A sun for a sun. A loaded title with some clear
meanings and some not so clear. One of those references is the
old biblical line An eye for an eye, which is fitting since that
is what Amon wanted. The actual lesson, though, is
not to engage in eye for an eye behavior.
That's the lesson of what you're not supposed to do.
You're supposed to turn the other cheek, forgive and forget.
But that's obviously not going to happen here.
Very little of either forgetting or forgiving seems to be on tap
for the near future. Mercy is in short order.
All must choose and even neutrality might be dangerous.
If you're not with us, you're against us that the war hasn't
progressed to that stage yet. But you can see it kind of going
that way. You know, it's, it's already the
signs of, of, of it becoming a very hated, hateful, angry,
bitter engagement are are there already and you can guess
they'll be more. But this episode also had a ton
of callbacks and Easter eggs, especially to Game of Thrones
season one, episode one, but also to House of the Dragons
season one, episode one. There's also quite a few direct
lines from the books and a few other references as well.
In short, they're probably quite a few things you missed.
We've got explanations on all that lore and of course, good
times. It's the beginning of a new
season. Let's have fun with it.
All that and more on this episode of History of Westeros
Podcast. Hello and welcome everybody.
It's time for Season 2, House of the Dragon.
Let me very briefly explain what we're all about in case you're
new here or in case you're catching up with this and want
to know what our schedule is going to be like for the season.
We're doing breakdowns of every episode, short ones that'll be
about 10 to 15 minutes. Those will be published within
24 to 36 hours of the episode roughly.
We also have these live streams, this first one that you may be
watching right now or listening to later.
Those will be at 6:00 Eastern on Mondays.
They'll be spoiler free. We're only going to talk about
what happened, very little about what will happen.
Certainly no references to things that haven't happened yet
that we know about. No leaks, of course, no spoilers
like that, Only book stuff that's already very public.
Nothing that that's going to tell you what's happening.
Wednesdays at 7:00, we're going to go deeper dives with
spoilers. A lot of times the topics will
vary. It's going to depend on what
happened in the most recent episode, what topics have our
attention, what topics have your attention.
And then on Saturdays at three, we do our prediction episodes,
which is when we guess what's going to happen next, mostly in
the next episode, but also maybe for the rest of the season.
Because sometimes when you guess something's going to happen, you
don't always know when it's going to happen, just that you
think it might happen at some point in the future.
It might be worth noting. I'll make some guesses, but I
don't actually know anything. I my role is to kind of be on,
on the to, to give the, the feel of people who haven't read the
books and don't know where it's going.
You're just watching the show. So, you know, I've read the Game
of Thrones books and I've read a portion of Fire and Blood, but I
stopped before I got to this dance section.
So I may have some vague knowledge like, you know, maybe
you know, that King's Landing doesn't get burned to the
ground. We kind of know that, right?
Well, I, I guess maybe it gets mostly burned or rebuilt.
I guess that's a possibility. Yeah, I guess so from your
perspective. I am hoping to have some good
predictions, but they will be unsullied predictions.
And one of the values of unsullied predictions too is you
aren't basing your predictions on what you know from the book.
You don't expect certain things and that gives you kind of a
fresher perspective. A lot of times.
It's been valuable for us over the years having an unsullied
person cover the show along with us, who are very sullied.
That might already come into play a little bit here 'cause I
get the feel from a few other people that that's it is the
take from, you know, blood and cheese.
Like it was even darker or it's in my mind like that was, I
don't know how you can make it much darker.
That was pretty. Bad, right?
Well, just in case you don't know who we are, I'm Aziz.
That's Sean. We have Ashea as well, running
things from behind the keyboard. She's our technical wizard and
does pipe in with some thoughts here and there.
If you have questions for us, any of us, specifically for the
whole crew, just in general, you can ask them live.
Ashea will send a lot of them directly to us for us to answer
live. Others we might handle later.
You can also send them to westeroshistory@gmail.com if you
aren't listening live. Maybe we'll read your answer in
a future episode. Tell us what you liked most,
what you didn't like, your favorite performances, Easter
eggs and callbacks, things that that you noticed that we might
not have. There's so many.
I'm I'm quite sure I had to have missed a few things.
And Sean, looks like we've got our matching shirts today.
We have our Dance of the Dragons tour shirts.
They look pretty cool. They're designed by a Chea.
You got the twin Dragons here on the front.
You got black and green and the tour dates are on the back.
Sure. I'm just going to put the image
up here 'cause I can't turn around so easily to show you the
back of that, and neither can Sean.
I should have worn my shirt backwards.
That would have been fun. That would have done the trick,
that's for sure. Now, there was a new intro, not
just for us, for House of the Dragons.
So let's talk about both of those very briefly.
Our new intro is awesome. Thanks to Brand the Builder for
making that. It's basically the same music,
though it did get an upgrade similar to the House of the
Dragon intro. Same music, slightly, actually
slightly different, but the same basic tune but with a whole new
set of images. So that's cool.
But we're going to talk about that separately.
Requires its own breakdown, and frankly, we haven't had time to
fully study it given how short a time we've had since the episode
dropped and all that. Let's go right to the north.
Sean, what did you think of this northern, this northern bed?
It was, it was pretty cool, huh? It was short, but it really
delivered. I thought for for considering it
was only about 3 minutes. That whole little thing was only
about 3 minutes. Yeah, I was thinking that every
image I could remember from the trailers, I think we got
already. And I'm, I'm wondering, is that
all we're gonna get from the North?
I I I'm kind of guessing that it is.
And I'm impressed they went through so much production
effort for just that short little bit.
But I'm glad that they did. I'm glad they have a budget.
And if they think it's important and they've got the budget for
it, man, I I think that shows like HBO believes in his show
and it shows how good the show is and how popular it is.
It's all positive stuff, you know?
And one thing I took particular note of was there's there's one
shot from behind when Cregan and Jace are looking out off the
wall. And out of context you would
just think that's Ned and John. Yeah.
There's no way they weren't actively trying to make it look
like Ned and. John, you know, yeah, there's
some, there's some Benjen vibes in there too.
I thought a little bit. But you're right, mostly Ned and
John, even the way even down to the way they talked.
I mean, Tom Taylor really sound. He said he was trying to channel
Sean Bean. I'd say he nailed it.
It technically starts with the Raven and our first set of
callbacks. This is very similar to how
Winterfell was introduced in season one, episode one of Game
of Thrones. Even the music is from that
episode, though it's not the same music from the first scene.
The first Game of Thrones scene is actually happy music.
Yay, we're meeting the Starks. It's all happy because it's
going to get dark. So they started off happy.
That actually has a cold open. Before, you know, this is just
cold. It's not a cold open.
That song, though, is called Goodbye Brother.
Which man, that makes it hit so much harder when you know that
it's already a really sad song. Several of you wrote and said it
brought tears to your eyes. Same.
I'm with y'all The it's of course refers to Jon Snow
parting from Robb Stark. They expect to see each other
again. It's just a temporary party.
Sad look good in black. Black was always your color.
And that's obviously very sad because Craig and gets the news
from the South while he's talking to Jace that Jace won't
ever see his brother again. And goodbye brother is a very
appropriate song to have been there.
And of course, we see this scene playing out.
It's not entirely clear if this is something that just happened
or it happened like right when when Jace got there and Kragan
was escorting these men to the wall because they've just taken
the the vows and Jace just happens to be there at this time
where they've decided winter is coming and they're they're going
through this choosing a ceremony.
And that's a convenient time for him to be there.
But that's cool. You know, that's, that's the
kind of thing TV shows do a lot. And there's so many other
callbacks in this. There's a callback to seeing the
wall beyond the wall. Rather, he looks beyond.
He's like, oh, he has his his voice kind of quiets as he's
talking. Very similar to Tyrion's initial
reaction to it, or John's reaction to seeing the wall for
the first time when he's walking towards it is very similar to
this unnamed Stark who has just drawn the Blackstone the first
time he sees the Wall now. It's a little too bad.
Yeah, but Kragen lost a brother also.
So there there really is a lot that could could have done here.
But Jace grieves with his mother later.
I mean, how much grieving do we need in one episode?
I can kind of understand why they didn't want to just give us
all this good grief. You know, that's a lot of grief
right here. It's full of grief.
There's plenty of grief in the episode.
They didn't need to have Jace breakdown twice.
So I kind of understand that. But we do want we.
That doesn't mean we couldn't have had other things in the
North. But, hey, you know, I I'll give
him, I'll give him a little bit of a pass there.
Now, this Raven was in the trailers, and we kind of guessed
what it might be. One of those guesses was this,
that it was news of Luke. I won't point out my other
guesses, which weren't right because they're a little
spoilery, but it wasn't. I'm not entirely sure I'm right,
though. Is that the same Raven 'cause
that Raven passes through the courtyard when they're all
standing there before, when the choosing is happening, and then
the Raven arrives at the wall. They've already walked there.
So I think it's two different Ravens, but whatever.
There's a lot of Stark vibes in that scene that shows the
choosing when they show through the arch of Winterfell.
There's children running with a dog, and that dog looks like one
of the Stark direwolves. There's a pair of girls standing
side by side and one of them has long red hair.
It's very much vibes of the first time we see Winterfell in
episode one, season one of Game of Thrones.
And I do actually appreciate that Tom Taylor is beardless
because he's young and his father was beardless when we saw
him in season one, episode one of House of the Dragon bending
the knee to Viserys and Renera. Now Starks, don't forget their
OS is a big part of this conversation.
Winter is Coming is mentioned and it's a beautiful speech by
Craig. And it it kicks off what I think
is a particularly excellent dialogue in the steps.
There's a lot of really good, I'd say, prose for the words
they've been given. There's a lot of cleverness, a
lot of double meanings. There's a lot of cutting
insight. There's a lot of diplomacy,
people who are trying to chastise someone while also
praise them, you know, So this new bit of lore about Turin, I
actually like this a lot. It's they could have easily
messed this up. They could have easily said this
wrong and I would not have liked it.
But the fact that Craigen describes that this policy of
selecting one out of every 10 men to take go to the wall
started after the conquest, That's why it works for me.
If it started some other time, I would complain.
I'd be like, why? You know, why haven't we heard
of this? Why did they do that?
People were volunteering to to go to the watch before.
It didn't seem necessary. They had so many people there.
But we know already it's well established and has been for a
long time, more than a decade. Like since well before even the
world of Ice and Fire, let alone fire and blood, came out.
That Aegon's Conquest severely depleted the Watch because there
was no longer war between the different kingdoms that would
result in large numbers of people sent to the wall.
Those stopped happening. Of course that's a good thing
that those wars stopped happening, but this was one of
the very few downsides. Less people at the Watch.
So Turin, who also in our own analysis seems like a guy that
was very forward thinking, very conscientious, The rest of the
reason he bent the knee instead of fighting a losing war.
At least that's part of the evidence is that, well, he could
see that this would result in fewer men for the wall.
And it's his job, perhaps more than anyone else, to make sure
that doesn't happen. So he institutes this draft.
One in 10 men go to the wall. Yeah.
Were you aware that was a a show invention, Sean?
Or what did you think of that that choosing bit?
I had not heard, I, I didn't remember ever hearing anything
about that before. I remember thinking that's
interesting and wondering like I think they said one in 10 Stark
men, so like. Well, how?
One in 10 from the household not not one in 10 Stark men, just
one in 10 people from the household which which could
which could be a Stark, but not necessarily the guy chosen was a
Stark, Ryan Condall clarified. That was a Stark who was chosen,
but it didn't have to be 'cause there's there's not usually got
AB10 Starks, you know? From the household of
Winterfell, I guess so like of all the different servants and
stable everyone maintaining it, I guess that that open one, it
means they'll be sending more than one 'cause they're that I
think would be scores or hundreds of people.
Which makes sense that that that procession N was a lot of
people. It wasn't just the one guy.
Yeah. And maybe it's they even had
that little bit about the the sacrifice of duty.
So it might be. Yeah.
You, we appreciate you serving Winterfell.
We appreciate you being a bannerman to the North.
But there is a specific catch to this.
Keep in mind you. Might have to suddenly.
Give up. And maybe one about other
logistical details about what if someone is already married with
kids, they got up and leave their families behind, and would
that deter people from wanting to serve?
Well, you can see what. I think that probably sometimes
someone would volunteer to take someone's place.
I think there are certainly exceptions where you would go
across and logical sense would be made like this man has a
pregnant wife right now, you're not sending him to the wall.
I I think they are not completely without some
rationality and logic here. And I think that might also be
why the practice was discontinued.
It's no longer a thing by the time we get to the time of Ned
Stark. So these flaws are not bad
writing. They're a reason why this
practice was discontinued because it wasn't pay perhaps
fully considered. Maybe there were some flaws with
the Tauren comes up with this idea and then like, actually,
this isn't so great. This doesn't work, you know, And
and that's why it's at this point it's only been going for
100 years or so. And so it hasn't, they haven't
had a time where it's like, actually, this is a terrible
idea. Actually.
You just chose someone that is too vital.
Like you said, there's lots of things that could go wrong here
and that would be why it stops, which is why I accept it.
If it's something thousands of years old, these flaws would be
like they would have had to deal with this.
This needs more explanation, you know.
But a short term come up in the lores or whatnot, we've never
heard about it before. I didn't think it was a good
touch too, that the stones they were drawing, they're, they're,
it seemed like they're mostly white or grayish Winterfell, you
know, Northern color. What's the word Stark, you know?
But then the one going to the wall gets the black one.
They're going to join the black brothers.
And aesthetically, it made sense in a lot of different ways.
So that Blackstone choosing is one of many parallels I have
hold that I'm holding on to to discuss later.
We've got a bunch of parallels, Easter eggs and and stuff like
that. So we'll either get to that this
episode or if we run out of time, we'll get to it another
time 'cause I love those parallels.
Let's talk about Dragonstone Real.
Quick, I wanted to say that I thought it was noteworthy that
we didn't see exactly how it came about, but Kriegen said he
appreciated that Jace didn't use Dragon to threaten him.
Yeah. Like Amon did with What's the
Baratheon Lord? Boros, Lord Boros, Yeah.
Boros no, yeah. And, and Luke attempted to, I
guess, like I, I wonder some of how that logistics worked out
too. As you were saying like it, I
was kind of supposing that he went to Winterfell to meet
Kriegen, but Kriegen wasn't there 'cause he was escorting
this, these new Weitzman new. Weitzman.
The Wall, so that let them show us from from like a a TV
standpoint, we get to see both Winterfell and the Wall.
Good point. Yeah, I think that does make
sense. Actually.
I think it's a very good theory that he shows up at the
Winterfell like, oh, now he's up at the Wall, just go there.
He's like, Oh yeah, OK, I'll go there.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Another thing I asserted to
keeping track of how often we saw the Dragons, just something
I was kind of curious about. Yeah.
And about one in four scenes had a dragon in it.
Sometimes harder to find exactly what a scene is, but like I
counted that whole sequence at the end is just one scene.
Right on. But at 20 ish scenes and there
are four or five, you know, dragon appearances but only one
of them was the greens. We saw Vega one time, all the
other times were black Dragons, so.
Yeah, well, they, they keep theirs in the dragon pit, so
they're not as out as much I guess.
But that's also because they're not the Gullet and all this
other stuff. Yeah.
Anyway, there's. Reasons for it, but it's still
interesting. I wanted to think about how are
they presenting the Dragons here?
How are we gonna start this off, you know?
Right, right. One of the very quick note for
your intro thing. This probably doesn't matter
very much, but I just can't not express this information.
The eye for an eye thing. It's not that it is like this
shift in, you know, biblical lore or whatever that eventually
Jesus is saying turn the other cheek, but the eye for eye.
Originally what they were trying to say is if someone steals
something, you don't put them to death, they take your.
Punishment should fit the crime back.
It's even punishment, right? Exactly.
So. So to that end, on some level,
maybe Amon or daemon or someone is trying to do the right thing.
You know on that. End it's, you know, too innocent
dying and I've read a son for a son.
Yeah. Yeah, that part's not so great.
That's not so fair or, or whatever.
Yeah. So Rainey's returns from holding
the blockade, which is not fully formed yet.
The blockade is going to come up several times this episode.
It's very relevant to both plot lines, but both locations
Rather, Damon is increasingly impatient and worried.
He was already kind of like a caged animal wanting to go out
and start the war. He wants to go to Harrenhal, He
wants to take action. He's worried that they're taking
action while he's just sitting there.
He's also paranoid at Rain era, just going out on her own in
this state of mind when she's vulnerable.
We predicted that just like. Damon telling Ranira and blaming
the death of his brother on the Greens, Like yeah, they murdered
my brother, which that didn't happen.
He died slowly over this long period of time.
But given he blamed them for it, what are the odds that he
doesn't blame Amond for that? Like of course he's pinning that
directly on and of course it's his fault.
He doesn't have a nuanced view of this at all and isn't
particularly willing to entertain nuance about it.
He even says, look, when she's out there looking for evidence
of her son, Eamon could just pounce on her.
And then Randy says that clever answer.
Well, I I would feel bad for Eamon in that case.
Now she's just joking and down and down playing his anger,
trying to deflect 'cause I don't think Rainy Hero would win that
engagement, but she'd do better than she might on any other day
now. So they're arguing about one of
the central themes of this episode, duty.
The first word of the episode, duty is sacrifice.
All men must pay. You know what?
It comes before everything, except it comes before blood.
At the Tullys would disagree, but he says it.
You know all men of honor must pay its price.
I was gonna say it is an interesting distinction.
All men of honor. Yeah, he's like, well, I can't
expect. Honor, you might get away with
not paying a price. You can't expect men of dishonor
to pay any price they steal. And yeah, so he's wants to take
action. He's ready.
He's champing at the bit, chomping at the bit.
Which is it again? Champing, chomping.
Don't. Ask Julia Louis Dreyfus so.
They're so they're arguing over what their duty is in this
moment. Rainier is Rainies is like
deferring to the fact that Rainier hasn't given them any
orders and and Damon's like she's the queen.
The queen shirks as the mother shirks her duties as the mother
grieves. And that's really bothering him.
Now. Damon should remember the line
he gave in season one, episode one of House of the Dragon when
he's confronted with the line. Did you say it air for a day?
Did you say it? He says we all grieve in our own
way, your grace, So maybe he should remember that.
But he's pretty angry right now. And you know, like I said,
doesn't have a lot of nuance. So, but Rainey's handles him
pretty well. She's like, yeah, you can't
order me around and I'm tired, so bye.
But he's not wrong in that if they are to take, if they can
take out Veigar, it's a humongous advantage that they've
gained because Veigar is pretty much the reason why they can't
do a lot of things that they would otherwise do.
The Greens are realizing that too, that Veigar is so powerful
and, and it's where Veigar is, is where you can't be.
And Damon is struggling to accept that he wants to go
challenge Veigar and and Eamon's.
Some of that power is going to his head.
But more on Amon later. Let's stick with Dragonstone
here. Damon blames Rainey's for not
killing the Greens when she had the chance.
Something he's also going to say to Eric and Mazaria.
He's going to blame all these people for not doing this when
they had the chance. He's blaming that on them.
It's part of his just wild animal.
Like I got to do something. I got to fight.
I got to make I got to make this right in his mind.
Rainey's in turn says Damon is being too vindictive.
He's not lost to she's not lost to vengeance, meaning Rainiera
like he is. But Rainiera is kind of
vindictive. She is.
She's once Ayman Targaryen. So by the way, Emma Darcy says
themselves that this is a darkness in Rainiera that is
shared with Damon more so than they'd like to admit.
And if there's two actors in this show who are the most worth
listening to about their characters, it's Emma Darcy and
Matthew Needham, who of course plays Lauris.
The, the words they use to describe their characters, the
insight, it's like, it's like hearing prose.
They're so eloquent in describing their characters.
I, I think Emma might be #1 in that the way they talk about
Rainiera is and the choices that she makes.
It's really, it's really interesting, really insightful,
and I can't do it justice with my own words 'cause I'm not as
eloquent as either of them are, at least not when describing
their characters. So we get a brief jaunt to
Storm's End before returning to Dragonstone.
It's beautiful and haunting. There's an amazing shot of
Storm's End in the background. This is Emma's acting being top
notch. Just lots of different grief.
She has one line the entire episode.
I'm not sure if y'all realize that she says one sentence the
whole episode. It's hard to do that.
Sean, I, I, I remember you and I noticed that maybe one time in
the show Vikings really long ago, there was an episode of
Ragnar only said like one line the whole episode and we thought
that was pretty cool. Now it's not nearly as artful as
this one. It certainly doesn't have the
grief. The challenge for the acting
isn't quite as as intense, but it still was a really difficult
thing to do and he had to do a lot of things with just his
face. And I think this is this is
that, but maybe boosted a few levels.
Filmmaking is a collaborative effort too.
It required good writing and editing and directing and
everything. And, and they had a different
angle to this too. Cyrax does a lot of the emoting
for Rain era because there's the mournful roaring and the the
anger and a few of the things that can be expressed through
the dragon instead, which I think is pretty clever.
And although to be fair, it's something they've done before.
It's always good. That's what people think.
Maybe a lot like Cyrax and it makes sense.
I I think I like to choose that interpretation, yes.
But we don't. I thought about this too, that
even if it is her egg, she might not necessarily even realize
that. As far as I know the Dragons
don't like hatch and raise their own babies.
So she might not necessarily have an emotional connection.
It might just be the reflection of the dragon and dragon rider,
but it could be another layer that was in her also.
Absolutely, absolutely. I'm, I'm totally down for that,
that theory. So part of what Damon and
Rainier, I'm sorry, Damon and Rainey's talked about was how
it's painful for a mother to receive news of their child's
death via Raven and they need to go seek proof of it being real
because it's too not. Easy is the wrong word, but your
mind apparently will refuse to accept it given it's such a
tragic thing to have to accept. And Rainey's knows this from
experience. And it's one of the few things
that gets Damon to back down a little in this moment.
Because the mention of Lena definitely like brings him up a
little short. He's not takes away a little of
his anger, remembering her and her bravery, especially 'cause
this was Veigar's previous rider.
So it's he's got a whole lot of feelings about this 'cause he's
like, I'm going to go kill Veigar.
He doesn't even say Ayman's name in that moment.
He says if we kill Veigar and her rider, like he doesn't even
want to say the guy's name. So this whole bit about Ravens
and and delivering news is a big part of the episode as well
'cause obviously it's it's how news gets to the north as well.
So when she finds the there's the moment where Rainier lands
Cyrax on the beach and rips everything apart.
And not rips everything apart, but pulls the net out and gets
the cloak and then heads home. When she does return, Damon
immediately just asks if she found what she was looking for.
Like, again, his impatience is there.
He's like, you were looking for Rainey's told me you were
looking for physical proof. Did you find it?
You know, he doesn't say quite like that, but that's basically
what he's saying. And yeah.
And she nods. She's like, yes, I found the
cloak. And then, of course, a little
bit later is when they have the funeral scene, which we'll get
to in a, in a, in a moment. And this is when she does utter
that one single line. I want Ayman Targaryen.
Everyone's like updating her with plans, like we're ready to
attack. We're ready to do this, We're
ready to do that. She just ignores it all, says
the one line, pauses briefly, kind of then walks away.
And they're like, well, at least we have a command now.
We it's not what we expected. It's not what we wanted.
We have these other things kind of up in the air.
But at least we have something we can go do.
Although really, that's just Damon.
There's no one that's not. It's not a call to action for
anyone else. Instantly, that's one way they
manage. This is when he asked her that.
She just nodded. She didn't say anything.
Yeah, she just nodded. Yeah, just tearful and.
She came around, you know, he was kind of cut her off as she
entered the, the council room, the painted table.
And then everyone's kind of given these reports.
And then it's almost like none of that mattered to her.
Just get aiming. Like, I'm not even thinking
about the war or the crown or the whatever else.
And it was I, I think when Damon was asking her, did you find
what you need? On some level he's asking, you
know, did you find proof? Did you find about whatever
else? But I think really what he wants
to know is did you find justification for me to go be
fine right now? Yeah.
You're right, yeah. Please do what I've been wanting
to do this whole time. Take me off the leash now,
please. Uncage me.
Unchain me. Yeah, that's what he wants.
And it wasn't quite the unchaining he wanted, but it was
something he could go do. And it involved killing and the
action. So super chat from Dom.
Hey Dom, shout out to folk wise YouTube channel.
He says Aziz and Altchift X did the same.
Champing, chomping at the bit thing today.
It's a big question. Everybody knows whether in the
US or Australia, they want to know if it's champing or
chomping. Let's go to drift.
Mark Corley's limps to the dock with help of his cane.
He's still, you know, recovering, may be permanently
injured from his ordeal. And we meet the man that saved
him, a burly sailor named Allen. This guy's clearly in some kind
of command role because he's updating Corleiss on the status
of the blockade. He says them seven more ships
were sent out to reinforce the blockade.
He says he doesn't think it's enough.
Corleiss is impressed, though, that his own ship has even been
recovered and that it's going to be repaired.
He says I want this ship to lead the blockade.
Yes, it's going to be difficult to to to hold this blockade, but
with my ship out there, that will help a lot.
Alan tells if it's going to be weeks.
There was a vibe in this scene, wasn't there?
Sean? This is where you being
unsullied or is really valuable because we obviously could say
some more about this, but we're not gonna.
And so I really want to hear what you have to say about this.
Like, what did you. There was something, there was
some unspoken things here, weren't there?
Like some stuff between the lines, Like how do you how do
you. Yeah, tell me what you think.
One of my first thoughts was, OK, here's a new character.
It seemed like they spent enough time to this incident, just a
throwaway scene. This guy's coming back.
And it seemed like Corliss was, you know, expressing gratitude.
This guy saved his life, but everything, it didn't seem
cordial or or warm between them, you know?
So like, I don't know if there's some other past and it Allen
saving his life might have been begrudging or yeah, maybe it was
Allen's fault that Corlos got injured in the 1st place and I'm
not sure. And it that all that tension,
for lack of a better word, between them was also disrupted
by the presentation of this knife that was meant for Jace or
for for Luke, who's dead now. So like, there's, there was a
lot going on there that these seemingly stoic men were not
letting seep through to me as an audience yet anyway.
So yeah, I am intrigued. Yeah.
One, one thing I noticed was that, yeah, when Allen mentions,
he's saying I'll speak to my brother about what the
shipwrights can do, which implies his brother's a
shipwright. And that gives Corley's kind of
pauses a little at that line, but he pauses much longer when
the dagger is brought in. He's like, oh, and Alan
apologizes. He's like, yeah, that's I'm
sorry for the loss of your heir. And he, you know, he calls him
his heir, notably, by the way, not like your grandson or
whatever. And so is Joffrey the heir now,
the drift mark that hasn't been settled.
But that's a that's kind of an open question at this point.
So obviously the when one heir is gone, you got to that's a
big, obviously that's a big question in general for the
throne, but in places like Drift Mark too.
Do they re? I feel bad I I I lose track of
the names, but was it Lena who was betrothed to to Luceros?
Reyna. Reyna would she now give
betrothed to Joffrey? Because that was, but it it,
it's happened, but I I mean. It's a pretty big age gaps and
it and it seems key that the true valerian line continue
right which. Was that marriage was part of
making sure that was done under the under wraps.
So you're right, good call. So yeah, this is all developing
situation. As you said, they wouldn't
expect answers necessarily for it right away.
But you, you really did point out several of the important
bits here that are, that are crucial.
And yeah, there's something else going on.
They'll definitely explore it further.
That hesitation that that like you said, lack of warmth or for,
for better, maybe for lack of better words is, is there is
something there. You you picked up on it
correctly. I'm glad you did.
But we got a lot of talk about. So we'll come back to this
because it's like you said, it's just now getting started.
Mizar. Yeah, it's, it's just, I want to
say real quick, it's just like, hey, thanks for saving my life.
You're welcome. I got to get back to work.
Oh, actually, I'm glad you I'm glad you said that because what
he says it was only my duty, which again, big theme of the
episode. He said he did his duty and
unlike all the other duty in this episode, all the other duty
in this episode. That sounds funny.
There's duty comes up so many times in this episode.
This is the only time where the duty isn't isn't given blatant
conflict thrown in the midst of it here.
You can tell there's some conflict.
It just isn't clear what it is. So you know, there's something
it just isn't. You know you haven't been told
yet. You know, the one place where
you would have thought more duty would come up is in the sewers.
Yes, right. There's hardly any duty down
there. There were two very, very bad
men, very duty headed men. But they weren't, they weren't.
They were doing their duty too, I guess.
Anyway, let's talk about Mazario.
Yeah. Can I add something here as we
segue to course? Because of course, I rewatched
last season leading into this and I remember something that it
clicked in my head that if we know when when it originally
came out and we covered it, if we talked about this, I just
don't remember. When Messaria meets with Otto
to, you know, he's going to pay her to find out where, where
Aegon is, right. And she has this demand.
She's like, look, I'll tell you, I'll help you here.
You're paying me money. But also, I want you to stop the
the the abuse of children in the city, you know, and he's like,
OK, sure, I'll look into that. And she says, and I want you to
remember how powerful I am. I could have just killed Aegon
like a wasp on a fruit. Don't forget you know where.
Don't forget who put him on the throne.
Right. And, and Otto's like I won't
forget. And that's on one hand that say
I won't forget, I'm indebted to you, but the other hand was that
I won't forget. I'm going to take care of you
'cause I can't have this problem coming after me, you know?
That's exactly what I wrote in the synopsis.
In our breakdown, I wrote, his way of remembering her was
burning her establishment down. Although he didn't do that.
That was Larry who did it. Exactly right.
I think she thinks Otto did it though.
Exactly. She's going to blame Otto for
that. Yeah, that's what I was going
through on my rewatch. OK, Yeah.
Whether or not that occurred to me, we talked about it a couple
years ago, I don't remember, but on my rewatch, I was like, I
wonder if she's going to hold auto responsible for what
Larry's did, and if so, what will the impact of that be?
And sure enough, we see, at least on some level, that seemed
to motivate her to help Damon out.
Right? Yeah, a little bit, yeah.
So we get started with her because I, I, I put this right
here because of the blockade and she's the one we talked about
Allen and and core lease and then there it's their blockade
that captures her. Where do we suppose she was
running to? I I guess Essos like she wasn't
going to Dragonstone on purpose. I don't think maybe she won.
Maybe she was going there to talk to Rainier because I don't
think she wanted to see Damon, though.
I don't think she wanted to be seen by him again, given the way
he confronted her and outed her for some of her things.
She talked her way out of much worse.
Like you said, she was guilty of a lot of the things he said she
was guilty of. He's like, she's like, I
couldn't have killed him even though she said he could.
She could have killed him. And then she says, I all I did
was profit from it. And even though she tells Otto,
remember who put him on the throne, like like he's Damon's
like you put him on the throne, he's like, no, I didn't.
I just profited for his. Like, no, you did, you really
did. So but she's going to talk and
she kind of, you know, White wormed her way out of it and she
did kind of go too far there. She did overplay her hand with
Otto, even though, like you said, it was Allison's order to
Lars. Upon Lars's suggestion, Lars was
brought Allison the idea and got the OK in the same brief like 3
sentences there. And yeah, so she's despondent.
You can see why. She's just kind of at a loss.
She's lost everything. She lost her establishment, she
lost her connections. Cheese thinks she's dead.
So that's one silver lining for her is that probably no one's
after her anymore because they think she's dead.
But now that she's on Dragonstone, maybe her star will
rise again. I don't know.
There's a conversation she had she was having in the.
Trailer cheese thinks he's dead, thinks she's dead.
Yeah, Cheese thought she was dead.
He he, Damon brings her up to cheese and she says we thought
she was dead. He says her ghost talked to me.
He just plays it off and says her ghost told me that you were
gambling dead cheese. OK, yeah, I do remember that
moment. I just mixed up which one was
which one. Yeah.
So, yeah, so she's a very good liar.
And you know, she has, she did have some positive things she
wanted from her position of power, unlike most people, but
like a lot of. But whether you want good things
from your power or bad things from it, power can go to your
head and you can go too far. You can get loose with it, you
can get arrogant with it. You can think yourself safe when
you're not, which is very much as the theme of this episode.
The arrogance of the Greens and thinking the only threat is from
Dragons and there's no threat at all because they have Vagar,
leads them to not think that this kind of thing could ever
happen, which also happened to Mazar.
She didn't think this kind of thing would ever happen either,
I suppose if. Or she wouldn't have, you know,
gone so deep in with Otto. This may be a a little too.
I might be stretching my judgement on the the characters
a little too much, but typically people expect things of other
people that they would do themselves, right?
A liar is always suspicious that other people are lying to them,
whereas an honest person, it might be very naive to the fact
that someone is lying to them because that does that make
sense? So Damon would do something
underhanded and murderous. We've seen him do it multiple
times. The Greens, maybe not so much.
Maybe that's why they weren't expecting this.
They they didn't. They are more honorable in their
approach to this war. You know, maybe I'm giving him
too much credit, but. Well, it's not.
Maybe not. Honorable isn't the right word.
They don't have this particular brand of cunning.
I think their cunning comes in different forms.
Like Otto was trying to. Yeah, yeah, Otto's Remember,
Otto ordered Harold Westerling to go to King's Land to go to
Dragon Stone and kill Rainier and her children gave that
order. Well, it wasn't subterfuge, but
what's the difference? It's still in order to kill a
bunch of children and like, so what's the difference?
He ordered him to go arrest them.
No, he ordered him to kill them. No, no, he didn't.
He he ordered him them to kill them.
It was like order to kill them. Yeah, he specifically said kill
them. That's why.
That's why he took his cloak off and said no, I'm done, I'm out.
I'm not doing that. I thought that was in the wake
of Allison saying, you know they won't bend the knee.
If you go tell them to bend the knee, they're not going to do
it. And then he orders Westland go
arrest them, which is in the context.
He specifically says kill them. OK, Yeah.
Also, I want to give a shout out to our boy Eric Cargill, Sarah,
Eric with an E who says it's a matter of honor that he defend
Mazzaria right there. And I just want to want to say I
appreciate the Cargills in general and and Eric for
speaking on her behalf. I agree, that was a really good
scene. Yeah, he kind of stood up to
Damon a little bit there. He could have just put his tail
between his legs and, OK, I'm in trouble with the Prince, you
know, I better just do what I'm told.
But he said no. Like, he still believes he's
doing the right thing. And on some level, I think he
might respect brother, too 'cause that was also part of the
point he made when Damon further challenged.
He was like, look, we joined the Kingsguard when we were 18, and
we're supposed to protect the royal family, and then royal
family turns on itself, like, so we don't know who we're supposed
to protect anymore. I think he made very It was a
cool argument for his attempts to be moral.
It was on multiple levels. It was very much the same Jaime
Lannister argument with that he presented to Brienne.
He's like, look, what are you supposed to do when your oaths
conflict? He's like, well, to protect the
weak, defend this the the women. You know, the king is always
right, but the king is the one killing the kids and the women.
Like what are you supposed to do?
It's the same dilemma. I mean, he's even a Kingsguard,
right? What side are like he said they
this has been their vow, their oath the whole time.
What's he supposed to do? Just drop it on a whim?
And for who for which side? How is he supposed to be?
He's he's just a he's basically a cop.
Cops aren't supposed to like make Supreme Court Justice
decisions, you know, like who's in charge is not his call.
So it's usually simpler, but it wasn't.
So that's again to the duty theme of this episode and the
conflict they're in. Yeah, I think that Eric does not
think his brother Arek is evil at all.
I don't, I don't think he thinks that.
I think he he as he points out to Damon, Damon tries to call
him out on he's like, no man, I made a really hard decision.
So yeah, I don't think, I don't. I just don't think that he has
hatred in his heart for his brother at all right now.
Even if he thinks Aegon is not the righteous king, he he could
see how his brother was torn. Well set.
So let's let's move on. Let's talk about the twin flame
scene as I'm calling it, which or you could really call it
three flames because it was 3 candles and three things dropped
in the funeral pyre. It's Luke's funeral interspersed
with Allison at the Great Sept. It's a really very well done
scene. A tear jerker right up there
with several of the other scenes in this episode.
Very tear jerkish in this one. First Jason Raniera are reunited
and he attempts to do his duty by delivering the results of his
mission but he just can't get through it.
Like he just starts crying before he can even finish saying
what he's got to say. And Raniera again says nothing,
just embraces him. Soon after they have the full
funeral. There's some interesting older
cow old man in this funeral who's like the only non family
member there. It's just a few of them and this
one dude, and maybe a couple of guards too.
I guess now that I'm seeing images on screen.
Oh well. They had a different maister
there and he's young, so I don't think this can't be the maister.
Maybe the Castellan of Dragonstone?
I'll just say the thing. I I've I noticed was when Jace
comes in to to see Rainiera, Bayla walks him in like like and
and gives him a little like squeeze on the shoulder.
Yeah, a little escorting him in as he's.
Yeah, I I appreciated that too. So it it's just like I said,
small ceremony. Balin Rainer there, Jason
Joffrey and Rainier. I don't think Damon was there.
Did Damon not attend now as I was writing this?
So, like, was Damon not there? I don't see him there.
He's still. Oh, had he already left?
But yeah, he already left. You're right.
He'd already left to go execute his plans.
He's already sailing to King's Landing.
Good point. OK.
It wasn't his son. He doesn't care.
I appreciated them giving that the beat to Reyna there, who
again, this is the death of her potential future.
This was her betrothed, as Sean rightfully pointed out a minute
ago a little bit ago, but I knows what the future holds for
her right now, right? Like she she doesn't have a
betrothed right now. She doesn't have a dragon.
She, yeah, I think she's a big question mark for a lot of
people right now. I don't know if you have a
thought, Sean, on where you, what you'd like to see for
Reyna. Yeah.
Where do you think? What's your thoughts on her
right now? It is a weird spot that she's
in, like Ashea said. Yeah, her, she's got a lot of
personal struggle, but her house too, if on some level, it seems
like a lot of these characters do share the importance of the
legacy of their families, if that makes sense.
So that's maybe just one small piece of the puzzle, but I'm
thinking about that specifically because if she does get
betrothed to Joffrey, that seems like from the, you know, big
picture political view. You know, even Lionel Strong,
who is kind of presented as like a a protagonistic wise
character, still wanted to marry the 30 year old to 12 year old.
You know what I mean? I guess he just knows like this
is just the right political move for the land.
Sorry about your personal relationships, whether or not
you love each other or whatever you care about the age
difference. This is just what you need for
stability in the politics. And I think I personally screw
the politics. Just step down for the throne.
Let someone else. All this nonsense for being.
King or who's gonna be is not as important as like a basic
morality. You don't sacrifice morality on
it anyway. But but I do see the importance
to how the the lineage of the valerian going to continue and
the inheritance of Drift Mark and it it just makes sense.
Okay, just marry her to Joffrey and that that solves all these
problems except that it's so messed up to marry.
They wouldn't be able to start having each.
Year old to a 7 year old or whatever.
Yeah, if the, if the, if they're trying to make sure there's the
line continues. Marrying like a 5 year old to a
16 year old isn't the best way to make sure they have children.
It's not that out of whack. But it's definitely like you're
setting yourself up for, for it not working out.
Yeah. So like there's one thing like
are they even going to be into each other?
It's, it's much harder to accomplish that for you to do
your husbandly and wifely duties when there's these things like
big age gaps that lead to you maybe not being so into each
other. But yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a
developing situation for sure. Drift.
Let's not forget about Driftmark when the Iron Throne is in play.
As you can see on the screen, I wanted to point out that
Joffrey's little, little 5 year old Joffrey's submission to the
pyre and you can see is Luke's toy he had clearly inherited
like he, you know, he had like maybe he'd be playing with them
because Luke obviously wasn't really too was, was too old to
play with his old toys. But you remember that toy was
the one that that he had as, as, as a as a young boy at the as
his old actor. Yeah.
We remember, I think we remember seeing it in episode seven or
something like that. Yeah.
It's a, it's, it's a definite call back.
Good catch there. I missed that one.
I, I totally forgot about it. I recognized it as Luke's toy
cause of course it's Luke's toy. They're throwing Luke's stuff in
there. But I forgot that we'd seen it
before. So as each item is consigned to
the flames, there's three items, one from each of Rainier, Jason,
Joffrey. Allison lights a candle.
So it's part of the paralleling going on here.
And and Allison, each candle represents a recently deceased
person in her mind, someone that's she's thinking of the
first being her mother, Allery Florent, then Viserys Targaryen,
her recently deceased husband, the king.
And then after hesitation and build up and you know it's
coming, she says Luceris. But you what you don't know is
coming is how she's going to say it.
Like you can tell she's about to say Luceris.
At least that's how I read it. But I was really wondering
whether she would say just Luceris.
Would she say Luceris strong? Would she say Luceris Valerian,
which she's? I don't know, but.
On edge just about whether she would bring herself to to say
Luceris. Thought she might just not do
it. At all.
And I was like, where's she act going to to to say his name?
I wasn't really on edge about how she would say it, I think.
I think I always assumed she would say just like how he's
he's referred to in world she would say it properly.
And that that moment got sort of addressed again later in the
episode when I'm pretty sure it was Amon said something to the
fact of she has love for our enemy, right?
She. Yeah.
Which makes her a fool, He. Was like on on her as the queen
or as the decision maker or whatever if she's sympathetic
with the bad guys. Yeah, definitely.
More on that later. There's definitely power
struggles going on in both factions, questions of
leadership in both factions. And that is another of many
parallels sticking here a bit longer.
This scene with the funeral and the lighting of candles is
another throwback to season one episode one of House of the
Dragon which had a funeral scene for Emma and Baylon with Cyrax
being mournful just like she is in this episode under similar
ish circumstances. I'd say this twit, this, this
three flames or twin flames scene, Twin funerals 3 flames
scene was the most obviously set up to be a parallel, but there's
so many of them. This episode in general I
thought was extremely well connected to itself.
The way the threads flowed from one plot line to another while
also connecting to other parts that would pop up later, just
like a tapestry, like the new intro.
I thought it really lived up to that.
And I hope the rest of the season continues that well,
because, you know, there's, there's always things we can
criticize. But in terms of the way the
episode flowed together and the way the different plot threads
aligned with each other, I thought that was quite well
done. What about you, Sean?
You have any thoughts on the flow of the episode or anything
along those lines? Episode Construction.
Yeah, I definitely have several parallels to other episodes that
I'm champion, champion at the bit to.
Well, we'll talk about the parallels later.
I just mean like your your thoughts on the how it was.
But yeah, just recognizing how well they did that.
I mean, it's just, it's just amazing writing.
It's so well, so well done. I did want to point out though,
one thing, that Elyria Florent. Alary.
Alary Florent I I in my mind, I was just in the context.
OK, that's got to be your mom, but that's that's kind of like
just now made-up, right? Yeah, we did not know who his
mother's name was or her mother's name was.
That's. That ahead of the season,
actually, Ryan Condall mentioned it in an interview ahead of the
season and we were like, ooh, and now I see why he mentioned
it because it was just prominently mentioned in
episode. One, they had already written
the name. And I'd like to point out that
Alary is a is a particularly resonant name.
Speaking of parallels for her to have is her mother's name
because the mother of the Tyrells in the main series is
Alary Hightower. So Alary is traditionally, you
know, a rich man, a rich woman name has been a Florent married
into the Hightowers and then a Hightower was later named after
it and then some Marjorie's mother is Allery Hightower.
And so anyways, I, I, I think it's a brilliant name choice.
Applause to them for the choice. Yeah, that was a good one.
I agree with the Shaya. So let's let's take a minute
here and say in addition to these cool shirts that we've
got, that is a way to for you to support History of West Rust
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Patreon. We will be doing some bonus
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And of course it's just a good way for you to support the show
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Go to patreon.com/history of Westeros and choose the level
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Also, happy birthday to Fox and Brambles.
How's it going, Ashton? I wanted to give Fox and
Brambles a special shout out because if that name doesn't
mean anything to you, that's the person who designed our logo.
One. And two, Ashton has designed
lots and lots of sigil shirts and stickers, which you can find
on their Etsy. And I think you'll probably see
lots of people wearing their Damon Rogue Prince shirt or
their Amon's shirt. Yeah, you'll see a lot of her
shirts this season. So happy birthday, Ashton.
I was wearing her C snake shirt during the episode yesterday in
fact. And Fox and brambles makes me
think of Florence too. Well, fox head symbol, right?
OK, so also on Fridays I'm continuing with my Twitch game
streams. twitch.tv History of Westeros.
It's the game Crusader Kings 3, but it's modded to be Westeros.
It's extremely well detailed and the game works like this.
I play Lord, a lady, a king or a queen, and when I die I become
my heir. That's how the game works.
It's not just how I do it. That's how the game works.
And you role play the character based on the personality traits
they acquire during the game. If they're a fool, they're they
act foolishly. If they're intelligent, they act
intelligently. If they're a drinker like Aegon
the Second, they drink a lot. If they're a psycho like
Joffrey, I do psychopathic things with them.
Yeah, it just depends on the character.
And y'all, the people who attend always give me good advice on
what decisions to make, who to ally with, who to marry, what to
name our children, lots of fun stuff like that.
So check it out. Fridays at six, twitch.tv
History Westeros. A big question I have is what
was Elena whispering? There's I think we're just
getting to the tip of the spear with Elena.
We might see her family start to figure out that she's been
having visions and dreams. Maybe not.
But we asked Ryan Condall in our interview with him if if anyone
had noticed that she predicts the future sometimes.
And he didn't give a straight answer, but basically he said
yes. He didn't say who, he said some.
People are paying attention I think is how he worded.
It right? Yeah, it was a very diplomatic
answer, but it wasn't a no. It was not a no.
It wasn't a negative either. It wasn't a like he wasn't
trying to steer us away from that and what we've seen.
So let me let me get back to this original question.
She was whispering something when Aegon comes into the room.
And the, in retrospect, sad foreshadowing for which child is
which. Even Aegon can't recognize which
kid is which his own son. He's like looking for his son.
He's like, oh, that's my daughter.
Where's Aegon? You know, and I.
Actually had to rewind that and like what?
Why did he walk? Oh, it's hard to tell the twins
apart, you know, even his own dad or.
Yeah, so, but when he comes in the room, Helene is stitching
something which some some people's theory is that it's
already a funeral shroud. She was already stitching a
funeral shroud for her son. I don't know if that's the case.
Maybe we'll figure that out later.
No, it was it was green and gold.
It was like their house color. So I kind of.
Yeah, I'm not so sure about that.
But it's a it's a good theory, at least worth considering.
And but yeah, she's whispering something and the first thing
she says is the only one or the only ones, and then I can't make
out the rest. It's not on the subtitles.
So before you say what did the subtitle say?
The answer is nothing, because we always watch the subtitles on
anyway. So I don't know what she's
saying, but it just adds to the mystery of her as a dreamer, as
a predictor, as a prophet. And we're going to do a lot more
studying on her. And the show has given us a, a
treasure trove. There's photos, there's images
of her drawings and sketches on the walls on in a book.
Yeah, she's got a lot. It's got some deep rich stuff
that we can't get into now because it would be spoilery,
because some of it's, of course, these are prophecies, some of
them. And some of them, for example,
there's a rat in there, which you already kind of know what
that's about, but there's others that we shouldn't talk about.
So if you figure out what Elaine is saying, please let me know.
And yeah, or if you just have a guess, I bet a lot of you didn't
even catch that 'cause I didn't catch it on my first watch.
So yeah, it's pretty easy to miss.
I took note because in one of the behind the scenes bits that
they make for this, they pointed out I was like, oh, and I looked
at it kind of superficially and decided, you know, I'm not, I'm
not sure I want to figure this out.
I want to ask you questions and spoil myself.
Also interesting by the way, the subtitles you pointed out that
you can't, it doesn't say what she said in the subtitles.
There's other interesting things too about the subtitles that I
think one time Carlos called Alan Allen, but in the subtitles
it said Allen of whole. It gave his full name when he
was speaking off screen and same thing.
I don't I don't remember. I think it maybe eventually
someone might have called those guys Blood and Cheese.
Yeah, they are. They're in the, in the in the.
Note from the subtitles is where they gave it in.
The subtitles, yeah. Yeah.
Can I say a fun fact about Blood and Cheese that in the rehearsal
scripts they were not referred to as Blood and Cheese.
They were referred to as Boris and Charlie, which is very funny
to me because of Charlie Kelly from It's Always Sunny in
Philadelphia. Who?
Being a rat catcher. Yeah, he's always bashing rats.
He looks kind of like him. He's always eating cheese.
And now they call him Charlie. I'm just very tickled.
I made some edits for our breakdown video of that.
The parallels are overwhelming between Charlie and cheese.
Other than the murder, you know, and the gambling debts, I guess.
But and the violence. But Charlie's a little violent.
But yeah, the cheese part, even he's they're both obsessed with
cheese. It's great.
It's so my other. OK, so there's another go.
Go ahead. We know those It's Always Sunny
guys are fans of Yeah writings in general.
They even got little cameos in Game of Thrones.
Right, they did, and David and Dan had cameos and It's Always
Sunny. Maybe Ryan Condall will as well.
So that brings me to another of my favorite parallels.
Since the Shaya mentioned the It's Always Sunny crossover, I'm
going to mention the Office crossover.
There was an Office crossover. Aegon the Second said a line
worthy of Michael Scott, which was one of his drinking buddies
asked him would you rather be loved or feared?
And he goes, it's got to be both.
Michael Scott's for said goes farther and says, I want them to
be fear how much they love me, which would have been perfect
for Aegon to say. And I really wonder if that was
just something they didn't. I don't know if they I wonder if
they realized they were basically channeling the office
there. But either way, I love it
whether it was intentional or not.
How good is this casting by the way?
Like Blood and Cheese were great.
Like that guys voice was just so intimidating and terrifying.
Like I tell you, if that guy was 10 years older, he could have
given Rory McCann a run for his money trying out for the Hounds
role. I don't think he would have won,
but he would have been made the cut to the finals there.
That voice is great. I think he should have a voice
off with Christian Bale's Batman.
Who can go deeper? Yeah.
It's like, well, yeah, they should have like a little screen
that's like, shows their decibels, like how low, like how
low, like what pitch they had, like, like who can get lower
instead of like, yeah, like, who can hit the lower bass notes?
Like, yeah, yeah. Thea was amazing as Elena.
Like she's playing someone that's a little or a lot
neurodivergent. I I I'm not capable of making a
diagnosis and we're not supposed to know exactly.
But she's clearly neurodivergent in some way.
And this shows up in her reactions and in her plea to her
husband that she's afraid of the rats.
And to his And his reaction is just, it's almost comical.
It's just tragic but comical because if you know what's going
to happen, it's tragic and funny.
If you don't know what's going to happen, it's probably just
funny. But maybe, you know, Helena
predicts things, so maybe, you know, something bad's gonna
happen. But like, the nursemaids just
kind of like, look around on the floor like rats, like they're,
you know, And Aegon has that humorous line.
He's like, the Queen is an enduring mystery, is she not?
It's just that he delivers it so well.
And it's like, how do you add so much levity to this very dark
moment? Well, by great acting, that's
how you do it. You know, I, I'm glad you
brought that up because that moment and a couple other
moments, I feel like Agons had a little growth here.
Like that was a very tactful thing.
I think Aegon a year ago would have said something much meaner.
He would have ridiculed her, or scoffed at her, or taking one of
the maids in a room off with him, but instead he gave her
respect it. Was a little, yeah, a little bit
of diplomacy, Yeah, just a little bit.
Yeah, he was confused. He knows that.
He knows everyone's a little weirded out, but he's like, hey,
we respect you still. That was basically what he was
saying, you know. Yeah, like she come when she,
when she said what if he doesn't?
You know, you must not disturb him at his custom.
You know, he's like, you know, where is he?
She she says, what if he doesn't want to be king?
Aegon could have easily said something snarky.
I expected him to. I was ready for the retort.
Like me, I didn't want to be king and they made me to do it.
But I'm happy with it now. Although he probably isn't going
to be, you know, next episode already.
He's probably, it's already going to turn quickly.
But yeah. And the reason I think he's so
magnanimous right now, and that was one of the suggestions for
his name, that he was like a magnanimous is because he's high
on validation. He just went in front of that
crowd and everyone screamed for him and they were all so happy.
And he's raising the sword in the air.
And they're like, they cheered even louder.
He's like, all right, I'm going to do more of this.
He's like, hey, how about this? They love me.
Wow, this is unexpected. So he wants to return the love.
They love him and he wants to return it.
So he's like, yeah, I'm going to be a good, good to the
commoners. Let's see how long that lasts
now that a commoner has killed his son.
But, you know, we'll we'll see. But but yeah, I'm very impressed
by the acting. And apparently he, like the buzz
from the set was that a lot of people were impressed by him,
too, just the way he brought that kind of humor to places
where it wasn't planned to be. And they're like, well, that
worked. Let's keep that.
That's really good. Can I say an acting thing I
really appreciated about him? Yeah, his humor, he's really
funny. But like there's also a certain
a certain element of uncertainty of uncertainty that he has like
you, the image I have on the screen right now, the way that
IA lot of the actors show and in the books, they even reference
it do this. The people who fidget with their
hands in different ways. You see it from Allison.
You see it from Ranira and an Aegon here in the scene when he
he was so confident at first to to just tell people what they
wanted to hear. But as soon as he learned like,
oh, I don't just get to tell everyone.
He's like his acting. He becomes so much more like
uncertain in himself. And you see it in his whole
dynamic and his whole demeanor here.
And I just, I think Tom Glen Carney is a very good actor.
Yeah, very well chosen. And it's very similar to Damon.
Not, not the way that they're acting, but the fact that they
are showing uncertainty where they didn't before.
They're they're not sure how things are going to go There
aren't things aren't going the way they expected.
They don't have the power they thought they did.
And he's he's he's not as cocky and confident as he was.
He's got nerves and anxiety and and impatience probably more
than anything else Damon does. So you're seeing a little bit of
a different angle to Matt Smith as well, and I appreciate.
That and as much as I agree so much with everything you're
saying and my next comment, I don't want it to take away from
it. But I do also want to point out
that I feel like, like I was saying it, he's grown and
growing because he does start off with the all right, yeah,
let's give you the sheet back. And Otto's like, look, there's
going to be a problem with that. And he's like, he he sees Otto's
point. He's not he wasn't just like,
screw you, I'm the king. I can do.
He wasn't Joffrey there, right? He's like, OK, yeah, I guess we
can't sorry, we can't give you the sheet back.
And so then the next guy he kind of puts down too, like he gets
to be confident. Like, I'm going to burn that
stupid. Blockade, right?
That's a nice complaint. But the next one comes and he's
learned here his demeanor changed a little.
I didn't have quite the confidence he had before, but
he's learned because what he wants to do is reward the
blacksmith. But he knows Otto's not going to
let him. So he makes it hard for Otto to
stop by saying, like, we owe so much to the common people.
So now you know what I mean. He he's understanding how he
just was taught that when the king speaks, everybody hears it.
So he's like, oh, I'm going to do that right away.
He's like, once I say it, yeah. He's realizing it, you know,
people were going to listen to him, but he also doesn't want to
create problems for himself. Like he's learning a lot.
And I think that's part of what this scene was showing.
Same thing when Larris comes up to him in a moment, I start.
If I'm jumping to your head, no. It's a perfect.
Document but but he he doesn't. He easily could have a Joffrey
or many other characters could have.
He sort of saw through what Loris was doing right.
He knew that there was something more to what Loris was
proposing, but he didn't snap at him.
He didn't take offense. He's like, tell me how.
Yeah. Like, he's like, let me learn
from you. I'm learning a lot.
I'm figuring it out. Learning on the job.
Taking advantage of like my dad. Tell me how to not be, you know
so. Yeah, and that was a perfect
example because Loris is just so creepy and his dialogue is so
well written and he cuts to the chase just right.
He knows exactly the leverage point to that you're anxious
about the thing that will get you to move.
He knows exactly what to say. And it was.
It was. Perfect in.
A diplomatic. It's diplomatic, yeah.
He can't he, he gives himself an out like, oh, I just meant blah,
blah blah, you know? He's like, oh, not me.
He's not, he's, he's not saying name me hand.
He's not saying any of that. He's just saying, you know, if
you might want to consider that. Like he was your father's hand,
not your hand. You know, like you don't have.
He's not your hand, he's the implication, is there?
The implication of. Someone challenged him on that
like, wow, wow. Just because it's your dad's
hand doesn't mean you'd be yours too.
I'm all behind. Yeah, you could keep him if you
want. But yeah, you can keep him if
you want as your hand. But you know, has anyone just
pointed out to you that you actually have that choice?
And he's like he he kind of his eyes kind of go back like he's
like thinking about it, like he never considered it.
And in a in a few in a scene not too long after this, Allison
basically tells Otto, they look up to you, all my sons look up
to you, which was true, but not realizing that it's just been
undermined, like just got undermined right before that
moment, which is really good. Again, how shows how well the
episode flows and connects and it's it makes these things
easier to catch. Because it's extra ironic did
that conversation Otto and Allison were having was about
how he was undermining her. Yes.
There's just another layer happening that neither of them
are even aware of. Yeah, it's so well.
Done it is really good yeah just excellent yeah and and Otto as
well His his his way of approaching Aymond later was
like super diplomatic super like he's like you got to learn
discipline but then he which is like unlike your brother who we
both know you're much more disciplined than him.
It's like, which Eamon's about to like, say something and then
he's like, OK, you just assuaged my ego.
And we know that's true. We know that Eamon thinks
himself superior to his brother. That came up plenty of times
last season. And like, he's like, if they
come, if they come to use me for the king.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, So I love how they broach
these topics and, and managed to like, drop negatives and praise
at the same time and do it in the right order.
Like, you know, the, the, the good cop, bad cop.
But there's just one person there, there.
He's a good cop and bad cop at once.
Like Larry's and Otto both do it.
And yeah, we may as well talk about it now 'cause you brought
it up. That Allison conversation with
Otto where they have their private moment.
That was a great scene, too. First of all, again, great
dialogue, great writing for the for the words that they chose.
I had a moment, actually had a moment of respect for Otto.
Those are rare where she points outlook.
If we're you and I are trying to keep my sons in line, how's that
going to work? If you undermine my authority,
you give credibility to this guy and this guy.
But when it comes to me, I mean, she doesn't say it, but it's
basically misogyny. He's like, well, you do it for
the men, but not for me, you know, And that's not the word
they choose, but that's basically what's happening.
And he agrees. He's like, I hadn't thought of
it that way. And it's like, look, we need to
work together. We made this guy king.
And this is when, and this is when they start to make a
mistake. This is when they realize this
is when they're maybe not arrogance or maybe they've the
ship has sailed and they don't realize it yet.
They think these still are still children.
They're not children anymore. They're like, oh, Aegon will get
bored with ruling and then we'll take over.
Aegon is just angry. He's just mad that he lost his
eye. It's the, it's, oh, it's the
Caprice of youth, you know, like, no, Aegon is fully ready
to go to war and has a battle plan and all this other stuff.
And he doesn't, he's, it's not about his eye.
He's got grander ambitions than that or something else He just
wants to prove. Who knows?
But it's, it's bigger than they think.
And of course, the idea that they can steer Aegon away from
ruling after all this is maybe not going to happen, but we'll
see. There's another irony to this,
too, is that Amon might be thinking the same thing as Otto
and Allison. Because remember when he and
Kristen got Amon when he ran away right when he was missing
and Visaras had died? So everyone's trying to find him
and they get him and Aegon is trying to like he's like, no, I
don't want to do it. Let me go.
Like look, let me go and I'll I'll take a boat to Essos.
You'll never see me again. Like and, and, and Eamon was
kind of tempted. He's like, can I make this work?
You know, like Chris sounds like.
OK, let's go now. Like I.
Guess not, but. But Eamon might be thinking the
same thing that Otto and Allison are.
It's just a matter of time before this irresponsible kid
gets bored and we can just give him money and girls and I can
actually be in charge. Yeah.
Yeah, I I agree that is probably that is that is basically what
you're thinking. You're right to think that maybe
Eamon think is thinking along similar line.
Maybe he hasn't quite thought that far ahead, but maybe he has
It's it's absolutely possible. So I like the King's Landing
getting back to the blacksmith moment and tying that into the
scene where Veigar arrives at King's Landing.
Mostly I just want to point to the status of King's Landing and
how they're on alert for dragon attacks, which is ironic given
where the danger actually comes from that they're not seem to
seeming seemingly aware of now it might have seemed funny at
first. It's like why do they just have
the one scorpion? You know, like that's explained
later when Hugh Hammer is sitting there saying scorpion
takes weeks to build and we don't have proper iron thanks to
the blockade. So that's why they only have the
one scorpion. It's actually explained.
And that makes sense. Why wouldn't they have had a lot
of scorpions before? Well, that's an easy answer.
Why would the Targaryens put those up?
That's the only thing that kills Dragons.
They don't want those dragon killing things you know out
there. They want none of them to exist.
This is the only time they want them when the one time they've
turned on each other. So you would never see those
things built in anywhere in the seven kingdoms cause the only
reason to build those is to shoot Dragons, at least in this
setting. There there are other reasons to
use them, but in this setting they're pretty much dragon
killers or would be seen as that you know to to the by the
Targaryens. So so I thought that was cool.
It's a small thing, but notice how even Loris makes this
mistake. We're talking about when Loris
approaches Allison. So let's back up a little bit.
We have him doing the same sort of open-ended question.
He says I tried to see you before the small council
meeting, but your maid said you were indisposed.
And of course she was hooking up with Kristen Cole and according
to her it will be the last time, but obviously it wasn't.
And then he says, I fired everyone in your household,
killed all the traitors and replaced everyone with my own
people, which might include the handmade he just mentioned.
And Allison immediately is like, great, she we already talked
last year about how she was getting herself trapped by this
guy. Now she's just like even more
trapped by him. And you see her, she's taking a
bath and she just doesn't want any, any of them around.
She just like, she's like, no, get away, get away, get away.
Everybody leave me. You're sparking so many thoughts
in my brain disease. I want to point out that I think
that scene in a bath, not only does she not want those people
around her, but she couldn't get herself clean.
I think that's part of what's going.
On Oh yeah, 100% yes, she there's no no amount of
scrubbing is gonna scrub away the shame, the hypocrisy and and
I'm glad she's getting some she deserves it.
But that doesn't mean she's not feeling shame in hypocrisy.
Yeah, and she might not deserve it in this particular way
because that was another scene from last season when her and
Kristen were walking together talking about plans or the
frustration were Minera and I can't remember what else, but he
called her some awful name, you know, And Allison stopped in her
tracks and she's like, so Kristen, like we're supposed to
the the reason we are right is because the decency and honor
and that we have to stay decent and honorable if we're going to
stay right. And he's like, you're right.
That was beneath me. I'm sorry.
But now that's gone. Like they don't have their
pretense of righteousness anymore.
Power corrupting them. Yeah.
Good cats. That's a good, very good catch.
I didn't think of that one. And also, I wonder if she, on
some level at least, suspects that Laureus might know that
she's having an. Affair.
Oh yeah, she. Wasn't specifically telling her
that that she's got to be worried about it and Otto was
suspicious too. Otto gave them both looks.
Yep. He gave them both a look.
And I think all of that is one, maybe to let us know as an
audience that they're on to her, but also to let us know that
probably wasn't a one time thing that just happened in a moment
of passion. It's a routine they've got
going, yes. And it was full of the symbolism
of her putting the the white cloak back on him, which is
like, they're like so paralleled.
Kristen Cole when when he slept with Ranira.
Parallels more than that, Sean. It parallels when when Allison
dressed Ranira in that very room, like with a lot more
lovingly before her. Yeah, before she was great
catch, it was that same room and she she, you know, got her
dressed for that. So yeah, I think it was a few
things. Also, the room that that Allison
and Cole are in at the end of the episode is the same same
room Cole and Rainiera hook up in the first time.
Yeah, Allison is living in Rainiera's bedroom now.
Like Allison has moved bedrooms to Rainiera's old room, Helena
is in Allison's old room, Aegon is in Viserys room, and who
knows who else has moved around. And, you know, I'm going to open
a minor can of worms here, but in the past, I've made, you
know, maybe have had a tendency to defend the gorgeous Kristen
Cole. And.
I have lost some respect for him so some of my reasoning behind
and it wasn't so much that I wanted to defend him, it's just
that it felt weird to me how much he hate he got relative to
how much hate Damon got it. It seemed like Damon did more of
villainous stuff, but I didn't know where the story was going.
And so, but I, I, I definitely like Kristen Cole took a notch
down here in my so the Damon. Damon got worse.
Also. David did get worse, yeah.
But on some level, hey, can we give credit to the player
Kristen Cole, who has slept with two Queens?
Who else just slept with two Queens?
Oh yeah. Viserys Targaryen, I don't think
anyone says. He's.
But he's a king. He's.
Not Viserys. Right up there with the king,
the king level Riz. There's probably a few other
people that slept with multiple Queens and they were all kings
so. There's a bunch of Kings and
Kristen are. Part of one group, yeah.
That's pretty good. So let's see.
Moving on to let's talk about the the small rest of the small
council scene. So yeah, we have a lot of
threads come back here that we've already talked partially
on. We have Aegon bringing Jerry's
to the small council and this is both setting us up to grieve for
the child and great character work for Aegon.
Again, he wasn't taught to rule and he was under parented.
So he's kind of overdoing it here.
He's like going too far by Jerry.
This is this is too young to be a council, but he's got the
right idea. We appreciate that he wants to
educate his son, the heir for the crown, heir to the throne
should be well educated, but he's not doing it quite right
because, well, he wasn't taught quite right.
And you can kind of understand why he's overdoing it a little
bit. And I just want to point out
that it's really easy to compare him to Joffrey, but it's also
easy to contrast him to Joffrey because he's doing this sort of
he's kind of taking abuse of his power.
He's making light of this whole serious meeting.
He's manipulating and embarrassing someone.
But when he goes a step too far and someone calls him out, he
steps back, and that's it. Yeah, right.
Like, Joffrey would have pushed farther.
He would have made his mom leave the room.
Like, if you're gonna tell me what to do, you can leave.
And he would have made sure that Thailand was Thailand.
That's the. Yeah, Sir, Thailand.
Yeah, yeah. Lannister.
Yeah. So yeah, that's right, Sir.
Thailand. Yeah, where's Jason Lannister?
He's the Lord of Castle Rock. He's still back in the West, OK.
And they're twins, so that's might be why you have the
confused. Yeah, but they're not twins in
real life. It's one actor playing both
roles, unlike Eric Ark. And I don't know about these
Jahara. Jahara.
I think that's two, but I don't know.
Probably. Yeah, it is 2, I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, it's definitely two actors.
As Allison and Kristen Cole enter the chambers, we we
pointed out that Otto gave them a look individually.
Cheese is there with his dog and some dead rats and no one even
looks at him. This is very reminiscent of how
Ari was taught to behave like a commoner and reek as well.
Just keep your head down, don't make eye contact.
They won't even look at you the show and or actually has one of
the best lines that speaks to this concept.
He says like he's someone's asking how did you get steal
this imperial like technology and he's like they're so fat and
satisfied. They don't even suspect.
Suspect what? They can't believe that someone
like Meek would ever get inside their house, walk their floors,
spit in their food, take their gear.
They just can't believe it would happen.
And that's basically the arrogance that the Greens have
here. Not just towards cheese, not
just towards the servants that they ignore on a daily basis,
but the methods in which they are vulnerable to those people.
They don't see that as a danger when it clearly is.
A human being with a knife can kill any other human being given
the right circumstances. And that's basically what
happened, so. And I think, I think that was
another good moment of writing, editing, directing, because it
makes it more believable later when he just walks across the
throne room with Aegon there, because he is just around all
the time anyway. He is his presence is accepted.
So. Yeah, rats are everywhere.
Like they it would make sense that he would be there like no
one questions. It's like, yeah, rats, yes, of
course. And there's just so many other
servants walking around delivering drinks or who knows
what. Yeah.
So it just makes it just makes sense in that in that light.
Now, Speaking of people looking at each other, there's several
looks in this in this council scene.
Iron Rod has a snarky comment for Allison.
Allison's like, did we get any word back from Rainier?
And Iron Rod's like, yeah, the. You mean the apology for her
dead son? And she Allison gives him a hard
look. Remember, she had it out with
him during the coup. He's like, well, you know, we
got to do this. And and he's like, if you make
if you open your mouth one more time, I'm just cutting your
tongue out and sending you to the wall.
And he's like, OK, so she doesn't he doesn't like her and
I don't think she likes him. But our Orwell grandma, Sir
Orwell diffuses it by saying, you know, I do believe it's like
this is indication that war is inevitable.
Like he says it much more diplomatically.
And then, of course, we have Aegon almost embarrassing Sir
Thailand. And again, Allison deftly
diffuses this situation by blaming Sir.
She puts the blame on him even though it's clearly not on him.
But she does that because that's.
Who Aegon is upset with and she has to play along.
This is exactly like season one episode one of House of the
Dragon where Damon is just being a total jerk to Otto and Otto
stands up 'cause he's like, he makes he brings up his dead wife
he brings up Allary, who wasn't named at the time.
He brings up Allary Floren and Otto stands up 'cause he's like,
you just insulted my dead wife and Viserys is like Otto, you
got to stop letting Damon bait you like that you got to stop
letting him do you do that. He's like, I'm sorry, your
Grace, it's the same thing. He's like, he's diffusing it by
the the there's one person that just will not behave.
So the the mature person in the room has to take the brunt of it
and just be like, Yep, just sit down and let it pass.
And yeah, yeah. So when they get back to the
business of the council, rather than the distraction of of young
Jeharis, Thailand says his brother's leading troops from
the West. And Otto points out that his
nephew Lord Ormond is leading troops from Old Town.
Easy to miss that, he said. Lord Ormond, which means Hobert
has died. No Hobert, no Hobert.
We barely knew ye. That's Hobert Hightower for
those new we like to call him Aubert.
Very French, but now we'll say Ormond.
Ormond And remember, this was the guy, the dead Hobert is the
guy who said hail, hail Aegon the Conqueror babe or whatever.
That dude, that's the dude who said that.
Yeah, he did. He did now.
So the way a lot of this proceeds is Aegon wants to
intimidate other Hows into following them.
And it's straightforward. Like, look, we have Dragons.
Why? Like it would be so easy, we go
there, they would definitely say yes, 'cause otherwise we burn
them. So why is this a bad idea?
And Otto's like, well, you've already demonstrated your power.
You've already shown what Vagar can do.
Here we have talk of troops already mustering.
We don't have to make any more demonstrations.
We don't need to rub their faces in it.
We can just say, look, we demonstrated our power, let them
join us. Let's send out our our letters.
Otto's probably right under most circumstances.
Kragen was annoyed about over the memory of egg on the
Conqueror threatening enforcing obedience through draconic
threats and approved of Kragen being more diplomatic and
speaking to common goals like unity, which remember that was
actually very diplomatic of Jace too.
He says torn Stark would never have bent the knee he was so
strong and mighty unless he believed in Egons message.
He didn't do it because he was afraid.
Like that's the unspoken part. And, and Craig's like, yeah,
that's right, that's true. So in this case, I I side with
Otto on this one. Look at Burrows Baratheon.
He his loyalty was taken for granted by the blacks and he got
real mad about that. So, yeah, you got to be careful
with these Lords. They're proud people.
And if you force them into something, they might go against
their own best interests and be like, no, I'd rather be violent
and proud than on the winning side, you know?
So it is a real tight woke walk. And Aegon and Amond and these
guys, some of them don't really see it that way.
They, they just feel like, hey, we're powerful.
Everyone needs to fall in line. And yeah, it doesn't work so
well. I remember again on the the
rewatch, you know when Luke went to Boris Baratheon that he was
gone with a stick and not a carrot that Ayman went with with
a big stick. But also, I'll marry one of your
daughters. A stick and a carrot.
They couldn't. Offer that up right.
And, and we see a lot of other people.
I'm. I'm actually going to segue into
another thing I want to point out.
We see some other people planning to use a stick.
And as far as we know, without a carrot, Damon wants to go to
Harrenhall and he and and Aegon wanted to go to River Run,
right. Yeah, and they're like, I'm
going to show up. My dragon are going to do what I
say they don't have. They're not bringing carrots
with them. And so maybe for a minute with
the dragon in her face, it might go along.
But I don't know if you're really going to win the loyalty.
But I want to point out they are also they, you know, the, the
the greens are now also deciding to go to Harrenhal, right When
you're looking at that war map, right.
So we have the Blacks and the Greens both planning to go to
Harrenhal. Who's the Lord of Harrenhal now?
It's still Lars Strong. Yeah, Yeah.
His character's even more integral, maybe.
I don't know. He's not there, so I'm not sure
how it's gonna matter. They've been talking about his
castle without him in the room. I know that's a little like
that's partly why he might want to know what they're saying.
Yeah. Will Aegon need to go there?
Can they just go to Larry's and say, hey, your castle's behind
us, right? Like it's, I'm not sure how it's
gonna play out, but it's something I'm.
Yeah, he would have to send an order and maybe they would obey
it or not. Yeah, they're this is this is
going to be explained. You're right to question these
things, but yeah, it's it's common.
I know you love how Aymond, just the first thing he says, he
comes into the council room and they're like, wait, what are you
doing here, Alice? It's like you don't belong here.
And he doesn't want her here or she doesn't want him there
'cause she wants. They want to isolate Aegon and
and convince him of the things that they think are right
without the influence of their this aggressive younger brother
who clearly has some violent intentions.
And but Aegon like wanting Jaharis there.
He wants his brother there. He trusts his brother and and
relies on him and and Eamon immediately walks to the map and
says we got to go for Harrenhal. And it's like, this isn't a
coincidence. This isn't random.
This is because, yeah, it's these are two military minded
men who made the same strategic decision, the same strategic
realization. Yeah.
And they're right. I mean, it does run like that's
the reason so many other things have happened around Heron Hall
and in other parts of the story and other timelines.
And it's probably why Heron Hall was built where it is.
That's why Heron. Oh yeah, that is the strategic
spot. Yes, you are correct, Sir.
So they also Rainey's and Rainey's, yes.
And Otto and Allison on their side do not want it to become a
war of Dragons. They want it to be just keep it
a war of men. And then, you know, they're
they're still trying to have some restraint like yes,
children have been killed. Yes, this is the throne has been
stolen. There's different levels of this
where someone like Amon wants to go straight to Dragons, Damon
wants to go straight to Dragons. But some of the other folks here
are just like, okay, we could there's there's levels to this.
You know, it's DEFCON 12345. It isn't just war or not war and
but too many people, just not enough people see it that way I
guess. Super chat from Fernando Corona.
Love how Team Black is still somehow more likable than the
Greens after having a child's head sawed off.
Cole and Allison are just awful. Yeah, we all have our opinions,
don't we? I think a lot of opinions will
change over the course of the season, but maybe not maybe not.
I mean, like, like Fernando's almost certainly read the book
already. So these these opinions aren't
likely to shift a whole lot, but maybe they will for the the the
show versions and not. I don't think Allison is awful
in in the in the show. I do think she's pretty awful in
the book, but. However awful she is, I I could
even entertain the argument that she's awful.
She's not as awful as Damon. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no question there.
I think power struggles. Let's talk about some of the
various power struggles. They play out in a lot of ways
and in many places all over, mostly in the Red Keep for the
Greens, also for the Blacks. We'll get back to that.
Aegon's friends are where I'll start.
They're not really political actors, but they are absolutely
influencing him. They are egging him on to use
his power, which I suppose fits for a man named Aegon.
And they are drunk. They're almost as drunk on
strong Line as they are on power.
Like, these are his buddies and their buddy just got made king.
And they're all like, oh, how can this benefit me?
We can party, we can do this, we can do that.
These aren't like decent man. I don't know that they're bad
guys. They might be though,
considering who their friend is. The the Aegon's rap sheet is bad
enough that I imagine the people he chooses his friends are
probably not the most moral guys, but.
Take a moment and say who they are.
Yeah, go ahead and say who they are.
We've got his little homies, little friends here.
He's got Martin Rain. We'd wondered before who that
is. It's a rain.
It's now an extinct house. You're the blonde kind of red,
I'd say red hair kind of honestly.
But Leon Estermont, one of George's favorite houses, cause
the turtle sigils. That's kind of fun.
And red. Ned Waters.
Eddard Waters. He's a bastard.
Eddard Waters. OK, cool.
Waters. That's the one whose name I
didn't know, 'cause they gave away Martin and Leon ahead of
time I didn't know about. I was wondering what that guy's
name was, 'cause he, he's the one who said you're the king,
you can do whatever you want. Which is exactly the kind of
line I wanted to point to. That's showing the influence of
his friends. And it's just make maybe
corrupting him or pushing power to go to his head sooner than
might have otherwise. And these this also reminds me
of season one episode. Rainey's speaking during the
tournament when people just start killing each other.
She's like these young men, these summer children, they just
got sent here with their balls full of seed and they just
looking for a fight and looking for glory or whatever.
And this are the these are the kind of people that are
encouraging Aegon to do the things he's doing.
These are who he's this is the kind of person he's listening to
younger men who have no experience, who have never
fought in a war, who lack the wisdom to avoid such things, who
thinks that war is a good thing. Which, you know, again, this
this brings up a clash of kings. Catlin visiting the tournament
of the of of Renly and where Brienne talks about were the
Knights of summer and Callan's like, yeah, you are, you know,
you sure are nights of summer. But I don't think we interpret
that phrase the same way. You think it's a good thing?
I do not. I think it's it's a sign of
naivete and of hard lessons that need to be learned.
And so this is a regime filled with uncertainty.
Got all sorts of people power jockeying for position, whether
it's the King's ear, 'cause they're his friend and want to
drink with him and just their advice is bad.
They're just, you know, bad company.
They're just a bad influence on them.
Or whether there's people with political aims, like Larry or
Otto or or even his mother. I'm going to try to have maybe
naive myself, but a a positive spin here.
Is it like you said, they were completely drunk on alcohol
there? Maybe power too, but maybe some
of the things they say in doing that moment, they rein in when
they're more sober and in public, you know?
OK, yeah, maybe. Yeah.
Like, I mean, yeah. Like when they walk through the
the counselors like Aegon the Magnanimous all like they were
reasonably well spoken there. You know, that was it wasn't
like clown show. It was a little weird, the name
just being pulled out of nowhere, but it was given some
comedic delivery. But it wasn't like they weren't
looking like idiots in that moment.
To the to the general public, maybe to us they do, but not to
not to the public. They looked normal.
I think they look kingly, I guess like a new king might
look. I don't know.
How to say I don't know if any of you all watch the show The
great To me, I saw a lot of shades of Peter and his his
friends, his entourage and and all of their activities.
I don't know if you were reminded of that at all, Aziz.
Absolutely. Especially on the eve of of
Freddie Fox being in the show. Who is also in the great And he
was kind of of that ilk. He was in his entourage.
Higher rank, but. And there's there's even like a
black eye arcadie in that crew as well, who was always kind of
jostling about as well. Hey, I love great.
Highly recommend it. And if you like the scenes with
Aegon here, I think you'll probably really like The Great.
And Elle Fanning, who is the star of the show, would make a
perfectly cromulent Targaryen. So let's talk about these
various power struggles that mostly play out between a few
different characters at a time. We got Aegon and Otto and Laris.
So I remember that Otto is trying to tone Aegon down,
confronts him during the petitioner session.
As we already discussed, he gets him to back down on the sheep,
but not the blacksmiths, right? Laris was watching the whole
time. Let's not forget he was watching
from the gallery, from high up. And this is immediately after
the scene is when he suggests changing hands.
Recall that it isn't just, this isn't just random and out of
nowhere. This isn't just Larry's currying
favor with Aegon, though that's probably part of it.
Otto started putting pressure on Larry's at the end of last
season, and Larry's was flipped it.
He's like, yeah, but look how useful I can be to you.
He's like, yes, I've been talking to your daughter.
What do you want me to tell her? What do you want me to tell you
about her? Like, I can give you all that
information right now if you want.
You know, just don't he. This is the kind of thing we
would we would expect Varys to do his, his, you know,
counterpart in the future. There is a lot of difference
between these characters, but this is one thing they have in
common, which is taking someone that's mad at them and flipping
that into weight. I'm useful like I'm more useful
to you alive. And and let me let me tell you
exactly why. Here's some things that I wasn't
useful to you about before, but I can do that now.
And that's kind of what lies like they don't give you
everything at once. Like, let me be useful to you in
spurts, otherwise my usefulness may cease entirely and then I'm
screwed. They don't say this, and
hopefully the other person doesn't roll for their sake.
Hope the other person doesn't realize it.
But what they're doing is rather than becoming a pawn, they're
making you the pawn. Yes, yes, exactly.
That's a very good way to put it.
Yeah, 'cause Otto, if I remember right, Otto confronted Laurie's
and said you've been spending a lot of time with my daughter.
And he's like, yeah, wouldn't you like for that time to be to
your advantage? Yeah, it was really well set.
Yeah. Yeah.
It was like, don't you want the benefit of all that?
And he's like, oh, actually, yes, I do.
I was. Like, OK, OK, yeah.
Like, good, good point, actually.
Yeah, maybe that's what I should have asked for in the 1st place,
you know, or something. So we already talked about Otto
and Allison's conversation, which I praised that that was
really well done. But let's not forget that that's
part of the power struggle, them trying to figure out how to
control her children, his grandchildren.
Meanwhile, Cole and Aymond are scheming two.
They want to convince Aegon privately to go to war.
At least that's what they realize they'll have to do
'cause they know that Otto and Allison won't allow it.
Aymond is really tough on Allison in the scene.
He calls her two tongue. He's like, she blames the war on
me when she plotted to steal the throne.
It's a good point by his by his that he's making there.
He's like, yeah, it's not that he's not blame has takes blame
for it, but he's saying I'm not the one who started it.
It's a fairpoint. It's a fairpoint.
It's debatable. I wanted to say something about
Ayman here. There's something that we did
speculate last season about when he kills Luke.
Well, when he is present for Luke's death.
I don't know how to phrase it because it seemed like it was
kind of out of his. He might have been tempting
fate, right? Like chasing him down with
Veigar, like, you know, man, what did you think was going to
happen? But it and it was also something
that we kind of took note of that the dragon riders maybe
don't always have complete control over their drags, at
least not when they're kids, you know, right.
And so the look, I thought it was a really good moment of
acting and editing. When you kind of see the look on
Eamon's face after Luke has been killed, he seems kind of
mortified. He's like, you know, what have I
done? Like on multiple levels.
Maybe he feels guilty about killing his.
Would it be his cousin? His nephew.
Nephew, nephew. Yeah, it might be cousin and
nephew with these weird Targaryen, but but anyway, he,
you know, might feel some guilt over that they were childhood
friends, but he also might realize the implications, right?
Like how, Oh my God, how this is going to be interpreted.
What's this going to mean? Then on and on there was there's
there was a lot there. And I remember us wondering
maybe me more so than you guys, because you know, what's going
to happen in the books. But is he going to go back like
with remorse and regret and and but?
He didn't. He clearly didn't.
Yeah, he clearly did. Not right?
Or is he going to double down? Like, yeah, killed him, I'll
kill him again, Who's next? And that seems to be what's
going on. But I still believe that there's
some amount of denial in him. There's some amount of him that
just has to decide to be the badass.
Even if he knows he was wrong or feels guilty about it.
He just can't let that come through.
He just has to be like, I'm the warrior.
Yep, I'll kick your butt too. My mom doesn't know what she's
doing. It's it's just like his coping
mechanism for the murder that he committed.
Yeah, yeah. And he's very determined.
He he calls his mother a fool. And he calls his mother Allison,
by the way. He tells her by her first name
and but. So he called Penninette.
Remember that later. I want to talk about it later
when we get to the Helena and Blood and Cheese stuff.
Yeah, so he he calls her two tongued and a fool, but Coal
defends her of course, because they're lovers and he just
blames Rainier for everything Allison does wrong.
He says like no, she's not at fault, it's Rainier's fault.
And he repeats a line he said in season one, episode one, I think
no, not episode one, episode 6, I think he calls Rainier a
spider again. That's like a term he likes for
her. So skipping ahead to we're
skipping, we're skipping around the blood and cheese stuff for
now. We'll cover all that at once.
But Otto discovers their plotting later and it's a a
blood and cheese fake out because we know they're in the
building, we know they're coming and they're coming for Ayman or
trying to. And as Kristen and and Otto are
sitting there, or rather Kristen and Ayman are sitting there,
footsteps come and he reaches for his sword and then it's just
Otto. So like, oh, OK, nothing.
So just a little fake out there, Shast.
He sends Cole away. He sees what they're doing.
First of all, he sees the map, there's coins on the map.
He could tell they're planning a campaign.
He looks at the books. It's pretty straightforward.
Just sends Kristen away 'cause he knows he can tell Kristen
what to do. He's got nothing, nothing
special needs to happen there. But with Ayman, it's again the
the discipline thing. He's like you're, you're more
disciplined than your brother. You know, the whole like comp
good cop, bad cop within himself.
So that that happens. But what I want to come back to
here is we don't see how the conversation ends.
It clearly does. His blood and Cheese later enter
that room and they're not there anymore.
I don't know where they went, and neither did Cheese because
he doesn't know where everybody's apartment
specifically are. But it's important to note here
that wherever they went, Kristen probably didn't go back where he
was told. He was told to go back to his
post. I don't think he went to his
post because I don't think his post was inside Allison's
bedroom. I think he did go back to his
post outside Allison's bedroom. He's probably supposed to guard
her door, I doubt it. And then went into the bedroom
after he went back there. I doubt it.
I doubt. I bet his job was to guard the
Queen and the children. Which guard is guarding Allison?
If not Christian, is there another King's Guard that then
isn't aware? They would have sent that guard
away so they could bang because it doesn't make that there's a
hole one way or the other and this makes this is a much
smaller hole. Either you explain it as they
didn't have a guard on Helena at all, or it was supposed to be
Kristen and then Kristen went away and sent the other guard
that was guarding Allison's away.
Which is just a really major mess up on Kristen's part as the
Lord Commander, right? Because yes, you would say that
he should simply if he knows he's going to screw the Queen,
then give yourself the Queen's guard duty.
But if he's in denial about the fact that they're going to do
it, he would try to do anything to keep them OK from doing it,
right? He's trying to stop himself from
doing it, so he's not giving himself Allison's guard duty.
Does that make sense to you? I don't know that he's doing
that. We just said we know Allison was
hesitating, but I don't know if he is.
It seems to me like he is hesitating, and it seems to me
like that explains why the guard situation is funky.
It's because he chose. To not.
Assign. Himself.
I see. Yeah, that wouldn't make sense.
OK. He just owned it.
If he just knew that, like I'm going to sleep with Allison,
then he would just give himself her guard duty and he would have
assigned someone to Helena. But he was trying to stop it.
I like that idea. That is very plausible.
It would explain. It would definitely help explain
that that bit of of of arrangement there and yeah.
There's there's more explanation, potential
explanation too. Point A They're down 3 guards,
right? Three of the the King's Guard
are on Dragonstone with Ranira, right?
Well, that doesn't mean they can't use just other people.
They have guards. They don't have to be King's
Guard. Yeah.
That that's very true. There should have been some
guard I. Suppose in in the book it's just
two regular guards. It's not King's Guard 'cause
it's not King and some of the other circumstances are slightly
different. But yeah, so like to me there's
not much difference than two non Kingsguard and one should have
been Kristen Cole, who's such a bad ass, but he just wasn't at
his post. Whichever, whatever his post was
supposed to be, he wasn't at any post.
So we know that much. Like one thought that I had is
it after, but when when they went and they were both missing
that Amon maybe went to find Kristen so they could continue
their discussion. He's like, yeah, yeah, Otto, I'm
still making this plan. But but yeah, may Amon might not
have found him because he went there.
Yeah, there, there's, there's lots of, there's also just
there's plenty of potential explanations.
There's also just a general arrogance that we spoke to
earlier that they just aren't worried about this.
They just this is this does not occur to them as a means of of
danger. And you can easily, there's a
million reasons why that would lead to them not having as many
guards as they should and or why they just haven't handled it
yet. Why it's like, like you said,
like we pointed out last season, Otto mentioned that there were
two gold cloak commanders that needed to be replaced and they
needed to get around to that. That might have been blood,
might have been one of those too, 'cause that guy was clearly
loyal to Damon and hated the Hightowers.
That guy clearly needed replacing and wasn't.
So it just shows that they're they're they're a little sloppy,
that they've they've been sloppy for a while.
And like Laurie says, I got rid of everyone in the household
that was a threat. Not, yeah, not cheese.
That's the kind of thing that would come up on a modern
security screening. A guy with huge gambling debts
would never get hired on a job that has access to sensitive
information or sensitive people. But of course they don't have
such things in this setting or era or whatever.
Yeah, it it could be that they that Helena has guards but they
have to sleep at some point or that Lars disrupted the schedule
by getting rid of those people. You know, one of the pieces is
that's still not sure. It's something that could easily
be dismissed also. But Kristen is not only the the
Kings Guard, the Lord Commander, but also he was he was Allison's
swarm protector like that. That's how he started.
So maybe that just isn't the case anymore, but that would be
a potential reason why he would still be her guard.
There's less reason to protect her like she's no longer the
queen. You know what I'm saying?
Like she's not a she's not a target in that sense.
She's not part of she's part of the dynasty, but nothing flows
through her anymore like she doesn't.
So, so that's another reason why it's of course the heir to the
throne is more important. That's the one who you expect to
have protection and there's three of them just rather than
one of them, but also. And Aegon himself was just in
the throne room hanging out. I don't remember there being a
King's guard there. Maybe there was.
They didn't notice and there's probably all the guards.
There, there were other. Yeah, there were guards there.
There definitely were. Yeah, they walked.
They didn't. You could see how the guards
might have a hard time. There's so many freaking people.
They're supposed to watch Aegon's up at all hours, Chris
Don's with Allison and changing the guard duties, and this
Lara's guy just fired everyone. Like, sorry, we didn't have a
guard on. There, I think too many
Kingsguard Knights rise, too many guards are with Aegon right
now. Frankly, I think one should have
been with the children is is clearly, and again, I think that
comes down to Kristen as Lord Commander.
I think you're right. Else is really in charge other
than Kristen on that level. Yeah, Also in the book, they
said that they, the king was off the table.
They didn't even go try to go for him because they knew the
Kingsguard would have insurance Like, well, that's not even an
option. Let's not even try that here.
They're like, but the others, yeah, they're, they're, that's a
possibility. It's like 7 Kingsguard.
And as you pointed out, Sean, there aren't even 7 at this
point. So what's the reason I wanted to
talk about these things together?
We still have a lot of Blood and Cheese content to cover
separately. We mostly just talk around it.
And we we planned on talking about it separately.
And I think we're going to do that on Wednesday almost
entirely separately. But I wanted to talk about how
Blood and Cheese is clearly going to shake up this power
struggle. All this power struggle stuff is
happening is going to be just thrown into a loop or thrown,
like thrown into the fire or whatever.
Just completely shaken up by this failure.
Aegon's got to blame people. It won't only be J Harris's head
that rolls, hey, and people will be blamed.
All these slack factors that we pointed out, all the laziness,
all the like, lack of security, all the not following through on
things, that's going to be a reason to change things.
A shake up is needed when people are making this many mistakes.
You're not going to fire the king, so the King's got to fire
the people that are beneath him. Whether that means he's going to
take autos or take Larus's advice and choose a new hand or
fire Laris or stop listening to his mother or promote Ned
Waters, you know, or something like that.
There's a lot of options he has. He could listen to Martin
Rainmore or make make the other guy the Leon Estremont.
He could make him his captain of the guards or something crazy.
Like there's all sorts of weird things he could do once he
decides he doesn't, you know, if he decides he doesn't like
what's going on or the decisions being made around him as but
it's also probably going to shake up the blacks because it's
going to, there's already a power struggle there.
And as you said, Sean earlier, like Ray, Nira is not going to
be happy with this decision. She's not going, she's going to
be probably very upset. I, I'm very curious to see how
she's going to react, because I think it's going to be a
different mode than mostly silent grieving.
I think there's going to be a lot more anger and, and talking.
And this might push some of Damon and Rainier do a head
because I mean, it's not really what Damon wanted either, right?
He didn't ask for he, he didn't target J Harris, but I assume he
said it was an acceptable fall back option, right?
Because the way it's played out as he says, well, what if we
can't find him? And then it just cuts away.
But but Blood uses the phrase the sun for a sun, which was not
spoken in those other moments. So he clearly used the phrase
the sun for a sun in. Once he cut away, said he said a
sun for a. Sun, he said.
A sun? Yes, you're right.
He did no head, no gold like he. These are different things that
they're recounting. So how fairly or accurately the
recounting it to how much they have their own motivations or
whatever might be hard to say. But I feel like there's a
definite implication that Damon A, didn't fully think this out.
And B, when they bring up to him the problems, he says we'll just
kill one of the boys. You know, maybe he didn't think
that was realistically going to happen, but one way or the
other, it was very reckless and irresponsible what Damon set up
here. Yeah, it was.
It was sloppy. It was sloppy.
It was rushed and it was it's a partly because he was just
champing at the bed to do something and he finally got a
chance to do something and he rushed into it and he, he he saw
the opportunity. He was like, oh, wow, Mazaria,
he did all the pieces just like fell into place in his head.
He's like, oh, yeah, I can do this.
I got the I got a rat catcher. It's easy to find some violent
guy. That part's easy.
You know, I can sneak him in. Boom, done.
That's really all he thought through there.
He's like, sneak a guy into the Red Keep tunnels, kill someone.
Yeah. He didn't really think it
through much more than that. So, yeah, this is what I meant
when I said we're seeing another side of Damon who's a little bit
less controlled. He's a little less.
He's more anxious. He's more uncertain.
Whereas before Damon was just so like, sure of everything, this
ultra confident, even when things wouldn't weren't going
his way, he would get mad. But he was still pretty sure he
had. He knew what he would do next.
Now he's like, this is he's out of sorts in this.
This is not what he's used to. Even he is is thrown off by all
this. He has to be worried about
consequences. He's never been in that
situation before. He never cared about the
consequences. His brother would bail him out,
whatever it was. But now he's in a position where
he he needs, he's part of a team, right?
Like there's more on the line and he should be worried.
He's still isn't though. He's still like in the past,
when he wasn't worried about consequences, he could still
just be the badass that he is and his brother would bail him
out. But now he's in a situation
where people were counting on him and lives and war and his
family are all at stake, but he still isn't thinking about the
consequences. Yeah, OK, well, we're going to
talk about Blood and Cheese as a whole on Wednesday.
For the rest of this episode, we're going to go through the
theme of duty and conflict and all the different Easter eggs
that I alluded to at the beginning, and that'll wrap up
our episode. We can focus on Blood and Cheese
at another time, and that was kind of the plan going in.
I wasn't sure how much time we would have, but we're going to
add to it because we're going to also tie in some stuff from A
Song of Ice and Fire to Blood and Cheese, The Long Term Effect
in a way that's not spoilery. So that should be a lot of fun.
Guy, I wanted to point out one little snippet I meant to
mention earlier when Otto and Amon were talking.
Yeah. And, you know, Amon's or Otto's
building him up. It's like, oh, you know, you're
obviously the most powerful force and all the Westeros da,
da, da. But he says there are a lot of
pieces in play, some of which you can't see yet.
And at that moment, I thought that Otto had some secret plan,
or maybe he still does. But now I'm thinking maybe that
was foreshadowing for them not seeing Blood and Cheese or
similar things coming. Yeah, maybe, but I don't, I
mean, that's not what I what I was referring to, but yeah, but
I mean. Because I think Otto's referring
to. I don't know.
I mean just. Just unforeseen things in the
future. I mean, he just just other plan.
He's just, he's just, it's just his way of saying I'm planning
lots of things. We'll see which ones work out.
Like he's he's trying to get allies and he's trying to get
power for their side and he's not sure what will happen and
what won't. But.
I want. To it just sounds.
It just sounds cooler to to present it to the king.
Now he's like, I'm doing so much you don't even know.
Yeah. I also wanted to point out like
a a little thought process or emotion I went through as I was
watching a show. Maybe you're somewhere around
the halfway point in my mind. I was thinking, what is I wonder
where is this episode going? What is going to happen here?
Because usually episode one is a lot of sort of set up stuff,
right? And you're not going to have
some crazy moments in episode one, but one, the whole first
season was kind of the setup and this is it.
Now is the time for the crazy stuff.
So maybe there is something. There is so much talk of Damon.
You know, we're near once Amon and like, would they really kill
Amon in this very first episode with that?
That'd be crazy. Like, it'd be kind of
disappointing for. Eamon.
He's such a cool character, but no one would see that coming.
I mean, that would be a shock maybe that when I in my mind,
like that's what I thought started to think was going to
happen eventually, like, oh, it's going to be a little kid.
That's it. But also I realized, and I want
to point out, this is one of the parallels that I was seeing it.
Episode one of Game of Thrones had Jaime Lannister push Bran
out the door after seeing him have sex with his sister Like
that. Not only do we have an innocent
kid get killed, turn out Bran didn't die, but in that moment.
It looked like he would. Yeah, it looked like he.
Would it seemed like Bran was dead and you also had the
Kingsguard having sex with the queen?
Like that's straight out of season one episode one.
Game of Thrones is exactly. What happened?
Oh yeah, Dragon 100% yes, definitely.
I'm glad you caught that. So did I I was like, this is
like super sill. That's why I said at the
beginning I was like, there's so many callbacks, the game of
Throne, not just Hot D episode one, but actual Game of Thrones.
And I wasn't just talking about Winterfell.
Yeah, that was a really good one.
Yeah, 'cause it is Bran's cliffhanger virtue.
Harris, you have all this, a lot of these similar albums.
You even have a follow up to that when when Joffrey tries to
have Bran finished off by hiring just random dude, which is a lot
like hiring Blood or Cheese, like someone who's not really
that competent and just not really having a good plan here.
And like, you were supposed no one was supposed to be here.
Remember, that's what the guards.
That guy says. He's like, no one's supposed to
be here. And Catelyn's in the room.
It's like Blood Cheese at the opposite.
Like, where is everybody? No one's here.
Started putting it on the spot, but am I going to be on that
episode on Wednesday? Yes, Talking about blood and
cheese. OK 'cause there was a thought
that I had specifically about that.
Remember, I said. Yeah, let's say let's, let's
save it for them. Let's save it for let's, let's
talk about, let's talk about the the rest of the the parallels
and connections and themes. So like I said earlier, Jaime
Lannister would approve of this episode for multiple reasons
because of all the conflicting duty and multiple oaths.
Click all that. Let me just run through them
just to see how many there are. These are.
This isn't necessarily for discussion, it's just to see the
sheer weight of how much this episode delivered in that on
that theme. OK, so we have the Starks with
their duty to the wall and the South.
The first line of the episode is duty is sacrifice.
It eclipses all things, even blood.
All men of honor must pay its price, etcetera, etcetera.
Eamon and Cole believe they have a duty to talk the king into
accepting their plan because they think it's the right way to
proceed. They think that Otto and Allison
are too soft. They're not.
They don't realize they're already at war.
Remember, Sean, you said this before about the person.
The first one to win a fight is the first one to realize he's in
a fight. Aymond and Cole are the ones,
especially Aymond most of all, and maybe Damon are the ones who
most realized we are in a fight. It's why are you pulling
punches? Why are you putting on boxing
gloves? No, it's time for knives and
Dragons. And yeah, this is this is full
on. I don't know why you guys are
waiting. And meanwhile, Otto and Allison
believe the opposite, that they have a duty to not let it get to
that point. They believe that they can stop
it from getting that far and can and should try.
And when Otto confronts Eamond about their secret plotting,
what does Eamon say? He's like, I'm just trying to do
the right thing for my house and my my family.
It's basically saying I'm just trying to do my duty.
It's it's the same phrase said otherwise.
Eric decries the uncertainty of his duty.
His oath was defend the whole royal family.
What it is to do when they turn? What's he supposed to do when
they turn on each other? Of course, this is a call back
to the first episode in Reiner's voice over for the old king when
she says because he knew the only thing that could turn the
house that could end the House of the dragon was itself or
bring down the House of the Dragons itself.
And then Alan Valarian or Alan of Hall rather saying he says
it's his just his duty to save his Lord, which that's the one
we said must have some conflict, but it isn't explained yet.
So all of those were duty with heavy doses of conflict it.
Wasn't in this episode, but it was coming off the end of last
season that Renera also believed she had a duty to stop this from
coming to war. That's true.
Yeah, that's true. Otto came with these demands and
Damon wanted to chop his head off right there.
She's like, no, you'll have my answer tomorrow.
And, and in the council, you know, she was like, you know,
I'm, I'm, I'm trying to stop this war, that my, my duty isn't
to make sure I'm queen no matter what.
My duty is to protect the people of the realm and.
That's been a carried forward a little bit, but she's not really
expressing what her. That now, yeah.
We're not entirely. Happening here, but.
Yeah, we're not entirely sure where her head is at at the
moment, like what exactly? She's processing, what she's
feeling a lot of grief, obviously, But there's there's
got to be more than just grief. The more lighthearted pattern
common in all kinds of books and shows and movies is the
interruption device. George uses it a lot,
specifically when discussing lore.
That's his way of using it. It's interrupting lore.
But it happens a lot on TV and other things too.
And it happens several times here.
You got Eric speaking to Damon. He makes a good point.
Damon's not sure what to say. But then Cyrax comes back.
Oh, well, I got to go see you later.
And Amon's arrival at the council interrupts a discussion
that they were just having about who should be the new master of
ships, and someone suggests the young Lord Dalton Greyjoy.
And then that conversation is interrupted.
It's the second time a conversation about the Iron
Islands is interrupted during a council session at early it like
it happened in Hot Day. I think it might even been
episode one where they were talking about something like
blah blah blah Iron Islands and Viserys is coming in and blah
blah blah. They just, they start talking
about other things so little. Like they're trying to remind us
that the Iron Islands exist even though they haven't done
anything yet. Cragan and Jace's conversation.
Yeah. Don't remind me.
Yeah. Cragan and Jace's conversation
is interrupted by a Raven as well.
So yeah, the Ravens are a big part of this episode.
The phrase dark wings, dark words is never spoken, which is
surprising given given how many other phrases from the past that
are repeated phrases come up in this episode, which is going to
be next it. But it's implied several times,
obviously. Jace.
Cragan. Again, that's dark wings, dark
words. And the North is probably where
they say that even more, but also Rainier and Luke getting
the news and and Rainey's explaining that to Damon and
bringing up her own memory of getting that from Lena.
And then Otto complaints that the North and the Vale have not
responded to their Ravens. And again, the Raven to young
Dalton Greyjoy is discussed. So these things really work
together, the the uncertainty of duty and the interruption device
and the Ravens. The Ravens are the interruption
device sometimes. Sometimes it's the Dragons.
Here's some other callbacks and references.
The episode title A Son for a Son has spoken quite a few
times, but probably the most meaningful of those times is the
time it said off screen. Given that conversation we just
had about how blood clearly knew the phrase, even though we don't
hear it said to him, it was, it was, it clearly happened, and
winter is coming. Perhaps the most stated of all
the house words except fire and blood.
That phrase was said and at a very poignant moment.
It was after that, right at the end of his speech.
And then it cuts to being light hearted where he's like winter
is coming. What is this then?
That chills my bones. And that's very similar to some
some conversations in a dance with Dragons, meaning the 5th
book of a song of ice and fire, where they're like, oh, this is
just a this is just a summer snow, which he also says this is
just the the the summer. What is it?
A brief summer snow, something like that.
This is only a late summer snow, my Prince, he says.
Yeah, that's it. You know, Allison told Kristen
Cole one of those scenes that there was a chill in the.
Air, yes. And in the petitioner scene he
says I'm I had to give up 10% of my herds because of winter,
which he didn't have time prepare for because they don't
know when winter is going to come.
So yeah, three different references to winter is coming
and yeah, that's that's a pretty big deal.
So we also have that a line that we've heard before.
Do you think we built a 700 foot wall to keep out snow and
savages? That that sentiment, not those
exact words have been expressed, but both in A Song of Ice and
Fire and Game of Thrones that's been expressed.
I told you at the beginning that the drawing of the Blackstone is
a pair is something that has been done before.
It's done in I think Astapore, when Astapore is starving and
the different pyramid families are eating each other,
literally, and the one who draws the Blackstone gets eaten.
So it's not quite the same thing, but it is.
It is still drawing. The Blackstone was used in the
Song of Ice and Fire already. Of course, we talked about the
Aegon and Tauren changes. We thought that was pretty cool.
And Jaris and Alexander's Dragons not passing the Wall was
an interesting tidbit. In Fire and Blood, it's only
Aliceander's dragon then won't pass.
So they kind of emphasized it by saying Jaris's wouldn't either.
That's Vermothor, by the way. Vermothor and Silverwing.
I'm not sure how we're supposed to reconcile this with Danny's
Dragons crossing the Wall during regular Game of Thrones, but
it's all magic, so some magical rule changed.
I don't know, Like the the bread comet flipped a switch.
I don't know the others appearing allows them.
I don't know it's it's got to be a supernatural explanation
because there's no rational regular explanation.
I don't think I. Figured just the Dragons back
then didn't have a reason to push up against it.
It was enough to discourage them.
And the Dragons in Game of Thrones did have the reason to
put them past that. Like, they might have balked a
little bit, but they still had to.
Yeah, I mean that works. Gone and Danny or whatever was
enough to strengthen their ability or resolve or whatever.
I don't know why I wouldn't work with Harris and Allison, but
yeah, I know. But it's it doesn't have to.
Like I said, it doesn't have to. Magical explanation doesn't have
to. That's why.
There you go, There you go. That's that actually is a pretty
good reason. I just think Harris and Allison
weren't trying that hard to get him to move past it.
I don't think they were like, we need to do this to save the
realm or anything. They were just like, oh, I guess
you don't want to. Go it was just more of a
curiosity right. They were just kind of flying
beyond the wall for the heck of it.
Although Allison does say in fire and blood she tried three
times and he wouldn't go so anyway it's it's interesting.
We'll see if there's any more of that, Craig.
And also says the line when summer first.
Yeah. When, when he's describing what
winter will be like, he's like. Yeah.
And all memories of warmth will be forgotten.
Which brings us to our one book quote of the episode.
Because that line is in Bran's coma dream quote.
Finally he looked N he saw the wall shining like blue crystal,
and his bastard brother John sleeping alone in a cold bed,
his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled
from him. And he looked past the wall,
past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and
the great blue white rivers of ice and the dead where nothing
grew or lived, north and north and N he looked to the curtain
of light at the end of the world.
And then, beyond that curtain, he looked into the heart of
winter. Then he cried out, afraid, and
the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks.
So that's death. The same thing Kragen says is
death is beyond there. He doesn't have a straight
answer to give to to Jason. He might not exactly know what
it is himself, but when Bran peers deep into that heart of
winter, it's basically death that he sees.
And that's when Three Eyed Crow says now you know why you have
to live and why you have to fly and do all these other things,
'cause that's coming. You know, I wonder if or when
Ranira will tell her kids about the song of Ice and Fire like.
Yeah, I definitely wanted to. Just got killed.
She needs to tell Jayce quick, right?
Yeah, or before she gets killed and no one knows it.
Yeah, exactly right. Like it's a bit.
Of a shared collective misremembrance about that going
on in the fandom and that I've been there too.
I'm not the only person who kind of felt like Raynira would have
or should have told Jace in that final ending scene when she tell
when she sends Jason Luke off. Before he goes.
Yeah, like I've seen multiple people say they thought she told
him there but they went back and re watched it and she does.
And it's just like a Baron stain bears type B, you know where
people are. Like I kind of felt like yeah
she should have told him there but she doesn't.
She just doesn't. If you think she did, we don't
see it. And that is part of why we
didn't expect, you know, some of the other expanding on that
story in the North, because he wouldn't know what to talk
about. He wouldn't know about like if
if Rainier had told him about the dream and then Craig and
tells him that stuff. He's like, oh, that sounds like
the stuff from the dream. But they just didn't want to do
that. It's too bad.
I don't think they didn't want to.
I think they realized they didn't have time for it or they
may have other reasons for it, but I doubt it just flew over
their heads as a possibility. It's just too it's pretty
straightforward, which is explains why so many people just
kind of remembered it happening when it didn't because it is
that straightforward. So I really doubt the
showrunners just didn't catch that.
I'm sure they have their reasons.
Perhaps we'll disagree with those reasons, but for now we
don't know what they are, so we'll have to leave it.
A lot of familiar phrases were used.
The phrase words or wind was used by Aymond phrase little and
less by Mazaria the phrase much and more.
I forget who said that one. Actually there's we'll have more
to say about Arya's connections to all the stuff there with
Blood and Cheese. In our Wednesday episode we also
have the phrase hoary old bitch used to be like what?
What's that about? Yes, Damon called Veigar a hoary
old bitch in the book. Jayce calls Veigar the hoary old
bitch. So there you go.
Pretty similar. Aegon.
The 2nd petitioner scene with the sheep had some vibes to
Danny's, a sheep bones scene where, you know, he had to kind
of, she had to kind of back down after what she was told and she,
she wanted to be nicer about it. And then was told, look, if you
just give back the sheep to every person, people are just
going to have sheep go missing because they know you're going
to repay them for sheep. Even if that didn't actually
happen. They're just going to make up
and get lost sheep. But then this person turns out
to have child bones. And that's where it's very
different than the Aegon scene. It doesn't go that dark, but
still, we're still dealing with Dragons here.
And that kind of thing could happen if they wanted to have a
scene like that. And how's the dragon?
They could where like, the Sunfire killed a child or Cyrax
killed a child or, like, you know, that could happen.
So, yeah, Mother, that's nice parallel there.
Both sides blame their allies for not killing more people when
they had the chance to stop the war from escalating.
Mostly Otto and Damon, Like I said, Otto's like, looks at
Allison's like, yeah, we lost the element of surprise to do
certain things ahead of time. And Damon blames everybody for
not killing people when they didn't.
He's like, you could have killed Aegon, You could have killed.
You could have killed Aegon. You could have killed Aegon.
You could have all these different.
Yeah. So.
And the most tiniest of weird observations I made in in terms
of parallels was the army size reduction parallel that
parallels season one of Game of Thrones.
In the book, what Rob splits his army and sends his horse to
fight at River Run and his foot to fight at the Battle of the
Green Fork. In the show, they change it so
it's just a diversionary army of 2000 men.
In the book, it's like 8000 men in Fire and Blood.
The number of Gray beards sent South by Craig and Stark is 8000
men. In the show, it's 2000 men.
It's the exact same, reduced by four times.
Cut that into, cut that by 75%. We don't want to have 8000 men.
We got smaller numbers. Please, let's do 2000.
So. You know, I wonder if that's
like an if they need to show it on screen, that's a number they
can show more easily. But they never showed it on
screen in Game of Thrones. They never showed that army at
all. So and it doesn't seem like
they're gonna show it here either.
Maybe down the line these guys will get into a battle.
But it's, I feel like we're done in the North, you know?
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I think so too. I think we'll see those
soldiers, those graveyards, but not in the North.
We'll see them when they, like, arrive, wherever it is they're
gonna arrive. Presumably the Riverlands first,
'cause that's on the way. Like has been pointed out,
that's on when you're walking S from the north, you end up in
the Riverlands. There's not no other way to go
unless you take ship. OK, folks, that is basically it
for our first episode. We got lots more coverage this
season, obviously. We'll be coming back on
Wednesday with a more complete discussion of Blood and Cheese,
like I said. And we will be back on Saturday
with our first preview episode with a guest.
We've had a preview episode, but not with a guest, and it will be
Maister Merry, so we're pretty excited for that.
We'll talk about Episode 2 on Saturday at 3:00.
Wednesday at 7:00 Eastern is the Blood and Cheese and Rats and
Cats and Aria discussion. And we'll be back Monday with
another one of these with Sean and Happy Hot D Season 2.
Everybody. Thanks to Brand for our awesome
new intro. We love it and we're excited to
see it evolve just like the actual shows intro is going to
evolve. That's a really cool thing we
have to do in parallel there. Thanks as well to Michael
Clarkfeld. And thanks as well for the maps
behind me here and all the other great things he does.
Check out Clara docks.de. That's KLARADO x.de.
You can buy the map files from him, have them printed.
It's a great way to decorate your house.
But yeah, can't wait to talk more folks.
We're just getting started. Any final words Sean or Shaya?
I'll say I think we should have a segment next time where we
talk about what we thought about we liked it or didn't like
things in general. I don't feel that I get a, I
don't think I have a sense of whether Sean or you, Aziz found
it effective, good, anything. Just the episode as a whole,
yeah, we can finish with that. Yeah, let's finish with that.
OK, what people thought our tone, like for example, I think
that you really felt the lack of two episodes.
They didn't choose to make it 8 episodes.
That was a budgetary choice, but I think there were multiple
beats where I would have preferred to see them sit with
it for a moment or I would have liked to see how how people
reacted. And I think because of the time
constraint, I understand why they had to skip it.
But I felt that lack a bit. And that's my complaint.
I still give it a great score and loved it and found it
effective. But I I would mourn that briefly
with all of you. I think a lot of you feel that,
but I would like to say it was not Ryan Condall's choice.
Like he, he. Wanted HBO said yeah eight
episodes their call yeah you're right yeah.
We can't blame the show Earnest for that absolutely.
There's a lot of things you can you can put on them but not that
and I mean not that I you have to put things on them but you
shouldn't put that one 'cause it's not their call yeah so I I,
I take a Shaya's lead here. I I did really like the episode
but now that you're pointing to that I think you're right and
it's like we need to be wary of going forward.
We were already kind of conditioned to not expect some
things like us meaning here like we had already kind of come to
terms with the fact that there's not going to be the packed of
ice and fire Sarah snow and all that stuff seems very unlikely.
So we already knew some things were cut and I didn't fully
address that as a matter of the season being two episodes
shorter. And that might explain some
other things that we come come up on later and be like, oh,
that was a little shorter than we wanted to.
And it's almost certainly, again, we can pin it on this if
that's if that if that does happen.
But hopefully there's a lot of things that they're able to give
the full attention to and and we we find ourselves keep having
this feeling very minimally. I'll say generally, I thought
the episode was awesome. I thought that the writing and
the performances were great. I'm happy that they're not like
shoving too many Dragons in our face.
I appreciate the drama and the intrigue more so than the
action. And I don't think that's like I,
I wonder if on some level there's things you guys are
hoping for or expecting because it happened in the book that I'm
not, because I didn't necessarily feel like something
was missing here. When you do mention it, I can
see how maybe they could have given more time to Rainier AS or
just more. In the north for example.
For the body or right, more time in the North.
But I also feel like it could have been a little of a
distraction that I think that, you know, maybe they were forced
to do it in a way that was subpar.
But the way they did do it, I thought was outstanding.
Only given Rainier, that one line might have been their
solution to having to condense the time they have for her to
mourn. And maybe, you know, if they
spend too much time in North and we might expect that to be more
of a plot line. And, and maybe the fact that I'm
not expecting to be more of a plot line, maybe that's
negative. Maybe I should be expecting
that, I don't know. Anyway, overall, totally two
thumbs up. I loved it, I was happy with it.
I'm excited. Can't wait for the next episode.
Hell yeah. Well, thanks y'all.
Good call, Cher on throwing that in there at the end.
Maybe we'll do that at the beginning next time.
That sounds like a better place for it.
But wherever it gets in, as long as we do it, it's good.
We'd like to hear from you all again on that as well.
On that, please tell us what you thought.
Whether you agree with the Shay or just have some other
completely different takes, we want to know.
I think it's good to do at the end sometimes because it takes
the whole length of us discussing it for me to really
get clarity on where I land. Good.
Point. Good point, Very good point.
Before, but I don't know, I, I, I feel that it it there's,
there's pros and cons. Yeah.
It's like we're making our case for it.
And then you're like, you know what?
Yeah, that was better than I remember.
You know, some of these things, now that we pieced it together,
I liked it more or I liked it less.
Yeah. OK.
All right. Maybe we should keep it at the
end. It's been less than 24 hours
since I saw the episode. Do you know what I mean?
So like, and I had somewhere in there I slept.
And I'm sure people in general, there's always like some
immediate hot takes that people have.
But I think in a couple days, sometimes you realize new things
or think of something a different way.
Yeah. And, you know, now that you
bring it up, a Shay, I've seen it.
Remember the last time we might have done a little like a
favorite part of the episode? We did favorite, we did favorite
actors, we did the favorite acting performances and that was
it. But it I've I decided it was fun
to do that, but I've decided now that we are more familiar with
the characters, there's fewer new characters and we just, we
were already doing more episodes per week.
It's like we have to cut something out.
We got, we got, we got so much to talk about.
But. I was going to say, and there's
plenty to talk about. We're a whole hunk of this show
we're setting aside. So yeah.
All right, folks, that's it for now.
Valar reread us, but also especially in show season.
Valar, rewatch us everybody, and we'll see you next time.
None.