that she
messed up, but I don't think the show is is portraying it as she
did the right thing. I think they're showing that she
was rushed. She was pushing this and a lot
of people are unhappy with how she did it.
If she had talked to Jason, the dragon keepers and all these
people and had it out and they'd taken some time, they might have
been like, well, here's a compromise.
Let's do this, let's do that. That that's not what happened.
I, I don't think we're meant to admire Raniera for how she
handled this. We see that they're she's making
them stay there. It's very dark.
Like I, I don't think this is admirable of her.
Like you're right. I don't necessarily think
they're trying to make her make us admire her for it, but I do
feel like it worked out like at the end of this.
Episode for now. For now jar.
Is in trouble. I don't think we're like aha
Raniro was bad to the small for now.
The last episode was small folk. I don't think she's gonna face
repercussions for this. I think you're wrong.
You're just plain wrong.
Like, just think about it Like she has opened herself up to
three new dragon riders in this episode.
You think all three of those dragon riders are gonna you
think Jace is wrong? I don't think so.
Everyone was against her on this.
She's going to. I don't think she's going to
face the repercussions for having endangered and sacrificed
those innocence. Oh, I mean, you think the small
folk are going to take revenge on her then maybe not.
But like, of course they aren't. They're powerless.
Like why would she? Why would she face repercussions
for that? That's like.
That's like going to either, I don't think.
Why would they? Why would they?
Why would? Why would Damon face
repercussions for what he did to the bracken peasants?
It's the same thing. Like Royals don't face
consequences for what they do to lowborn.
I guess I just find it ironic or maybe frustrating to me that but
we're seeing the some of the stories, the eyes of the small
folk. Massaria Hugh of, you know, in
the last episode was named small folk.
And it seems like we're they're trying to show us the effects
that the wars, these angry Princess or whatever have how it
affects the average person. But this is like a specific
mistake. Know whether it's irresponsible
or rushed or greedy or you know, whatever it is or Rinera did
here that caused a bunch of innocent people to die.
And I, I feel like there should be a repercussion not not so
much for her like giving Dragons to people who aren't ready for
it, but for her endangering these people's lives.
I feel like I'm sorry. I should be upset with her or
maybe oof himself or you know, you or whoever be like, you
could have got us killed. Why didn't you tell us?
You know, well, she did tell them like that was very clear.
She told them they could die. Like I think every single one of
them knew there was a very good chance they would die.
I don't. I I agree with you that like
Anna Shaya pointed the same thing out that locking them in
was bad, but they all knew that they were not unlikely if not
likely to die. So I don't agree with that
second part because I think they all knew what they were getting
into. No one was forced to be there.
Anyone who like Alan didn't go and he he had the choice.
There are a lot of people. That are forced to stay in
there. Well, yeah, but they were told
they could die before they were forced to stay in there.
And again, I we're not arguing about being forced to stay in
there. We but we all agree on that
part. That was not cool.
They should have had the chance to change their mind.
She took the she took their ability.
She took them. She took away their ability to
to back out, not their but she didn't mislead them in the 1st
place. I that's the part I guess I
disagree with. But yeah.
And about the names of the the episodes, yeah, I kind of see
what you're saying. But like the last episode was
really focused on the small folk too.
They could have called this one small folk too.
Electric Boogaloo. But but it is more about the red
sewing. And I think this one is less
about the small folk because we only see it's really ulf and
Hugh, but mostly it's Rainier watching them.
Like that's the kind of like the OR Vermithor's point of view,
you know what I mean? Like, I don't think we really
saw, we didn't get to know any of these characters.
We didn't hear their names. You know it was.
About the using of the small folk, like it wasn't really
truly about like them, it was about how the nobility uses them
and how they're they're. They're like acceptable losses.
Yeah, yeah. That's that's that sounds.
Right complaint about last season and Rainey's too.
Like in a lot of ways, Rainey's would be my favorite character,
except she bust up through the dragon pane, killed the game,
who knows how many people. And if you could just remove
that one thing, she might be my favorite character.
But I can't, I can't just remove that thing.
And up to this point this season, Rainier has been my
favorite character. But all of a sudden now I'm
like, well crap, she can't be my favorite character of this, you
know? Who is it now, then?
Allison. Maybe he's.
Done some tough stuff too, but nothing this bad.
So maybe she has. I'm not sure if she has.
Like anything this bad? Yeah.
Well how bad is this though? Like every single person that
signed up for it knew they were going not unlikely to die.
Like I, I, I don't go as far as you all in in the darkness.
The thing is, even if they knew, I still think she could have
done more to protect them. Send less at a time or have them
not. Be well again, again.
I'm out or I'm repeating myself a little.
But yeah, she did not know this would happen.
She she had no clue Verma Thor would do this.
She's never seen anything like it.
No ones ever seen anything like this.
So I don't I don't agree that she should have guessed this was
a possible outcome. Maybe she should have, but it's
I don't call it irresponsible. I think like wow.
To tell the guards to keep them in there.
Like if she said she might have said don't let it.
Maybe she just said don't let anyone leave in.
The guards didn't realize that. Yeah, they didn't know exactly
how bad it would get. Maybe she didn't give him a
contingency or something. Yeah, which I agree with.
That's part of the irresponsibility.
But still, I don't think that anyone could have expected what
happened to happen. Well, that that's the point.
That's where I would disagree. She has seen something like this
when sea smoke burned. That's.
Dragon. Keeper.
That's not what happened though. That's not what happened.
Sea smoke killed the the one guy and then left or and caught
caught one other dragon keeper in the flight, did not go
berserk and try to kill everyone there.
That's what I'm talking about. That's the.
Difference. This did go farther.
That, well, that's what specifically what I'm referring.
To flames blasting onto that platform as she just put
everyone out there in harm's way so.
Sure. Yeah.
No, I agree with that part that they should have maybe been
standing farther back. But here's another angle to this
is that everyone wants to be there.
They want this risk. They want to become a dragon
rider like Kieran Beau who plays Hugh.
When the other guy stepped forward first, his he said in
the interview, he's like, at that point he realizes he's made
a mistake. What if someone else claims the
dragon before him? It's then his chance is gone.
So there is, there's a lot more to this than just they were
trapped in there and they didn't have a choice.
And there's a lot of danger. I mean, yeah, they knew that.
Everybody knew there was a ton of danger.
The danger probably went before, probably went beyond more than
what anyone expected. And maybe she could have guessed
at something like that, but she definitely didn't see it coming.
That I guess that speaks again though, to the maybe mishandling
of how how it was executed, which I don't think any of us
are saying that it was handled perfectly.
Yeah. Which is that like he was there
like thinking like man, I should go for like he doesn't really
have a good chance. It like just you just say who's
going to go first. It's just a.
It's just a weird way of handling.
It the other thing is she does, yeah, she doesn't know what
she's doing. She's like, well, and even if
the dragon keepers have been there, I agree with what you
said before, Sean, that if the dragon keepers have been there,
they might have been like, wait, this this could get a lot worse
than you think. But maybe even they wouldn't
know that because maybe they don't even know still, let's
assume they do. So their lack is a big problem.
Their their, you know, strike is a big problem that Rainier went
on to the site without OSHA regulations.
The people that know what the regulation should be.
So yeah, that's a definitely a strike against her.
I just can't help but think about how much she should have
just done two groups. She knows she has silver wing I.
I think if if she had just split them in groups of two IA lot of
my issues would have been solved.
You know, that's a good point. I think that having and maybe
she should have done Silver Wing first, but she was more
concerned about finding her right for Vermithor.
So yeah, there's definitely some mistakes made here and I
wouldn't say. Why she wants a rider for
Vermithor. She wants the dragon.
That's the best shot. Oh, yeah, that's easy that.
But she's. But if she goes with the more
docile dragon first, then she has a chance of.
Yeah. But again, I don't know that she
expected so many people to die. Like, the scope of death was
beyond what anyone expected. And the other thing is that
they're doing it differently. This is not the way Targaryens
mount Dragons. You go in by like, that's what
they tried before with Stefan Darkland.
It didn't work partly because he's not Targaryen.
This was her new way of like, wow, this is something that can
happen. Adam was chosen by the dragon,
so that's why putting everyone in the room does make sense.
It's not necessarily the best idea, but it's not just random.
It's because you want the dragon to select from all the available
candidates. And yeah, of course, what went
wrong did go wrong. And then maybe she's seen that
coming, but. I go back to what I was saying
before about like what if only 22 people have showed up?
They wouldn't have felt like we need to wait till we have
exactly 45. Like I think that you the idea
of the dragon choosing is a reason to have more people in
there, but not everyone in there.
That's my concern is that you could have.
But how do you make? Yeah, she could have.
She could have just been told some of them to say she would
have to order something to stay back, you know?
And it said we have two Dragons, we have Vermithor and we have
Silverwing. Describe the two Dragons.
Half of the people will want the biggest and baddest dragon,
Vermithor, or they'll feel some sort of kinship, or some people
will choose one and some people will choose the other.
I think you should give people the option and then you again,
you don't have all your dragon eggs in one basket as it were,
you know? And there may also be some
factor along the lines of the Dragons more likely to accept
the braver person or something along that line, right, so.
And they just don't know for. For the first 10 volunteers, you
might have a higher shot of one of those people making it, since
they are ostensibly more brave, I guess.
But if they don't, if something crazy happens, the dragon
rejects them or burns them all alive or something.
OK, we got 30 some more people to still try it with, so yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, all this, I don't think
anyone's arguing it. She did it perfectly.
How bad it was, how immoral or misleading or organized or the
dragon keepers could have done better or all things to wonder
about it. It's it's interesting.
It's it generates discussion for us, but it just frustrates me.
I just feel like someone else in the same way that maybe some
people are afraid to stand up to Amon or Joffrey, whoever,
because you might get in trouble.
I feel like someone should have said, Hey, Raniera, maybe, you
know, someone should have spoken up.
And she doesn't seem like a leader who wouldn't listen to
her advice. But she's really rushing through
this. She feels like this is ordained
by the gods and I. I wonder how many other mistakes
like this you might end up making.
Sean, someone does stand up to her at the Dragon Keepers and
Jace we see two by not that you know, Jace kind of doesn't want
to happen at all. But they're not, they're not
standing up to her for the for the I how to do it better.
They don't want her to do it at all.
This specific moment of putting everyone out there.
Yeah, Sean meant like how to do it better not to do it at all.
You know what I mean? Like he could have.
Yeah, but she didn't ask her counsel.
And. And I don't think that, but I
don't think that would have mattered.
I don't think they would have. I mean, I agree with you.
Like seeking out advice might have been smart, but like, what
advice would they have had? Like they don't, No one knows
what's going on here. No one knows what they're doing.
Like why is she going to take advice about Dragons from people
that don't know anything about Dragons?
Hopefully, just as she is Vice save half the people for the
other dragon. That's it.
I don't. I don't know about you both, but
I don't think this is a mistake on the writer's part I.
Think it's a mistake. On Rainier's part, personally I
think it was intentional for her to be sloppy.
So the other aspect of this thing that's interesting is the
guards blocked the door. That happened, but I'm not sure
they would have continued to, given how bad it was.
But then they all got torched too.
And then no one could leave because they were there was
burning bodies blocking the exit.
That's why people started running down the stairs because
there was nowhere else to go. And that's when Alf gets knocked
off the wall. And that turned out to be pretty
fortunate for him, though not as much As for some other people.
And this is like they're putting a very tough spot.
Like I said, they run down the stairs even though that puts
them into the Dragon's cave. But the platform is a complete
death trap. It's turned into like worst spot
possible. Like you said, Sean, it's so
many people there that made it worse that no one could run.
And then the bodies themselves became obstacles, burning
bodies. So Hugh becomes kind of the
focus in the chaos and darkness. It's a, it's a classic movie and
TV show thing to do. You have chaos and you have
follow someone that way you have some guide through the chaos,
something that you can stick with and at least have a sense
of what's happening. So it's not too chaotic.
You still have a, it's still a movie or ATV show.
You still have to be able to follow the action and it's
really insane, right? Vermithor is very God like in
the scene, a very dark God making a banquet of all the
seeds. Like I said at the beginning of
the intro, it was like reward a God of fire and shadow and
eating them was one, one by one. It's spectacular and terrifying
at the same time. Hugh finds himself behind this,
behind a rock, next to this woman.
They're both kind of panicking a little, and they make a run for
it. Vermithor notices.
They separate. Hugh pushes her out of the way
as the maw is closing on them, and they both dodge.
Basically, he shoves her to the side and then dives out of the
way, and then they make a run for it.
But she's faster than him, and then he distracts Vermithor.
And this is a point where Ryan Condall says that, yeah, we're
not trying to get too deep into explaining the mystery, but
absolutely, there is behavior and qualities and things that
the character and the dragon are connecting on.
We're not meant to know what all they are.
But it's easy to come up with a few guesses here, in my opinion.
Like, Hugh is not afraid. He's, he rages back at the
dragon, which Firmathor has probably not seen that sort of
thing. Like, wow, this dude is, well,
he's different. Maybe I won't snack on him.
You know, that's something. It's like when you meow back at
your cat. Or bark back at a dog that's
barking at you. Yeah.
You know, I, I feel like we have seen in the story, in the show,
in the story in general, different methods and different
degrees of dragon blood. And, and it makes sense that
Martin and Condole would not want there to be designated
rules and that there wouldn't be designated rules at different,
as we said earlier, like different Dragons would have
different personalities. The point in their life, their
temperament at the moment, how hungry they are, All these
things could play into it. And so it might play out a
little differently each time, but a friend we were watching
with Adrian, you guys know Adrian?
She pointed out a commonality, at least in these two, was they
both seem prepared to die. They seem ready.
They had accepted their fate. They're like, well, here it is.
I'm in front of the dragon if it wants to.
And it that maybe on some level calmed the dragon or gave the
dragon acceptance of them or something, I don't know.
I like that take, and I agree. I wrote a similar thing about
Ulph. I didn't write it the same way,
but I wrote that Ulph didn't panic, that he gave in to the
moment. And so that's it's, it's a not
quite the same as what Adrian was saying, but I, I, I, I think
I like the way Adrian put it even better, which is the yeah,
it is. And it fits really well with the
theme of the episode of gods and, and being chosen and just
submitting, just faith. Like what happens happens, you
know, it's the will of the gods. And also just he was saving this
woman here, this moment of selflessness.
I think that might have mattered.
I mean, this was the the, the Jaharius dragon.
Jaharius was the good, the old king, the conciliator.
He was perhaps the best king that's ever lived in Westeros as
far as the Targaryens, and made life better for a lot of people,
including the common folk. Not as much perhaps as his wife,
good Queen Alice Anne, which we'll talk about in a minute,
but maybe that matters. And as far as the fear thing,
the submitting thing, also remember when Stefan went up
there, the dragon keepers like don't show any fear, don't show
any fear. That's level one.
Maybe like don't show the fear. Actually not having it would be
level 2 and Level 3 would be like just full submission to
whatever happens, you know? Or, you know, there's always the
famous. You know, you, you have to be
scared in order to be brave. You know that.
However afraid Stefan or Olfa, whoever were Stefan, I don't
know if he was prepared to die, right?
He was maybe scared at first and then gain confidence, but I
don't think he was really ready to die.
But I think OLF and Hugh were ready to maybe because of all
the carnage they had just witnessed.
Like, well, I there's nothing I can do about this.
I guess I just have to be ready to die.
That maybe is a way to distinguish them from Stephen's
failure. You know, so clearly Sean, if
you were to redo the scene, you would put Notorious BI GS Ready
to Die album on in the background to properly psych up
the Dragon Keeper Dragon's seat. Hugh is a grandson of Jaharis,
right? Who he might just remind
Vermithor of Jaharis. Looks like Jaharis, smells like
Jaharis. That's exactly what I'm getting
at. There's a lot of things that
would make him think about his his previous writers only
writer. Whatever. 1/2 It's very, very
funny for the writer of Vermithor to be the son of
Sarah, who Jaharis just basically disowned and and and
did away with and then was real mad at.
The child of his that he got along with the least best by far
out of 13 children. Yeah, and.
In an interview with Kieran Butte, it was really good about
this. He talked about what
similarities he felt. Jaharis and Vermithor and you
shared and all of these things and he, he spoke to Jaharis
having a, a need to control things that he couldn't always
control. And that he felt that was
mirrored in Hugh, which we see with him like the the sense of
powerlessness that he has about the deaf daughter, which is also
something that Jaharis would have experienced because he
would have lost a lot of children.
Yeah, Anyway, he was. Just with Sarah too, like he
just couldn't, just could not control her and she wouldn't
behave and they couldn't reach a cord and he was so mad at her
and all that. Yeah, you're right.
That's a great. Yeah, so clearly the actor
playing he was put a lot of thought into his character, the
meaning of his character being a son of Sarah, a grandson of
Jaharis. And it's a great interview.
I recommend looking it up. He read all of Fire and Blood
too, so that's he's one of those.
Scoured it for like any hint about things that would have to
do with Sarah and his his story and yeah, it was really cool.
Yeah. And so just to be clear, in Fire
and Blood, Sarah is said to have had three bastard children, one
of whom what looked like Jaharius when he was young.
So I had Canon. I think a lot of people said
Canon is that's the one right there that meets that last
description. So yeah, great fit, great scene.
Great moment all around and it's something though, to add to
bring it back to Rainier. We she clearly moved closer
during all this. She was up on that balcony and
then as things progressed, she got closer and and wanted to see
what was happening and got on the platform.
And if you look closely, even in this moment, she's there.
She is standing up on that plumber.
You can see her on the platform even in these shots where it's
just Hugh and Vermithor. It's not just Hugh and
Vermithor. Rainier is standing up there and
you can see her. Yeah, it's pretty cool.
And a little adds a little more to the ominousness of Rainier's
vibe here. Like she's just watching it
happen. She's a little impassive.
People are dying. You know, we already talked
about some of the other issues there.
Can I ask you, Sean, what's your opinion on Hugh after his
comportment to use Oscar Tully's word?
What's your view on Hugh during this chaos?
You know, like, I feel that you might have expected him to be
real cut throat or awful to other people after punching
someone for food, but I don't feel that he did show himself to
be heartless. No, I don't think so.
It seemed like he was trying to save that girl there and.
She gets away, he saves her life.
He does more than like. He saves her life.
She got away, and as much as. He punched someone in the face.
He also saved a woman's life. Yeah.
Yeah, it's they, I feel like they're presenting him as a
protagonist. I I don't think he's going to be
a villain. He now he might not be, I don't
know, say this qualified for the protagonist role he gets right.
He still might screw up with the dragon or something, but I have
hopes for him. I, I was frustrated that he
punched that guy in the face and took his food, but I was
frustrated because I thought he was a good guy and that wasn't a
good guy thing to do. So now he's back to seeming like
a good guy for the most part of these.
This is all maybe a little inconsiderate of his wife.
Yeah, yeah, he shook a little of that good off, but yeah, he, he
took a little bad by doing that. Shades of Grey, of course, as,
as, as humans tend to be very interesting.
Yeah. And I agree with you.
Like he's a different person now, Rainier said So.
And that look he gave, he looked up like it was a little dark.
I think the way he he looked after realizing he had
succeeded, you know, he. Has an intensity to.
Him. Yeah, yeah, it's part of the the
rage, but also like, he just. He thought he was going to die a
minute ago. And it's an unusual situation to
find yourself in, so it's hard to exactly read the emotions
there. But it looked a little dark,
just like Rainier's look was. Elizabeth sends a super chat,
says there's a parallel between Damon killing Willem and Rainier
letting these people died and justify the means.
Yeah, it isn't about in this case.
This isn't a point about being good or bad.
This is a point about getting things done.
And yeah, Rainier is trying to get dragon riders and she is
willing to sacrifice people to do it.
And Damon needs to get these river Lords.
Damon is willing. Yeah, I think it's a great
parallel there. And again, what points to me
saying that we're not meant to think fondly of Rainier's
choices here, and we're not meant to really think fondly of
Damon's choices here either? Nope, Nope.
I agree. Yeah.
And and it's not a modern reading.
I think people in the story would would have like people
living in the setting would, would judge them for some of
these actions too. Some of it's modern.
We can't help divorce ourselves from our modern viewpoints.
But it's the exercise of trying to put ourselves in that world
and and judging based on the values of that world, I think is
interesting. And I think you make a good
point when you did bring up earlier, what would, what did,
what did Mazaria think of this? And that is not only is she a
small folk, a member of the small folk, but she has
Raniera's ear quite closely. And, and, and you know, they're
intimately acquainted and all that.
So I it is a salient point whether Mazaria would be like we
went too far or Mazaria herself is like it was worth it if we're
going to help all small folk to to sacrifice 40 small folk.
Don't. Yeah, don't forget that Mazaria
was is the one that encouraged her to to go this route and said
with Stefan the that it it was a good idea no matter the result.
When she's like, even after he got burned and the other dragon
keepers burned and sea smoke ran away, she's like, it was still
worth it. So I think, yeah, I think Mazar
Mazar was willing to let people die for the for the riot too.
Yeah, and and that's right, These are slippery slopes, you
know what I mean? When you start to justify things
that I, I This might be even isn't even the best analogy, but
one might argue it was a good idea for Aegon to fly into
battle. Never what the result, never
mind the result. Yeah, it may be.
Maybe. Yeah, you're right.
It's it's these are very hard things to judge.
Yeah. Like it's civil war.
And that right, that by itself causes us, as we've said to you
have to reduce your ethical barrier like you're the the bar
for what's good and and acceptable changes when it's a
life or death struggle. But of course it's not always
that simple and labeling it a life or death struggle in the
1st place. So but.
You know, like sometimes you could argue maybe in a time of
war, maybe different ethics apply, but you could also argue
in a time of war it's more important than effort to
maintain your ethic. You got to hold on to that.
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.
So let's talk about Silver Wing. It's a little.
Can I talk about Alf real quick? Absolutely talking about Alf
Real. Quick, Silver Wing.
I just want to say two things. He's probably drunk.
Right. He's always drunk.
He's at Dragonstone. I'm sure he's wine is available
to them. He.
Never gets to drink it. The 4th time I watched the
episode when they were when she was in the room giving the
speech, I was looking for refreshment.
Like where they served refreshment.
They probably were like, she's not going to have all those
people there and and not give them something to eat.
So yeah. Of course he's going to take
part of that. So he's drunk.
First of all, he doesn't want to be the one to have to, you know,
tame Vermithor. So he's hanging back.
We see lots of shots of him being scared and then he gets
knocked off as we saw. I just want to point out this
really funny character beat for him where he gets knocked off
and he got comes to and he's like probably again, still
probably drunk and out of it and discombobulated.
And he he is next to a torch and he sees it in his peripheral and
he just like jumps like huh. But he he thinks it suggests a
dragon flame or something. It's such a funny.
Little so funny. Small beat.
But like, I don't know, I just really loved it.
And it's, it's true because it also speaks to like the kind of
of terror and trauma that he's gone through.
And it's kind of interesting to me because what is it
theoretically possible? I don't think they'll go there,
but I could see ulf or Hugh having like real trauma about
this experience that they just went through and being a little
scared of track and play. Ulf maybe not because he was
drunk through the whole thing. He's like, I don't even remember
it very well, but Hugh, he was going to have nightmares.
But then yes ulf runs away and you can lead off there.
But I just want to. It's underrated little moment
where he literally goes oh fuck. He's his.
This is another reason I like the character so much is I'm
always drawn to people to act that can pull off drunk acting
really well. It's just one of my favorite
like genres of of of acting is drunk acting.
I don't know why I'm not even like a drinker myself.
I don't get it. So but his hand gestures too
like they really like it's like Jack Sparrow.
His hands are just going in weird.
Like he's pointing a finger and he's just like doing all these
weird things with his hands. Like, like when he falls down in
front of Silver Ring, he's got his hand like this.
It's just like, and even right here is he's just his fingers
are pointing out. They're just like, splayed in
unnatural ways. Like, it's it, it reads drunk to
me. Yeah.
Like his body isn't completely under control.
Which also brings us to Like the Dragon writer connection.
And if he's drunk, his Silverwing feeling the
intoxication. And I think Silverwing looks a
little tipsy as she flies. And Alf isn't a like super
aggressive guy, you know? Which might be relevant because
Silverwing is one of the least aggressive Dragons in the book.
Silverwing kills nobody during the sewing, just like here.
So, you know, Vermithor's anger might reflect Joharis in some
ways, like Kieran Beau said, like his his desire to control
things. And, you know, even though he's
a benevolent, he's still, that's still a thing.
You know, you get they can get angry about.
In Alison's case, yeah, definitely a woman of peace.
She endeavored to change laws and make things more equitable.
For example, she got rid of First Night.
Well, she didn't get rid of it. She made it illegal.
It's still, it's still happened in some places because some
people still do it now, like Roose Bolton says the Umbers
still do it. I mean, he basically did it
himself to make Ramsay. And First Night is really
relevant because it's where some of these dragon seeds came from,
not the recent ones that were born in brothels.
But the whole concept of it, you know, goes back quite a ways and
includes Dragonstone. Alf doesn't panic, like we said
before he did. He just kind of gives into it.
He's like, like maybe the being drunk is part of it, but I love
how much he was just stumbling around and then he just steps on
her eggs. Like it doesn't seem like he
actually damaged an egg because we've seen these sacks once or
twice before and it looks like he just broke the sack open and
didn't actually damage the egg. But how does the dragon know
that? How does he know that in the
moment? For all he knows, he's like,
it's like Jurassic Park or one of those moments where you hear
the dinosaur behind you. You know, you can't get away and
you know, and and worse, he's just stepped on her eggs.
Like what is? You have no hope here, man.
I can tell you a few theories here about Olf and Silver Ring.
One, he stepped in the egg sacking and now he smells like
her eggs and so she thinks he's her baby.
And that's how it happened. OK, 1-2 Alison was notably a
public speaker. She was a talker.
Olf is a yapper. He is the gift of gab.
I love it. Senses that three Theoretically,
Alison was a secret wino. She secretly liked to drink a
little bit and Silverman could smell the booze on ulf and was
was into that. Those are my my 3 theories.
My favorite vintage even. And I shared it with Tom Bennett
on on Twitter and he liked it along with some memes I had
shared. He, he is definitely living his
best life. Tom Bennett, him in the BTS, he
is just having such a good time on set and he's like the guy
that they can, they can count on to like have a smile when the
camera's on him and say something witty.
And yeah, he's, he's loving it. He's a he's a great, great cast
member. I wanted to say that Jurassic
Park for sure, but I also think this had a lot of alien vibe,
this whole. Especially.
The egg and the goop and that the monster coming over and.
Remember in season one, they brought that up when Damon took
the eggs out? They specifically said they were
using that as the the model. And it's the sad that's
obviously they they were just riffing on like they were
continuing what Damon It's that's Damon scene.
It's set up that they're gooey sack filled, you know.
So yes, you're correct. That was the original intention
and it continued to resonate in this scene.
You don't have to agree with the way they did all the dragon
bonds, but I do love the choice to do them differently, to have
each one have a pretty significant vibe.
Right. Ulp's vibe, even though it
happens like one cave over from Vermithor, was very different.
Even though there was darkness and Dragons and you know, the
fear and all that stuff. And sea smoke was extremely
different too. And we'll have to see what
happens with Reyna, who is our next potential dragon seeker.
Not a dragon siege, He's an actual Targaryen.
So there is a difference here. Matt Hatter says, intrigued by
Reyna foreshadowing wild Dragons.
Well, yeah, a, A scene that says a lot without a single line of
dialogue. I didn't really realize that.
And it's like, oh, yeah, no one says anything in this whole
scene, do they? Now, there isn't much to be
seen. No one's even standing next to
each other. We have Lady Jane standing here
looking like Maan Mothma. I totally love it.
But no one's actually standing near each other that just could
have a conversation. Reyna's just like already like
working her way out of this crowd so she can run off and and
as soon as the gates close, she's off.
You know, we were all predicting this would be sheep Steeler.
She was turning around to look at and like Nope, it was just
the eerie. I wanted to point out we see
from behind in the episode this like cloak that this gold cloak
that Jane Aaron is in. That's gorgeous.
And then like, we just see like the very top of her gown.
They never give us a good look in the episode of this beautiful
costume. They like sure, give us the
rest. In the stills, they give it to
us finally. And if you're like me and you
were like, give me the whole like, let me see this dress.
Here it is for you. I'm zooming in that is Aaron
we're about. To see in a second as it
clarifies, it even has her sigil up on the chest.
She's serving Aaron Realness, right?
Yes. She is, She is.
That is, with the, with the two guards, with the very prominent
Aaron Sigils there. Yeah, it's so cool.
It's wild to do so much costuming work and have such a
beautiful gown and never give a shot in the episode.
I guess they just kind of didn't realize they did that.
Like, you're like, oh, whoops, we didn't show that, did we?
I know it's amazing to have something like that and then to
barely show it, you know? So this subplot fits extremely
well with the overall episode theme.
A Targaryen isolated in the veil and a dragon just shows up
there. Like does this not seem ordained
by the gods? Like like she's the only
Targaryen there and it's kind of unheard of that a, that a dragon
would even go there. Like that seems like the the
heavens are arranging things for you And like, and since she's
the only Targaryen there who like, it has to be her.
Like who else can she imagine it's for?
So it's, it's the same line as before.
If the gods have called her to greater things, who is she to
gain say that which is laid before her?
It's not quite as clear because the dragon isn't like right
there but not too far away. And part of her wants it to be
true, right? She wants to have a real part to
play in the war, as she said she wants to.
She would love to have a dragon bigger than her sister, I think
as well, you know, and bigger than a lot of other people's
too. We don't know how big it is, but
Bale's dragon is small. Jace's dragon is small.
It would definitely be bigger than those two at the very
least. Beyond that, don't know.
I think she needs to be careful what she wishes for.
Yeah, yeah. This doesn't have to go.
Well, you're right. You're absolutely right to be
suspicious as to just she could, this could be a tragic tale of
her trying too hard. You know, that would absolutely
bit. It would not be pleasant, but
you could see it happening. You make me think of something
just considering that, you know, this young, I'm, I don't know,
relatively innocent girl who is charged with the care of these
baby Dragons and baby humans and is going off to safety.
But say she gets this dragon, what's she going to do?
People alive, right? Like, that's the thing.
And like, what kind of person does that change her into?
And I'm thinking about the parallel that we see with
Allison, who on some level, Kristen Cole is trying to
protect her from having to make decisions about who lives and
dies. And she's swimming in a pool,
you know, trying to find some relief from the stress of her
life. And then here's Renira sending
people to their burning deaths, right?
Like, they're living very different lives now.
And I'm not sure which one I would rather be in.
One person has more control, but one person has worse nightmares.
It's water and fire instead of ice and fire.
Yeah, White gown versus black and red, Yeah, or air and
realness in this case. But well, another thing about
Reyna is that she might have a little extra confidence because
she's apparently tried Silverwing, Vermithor, and Sea
Smoke and none of them killed her, although apparently it was
it was close. Close, yeah.
So she has survived these before.
She has at least some reason to think, well, you know, I got
through it once I can, maybe I can survive this one.
Even though this is a wild dragon, a dragon, which means
it's never been ridden before. So it's not the hasn't been kept
by the dragon keepers. Yeah, a lot more danger in a
dragon like this. No saddle.
But. Danny never had a saddle in.
Game I didn't think of the no saddle yeah, but like.
Danny didn't have a saddle in her on Game of Thrones and she
got around it, so you know it's true.
It can be it. Was able it.
You can fly the dragon without a saddle, but can you fight
another dragon without a saddle? Danny didn't do that.
Yeah, well, she sort of did with that was different.
She wasn't flying her. They weren't flying around.
One other thought on this scene here is I wonder quite how this
plays out. I think the important thing is
that she's going to settle on a dragon bomb with it, da da da
da. But I just want to know how the
next 5 minutes go when the rest of the party realizes wait,
yeah. Where did it?
Go the Princess were supposed to be protecting like do they start
a search party? They go back to the veil.
Does Jane let them in like play out exactly?
I think they just go. I miss Bayla.
Yeah. Like, where's Bayla?
Yeah. That's it.
I don't care. No one cares.
It's like Home Alone. No one notices Kevin McAllister
or whatever is is not with them. They just don't even notice, no.
One looking out for Rayna. Really.
Wait, wasn't there another person here?
Wasn't there an older Targaryen with wasn't there different
longer hair? You know, wasn't there a girl?
Like we had a girl here, right? Realistically, Rayna is also,
like, in charge enough that she could have just told the people,
I was told to do this other thing, go on ahead, and they
would have to listen to her. I don't think that anyone would
would say Boo to her, right? Yeah, I don't think she did
that, but I think she could have just said that.
He could have Yeah. OK, let's talk about the final
scene, which takes place in a in a few different places.
Really. In council starting iron rod
tells Eamon that the Hightower army has been slowed down by the
bees berries. Or if you talked about that
already in the past episode, the bees berries are upset because
Kristen Cole killed their Lord. Understandable.
That's the kind of thing you you revolt over, because this is
yeah, the the, the he kicked the hive, but Tasare and has taken
wing, which is Daron's dragon. The Blue Queen is her nickname.
I think Eamon looked so displeased at that.
Like he didn't look happy about. It like they thought he was
going to be pleased for some reason and he just is
threatened. But he probably is pleased or at
least understands the value of that after the scene, because
before the scene, he didn't know what he was up against and he
wouldn't maybe wouldn't be excited about having other
Dragons on his side. But after the scene and he
discovers that, oh, actually the blacks now have several more
Dragons, he might be glad of, of Tassarian, his brother.
But we'll see about that. Well, it's Eamon's reactions in
general will be very interesting to see about this.
And I, I do love that Tassarian has taken wing in the just as
the dragon seeds are being sowed.
And it's somewhat similar in the book too now as they're talking
as Iron Rod is giving the good news and saying, you know, this
high tower army's going to be unstoppable with a dragon, you
know, flying out in front of it and all that, which we'll see
about that. But it's certainly a lot more
formidable, especially given you can assume that the armies that
the high tower army is facing do not have Dragons of their own.
So. Cesarian is a small dragon
right? Like smaller than faces even now
so. Well, maybe about the same size,
roughly, maybe a little bigger, maybe a little smaller.
It's not. It's not clear.
It like I don't, I don't want to diminish it too much because
they can still fly and breathe fire.
So that's huge for the sake of like intelligence gathering,
just seeing how far away are the troops and maybe an ambush at
night or it's just the threat of it is a significant multiplier
to the force of an army. But it's vulnerable, right?
It's not unstoppable like these other huge Dragons.
It's. It's you're absolutely right.
Scales harden over time like Valerian.
Like an arrow would never Pierce Valerian scales.
An arrow would probably never piece Pierce Vegar's scales.
The younger you get though, like Meili's also probably pretty
immune. But yeah, you get to those
younger Dragons, like you say. Yeah, their scales are not super
hard yet, and they could be pierced by arrows, bolts and
other things. And not just the the Dragons
themselves, but the rider. A bigger dragon is more of a
shield for the rider on its back, but a smaller dragon is a
more vulnerable target. If the writer.
Is a more vulnerable target too. Absolutely true.
So as they're talking, this commotion occurs.
They're kind of like trying to ignore it as Iron Rod is
finishing his relation of the news, but there's cries of
dragon dragon and they're like uh oh.
And Eamon goes and looks on the balcony and Laurice and Iron Rod
share a look like uh oh, is it sea smoke?
Did we screw up? Did we?
Well, I don't know what they're thinking, but I'm sure that's
the what the look between them had something to do with that.
I would also like to see the 5 minutes after this scene like
Sean said, like what does Iron Rod and Laurie say?
Eamon goes and rides off and we follow him.
But Laurice and Eamon or Laurice and Iron Rod could be like oh
that's not sea smoke. That's what dragon is that they
might not have seen Silverwing. Silverwing hasn't flown, maybe
even during their lifetimes, so it's entirely possible they've
never seen this dragon before and they but they would know
that it's not sea smoke if they got a good enough look at it.
Although I will point out, I think I said it earlier too,
that they're both kind of a blue, grey, silver dragon.
So I feel that if there were two Dragons to get confused, it
would be these two, right? Oh yeah, yeah, I agree.
Or maybe 2 red ones or something like that.
Like Melees and Karaxis from a distance maybe.
Yeah, maybe those. Sounds you see the neck, but
then you're like, oh. It depends.
Like Lauris, I would expect to know the Dragons fairly well
because it's intelligence, you know.
But but you're not wrong that there could still be a mistake
here by yeah. He doesn't have good long
distance vision. He doesn't wear glasses.
How strong is his eyesight? Yeah.
So Eamon runs off to go get Vegar.
He's ready to fight. He's ready to go.
It takes him a minute to get there, though.
He's got a ride outside the city.
And by the time he gets to Vegar and gets her aloft, Silverwing's
already headed back. So let's talk about this for a
minute, because Silverwing flying over the city, this is
just fun, right? He's just like, Woo, you know,
It's flying around. He's like, hey, this is very
relatable. Like if you get a dragon, your
first day is probably what you do.
Just have just go out and take it for a spin like you would
your new car. Just have a great time.
Here's some weird hand gestures again, by the way.
Look at that. He's just so like, it's not.
He's like one finger is down. Like this isn't earth where this
he's this is hanging loose. Yeah, he's saying rock on,
right. It's so funny.
I love this guy. So yeah, he's just having a good
time. But you know, babe, hoping his
friends see him maybe. You know, I don't think this was
some plan, but Eamon doesn't know that.
Eamon probably Eamon's very suspicious.
He's a battle planner and might even look like what he did with
Rooks Rest, like send a dragon out his bait, lure him and then
ambush him. And I think that's what's on his
mind, among other things, as he chases this dragon back to
Dragonstone and says, OK, well, I don't know if I want to go any
farther. And then it's he probably sees
those other Dragons there and he's like, OK, I'm definitely
not going now. This is the funniest scene to
me, by the way. Like the very concept of it.
You know, the idea that say, OLF has no idea how badly he just
taunted, how badly he just taunted Amon and pissed him off
right there. He's just clueless.
I kind of don't. I wonder if OLF even conceives
like, perceives of the fact that he was chased away.
Like, did he even see Veigar behind him?
I don't know, right? And like Amon is like so mad
right here and Olf is just having the time of his life.
I love it. I love love it so much.
And I I, I do wonder, do you think he sees more than two?
No. Do you think Amon sees more than
than Silverwing? Yeah, that's why he turns
around. Yeah, yeah.
I I disagree. I don't think so and for a
couple reasons. I I thought he did it first but
just watching it back I could not see another dragon at all.
It's far away and and I'm like pausing the screen and slow
fast. He he said he could.
See in the. BTS they say he can see it.
Yeah, OK. I agree with you.
You. You can't tell that he sees it,
but he does. That's why he backs off.
Yeah. Even if he couldn't though, I
still can see why he would turn away.
There's a number of reasons, in fact.
One, King's Landing has scorpions.
Do you think Dragonstone doesn't?
And how Vegar successfully took out two other Dragons was
popping up behind a Cliff. Well, the whole island is a
Cliff. Like, this could easily be a
trap in a million different ways, including just a
distraction to get away from King's Landing.
And there's another dragon there now.
Like he's, there's a million reasons he's got to go back and
regroup and get more information and not just thrust himself into
what could be a trap or, or be running away from what could be
a trap. And he's just got all this new
information. He's like, whoa, this whole our
whole war strategy maybe has to change now.
Like, yeah, he needs to tell his counsel.
Even though that's maybe not the way he acts, he's still, it's
still a a consideration, you know?
I, I also, I don't know if OLF necessarily even decided to go
to King's Landing. So he might have just done that.
Or maybe so when we did it because OLF, so we could feel
that OLF wanted that. Maybe, yeah, I think that you're
right. I think there's no, I don't
think OLF was able to tell Silverwing what to do or where
to go at all. And they just have that Bond
knew where he was from, and Silver Wing has been there and
knows it. Yeah.
I I thought at 1st that it might have been a plan that Ranira
might have said are you fly there, lure him back wolf fly.
But I noticed that Ranira still had soot on her face and the
same dress that she was wearing and all still has he's
disheveled with soot. So I think this is just.
Right after. Yeah, totally agree.
Maybe an hour or two or something, but not long enough
that they met up and formed a plan and he took off and I don't
think he has any control. This is those proverbial 5
minutes after Yeah for that scene you.
Know I don't think she's spoken to Olf Olf has spoken to no one
since he's he's bonded with the. Good point.
Yeah, OLF has just been flying around ever since he claimed
Silverwing, and now he's gonna land there and now they're gonna
have a conversation. No one has told OLF that you're
not supposed to land on Dragonstone itself and like.
The Fuse Blackstone is stronger. It's stronger.
Here's here's one other thing Olf might have, you know, not
that he, again, I don't even think he had much control over
it, but he might have made things a little bit worse
because they've lost some surprise values.
Yeah. The idea that they would send a
dragon in to Laura Vegaar away and other Dragons come behind or
something like that. Well, now they can't do that.
Aymond is aware. Of this they're on notice,
right? They know they've lost their
huge edge. They're like, oh God, we had the
edge. Now we we don't.
So what do we do? And that's a big thing that, you
know, is presumably something that will come up in episode 8
and and probably going into season three as well.
I doubt it'll all be resolved in one episode, right.
And the, the episode ends with them kind of facing down, you
know, like Rainiera can recognize what dragon that is
probably. It's pretty easy to tell.
Like, what other big old dragon could that be?
Almost certainly Vegar with the holes in its wings.
Like, yeah. She could think it was
Vermithor, but she has Vermithor with her, you know?
She's like, that's right behind me and the Dragons are roaring.
It's like a big dragon chorus, big dragon song.
They're they're not really harmonizing.
I, I, I I would criticize the tuning of their knob scare this
track. They need, they need a little
work together a little more. Huh.
And that's a book quote, right? Yes, the Dragons roared
together. All the Dragons roared as one.
Yeah, all the Dragons roared as one.
That's right. Yeah, quote.
And the episode started that way, right?
Yeah, it started with Cyrax roaring and ends with Cyrax
roaring and two. So yeah, A.
Little book ending there. Which is funny, but also we
don't see sea smoke in this shot.
So we see the gold, the bronze and the silver.
Yeah, those are the three Dragons that are on display.
They're in reverse order of size.
The bronze Dragon's the biggest one, the silver is the medium
one. And the gold is the small.
That's funny right? But also I saw a really funny
meme that was like this is basically the Dragons yelling
slurs at Veigar. Yeah, you're bitch grandma.
Yeah, it's. Now my nose on you.
Yeah. I will talk to you a second
time. I can't see this image and not
just be really really amused. The idea of Cyrax yelling.
Speaking of that, Speaking of Dragons talking, that was
definitely a joke that popped in my mind.
When Rainier says it must be the dragon who speaks.
It's like, well, hey, I'm Vermithor.
Thanks for the introduction there, Rainier.
Now, what I want to get into is eating about 75% of y'all, and I
like my meat cooked, so get ready.
Yeah. Yeah.
Which dragon would have the French accent there from Monty
Python? Would it be Silver Wing?
That's it, I. Don't know what it sounds like
it it comes from George's favorite on screen dragon that
wasn't made by him. It's he made a he, he loves the
dragon Vermithrax pejorative from the movie Dragon Slayer in
the early 80s. So we're pretty sure Vermithrax
is he borrowed that name and chopped it in two and made
Vermithor and Vermax, which is, you know, Jace's dragon.
He liked, he loves the dragon so much he made two of them.
We've gone over what we expect a lot of the reactions to be, or
at least we've asked the question, what will the reaction
be to characters like Kat and ulf's friends and Eamond?
And we're wondering about Reyna, and we're wondering about
Corliss, Adam, and Allen and whether their connection will be
revealed or when it will be revealed.
It seems like it's unlikely to be concealed forever, but you
never know, I guess. But I also want to know about
the dragon keepers and how they'll react to seeing these
these characters on these Dragons that to them are so
sacred, and whether this rift with Rainier could get larger.
If you have questions for this episode or for the season in
general, as always, send them to us and we may answer them live.
Thanks to everyone for supporting us.
Thanks to everyone who listened and watched.
Sean, you had another take. There's dragon keepers of King's
Landing, too. You're right.
I wonder. How they will feel about this?
Well, Eamon, try to find more dragon riders.
Are there any Dragons or dragon eggs at King's Landing that
don't have riders? I don't.
I don't think there are. Are there?
There's a dragon in King's Landing that has a rider.
She when all when they departed from Drift mark, all three of
Aegon, Aymond and Helena were on their Dragons.
Yeah, you can only see her silhouette flying away.
It's not a close up. It's pretty weird.
But technically we have seen her on it.
But just just so we know that it's it happened, you know, just
so we know that it won't be the first time like it.
She has ridden her dragon before.
But yeah, it's it's, it's rare on the show.
What I'm really asking though, is it this isn't something that
Eamon can follow suit with? Like, oh, find my own dragon
writers for all the wild Dragon's a key.
Oh shoot, we don't have that option.
Yeah, you're right. They don't have like the big
stash of eggs and yeah, they do have the dragon pit.
But you're right, there's as far unless the show has changed
something, we don't we're not aware of anything from the books
other than what Ashaya said about Dreamfire being there,
which is a significantly sized dragon and could matter, but
maybe won't, maybe won't. So and of course the sorry and
we mentioned and yeah, there's maybe more Dragons out there,
we'll have to see, but there's quite a bit of dragon action
going on. I'm pretty sure this.
Was the most wild Dragons. They're just not necessarily
easily accessible to Amon. Yeah, and of course with the
show, you don't know whether they'll want to abuse budget on
them or not. You know, that's always a thing
that's they're very expensive. So we'll just have to wait and
see. But I do think this was probably
the episode with the most dragon screen time so far, like
Rooksrest had perhaps the most exciting dragon action.
That's that's debatable. Certainly Dragons fighting each
other is a very rare thing. They didn't do that here.
But just the number of Dragons, Cyrax, Vermithor, Sea Smoke,
Vergar, and I'm missing 1 Silverwing.
We've rarely had this much action for that many Dragons.
I didn't count the screen time, but I think that's something and
and I hope we get a lot more of that.
As expensive as it is, we certainly want as much as we can
get. All right, thanks, everybody.
Thanks, Ashea and Sean, as always, thanks Joey, Jesse and
Bran for the music and intro for our show.
And thanks Michael Klarfeld for the maps.
You can check out Michael's work at KLARADO x.de.
That's Clare dox.de and until next time, we will see you later
and Valar Riridis.