None. A crown hits the floor at the
start and another one hits the floor at the end, and a bunch of
bodies at the floor along with it.
And not all the bodies are people.
That's right. This war arguably started before
this episode, if not well before.
But this is the first time that the Dragons danced.
The red dragon and the gold, this one is called.
It's a bit of a play on the blacks and the greens that
represent their factions. You know, the greens are
represented by a green dragon. Veigar is the biggest one.
The blacks don't have a big black dragon, though.
So yeah, just. Yeah.
What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?
It just doesn't always line up this well.
This episode is interesting because for many reasons, But
before it aired, we thought it was called A Dance of Dragons.
For some reason, that title was released and posted on IMDb.
We've been going the whole season expecting that whatever.
This is not the actual title, but it certainly does describe
it. Because the Dragons did dance
and it's a Dance of Dragons, not the Dance of Dragons 'cause
there's quite a bit of dancing left and as spectacular as
episode 4 of season 2 is, boy, they set the bar high for future
dragon dancing. It's already one of the most
production intensive dragon scenes of all time in any media,
right? So just let that sit with you as
you're considering the episode. It isn't just a feat.
Big moment of the story, a huge pivotal change the the moment
when the action starts, the Dragons finally get into war.
But it's also a pretty watermark moment in television.
Right? But sticking to the story for
now and continuing with my intro spiel, leadership is a big theme
today. The lack of direction in the
Black Council and the Riverlands is a major plot thread, while a
crisis of leadership impacts the Greens as well.
Amond and Cole have a plan, but their goals aren't perfectly
aligned. Not to mention their view of
King Aegon, which maybe is more in alignment.
They want to keep him out of it. Cole circumvents him, Eamon
embarrasses him, and his mother tells him directly that the best
thing he can do is nothing at all.
Which, of course kind of goads him into proving them.
Well, he proves them exactly right.
Cole's plan was pretty clever, actually.
He's certainly one step ahead of Ranira, who thought her side
would have the element of surprise.
But neither of them really realized what they were
unleashing. They had an idea, a picture and
imagination and Cole in particular.
This is a man with plenty of experience in war, but only wars
of men. When he fell unconscious early
in the battle, he awoke into a new world.
His brutal treatment of the crown lands, houses, especially
Duskendale that played out over weeks and it but it's quickly
overshadowed by one afternoon of dragon warfare.
It was far more destructive and devastating and chaotic and even
and it was too much for even him, an experienced warrior, a
brutal guy like this. It's it really says a lot.
So no one's plans are going according to plan the battle,
but we've got it all. The battle details, the
confusion, the chaos, the dream details, the horror, the
harrowing, the Dragons, the drinking, the blacks, the green,
the red and the gold. All that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Hello and welcome everybody. What a great time it is to be
discussing House of the Dragon. What an amazing episode that
was. Whether you loved it or maybe it
didn't quite uplift up to your expectations, it certainly was
spectacular and we're glad to be talking about it here with you
all. Our spoiler free breakdowns Yes,
this is a spoiler free breakdown as all of our Monday episodes
are 6:00 Eastern on Mondays and we do deep dives on many
Wednesdays. That's seven Saturdays at 3.
The Saturday episodes are full of spoilers, preview stuff,
stuff from the trailers, stuff from casting notes, stuff from
the books, but never leaks. And we do have game streams on
at 6:00 on Fridays over on twitch.tv.
History of Westeros. I've got my cool Dance of the
Dragons shirt designed by a Shaya.
You can't see the back, but you can see the Dragons on the front
and the back actually has tour dates like all which has all the
battles or where the Dance of the Dragons.
It's almost slightly spoilery actually, but.
But you can get them at our Threadless shop at the History
of westeros.com site. That's right.
Why wait? Get one now.
Like I said, episode title changed on us, or maybe that was
never really the title in the 1st place.
Not sure what happened there. Maybe we'll figure that out
later, but not very important. I want to start, as we often do
with our impressions and see what we thought.
Sean, you first, what did you think of the episode?
Hit us. I loved it.
This is it's I think last week I said that was my favorite
episode. Now this is my favorite episode.
A lot of times it's like a recency bias.
But The thing is that I, I, I know there's like this, even
talking to other people, a lot of people have this mentality
like, come on, get on with it. I want to see the Dragons fight.
You know, I, I get there's this slice of the population that
wants action and adventure and Dragons and all this kind of
stuff. And it's not like I don't want
that, but a a lot of times it actiony stuff is handled in ways
that made me kind of roll my eyes.
I don't buy it. Some of the physics are off or
whatever. And BI don't care about the
action at all if I don't care about the characters that
involved the implications of the action and so on.
And you get that from conversation, character
developed nuance. And this episode I both, I don't
feel like they sacrificed one for the other.
I feel like there was just as much of these sort of like
meaningful, tough, nuanced conversations between characters
as there are in other episodes. They didn't.
They still had that here. They had some other quasi
fantasy elements that weren't necessary action here with
Damon's dream, the haunting of Heron Hall and stuff like that.
But also they had action and the most spectacular action that
maybe has ever been on TVI mean, I've said a couple times that I
they really make the Dragons feel real, and they were really
doing that here. And it may be my, my, my biggest
complaint that when I'm stretching for something to
complain about, it's maybe I'm thinking about the timing of how
Veigar could have got on the other side of the castle and
come up just right. If, if, if Rainey's can't see
Veigar, how can Veigar see her coming?
Like how did the, the timing? Maybe his little luck.
But but again, I feel like I'm, I'm nitpicking one element of
this massive action scene. Overall, I was impressed and I
have take on almost every freaking scene and the whole
show. I can't wait to talk about it.
I thought it was so awesome. Awesome.
Yeah, well, I've got all the all the different takes to queue you
up and get your responses on, but let's hear what a shaya
thought. Yeah, I absolutely loved it as
well. It was my favorite episode of
the season so far, so far. I'm also like you, Sean, action
isn't what I'm in it for. But when it comes to action,
this was really meaningful action That and in, in the the
action moments, I felt that there were strong character
beats where they like with Aegon, like the fact that he was
involved in this fight in the 1st place was, was like just
weighted heavy with the sadness of the fact that he shouldn't
have been there. With Rainey's choosing to turn
back and kind of sacrifice or so I felt like the action had so
much weight to it. Yeah, I, I, I loved it in that
respect. And I'll say we watched the
episode early as we often do. And I was so excited that I
organized a whole watch party with 20 people this weekend
'cause I was like, this is, this is the episode for it.
Like this is spectacular. I need to watch this with as
many people as I can. I feel the need to clarify I'm
not part of that Wii. I didn't see it early so I'm
still processing. Like 5 minutes ago I was still
like writing notes down. Yeah, to add to what you all
said, I don't have a whole lot of different things to say.
I've really loved it too. It was a fantastic episode.
I had high expectations and I was not disappointed.
I agree with you, Sean, about how they were.
Still had a lot of character work in there.
And I agree with you, Shay, how that character work came out
during the battle like you could.
Eamon's personality was there. Raines's personality was there.
Aegon's personality was there. All his all the chip on his
shoulder, all his feeling of worthlessness, all his, you
know, like trying to make himself prove that he's worthy
of being the king. And Glenn Hightower arguing with
Cole on the ground. Cole, like realizing it's all
going wrong and his his great plan is, is falling apart for a
reason that's out of his control.
And what can he do about. Yeah, you just felt all that it
was and and I felt for the soldiers, like just those guys,
like have what are they doing? Like they, they it's like
helpless, like they're caught between a a Rook and a hard
place. Say hey, yeah, we'll discuss
like the episode itself. We'll discuss things in the
order they played out. So we'll start with Harrenhal
and then move our way on to the battle of Rick's rest itself.
Yeah. You know, it's funny.
We we always do our our voting for character for the best actor
of each episode. And when I was writing our poll,
which is always in our Facebook group, by the way, and I put the
poll up this time, I was thinking to myself, some of them
besides Emma Darcy has a chance to win this time.
This is the first time they weren't like the really
prominent person there. You know, they're always center
stage, but but little off to the side, still pretty prominent,
but not as prominent as usual. I was like, yeah, you're for
once, Emma's like, somewhat secondary while still being, you
know, a main character, of course.
I think if you had the name a main character this episode it
was Rainy's and so they're just screen time.
Might give a little bias to her as far as picking my favorite
but. Yeah, and that's that is how the
poll is going. It's still in progress right
now, but Rainy's is winning. I'll say slide aside to this,
but she has been growing as my favorite character overall.
Her and Ranira both this season especially, 'cause I feel like
they've been the ones really trying to find peace, trying to
avoid the, the tragedy that's coming.
And I, I, I, I liked her quite a bit the first season 2, but I
was like marred by when she blew up through the dragon pit.
I'm like, oh, she just killed a bunch of innocent people and
it's like the one bad thing she did, but that didn't even happen
in the books. I know now, right, right.
So it makes me a little easier to like dismiss that.
I don't know if it's fair for me to do that or not.
Trying to meshing cherry picking show parts and book parts for
but. She's an entirely different
character in the book, Sean. She has black hair.
Like, totally different. Yeah.
No actually no, she's mostly the same actually.
But anyway, well that's that's the topic for another time.
Stannis Baratheon says the Super chat says.
How has Ashaya's opinion of Damon as a literary character
changed from the World of Ice and Fire, Fire and Blood now hot
DI know before Fire and blood you didn't think much of him at
all. I forgot you had that opinion.
So I'm curious what you have to say here, Ashaya.
I do think he has a lot more depth than he's written with In
Fire and Blood. I think if you'd asked me this
at some point last season in season one, I would have said
I'd warmed up to him in some respects.
And I found I, I, I found some stuff to relate to him on and,
and all that. But by this point in the season,
frankly, it's gone the other way.
It's swung back in the other direction.
And then I find him less likeable than ever.
He's saying he's suggesting some pretty awful things to little
Oscar Tully. He's like clearly tempted by the
idea of abusing Rain era in that moment and in the beginning of
the season. And he holds himself back in
that moment and just leaves. But like you, you, the weight of
him having choked her in season one is there.
And I don't know personally, I had warmed and then cooled off
on him. To be fair, I think what they're
asking, maybe I'm wrong, is they thought that your opinion was
that he wasn't, he was kind of one-dimensional, like from Yeah,
he was whether you like him or dislike him, you have like,
yeah, that gives him more dimension dislike or like.
So yeah, sometimes. Sometimes you got to separate
the difference between do you like the character of this
character versus do you like the entertainment of this character,
right? Yeah, I think he's a good
character. I think he's an interesting
character and I like seeing what he's going to do, which is more
than I could say for Fire and Blood.
But you think he has a lot of moral?
Like he's obviously got moral issues, character flaws,
etcetera. I think Aymond has moral issues,
but I like Aymond a hell of a lot more than I like Damon, and
that's my bias there. I don't know what what to say
about that, but I just feel that.
I think I like Damon more than Aymond, but we have, well, let's
save that actually, 'cause we have a Damon Damon parallel
conversation coming up really shortly here.
This will give us an opportunity to talk about.
That I, I will say that I was thinking about comparing Aegon
to Damon and that because I think there's this, it's easy at
this moment to kind of feel bad for Aegon, But don't forget,
he's a rapist. He didn't give a crap about his
kids until he, after he became key.
Like there's all kinds of things in this moment.
Oh, that's kind of sad. But I, I have a hard time
feeling pity for him. But but I bring this up because
I feel kind of that way about Damon too.
Like whatever struggles he might have, I don't think.
But The thing is that Aegon's mistake doesn't make it OK, but
it's a little easier, you know, if I have to compare and
contrast them, I'm it's easier for me to forgive a mistake that
Aegon has made as a teenager than Damon has made as an adult.
Sure. Does that make sense?
Absolutely. So we started at Heron Hall.
It's funny that we started at Heron Hall, but it's really the
Red Keep 'cause it's a dream in Heron Hall of the Red Keep.
Matt Smith said this is the very first thing they filmed in
Season 2 because Millie Alcock had somewhere else to be.
You know, like, I, I can't be here, y'all, I got other stuff
to do, right? No, it's a scene we've been
seeing since the first trailers. Damon in night clothes entering
this empty throne room. Except we don't see the Millie
Alcock on the throne wearing a crown in the trailers.
Of course, this is a throwback. It's in a complete reversal of
the very, one of the very first scenes of the show, Damon's very
first scene, not, not Rainier's very first scene, but one of her
first scenes. It's it.
He comes, she comes into the throne room and he's sitting on
the throne. This time he comes into the
throne and it's her. And in both of those scenes,
they speak High Valyrian to each other and there's a little bit
of a talk and then they switch to common.
And here there's accusations and guilt even in the dream, Damon
is fighting back like he doesn't he's he's in both of his dreams
when he had last episode of this one.
He's not accepting what his subconscious seems to be telling
him. He's like, and it's similar.
It's more about what he did to this girl, like grooming her for
rule, but with his control and etcetera.
And you might have missed it at the time because it was episode
one. You know, we're not sure what's
happening yet, but, and this isn't, you know, grooming in the
sense that a, an old man is, is trying to get have sex with a
younger woman. He's this is about power like
that. Although there was, that too
there was. That too, but that's secondary
here. If it was just that, I don't
think he would care. I think he'd, like you, wouldn't
be interested in her like that. I think if she was older than
him and she had the power dynamic, he would be interested
her. You know what I mean?
It would be harder for him to manipulate her 'cause she
wouldn't be young, but still. Yeah, it's the the sexual intent
is very low on the list here. So there are, We've gotten some
translations. This is pretty sweet.
David Peterson put the translations of what was being
said there because it's not made clear what's being said.
And we have. It's been said that Targaryens
are closer to gods than to men. And he's walking closer.
He doesn't understand what she's saying.
In my eyes, you were a God. Damon Targaryen, the Prince of
the city, the Lord of Flea Bottom, still can't understand.
I was an innocent. You exploited me and abandoned
me. You sullied my name at court.
You empowered my rivals. You tried to make my ruin.
You put me on that throne, and you love me and you hate me for
it. You created me, Damon, yet you
are now set on destroying me. So yeah, like, that's pretty
straightforward once you hear those translations, right?
It's very much a building on what we had at the Harrenhal
scene last episode. So there's guilt.
There's a little bit of a parallel there too, to when
Amond is speaking to Aegon and Aegon doesn't fully understand.
He doesn't know what to say back.
He's kind of, you know, I think Damon understands High Valerian.
It's it's a different point being made, but it still is this
sort of parallel, someone's sort of being put in their place.
Yes, with High Valerian. Yes, and I totally agree that is
a very similar message here and High Valerian is just a big part
of this episode general the Speaking of it comes up a lot
and it's part of what part isn't even part of the character
building for the episode. You have them using Valyrian in
combat and that's even that is part of the character work
setting that all up. So it's it's even a little
smaller clue here or hint or another parallel.
In that first scene of season one, he he puts a necklace
around her, gives her Valyrian steel necklace and says now you
have a part of your now we both own a part of our heritage.
He's referring to dark sister in this scene.
He cuts her neck off with Dark Sister instead of putting a
necklace on it, and then the crown hits the ground and
clatters. That's where we have that
trailer scene that we've seen a bunch of times.
It's a bit of an inverse to him placing it on her head, which he
refers to when he's arguing with her before he leaves for
Harrenhal. But it's perhaps even more so of
a parallel of his brother dropping the crown right at the
foot of the throne as he's trying to mount it that last
time, which he picks back up for him and puts it on his head.
So there's just all this like duality is present here, both
sides of it, Damon being at his best and at his worst.
The, the, the bad stuff is more focused on, but the parallels
to, to when he's been a good guy sort of or behaving better in
these things. That's, that's there too.
It's, it's, it's, it's shadowed, but it's really well done, I
think. And and then it continues by
merging with reality. And, but hold off here.
Let's see what you have to say about this so far, Sean.
A couple thoughts. One is I remember when the
trailers were first released months ago and we were, you
know, trying to pick them apart and there were a couple images
that look like the throne room, but we couldn't quite make sense
of what was going on. And we kind of decided it must
be some sort of dream sequence a little more clear.
That is what was going on. Why it was hard for us to
decipher those trailers imagery. Also, I think this is the third
or fourth time damage beheaded someone in that that scene in
the in the beginning. I think it was also season one,
episode one when he like took the city watch just trial or
anything. Just rounded up whoever you
thought was a criminal. And he that scene ended with him
beheading someone that was accused of murder.
It's true. And then he beheaded the the
crab king along with his arm. He got the head and shoulder all
together. Veyman Valarian, Yeah.
Yeah, and Valarian, and so now it's a dream, but maybe he
dreams about it 'cause he does it so much.
And he's somewhat responsible, if not mostly responsible, for
the beheading of young Jaharis, too, 'cause he ordered a head.
He was like, give me the head. So that was his command.
Like, bring that head that got to decapitate him for that.
Yeah. The dream starts to merge with
reality as he's waking up, which seems to be something they build
on here. The more more into the episode
we get, the harder it is to tell for him what's dream and what's
reality, and somewhat for us as well.
So he, he, Millie Alcock's head is says there's a Raven and he
kind of wakes up, there's blood on his hand and he's looking at
the blood. And of course that's a like one
of the more obvious symbols, literary symbolism of your hands
are bloody. That means you're guilty, right?
So of course it's only one hand, but still.
And it's interesting too, because his hand didn't get
bloody during the dream. He didn't do anything to touch,
but he cuts her head off very cleanly and smoothly and never
touches any blood. So it's very much about the
guilt, I think, the symbolism there.
But as he's looking at his hand, the blood fades.
It's so cool. He's like, where did that blood
go? It's just gone.
Also really interesting there, remember last episode he had
barred the door to his room shut with two swords?
Yeah, but this episode he's waking up to people in his room
talking about a Raven and pulled the curtain aside.
So like, was it a dream for those?
No, I think he's, I think he just has been there several
weeks now and it would be silly for him to still think they're
going to kill him else. Like if they were going to kill
him by now, they could have done it in 100 different ways and
they haven't. So I think he's just like, all
right, you know? I'll more relaxed and more out
of it. Surely he's eaten by now, you
know, right? He's like, now.
I'm still worried you're going to poison me, you know?
Yeah, he certainly isn't worried about being fed poison.
You just drink that Alice Rivers right away.
So as Simon leads him to the hall to speak with young Oscar
Tully, he sees a black goat, which is like, is that really
there? And Sarah has teased before the
season that there would be a haunted goat.
And I guess there it is. There's a haunted goat.
It makes me think. We're going to see it again.
Yeah, I think we might see it again.
You're right. By the way, one thought I had
when they first showed this is it's just another indication of
the sort of rundownness of Harrenhal.
This isn't like a really royal castle that's got its stuff
together, you know. But then later on they show
three dogs laying there. Have you guys seen this?
Of course, this, this it's a parallel to people who get Yeah,
we. Have.
A section on it in the document. Yeah, we've got, we've got.
OK, I didn't mean to jump ahead. Yeah, so in world you the black
goat is associated with cohor, though it's might be the meaning
here because that is the sigil to the the Brave Companions,
which would be connected to Vargo Ho if it's supposed to
represent future sigils at Harrenhal.
But black goats are an old piece of symbolism in literary, a
literary world which they they represent the unseen elements of
life, the need to confront one's fears or unresolved issues.
It's a bullseye for what Damon is dealing with.
So it doesn't have to be one thing, but it's definitely that
among probably other things too. So he meets a very nervous Oscar
Tully, grandson of Grover. It's a bit of a call back to
Hoster Tully, also infirm at the start of the War of the Five
Kings. But it's mostly a service level
similarity because not much else is similar here.
Edmure was an adult and he was allowed to give orders in
Hofstra's name, which this kid is not.
He's also too young to do it even if he did have permission,
which he doesn't. So Damon's rude to him.
But he's right that what's the point of you even coming here if
you have no authority to give any commands at all?
It was. It was kind of a waste of time
from his perspective. He wanted to meet Damon.
He's like, I want to meet the king or yeah, he's like, yeah,
he may have. That may have been all there is
to it, you know, He's like, oh, I just wanted to meet you, you
know, like you're the king. I'm just, I'm coming to hang
out, meet, you know, it seems like the thing to do, you know?
Yeah, he's a famous fighter and a dragon rider.
If I was a young teen boy, I would want to meet Damon
Targaryen. Yeah, yeah, I probably would
too. That's a good point.
I, I, I did think it was interesting how this played out
because I, you know what, you know, did Damon really think
he's like, well, you need to go, you know, murder your
grandfather so you can take charge?
Did Damon really think this kid was going to do that?
At the same. Time did this kid think that he
that Damon's gonna be like, oh, well, we'll just wait for him to
get better? Like, I don't think anyone was
thinking realistically about how this is going.
And, you know, maybe Damon had this hope because the fact is
Damon doesn't really quite have the authority to do what he's
doing right now. He's just doing it.
This kid maybe could have said, all right, fine, yeah, we'll do
it. Fly me back on your dragon, and
now the armies will follow you. I promise.
You know, like he maybe could have taken charge.
Whether you should have, I don't know.
But I could see what Damon's hope was, you know?
Yeah. And of course, yeah, I agree
with you. He wasn't really being serious
with this suggestion. He's just like, OK, this is all
a waste. So I'm just he's just being
snarky because he immediately realized this whole thing has
been a waste of time. And that scene, I want to give
credit to the direction of framing that scene.
It was so perfect, the way Damon was just too close to him and
sat in the seat that he had been sitting in and the kids sword
was a little too big. He had to stumbled back into his
chair. It was like it was perfectly
portrayed. When Damon declares the
Riverlands are leaderless, like the fish without a head, he's
kind of right so and near. And this is reflected elsewhere
by other people's takes elsewhere in the story or
elsewhere in the in Westeros. Like Lord Massey says the
Riverlands are deeply are deeply entangled, like the end of a
lesseni orgy. And Eamon says Heron Hall is a
useful morass. And Lara says it is beyond his
faculties and jokes that it's more crippled than he is.
So. And Sir Simon, of course, is
like repair, you say, like, what are you going to do here?
Like, yeah, he's even, he's a little confused there.
So real quick side note, they made some changes to the Muppet
Tully family tree here. We guess that the main reason is
to avoid using the name Kermit Tully in the show, but we'll
talk about that separately. It's a a part of the book to
show changes thing that we'll do in one single episode after the
season. Aymond and Damon meaning the
dream here. He goes back to sleep, has
another dream similar to his first night where he sees feet
at the door and sound of marching.
That's kind of a rehash there and it's quite a lot of noise.
He again follows and sees a Valyrian figure in black with
long hair. And my first instinct was, is
that his brother Is that Viserys?
And then as it goes a little farther on, you're like, oh,
that looks like Eamon, the way he's stalking with his arms held
wide outside of his body. And then when you get even
closer, there's you can see the strap of the eye patch, which is
like, OK, that's definitely Aymond.
But then he turns around and it's Damon wearing his clothes
and it's like, whoa, that's pretty cool.
It's kind of a horror movie trope to do that.
But it was done really well. Like, it's not a when I say
trope, I don't mean bad thing. There's a reason tropes are used
a lot. Because they work, you know?
Yeah, I, I thought it was, I didn't take note quite of the
eye patch one or the other, but I felt like the gate was aim and
I it, it seemed pretty clearly off the bat that to me, there
might have been a flash of a moment when I thought it might
be for serious or some other person.
But. But I bet they had Ewan, what's
the name? Ewan Mitchell.
And Mitchell, yeah, might have been the actor that was pacing
there, you know? The parallels to Damon and Emond
are really powerful. Obviously Damon is being shown
that he might not like seeing how similar he is to his nephew,
how he's this is a younger him, he might not like that.
And Amon may not like being seen as an older or younger version
of Damon, but it's true. Like they're not identical.
There's obviously many differences.
I think Amon likes it, Damon doesn't.
Amon might like it. Yeah, 'cause one is being, he's
being compared to and established a guy who's already
a veteran and has risen high and is a dragon writer that's
actually proven himself. Whereas Damon's dealing with the
younger, more beautiful queen type beat, you know what I mean?
That's. True, and upstart, who has not.
He has a bigger dragon, sure, but what has he actually done?
You know what besides kill a smaller dragon?
After this episode, he's got a bigger claim to fame, but prior
to, you know, still hasn't. Perhaps still doesn't have
Damon's resume probably, but but gotten closer, that's for sure.
So yeah, like for example, if we look at their power dynamics of
the brother, Damon undermined Viserys as kind of like he's
undermining Ranira, but he never like went directly against him.
There's still I'd say there's more loyalty.
Like Damon would stand up for his brother.
If anyone tried to attack Viserys, Damon would jump in
front of them and fight them. I don't know if Amon would do
that for Egon. Like because Aegon was mean to
him he bullied him, Viserys didn't bully Damon.
So like their their dynamic has been different since they were
children. That is, a similarity is that
they both feel like they should be king.
But that is. Amon maybe, Amon maybe has
earned it a little bit more. Like he's done what he's
supposed to do. He just happens to be the
younger brother. Damon has been petulant because
he's the younger brother, right? And so that that's it, I think
you're right. And we maybe even kind of saw
that here, that not only would Ayman not step in to protect
Aegon like Damon would have done for Thesaurus, Ayman might
purposefully put Aegon in harm's way and stand back and watch him
play out. Yeah.
And I don't think Damon would have done that particular thing,
which is not necessary defense of Damon, but more of like
showing the ways that these two are different in some ways, even
though they do have a lot in common.
I'll talk about Alice River. She's super cool, very
interesting character. One of the characters we've been
most looking forward to because her story is so deeply personal.
Meaning it's it plays out on a one to one level, which is the
kind of thing the maesters and historians are not going to have
any idea about. And she's a bastard and a woman
and a possible practitioner of magic.
Also things they have no idea about.
So this is a character that is most going to be misrepresented
in the histories. That's the one that has amongst
the most potential to be made into something interesting into
drawn out and make, which is already quite interesting just
from the bits in the book. But this is there's so much room
to make her more and it's a great start to that.
We we joked about her accent having only heard, you know, 5
words from the one line. It's a lot Scott.
It's very Scottish. I mean, she is Scottish.
Still think there is a tone to her voice that she is doing some
muted thing that gives some words a quality that is not your
standard Scottish. There was a certain word she
said that sounded off to me and I'm I feel that I've seen other
people talk about it on on Twitter and whatnot so I'm
curious if anyone agrees. We'll get more clarification
later, probably, she might say. Scottish, to be clear, and I
knew it was Scottish at the time.
I'm saying that it just has a certain tone to it, like she is
slightly. It makes her seem like she's not
from around. No one has that accent in
Westeros. Either way, that's a unique
accent for Westeros. Yeah, 'cause the other Scottish
actors that we've had didn't sound like this.
They didn't sound like the accent was thicker, like Graham
Mctavish has a thicker Scottish accent that he allows to come
through and it fits. So it's a great scene.
Damon just doesn't know what to do with her.
He's a little back footed 'cause he's used to people just kind of
wilting under his authority and his reputation and she is kind
of above him in a way. She's like one step ahead of him
the whole way, if not three steps ahead and he just doesn't.
He's like, well, you're weird. I hate to say.
He's not sure what to say. It's awesome.
Like one of the, and that's one of the things that puts him off
is she's not treating him like royalty.
She's just treating him like some guy, like who's having
sleeping problems, Like he's, he treats her like just anyone
else. And that's to him, that's
unusual. Like no one treats me like a
normal person. What's going on here?
Everyone's like scared of me. She's not scared of me.
Should I be scared of her? I don't know.
You know, it's like he's like all these thoughts, but he's
also just sleepy and confused and has been sleepy and confused
for a while now. So that's also she knows she's
got the edge on him. There is that he's a sleepy guy
that's like disoriented. So she can use that to her
advantage, and she does. Not just sleepy, by the way.
Haunted, discombobulated, you know?
It's however, where she is of his state.
It seems like he's encountering her at these moments of
weakness, abnormality, whatever, you know?
Really good dialogue here. He says you are Alice Strong
Rivers, a bastard. Not so bad once you get to know
me. Which is meant as a joke, but
it's also true. Like bastards get treated badly.
And when they get people assume that bastards are like, petty
and and jealous and ruled by their passions 'cause that's how
they were created. You know, it's, it's very silly,
but that's how they believe, yeah.
I like all these trueborn people who aren't ruled by their.
Passions. No, he's, he's very, you know,
he's just ice cold and stoic all the time, right?
Yeah. So she refer, she knows what's
going on so much. She's like, I've seen the look
of bad sleep before. It's such a common experience in
Harrenhal. Anyway, it's gonna be the first
thing she thinks of and she blames it on the curse of black.
Heron points out the cut down weirwood Groves and that's all
that's all book cannon for the basically.
And she even says his bed is made from one of those trees
which is that's a big one. And you could see how that fits
into prior A Song of Ice and Fire lore with weirwood items
sometimes being associated with dreams.
Like Theon also had powerful dreams while sleeping in Ned and
Kat's bed, which isn't stated to be a weirwood bed but I wouldn't
be surprised if it is. It would explain a lot.
And Jamie has a weirwood dream when he puts his head on a on a
stump, you know? So these things happen, right?
Not to mention Bran at the center of all the weirwood stuff
being fed. Weirwood paste, possibly Jojen
paste, possibly that's the same thing of which there are echoes
here. She has weirwood leaves on her
apron. She speaks of dead spirits in
the weirwoods that were cut down.
Pretty consistent book with book cannon on there on that She
talks about, you know, the ghosts and and being inheritable
and the ghosts, you know, if we're looking at it from their
perspective, the ghosts might dislike Targaryens given Aegon
Valerian. But but if she calls herself a
barn owl, which is like, is that meant to just be silly or is she
like a skin changer? Is that what she's saying here?
Sometimes you can, when the truth is something really
fantastic. You could just tell people and
they don't believe you, you know so.
That was my first thought there and the behind the scenes
suggests she might be like way older than she says than she
looks, which it's already you're already supposed to not be able
to tell how old she is by looking.
That's that's like her. The way she's described in the
books. It's like that woman could be in
her 20s. That woman could be in her 50s.
I don't really know, but it's hinted at that she might be even
older than that. It's not she's not in her 20s
that that's definitely wrong. But but the point is she could
she could pass for that. Now book version doesn't know.
But here it suggested she might be even centuries old, which
would mean she lived somewhere else before.
Cause Haranol isn't is 130 years old.
It is not centuries plural old. Even if you count the
construction phase, it's 170 years old from the day it
started construction. So anyway.
But the red coloring of this concoction that she makes for
Damon's dreams, that's the same color it would be if it was
where it would pay. So they were very being very
intentional there. And she licks her fingers the
red off of there that gives me series of Euron vibes when Euron
is licking up that extra shade of the evening when his brother
spits it back out onto his face. And he's like, oh, we don't want
to waste that. It's like, yeah, really cool.
Yeah. And you're, you're right, Sean.
He's just like, OK, I guess I'll drink this.
You know, she, like, got so far ahead of him in their
conversation. He was back footed so much.
And clearly he's established some level of trust there, you
know, and he does want to sleep really badly.
He's like, yeah, I really do need sleep.
You know, I, I have a a few thoughts that are maybe like
approaching tinfoil territory, but you, you know, like half
joking but half wondering what happened to that old maester,
like here to the night he wasn't fitting in.
Like is she feeding him? Is she using his blood for this
pace? You know, but slightly more
serious thought is how aware or trusting or whatever is Simon
Strong of Alice Rivers. Do you think do?
You think Simon understands that Damon is having visions and not
sleeping well? Does he know that it's a
weirwood bed? Has Simon slept in that bed?
Did he have visions? I have those same questions.
Yeah. Could.
He know or could Alice have told him or trust what Alice tells
him if they have had some vision 'cause he seems so calm and
prepared. When Damon showed up, did he
know that was coming somehow? You know, maybe it's just a
prediction you can make. The Lords are at war.
We're in a key spot. Someone's coming here, you know?
Just like she susses out her his problems with Rainier.
You didn't send a Raven back, so there must be a quarrel going on
here. Yeah, kind of like that.
So some of it there's some explanation for her, but I can't
help but wonder, like she they're featuring her character.
She seems to have rain. She walks through the corridors,
she's up at night. It's not like she's, it's not
like Simon doesn't know who she is or doesn't think she should
belong. So.
She didn't eat with them. I think she is at least looked
at a second class. Or they just thought it would
raise questions with Damon. Like maybe when Damon's not
there she eats at table with them.
But to me that indicates that she is not warmly fondly loved
by the fellow Strong's. Exactly and kept close.
She might be accepted almost as a maester, but like she doesn't
have a chain, so it's not official and she might have done
some valuable work and have some healing properties and knowledge
da, da, da. But still, she's a bastard.
There's all kinds of reasons why they might limit her ability to
sit with the boys, you know, But but he, they, that doesn't mean
that they don't listen or trust or respect her.
And and so I wonder how much they know, what she knows, if
she seems to have this insight taken Damon, has she shared that
with them? Do they?
Anyway, we'll see how it plays out.
I'm very curious. Yeah, those are those are very
good questions. Yeah.
And we and not particularly questions that are given to us
in the book, answers that are given.
So I'm, I'm like, I don't mean that.
Like I wonder too. No, I really do wonder too.
There aren't answers from the books there.
So we we'll see what the show does super sat from Anthony de
Palma, who says fellow Westorian Diana Dunlap.
Hey Diana and I talked earlier about how Alice and Melisandre
use opposing gods to deliver visions.
Alice equals Jojen pace melodic valor.
Yeah that's that's really cool. That's been that fits into our
long standing theory of magical overlap, which is that different
forms of magic allow you or sources of magic allow you to
tap into the same powers. Whether it's the prophecy powers
that maybe you are referring to here that come from, yes, fire
from allure. They've gazed into the flames or
they have dragon dreams. If they're, if they have this
Targaryen blood, maybe that's fire in their blood already.
Yeah. And Alice, the complimentary or
perhaps opposing ice magic versus fire magic here is being
perhaps explored. I I love that concept.
Or blood magic. Alice is maybe feeding Damon
blood whereas Melisandre was drawing blood, leeching blood
away. That's cool.
That's a good interpreter. Yeah.
The leeches. That's a That's a good way to
think of it. Yeah.
Sandy Hartcorn says Helena had an owl in her drawings near a
drawing of Harrenhal. That.
Yeah, I did see people pointing to that on Twitter.
I saw maybe just like 30 minutes before this episode went live.
So I have not had a chance to think about that.
And I need to go look back at Helena's drawings again.
You need to refer to those just about every time ever.
That's to be a standard thing on my like list of things to do
after every episode. Look at Helena's drawings.
We can't look. At.
Helena Helena's the biggest spoiler of all.
She's a she's a walking spoiler. So.
So Damon drinks that beverage and then wakes up.
It's a neat cut. Where is this?
Does he really just wake up here?
Or is it just this how the show is showing us the next scene or.
Like it's unclear just how disoriented he is here.
Do you know some drooling in this shot?
Like the drool just drips out of his mouth.
He's literally just like sitting there drooling.
I did not know I have it on the. Screen right now you can just
see like a. Droplet.
Yeah, it's so embarrassing for him.
There is wow, that is one of the most embarrassing things he
could do. Like as a guy, like with his
reputation, with his he's like some badass word and he's just
drooling it like wow, I did not see that.
Yeah. So it's a pretty neat cut that
he's raises the drink, the Alice rivers his drink to his mouth
and then it cuts and he's lowering this drink and he's so
disoriented. So she says it will help with
his sleep, but I don't know what help means.
Like maybe it helps actually she says help with your dreams,
which it's certainly making. It seems like it gave him more
of them. I don't know if that's kind of
help he wanted. So more on that.
We'll have to just keep looking at that 'cause I don't know,
Like this clearly isn't all day. Long.
Well, it seems like we he was black out.
He wasn't dreaming, he was just passed out.
Like maybe he had some really intense visions during that.
But like, it's like when you you, if you're like on an acid
trip, you know, like maybe you had some like spectacular things
you experienced and then like they just fly out of your mind
and you're like, you basically could have blacked out for all
the good it did to you if you tripped too hard, right?
Yeah, now I'm going to be real honest with you all.
I have tried psychedelic drugs before.
Wow. But here's what I'm going to go
with that I've never seen anything on them.
I've never hallucinated anything on a psychedelic drug.
But I have hallucinated on lack of sleep, both audio and visual
hallucinations on lack of sleep. So I think this is very this is
the most realistic way to make it unclear if this is
supernatural or not. I mean, surely some of it is,
but where the real and the supernatural split, where they
come together is very unclear. Cause yeah, you would be, you'd
see things when you're sleep deprived.
You really do. That is a thing.
Again, I like how well this is merged here and he's sitting at
table, he's talking to the Blackwood guy.
He has to reintroduce himself and like I just told you his
name a second ago, he's like who are Oh yeah, nice to meet you.
He's like, you probably did that already too, man.
So. This is Willem Blackwood.
And The funny thing to me is that if y'all remember, in our
interview with Ryan Condall, we asked him about the names of the
Blackwoods and why they went with Willem and Jarrell.
And he said, oh, sometimes marketing other people name it
and we didn't name them. And he kind of played coy with
us about it. Well, Willem Blackwood is in
episode 4. And The funny thing is when he
he came to the interview and he said, I just came from sound
mixing episode 4. So like, he literally had just
been looking at Willem Blackwood.
And maybe they were still named by someone else.
Or maybe he was more referring to Jerrell being named Jerrell,
which is a really weird name in the world.
Willem makes sense. Jerrell is not common.
Yeah, that's the first time I've ever heard Jarrell at any
setting. Yeah.
So maybe. It was more casting shade on
Jarrell and not Willem cause Willem is very much real.
Willem is real, yeah, and maybe he hadn't decided at that point.
They're like, yeah, we'll just use that name.
We maybe at that point he just said we, they, they got stuck
with using the name 'cause it had already been settled for
them. I don't know Anyway it.
Makes sense. Willem is the brother of Lord
Samwell, and so of course it makes a lot of sense that a
second son would be the one vying for Rainier's hand in that
case. Can I make a a quick aside here
by the way? Absolutely.
Usually I've been drinking my a Magic Mine green drink, but
today I tried to recreate the the red paste.
Very nice. The diamond drink.
I actually did this originally in in honor of Melee's The Red
Queen. Is the the red the the the
maester paste? Yeah, so another one of the big
moments happens here in terms of the dream stuff, which is Lena
appears as a in place of a serving girl.
It's not a blonde L, which is interesting.
It's not a it's adult Lena and not younger Lena, which it is
for Rainiera, but it's a different thing.
He didn't. It's not quite the same.
He wasn't like using her as a leverage for power so early on,
although she was pretty young, I.
Think it's older Lena that he failed more maybe?
You know what I mean? Maybe.
Yeah, yeah, probably. Yeah.
Older. Yeah.
Older Lane. He failed more.
'Cause she had her, I don't know, dreams, ambitions or
whatever. She wanted to be back with her
home and her family, or at least do something more if they're
going to be in Pintos. But he was just holed up in the
library, didn't want to leave, didn't want to cooperate, did
wasn't being a good father to the kids, etcetera.
Yeah. But I'm sure I wonder how much
they thought went back and forth on which which one of them to
use there. Yeah.
So like you said, there's the
hunting dogs there, which was really interesting.
I wondered about those too. And yeah, shout out Joe
Magician, who points out that maybe what we're being shown
here is the houses that are going to rule Heron Hall
afterwards. OK, so we've already had a few
houses rule Heron Hall at this point after how strong whose
banners we were already shown because there's no way to show
their sigil with animals. It's three forks of the Trident.
So after the strongs comes the Loftons we already referred to,
and we pointed out the bats that flew by and the Wentz are after
the Loftons and then also bats, right?
And then comes the War of 5 Kings, where first of all, Tywin
Lannister takes it and then he hands it off to Vargo, or rather
he hands it off to well, it gets lost to Roose Bolton because
Vargahote switched sides and Vargahote's the black coach.
So there's no, you know, there's no Leech Lord or flayed man that
we've seen yet. But that's another one that
might be kind of hard to represent.
They can maybe show a Leech but. It was never like controlled by
the. It was never like a Clegane
castle per SE, but but Gregor, like hell of the castle, right?
Yeah, there's Sigil's three dogs, so.
Right. Well, that's what I'm saying is
that so did Lewis Bolton and his sigil hasn't been seen yet.
So if we do see a bleach, that would be like the final.
And maybe there were leeches in Alice's concoction.
Maybe that's where some of that blood came from.
Either way, it's serious Fear and Loathing and Harrenhal
vibes, right? We've got drug hazes, waking
dreams, a lot of uncertainty, some very bad behavior, and it's
most definitely bat country. Yes.
So yeah, Willem, as I say, I said this is the same guy who
killed Gerald back in season one.
He refers to it. He refers to the duel of
fighting for. He's like, I liked Rainier back
then. She I thought she had spirit,
you know, like it's kind of a weird thing to say, but Willem
is Regent to Ben Jacot Blackwood, who's underage.
So, you know, that's bloody Ben Blackwood from the books.
Damon accuses him of putting their grudge with the Brackens
first. And he's right.
Like they're like, he's like, he doesn't say you're right, but
he's like, well, if you help us take down the Brackens, I'll
join you. So yes, that's basically what
we're saying. So Damon's like, all right,
fine. You know, this is what it's
going to take. He says bring the Queen's
justice to Stonehedge and the blackouts will join you.
So I guess that's going to happen.
I mean, we've there's tons of scenes still of Damon outside of
Harrenhal that we haven't seen yet.
So there's there's 100% leaving Harrenhal this season and doing
stuff. So I guess he's going to not get
what he wants because what he wanted was to make them come to
him. And which maybe that's a bigger
sign of authority. It makes him more kingly.
I'm not really sure. But if he had started with the
plan that Aegon wanted to do, which which his counselors also
say, you know, don't we don't want you doing this, but we're
going to do it without, with soldiers and not Dragons, which
is to just go from castle to castle and say you join me or,
or else Damon's waiting, making them come to him.
And it's not working because there's no one leader to make
them like to, to get to make them all come.
So now he's going to have to go to them one by one potentially.
Or at least that might be. At least that seems to be where
it's headed. That's I think why he was
pushing so hard to get this Holy Lord, Yes, because otherwise it
takes so much more time for him. He can go to 1 castle with his
dragon, say, all right, give me all your banner men or I'm going
to burn you down So fine. So he gets 300 soldiers and he
goes to the next castle. And so after three weeks, he
might have 3000 soldiers, as many as cold.
But in the meantime, while he's out doing that, Cole might show
up at Heron Hall with 3000 soldiers.
Just take it like if he could just Fast forward the whole
process. If the Lord, whoever's in charge
of River Run, sends a Raven to all the bannermen and says
everyone go follow Damon at Heron Hall, that's.
Normally how everyone. 'S there all at once?
Yeah, that's what Damon was expecting, but but you know, the
the gears are jammed up here. Fish without a head.
OK, so moving over to the black, moving over to Driftmark,
floundering. There you go.
Very good. Yes.
Flopping around. OK, so Driftmark, let's talk
about that. Rainey's approaches.
Allen bringing up saving her husband's life and points out
how handsome he is since your mother must have been beautiful.
It's a little awkward and then kind of Corley's interrupts.
But. It's more than awkward, it's
really sad. Yeah, yeah, it's really.
Moving. Actually, I just.
I yeah. I mean, it's awkward for Alan,
but like, for Rainey's, it's like what?
A moment of her imagining what? The woman that Corley's cheated
on? Yeah, I don't know.
So is that what you interpreted from this Sean by when he says I
know what she says, I know who he is, Is that what you did?
You get that? OK.
Frankly, if Sean hadn't guessed at this point, these are two
bastards. I was going to just tell him
because everyone in the world has guessed this at this point.
I've seen like people's mothers be like, oh, that's like, yeah,
like we're not pretending anymore.
We they're bastards. Yeah, I hadn't guessed before
this episode at all, but when in this scene it's like, oh, it
also she even said I've been talking to your captain.
She probably picked up. Even if the captains don't tell
directly, she can tell what it is that they're not telling her.
Does that make? Sense there's a topic they're
uncomfortable with, Yeah, she susses that.
Out and so I'm almost Yeah, this is Alan and with forgotten the
other character's name Adam, I'm assuming that they are both
bastards of Corleys by different women.
Maybe he's done this a bunch of times constantly off at sea for
years at a time. It it makes sense.
That's true, and I guess it makes sense that he would try to
hide it too. And maybe these guys maybe would
try to hide it. They don't want to I I can
imagine the drama of their lives.
You can probably make another series just about them and their
adventures and everything. If their dad's not going to talk
about it, then they shouldn't either.
Like it's it's it's like that's kind of the message.
Like, well, if he's not going to make it public, then we can't.
What would he do to us if he doesn't want that?
How? Like what could be the back
this, the blowback to us could be severe.
Yeah. Like she doesn't know.
Like it's the very much the like picture, one of the most
important bastard, you know, stepmother relationships we've
seen, which is Jon Snow and Catelyn, which did not go very
well. So we have an example of why
these two might not want to Like, I don't want her to know,
you know what, what would she do?
Like they don't know if she's going to be a Catelyn or
whatever and be like, no, send them away, you know, or
something worse than Catelyn, which is like have them killed
or something like that, Like a Cersei which who might do
something like that, you know? She seemed to be all the way on
the other side of the spectrum, though.
She was accepted and supportive even.
You know which is, which is refreshing.
Yeah, that's nice. And there's another piece of
this. It also explains why Corley's
was so dismissive when Rainey's was pushing him to name an
error. I was like, I don't want to be
the girl. I don't want to be a little
baby. I mean, it's got to be someone
who knows how to sail. I've got a few people in mind
already, my other sons that you don't know about.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
That's right. Cool.
Yes, that's that's that's where we're at with this.
It's very interesting to see where that's going forward and
who knows? Can I say how much?
I just absolutely love the choice to have this scene with
Rainey's and to give Rainey's the the scene where she confirms
that she knows and she kind of gives her approval to him and
her, her blessing as it were, to raise him up and make him the
the heir and the Lord and all that.
I just, I, I had wondered whether Renice would react in
anger or, or what. And so I'm just, if I just
really, I had wanted Corley's to give her the option the same as
I always wanted Ned Stark to tell Catelyn.
I really think you should tell your partner in life something
like this. And especially now again, at the
moment to tell her, if I could see why he wouldn't have told
her before, frankly, the moment to tell her I think would have
been in that scene when that you brought up Sean, when she was
like, who's going to take over? I think that's that's your
opportunity. And I want to bring this back to
like at the end. I have to wonder if that's part
of the calculus she had in deciding to sacrifice herself.
She knew that it would be easier for Coralie since him to have
these errors. She wouldn't be humiliated as
having him having I, you know, I in terms of if she's weighing
like is this the time for me to do this?
I feel like her knowing about Alan and Adam was a significant
factor. And if you go back to that
moment, he's like, we'll find a way through.
He's like, he doesn't have an answer.
He doesn't give her a straight answer.
He just kind of puts it off and she's frustrated.
She's like, what do you you didn't give me an answer.
Like what is that? Yeah, I like literally pulled
his hand away from hers to get away and avoid continuing that
conversation. Which by the way, I noticed that
in all the previous scenes, Allen's like when he wants to
leave Coralie, he's like, I have duties to attend to.
When Coralie wants to leave Reignes, he's like, I have
matters to attend. No, he says.
I have. No, he does.
He says I have duties to attend to and leaves.
And then in this scene is what you're talking about, He says.
Don't you have duties to attend to?
And. He goes, so that's what he says.
To Alan. Exactly.
It's hilarious. They're always like duty calls,
you know? What about your duty to your
child? Yeah.
Two other little notes on this by the way.
One is, I think there was a, a parallel of sorts between this
realization of infidelity, if you will, between Corliss and
Rainey's and between Allison and Laurie's.
And I think it was a very next set scene.
We see Alice Allison getting the moon T and then later on
Laurie's kind of pieces together what's going on.
I think it's a similar sort of realization.
And, and also similarly, both of them are like, all right, all
right, let's just move forward. They're, they're, they're both
kind of OK with this thing. The other thing is it, it sheds
a new light on the scene when Adam saw sea smoke flying
around. It sure does.
I wonder if there's a new I, I because the very next scene
after that, they showed. Oh, crap.
I always forget Rayna, the younger daughter.
I thought that, oh, she's going to get sea smoke now, but the
fact that she's just leaving makes me think that's less
likely. So what was that all about?
So now I wonder if it might be Adam.
'S OK, yeah. So yeah, Carly's gets defensive
about Rainey saying he should be raised up and she just switches
the topic to the Black Council. And that is our segue to the
Black Council. Alfred Broom is still making his
accusations. He's still at the forefront of
the We're scared about the Inaction faction.
And you know, he's not entirely wrong, but we've been over this
before. He basically says the same
things Damon is saying about the Riverlands.
He's like, we need a leader, we need leadership here.
Like y'all need a leader, We need a leader, Rainey says.
You know, I'm handling things, but broom's like, well, why are
you so important? You know, it's like, well,
you're not even a land holder, bro.
You're not a dragon rider or a Lord.
Are you? Who are you?
I am Princess Rainey's Targaryen.
He's like the lowest ranking guy there by far.
Like, yeah, he's a real upstart. This is honestly really true to
life. It's like, wow, the worst and
most incompetent person you know is the loudest in the room.
Surprise. He, the one thing he says that's
right is that, well, it doesn't matter what tongue says it, if
it's true, well, it doesn't mean what you're saying is true, but
he is he seems to chafe under the rule of women.
I think that's the pattern here because he denigrates Bayla.
He laughs at Rainiera that one time, and he now he's coming
after Rainey's. But when Corley's walks in the
room, he's like, oh, I'm so oh. Oh sorry man, I better do what
I'm told now. Yeah.
So it's like, why is why is Corley so much more intimidating
than Rainey's? Like they're both intimidating.
They both have the ability to just like snap their fingers and
have you executed or do it themselves.
Like, yeah, so I don't that seems, that seems to be an
undercurrent here. I I would take note of that.
Frankly, like it almost is unbelievable to me, like the the
the amount of disrespect that he has for a Princess of the realm
and a dragon rider and a lady. And like beyond all of these
things that she is that he is SER Alfred Broom.
He is like the Castellin if he's at the show, but he he's not
even a Lord. I think what we're seeing in
part is that they are a more tolerant group like rain era.
More value is is more willing to entertain people like yelling at
her or because she wants to hear other opinions.
It's part of her the way she conducts business.
She wants to hear other opinions.
She wants them to speak up, even if it means being a slight.
She'd rather than be a little insulting than to not say the
things that are important. Whereas the green counselor not
like that. Like you, you watch what you say
around Egon. Like as you can see, Otto like
said things and he got kicked off for it.
Like and Alfred says these things and does not get kicked
out for it. And that leads to people making
secret plans behind his back. You know, like it.
Yeah, they undermine exactly. You're you're absolutely right.
When they don't conduct their council business openly.
It's it's conducted in secret. Yeah, So you're totally right.
That's a great take there. So Rainier does eventually show
up, right? And they harangue her for the
risk and the absence. But it dies down quickly when
she's like, look, y'all my bad, but I'm in it now.
War. We're going it's go time.
So like, oh, OK, then, well, what are we doing?
So instead of arguing about that, they're just like, let's
argue about who to sender Brooks rest, which is that's the kind
of argument maybe that they should be that they want to be
having like, all right, let's let's argue about battle plans,
not about whether we can stop the war.
Still, when you're the only one in the room who thinks that we
can, you know, so they're all, they're finally on the same page
about that at least. I will say it was a little
prizing disappointing to me that even Jace was like, I don't know
what. Where do you slightly petulant
towards his mom? You know he like well.
Think about what position she. Left him in.
Right. Yeah, I understand his
frustration. Yeah.
Yeah, like she should. Have told him he's the heir to
the throne. He can't know that you went to
King's land and come on now I'm sorry but like if you can't tell
your son and heir where you went you real I I just think she
messed up by not communicating that. 100% cause what if she
didn't come back? They would still not and they
wouldn't know where she was and they'd be like what happened
Like they just she's just gone. They would never have learned.
In a sense, it's very similar to Aegon taking matters into his
own hands and going to the battle on his own.
It's just that Ranira suffered, didn't get caught.
She didn't mean, of course it's a lot worse going into a battle
that's obviously more dangerous, you know, but it's, it's a bit
of a parallel. It's just she didn't suffer the
consequence. The only consequences we're
getting yelled at when she came back whereas Aegon it.
Sounds worth noting in. Horrible shape, yeah.
Not to take it away anything, any of the points you're making,
but it is worth noting, you know, if you're going to draw a
parallel, that the primary contrast is he was excited to go
kill people. She was trying to go save
people. You know that too.
Yeah. That's, well, I think Aegon's
also is mostly trying to go prove himself.
He was trying to go attack the help the army and attack the
Queen's Dragons if they were there or whatever.
Yeah, but still, you're not you're not wrong.
I'd say killing wasn't his motivation.
He was willing to kill to prove himself, which is to, to just,
you know, to, to distinguish him from a Joffrey who just liked
killing, you know? But we've already been through
that. He's not like Joffrey that much
anyway, so I appreciate that. Rainier, I was willing to go
into battle, but her son and her council are right.
It's not a good, not a good idea.
Don't put her at risk like that. The same reason they don't want
her sneaking into King's Landing is basically the same reason
they don't want her flying into battle like you take her claim
is too important. The same reason the Green
Council didn't want Aegon going. Exactly, and this is the same
point I was making earlier. She takes that disagreement as
advice, as counsel, whereas Aegon took it as, like,
disobedience or a challenge, Right.
He she sees the logic behind their argument.
Aegon is just like, no, it's just they're just back footed.
They're just sidelining me. You know, I'm as tough as
anyone. Yeah.
He just has the wrong, completely wrong approach about
it. And it's also worth noting
Ranira had the other correct option which is Rainey's like.
And not that there weren't other correct options for Aegon, too,
but I I can imagine that she felt it was important, since
this is about her, to risk it herself.
You know, like Ned Stark wants to be the one that swings the
sword or whatever, but Rainey steps up and says I'm the one
that should be doing it. It's like, relatively speaking,
I am more expendable than you. And my dragon is Beijing.
She had, like, she had all the reasons ready to go.
And like you said, Renero's like, OK, yeah, that's logical.
I don't like it, but you're right, you know, it's that kind
of thing. Whereas Aegon's like, I don't
like it, so I'm not going to do it.
It's the, you know, that's that's the difference between
them, you know? So, yeah, Rainier is just not
concerned about other people looking stronger, but she's not
worried about people overshadowing her.
She's been through that with Damon.
She sees that that's a thing that he he deals with.
And she's like, I'm not like that you.
Know, you know, it's funny, 'cause Laurie, Laurie says that
Cole's victories are like to incite Rainier's fury.
Like, I don't, I don't know. Not really.
Yeah, not really. You know, just.
Confusion. She's confused.
Yeah, it's it's certainly brings a reaction, but not not Fury.
I'm not sure how much Lawyers really believes that.
He just knows that we'll keep everyone on on board with this
plan. Well, he only told that to
Allison, but we'll let's, let's hold off on that thought.
We're going to talk about that later anyway.
So in the meantime, it works as a parallel that they both did
something extremely dangerous without their counsel agreeing
to it, right? They wouldn't and wouldn't have
had it been discussed. Well, it was discussed in
Aegon's case, and they said no. So there's this cool thing Shane
noticed there. We noticed together.
There's a pix Cole's marker up off the map, The battle map,
It's a little chunk of coal. When I've noticed it, at first I
was like, how do they know Cole has a Unicorn horn on his like
horse? Like I thought it was a horn.
And then as he's just like, no, look, there's a chunk of coal at
the top. And I was like, oh, as soon as
my eyes adjusted, I couldn't Unsee it.
But yeah, they have a little coal marker for for coal.
Very nice. Even though it's Cole, you know
whatever this does have the little blocks of.
Coal on a sigil The the 9 dots of of coal or whatever.
Yeah, because he's been a very bad boy.
I appreciate that Rainier basically said the line, she
said. Okay, it's it's it's I win my
claim or I die. That's those are the options
left to me. Although she's not telling the
council. The third reason, which he goes
pulls Jace aside. I like how he comes to confront
her. He's like, I want to fight for
every. He's been impatient before.
This is consistent with him. He was he's impatient with Luke
training. He was impatient with there's a
couple other impatient things he did anyway.
So this is in line with how he's been so far, which is, you know,
typical just a younger man that's like ready to to go for
it. And so she tells him.
She pulls him aside and tells him A Song of Ice and Fire and
says, actually, yeah, there is more than just my claim.
I wouldn't do all this just for a claim, actually, son.
And I hope you share these values.
She says it's something she should have told him before.
And I bet a lot of the audience were like, yeah.
And we're like, yes, you shouldn't.
Yeah, they were like, yeah, you should have.
So she says the horrors I've just unleashed cannot be for a
throne alone. Like, OK, yeah, Fairpoint.
Good call, I guess. And we don't actually see how
Jase reacts to this, which is interesting.
I'm sure we will, though. But it's also talked about.
It's spoken over the start of the battle like he's.
She's describing the Song of Ice and Fire as the Dance of the
Dragons begins, as if this line of Dragons must stay together to
fight the war to come. Yet here it's being spoken right
as they're splitting apart, right as it's the point of no
return. And it's super cool.
He he asked the questions and she, you know, goes on the spiel
and we're seeing people get shot down by arrows and trees falling
and the yells of battle. And it's mostly just arrows
because the Dragons haven't arrived yet.
Now, before we go to the battle, we've got a before we go to our
little break here as well, take a look at the skull behind him.
There's a big skull back behind Rainier and Jace that's framing
their conversation, and I think we've got a couple shots of it
here and it we were wondering what skull that is.
Maybe our best guess is Miraxi's.
Maybe Miraxi's is. It was sent back after she was
shot down over Dorne. If you look at the eye, it looks
like there's a big bigger hole than there would be if it was
just an eye socket and she was shot in the eye.
Good call. Yeah.
We were talking about what that might be right before this
episode. We had not come up with an
answer, but I think I should have figured it out while we
were sitting here because the, the the broken eye, I think is
the tell tale sign there could call because that's where the
bolt hit her, right in the eyeball.
Indeed. Folks, we are doing episode
eight of our prediction series, meaning the Saturday episodes.
It it actually won't be a prediction series more than it
will be a recap of the season, but it's going to be live at
City Winery in New York City on August 3rd.
If you want to check out the event page, go to bit dot LY
slash HOW live NYC. That's how live NYC bit dot LY
slash how live NYC. The link is in the description
or in the in the video description or the podcast
description, whichever one you happen to be partaking of.
Right now. We're going to have a costume
contest, we're going to have bottles of wine with the History
of Westeros logo on it. We're going to have a great
time. So if you are in New York City
or in the area or going to be in the area on August 3rd around
then get your ticket, Come see us, get your wine bottle signed,
or just come say hello and hang out with us while we recap House
of the Dragon Season 8 and prepare ourselves for the
finale, which will be the. Season eight.
Wow. Season eight, Oh my gosh.
We're thinking way ahead here. Sorry.
Episode 8, we're thinking way ahead.
Yes. By the way, folks, yes, House of
the Dragon is now going to have eight seasons, as per me just
now. Yeah. 30 episodes per season.
OK, let's keep it moving. I hope to see you all in New
York City. But we got a lot more to talk
about, Anthony De Palma says. I like the idea that Damon and
Otto both tried to grooming children to inherit the throne
with the belief that they'd be easy to manipulate.
Yeah. And neither of them were.
That's always the flaw with that problem when you're doing,
You're trying to manipulate a child before you know what kind
of person they're going to be as an adult.
Like, yeah, get them early. I see the logic behind that.
It's. It's evil.
It's corrupt. But, you know, you also teach
kids good values as a kid, you know, when they're young with
the hope that sticks more. So you see the again, that's why
that logic exists in the 1st place.
They're more impressionable. Of course, you teach them when
they're young. And yeah, So yes, it definitely
happened on both sides. Otto and his own daughter.
Damon and his own niece manipulated in different ways,
but for basically the same purpose.
Yeah, I mean Otto and and and Aegon too, beyond that.
Yeah, you're right. Aegon is the monarch that's
being rule. Yeah.
You know, it's really a various Young Griff type beat there with
trying to like have your figurehead type type king.
True, very true. Yeah, but the puppet has ideas
of its own. So let's talk about the Green
Council, the other side of things.
Aegon continues to be very reactive of a terrible quality
and any leader. Eamon calmly explains the logic
behind their strategic choices. And it sounds like he's making
sense. But Aegon just wants like, take
Harrenhal. No, take, tell him to go to
Harrenhal. I want that back.
It's it's kind of comedic. And it's also a little, it's a
little pathetic, a little comedic.
At the same time, he yells at Larry's, he's like, it's your
castle. You know, he's like, well,
Larry's response is that clip about it being crippled, which
is more of an attempt at Fleck than to be genuinely funny, by
the way, as predicted. And having lorries at council is
there is a thing now and it makes it interesting.
Which by the way, I forgot to mention Mazzaria was overseeing
the Black Council from above in the same in a similar way to how
lorries would look down. But she's so far not sitting at
the Black Council, which I was wondering about South one yes,
the other no, but it's still early.
So, yeah, So that that was more of Aegon just acting out at
council. And then they have their moment
there with where he's haranguing different people.
And it this episode, of course, is very intense and tragic.
But just like a lot of episodes, just like a lot of episodes this
season and like them in general, they had their moments of Comic
Relief. Alice had several funny lines,
you know, Did you, did you, have you experienced anything of
note? You know, that's so good.
And the drinkings guard bumping into each other when they're
leaving the room with Alice and Aegon or Aegon doing the like,
you guys are boring, you know, And he makes the face right,
which by the way, is another Michael Scott moment when he
does the you guys are boring. Twice now he's been he's acted
like Michael Scott. And Ashaya pointed out that he
even gets burned like Michael Scott.
You know, Rook Rest, Foreman Grill.
If you're trying to channel a bad leader, it's Michael Scott's
a great choice. This face made me laugh so hard
it was the funniest. Like one like less than a second
millisecond thing. I can't I I, I still laugh
thinking about it and he just leaves.
I can't not see it as Michael Scott now.
He he has done faces like that, hasn't he?
Like once you hear it, you're like, yeah, he does do that.
Totally, totally. Yeah, We need to get a side by
side. I'm sure there's a bunch of
people looking like that. I'll find just I'll find a pic
of Michael Scott looking like that and do it.
It'll be in our breakdown video that when I do the fun edits and
stuff, I was already planning on grabbing it.
It's also true that that many people at the office do make
plans around Michael Scott without his knowledge, which of
course is a big part here. Aegon.
But did that actually comes out during the council?
That Aegon has been left out of the command process and the
Green Council has two. But the council being left out
is one thing since the Hand of the King outranks them and
they're kind of afraid of Eamon. And you know, it's, it's not
Eamon's fault that Cole sent the message just to him, but Aegon,
he's the king and gets mad and embarrassed.
I think it's more embarrassed by Eamon speaking.
High Valerian. What a cringe scene this was.
It was so good. But also just oh man, what an
embarrassing moment. And the comedic slow turn of the
Green Council's heads, like turning to look at Aegon, like
oh man, it was painful and cringe and funny all together.
And it was just, you know, turnabouts.
Fair play, right? I mean, Aegon utterly humiliated
Amon in front of all of all of them.
And so, yeah. Damn sure did.
That was absolutely payback. The question is whether the rest
of the episode is also payback. I think so, but on but it's a
little it's not so simple as that.
I. Want to say also, I think this
was this is layered because in a way, Amond is kind of protecting
Aegon from greater embarrassment.
Like he's making sure that he gets his plan to go through
right, that that one thing is, is what's happening here.
And he does it by basically embarrassing Aegon into
realizing you don't know what's going on.
You haven't been paying attention.
I'm better than you. But he does it in another
language so everyone can't exactly hear it.
And when Aegon finally responds, it's like broken.
It's like a incoherent sentence, right?
He doesn't, he just doesn't know the language as well as Amon.
They're just like everything else.
He just, he, they both had the same opportunities growing up.
Amon just took advantage of him and Aegon didn't, right?
And so now here we are. Amon just qualified and Aegon is
not. And so because they're talking
another language and Amon puts it back on to Aegon, and Aegon
says something and Amon's responses, he's like, OK, He
like, agrees with them. And then back in a common tongue
says, OK, so we're going forward with my plan now.
It's like it without quite the embarrassment, what was actually
said there. He kind of makes everyone,
including Aegon, realize that his plan is what they're doing.
You know it was masterfully done by Amon.
Yeah, you're right. I think that's a great take.
No notes on on that interpretation of the scene.
They yeah, he's doing all those things and and he saved him a
little bit of face even though it's still embarrassing and and
he's breathing heavily at the end.
Aegon, he's has no response, but he's just like see his body
language. He's just and there's a lot of
that this episode of people breathing heavily because
they're frustrated or in battle or whatever.
It's interesting recurring thing in this episode.
They may not have even planned it, but it comes up a lot.
So so yeah. So they have to plan around
their own bad leadership here. And that's exactly what Cole and
Eamon did. And though, as we'll see, even
Eamon and Cole didn't quite tell each other everything, although
they made it's more Eamon than Cole.
I think Cole did tell Eamon to everything, but Eamon maybe left
a few things. But I think mostly what Eamon
did was just react situation. I think the plan originally was
as it was and Eamon didn't have any variation plan, but they
adapted to the arrival of Aegon separately in very different
ways. But we're not quite there yet.
Let's talk about Allison had three conversations of note.
She wasn't at the council session, which is one of the
part of one of the conversations.
So Orwell is the first conversation.
She drops the stone dragon when Orwell first comes in and that's
important. Like this is symbolic.
She she shows she's on edge, lost on thought.
It's a very simple thing to make her just start and drop the
dragon and knock on the door. Shouldn't be that startling
really normally, but she's clearly lots on her mind.
This is that same dragon, presumably that she had repaired
for Viserys back in season one, which I believe there was
episode 2. And now it's broken again.
Symbolism is even darker because in that scene he like he she
kind of made it whole for him and it made him whole and it was
kind of like, well, maybe this isn't great for you, but it's
it's still kind of nice. It's wholesome, even if it's
going to not end well. And this though, it's like,
well, the broken Dragons are like, well, we're about to see
all that. Like the House of the Dragon is
truly split now. I don't know if it can be
repaired this time. Yeah, it's foreshadowing for
Dragons falling and breaking at the end of this episode.
Also, I think it might be the last piece of Asaurus's valerian
setup. Remember, that's where that
dragon was part of, and Aegon smashed it all, but she still
had that one dragon. But now that's gone, too.
Yeah, that's a good point. So his shadow, Viserys, that is
his looms over all this, which plays deeply into the bad
leadership theme that's here. Like a lot of that is started
with him and then you can argue started beforehand even.
He wasn't raised to be a ruler either, you know?
So bat garbage in, garbage out. You know, bad leaders choose bad
counselors bad, and then the next set of leaders following
those footsteps. So she gets that moon T from
Orwell. I think a lot of people probably
laughed at this moment because the way they talk about they
both know, like he knows and she knows he knows, but they have to
be politic about a diplomatic he's She's setting up plausible
deniability. I doubt she thinks Orwell is
fooled, but she has plausible deniability.
I will observe the girl carefully.
You know, she says. It's great.
I think that conversation between her and Orwell is very
similar to the conversation Horror and Laris later where
they both, it's almost like this check that like we're good,
right? You know how what we're going to
say in public, we know how to be tactful.
We are going to guard each other's secrets.
Right? Yes.
Yeah. OK, let's go.
Yeah. So perhaps as a way to deflect
or as a way to set up for the viewers to know what she's
thinking about, she asks what he thought about Viserys and the
succession. But.
Or while you don't get to be Grandmaster without
understanding that you should not answer questions like that.
And he's like, oh, I have no way.
I wouldn't have any way to know. He never talked to me about it.
The same tact that he just had with her and her dilemma, he's
going to use it and she asked this question.
Too right. Yeah, like I will.
Yeah, exactly like I will ask the other girl about that.
Yeah. Refer to the third non existent
third person here. Yeah.
So are we meant to think or well, talk to Larry's is maybe
that well how the next scene gets set up or is just Larry's
checking in on her on his own is totally believable.
But we given that we know Larry's is has spies in her
household now it's it could be both.
I don't know. Like he's got, he's got his
fingers everywhere. If I were lorries, I would want
one of my informants to be the maester who deals with
everyone's, you know, medical ailments like that would be a
very powerful and letter is like of all the all the people he
could get or while would be the best one.
That's a good point. He's director of communications
medicine. Yeah, those are two very
personal things. Even even if he doesn't have
actual oral, though, any other maester or any other servant
could see that Oral just made this potion and then went to
Allison's room and tell that Dolores, yes, that's enough room
to put it together. So.
Absolutely. So the now with Laurie's comes
in. Instead of a stone dragon this
time she's heating stones by the fire just to uses, you know, hot
compresses, you know, for aching for her stomach.
So the conversation with him is as highly charged as it often
is, though, at least for now, he doesn't seem to be pussing pussy
pushing for any sexual favors for now.
For now, he tries to make everything personal, though,
Speaking to Allison the woman, he's trying to talk to her about
how she feels about Kristen Cole being in danger.
But every answer isn't come from Allison the woman.
It comes from Allison the queen Dowager.
He's trying to speak to her on a personal level, but she answers
as as if they're at counsel or as if it's like, well, Kristen
Cole's the hand of the king. We all should pray for his
success. Like he won't.
She won't answer on personal terms.
I think it's very interesting that dynamic.
It's happening there. So he kind of moves on from
that. He's like, she's like, well,
what did I what did I miss at council?
And this is super interesting. He's like, oh, Aegon's mad about
losing Harrenhal. He doesn't talk about anything
else, doesn't mention the showdown between her sons, the
argument or any of that. He just leaves that out, which
is kind of sneaky. And I don't know exactly why
he's doing that, but it's just, you know, it's just a control
thing. Surely it's all about power and
control one way or the other, you know.
It doesn't benefit him for her to know that Aegon might need
some extra comfort or coddling. It doesn't benefit.
I can't see a way that it would benefit him for Allison to know
about that and it but it does make you wonder if he is would
throw his lot in with Aymond or if he is in on Aegon.
Like what does he? Who does he see being powerful
long term? Because, I mean, he doesn't want
to bet on the wrong dragon. Good point I think.
He's playing both sides. I think at the moment he's got
an amount of control over Aegon, but I think he understands that
Aemon is really doing more than Aegon is a Aemon's the one he
needs to have more control or at least be in good with.
He may not be able to control Aegon.
That's the, the the the problem here, that a little from column,
a little from column BA Aemon's the one that's maybe the better
one to back. But Aegon's the one he can
actually manipulate, which might be better for him personally,
you know, as far as his own power goals.
But another thing that he says is interesting is he even when
he seems to be understanding that, he seems to point out that
he knows that she and Cole have been hooking up.
He's like, yeah, but it's OK. It's a sin to deny your desires.
He's like, yeah, I know, but I don't have a problem with that.
Doesn't mean he won't use it as leverage against her.
It also doesn't mean he wants her to stop because, well, if
she stops sleeping with Cole, then he can't use that as
leverage against her. Like, what good is the secret?
That's what's good is a dirty secret that doesn't isn't taking
place anymore. Like it you can't prove it, then
you know. Yeah, I think Laurie's benefits
from every person who is corrupt.
Good point. Good way to say it, yeah.
I think it's also another example of him trying to
communicate with her on a personal level because he he
doesn't want to think it's a sin to have indulged his his
fantasies or whatever. Right, so.
So the next topic is Viserys his intentions and how he can see
from her books and maybe because of the question to Orwell.
That's why I was wondering about that if if she's, he thinks
she's wondering about that and if that means she's not as
committed to the war as she had seemed.
I'm not entirely sure why he's concerned about that, but I
think that's why 'cause look, he, he wants her to admit that
we're at war now and then who wins is all that matters.
It doesn't the significance of Viserys intentions died with
him. That's a line from a trailer.
We've been waiting for that one for a while.
And it's it's true at this point it doesn't matter what Viserys
wanted and she he wants to hear her say that because he's like,
look, we're fully committed now. You can't be Hemming and hawing
now that the war is on. Like the time to hem and Haw is
long past. We need you committed.
We're committed. Our lives are at stake.
You just said yourself, someone's going to, you know
they're going to. A bunch of people are going to
die. The winner's going to climb over
all those bodies to ascend the throne.
We don't want to be those bodies.
We don't want them climbing over us.
So you better be in this lady. That's what he's saying here,
but very diplomatically, very politic instead of the way I
just said it. And she agrees.
She knows he's doing this. She says he he's like, yeah.
And she, he closes the book like, the topic is over, right?
He close like, OK, that topic is over.
Closes the book on that. It's like the bloody hands
thing. It's one of the most obvious
forms of visual symbolism. Bloody hands means you're
guilty. Closing the book means that
topic's over. But it clearly isn't because
later in the episode, she's like, egg on where are your
father's books? You know?
And he's like, oh, I had them removed.
And she at first is like, why did you get rid?
He's like, I didn't burn them. So those books are still there
somewhere. She might, just the very next
episode she might be looking at those books.
So I, I wonder what it is she's looking for.
The books in her chamber I think were history books at least
cause at least that's how Laris was referring to them.
But I think she now might she might be looking at prophecy
books. Yeah, I think she's expanding
the scope of her research, but I think, yeah, that's clear,
'cause she's looked at the history books and now she's
looking for even more books that were in Viserys room now or
elsewhere, wherever Aegon removed them.
And thank you to Aegon for calling Allison out, for being
so like rude and extreme to him. He's like, I didn't burn them.
You don't have to call me like an idiot over this.
Like I just removed them from my room.
Removed doesn't mean incinerated.
Like, why? Where did you get like?
That's quite a leap, mom. Don't, don't assume the worst me
mom, just 'cause I'm a rapist. So that's the third conversation
is between these two. So Allison's already obsessed
part of why she rounds on him like that.
She's already upset, but she rarely has any patience for him
anyway. She's already she's very
commonly speaks to him harshly. And she and there's another
another scene where someone is breathing heavily.
She's like visibly like 'cause she's mad and it's it's showing
in her body language. And it was kind of like that
before he even started talking. So he Joffrey's a bit here, you
know, he's like I'm the king, they should listen to me.
That's what I mean by Joffering saying I'm the king.
But she reminds him again that just being king doesn't, like,
mean you're suddenly smarter. The crown doesn't give you new
powers. Well, it does, but not new
thinking powers. It gives you new authority, not
new. Yeah.
And so she's like, look, you weren't taught.
She didn't say it this way. She's like, look, you weren't
taught how to be a king. So the only way for you to not
screw up is to do nothing 'cause we didn't, we didn't prepare you
for this. And you're not a natural at it.
So I sympathize with Allison's points, but it's another example
of her coming up short as a mother.
This is an example. This is another person trying to
talk to her on the personal level, but she just goes at it
as a queen Dowager and not as a mother.
And he's trying to talk to her as a mother.
And this is your son, not the master of whispers who's tried
to get feet picks from you. So I, I think she should have
been a little more compassionate here.
And she may regret it even more after, you know, once she sees
what happened. Yeah, you're right.
I think she's going to really, I guess that's like really beat
herself up for for him going to do that.
I can't see how she wouldn't partially blame herself, even
though I don't think she really should.
But regardless, I think Allison, like I had such big feelings on
her here because, yeah, she's really cruel.
She's really mean. But I also think she's make some
very good points that like show her as a, you know, I, I
appreciated her saying, no, the crown does not imbue you with
wisdom. The I, the people on this
council are learning people like they're, they're competent
people and all that. I will say a lot of those people
on that council got to that position through, you know,
nepotism and then there and and the aristocracy and all of that.
But still, they're generally more competent than Aegon is.
Her point remains, and I appreciated her pointing that
out. But like you said, Aziz, it just
isn't the time for that. And I think the other thing here
is that she just took her moon tea recently.
And I think she's extra like emotional, grouchy, like
sensitive. She's she's willing to snap at
him more than she would have otherwise.
Especially getting called. Actually, she's just at that
scene with Laura. She's like, God, this guy's so
you know. Yeah, exactly.
She's extra irritable. She's just irritable right now.
And it's like, that makes sense to me.
But she also doesn't know what a rough time Aegon actually has,
cause Laurie's didn't tell her. She doesn't know that Aegon was
just completely humiliated and yeah, he does not need to be
more humiliated by her. Lawyers didn't tell her, but
also she wasn't at that council meeting.
That is a duty that she has, that because of other ways she's
been shirking her duties, she missed out on.
That's kind of a fairpoint. Yeah, yeah.
I think that this is a strong parallel to Otto's last
interaction with Aegon, that she's just emotional and on edge
and fed up, and she just said a bunch of things she shouldn't
have said. Even if she's right, everything
Otto told Aegon, it was pretty much right, but it didn't stop
Aegon from firing him his hand. You, you know, like it's
understandable that they're losing control of their emotions
in these moments, but it doesn't mean just 'cause we understand
that you're losing control, that it's OK with Aegon.
Yeah. And they're dealing with the guy
who has even less control than them, by far.
Like, don't set this guy off. This guy with all this power.
Like, don't do that. Yeah.
The worst part about it is that even though she was sort of
being snippy and saying things that were mean and she could
have handled it all better, she still had his attention.
The last moment he said, OK, mom, what do I do?
And she could have, in that moment, she could have said
like, just listen to the other counselors go back and and have,
you know, have court and let the commoners cut.
You did a good job last time. When the people were coming to
you with problems, you helped them find solutions.
Go have a speech, throw a feast, a tournament, do some PR.
She could have given him something to do, even if it's
busy work or beneath him or whatever, but to say nothing
guarantees he will do something. Yes, absolutely.
She finally actually he was ready to listen to her and her
advice was nothing. And it if she had told him
anything, I think he would have done it.
And even if it was busy work, even if it just delays his
boredom for three days or something, that's all it she
needed to do with Delay his boarding for three days because.
Instead he sits there and keeps drinking.
And if you notice that pitcher was full when he sat down at
that table and then eventually did to make sure we know it's
empty. He smacked.
He pushes it slowly off the table like a cat.
And he was drinking before he got to that room and he's
drinking while he's putting his armor on.
So he is just like mad drunk. And he's it's the boy in Aegon
who makes this decision to fly off, not the king, a very, very
drunk boy. And it's it's just like rain
era. It was the mother in her that
flew off to find her son's body. But it's the queen making the
decision to send Rainey's to Rook's Rest.
And it's Aegon, the boy who is going off to Rook's rest.
It's no point. Is Aegon the king and play here.
He's just he's trying to be but but the boy and the king aren't
separate with him. He he hasn't separated them at
any point. So the duality of roles is
really big in this episode. It's always big in the show
because everyone, all these Royals and nobles have these
dual roles. They they are mothers and Lords
or mothers and both mother and grandmother in some cases.
Or mother and Queen. Right, Mother and queen or king
and father for Aegon, Hand and father for Otto, Lord commander
in Hand for Kristen Cole, which actually comes up pretty big
too. The difference there in the in
the battle that we're getting to and Damon has more than one
role, like he's king, consort, uncle, husband and father.
Which part of that's Targaryen incest.
Yeah. And some like Amon maybe he's
mostly only about power. He doesn't have that much family
loyalty. He has shown loyalty to Helena
in the past, but not not as he's called his mother 2 tongued and
obviously has all sorts of problems with Aegon.
So anyway, it's they're not all the same.
All right, let's talk about the battle.
Let's talk about it. It's an interesting name.
Rooks Rest. What battle?
Oh, you know the one at the end, that little thing that happened,
you know? Oh, I didn't finish the episode.
I didn't know it was going to be battle.
So it does not refer to Rook as in the piece in chess, even
though that's would be kind of fitting cause a Rook is a castle
in chess. But it's not.
There's no chess in Westeros or Essos.
Rooks are a type of bird. They're in the corvid family.
So they're very similar to crows and Ravens and such.
They have white beaks instead of black beaks.
They don't live in America or in South America or in Africa.
They're they only live in Europe and and Asia.
They only breed in Asia. So a lot of us aren't as
familiar with them. You might recognize the scene of
this battle from Gladiator. This is the same site that they
filmed that bat early, that scene in early bat Gladiator
where the they're fighting against those German Germanic
armies, I believe. And it's because of that just
very distinct tree line that very that it goes from flat
ground to tree line and and very quickly.
And that's really important for having their shelter and their
army can emerge pretty close from the castle.
So it's really good. Now before we say it starts
simply with just some felling of trees, the castles like, oh boy,
there they are. We need to get some help and
then we go away to set do some more set up.
The Green Council is very pleased with Kristen Cole's
progress. We hear he's sending back loot
from the castles they've taken. And money is becoming an issue.
They're feeding the Dragons. It's getting harder.
The blockade is is pinching them.
So they're it's a it's it's a problem.
In fact, talking about how well Kristen Cole is doing is is one
of the things that gets Aegon a little upset.
The thing that really sets him off is when Jasper Iron Rod goes
and Heyman Veigar is here to protect us, you know, we're
doing, you know, and then he's like, yeah, you are boring me,
your boy. Like that's the last thing that
sets him off. So the blacks, on the, on the
other hand, are worried about Cole's.
While the greens are praising Kristen Cole, the blacks are
like, Yikes, that's the biggest boogeyman for them.
And Harrenhal is also worried about Kristen Cole.
And Sir Simon Says to Damon, he's like, you know, Kristen
Cole's target is probably here. His eventual target is probably
here and he hasn't gone. And even Gwain expected Kristen
Cole to turn West for Heron Hall and made that joke about it.
And he's like, no, we're not. We're not ready to do that just
yet. I, I couldn't help but think of
in our Facebook group, Michael Clarfeld had had a post where he
was like, it looks like they're going out the wrong way from
King's Landing to go to Heron Hall, blah, blah.
And he's like, you know, he's, that's the map maker and did a
map behind us. He's right now Clara Docks
Michael Clarfeld. So he like had a map post and a
bunch of us called him to be like, they're not going to Heron
Hall. They're not going there, you're
right, but they're. Going the long way.
They're going all the way around the globe, coming back around.
They'll never see that coming. Yeah.
So Cole. Yeah.
So Michael Clarkfeld and Glen Hightower had the same reaction
there as a lot of people. So now Cole knows Cole.
This is why I say Cole's plan was pretty clever, even though
it didn't quite work the way he wanted to.
He knew they know that he knows. They know they're watching him.
So he used that to their advantage.
He's like, they know I don't have a dragon, they'll send one.
Hence the trap, right? Aegon calls Rooks Rest a
pathetic a prize during council, but it's explained why it has
strategic value even without the trap.
He doesn't mention the trap as to why it has strategic value.
And those reasons are it forces smaller castles to take a side
like nobody's too small for this war.
You have to choose like the marketing for the show, all must
choose. This is a council member on the
Black Council so they want to punish the Rainier's closest
supporters to make to punish other would be joiners to say to
to cut that off before it even happens.
And it might split, it might split motivations on the council
if those other council, 'cause they might go to my castle next.
We need to defend that, yes. And Ranira wants to go to
Harrenhal or whatever the thing. And then suddenly they'll have
their personal motivation to get mixed up and stuff.
Very good point. You're that's a great point.
Yeah. So and then the final point made
by Aymond is that it cuts it's the last available port to them.
So if they will try to stop us from taking it because then they
won't have a place to land troops anymore unless they take
one of these other castles back. So it's a pretty, pretty solid
logic all the way around, even without the trap included, which
makes it an even better plan. Backing up a little farther
though, we have Duskendale and this is where we get the why
aren't we marching W bit. Everything about this Dusk and
Dale scene is grim. It's super well done.
It's like a two-minute scene, but the vibe is overwhelmingly
dark. Hey, appropriate.
It's house Darkland, but they're the ones suffering.
The darkness here, the music, the setting, overcast weather,
the overall vibe, the way Kristen just walks along the
line of men as they slowly kneel after he cuts their Lord's head
off. It's so ominous and it just
shows how caught between, again, a, a Rook and a hard place these
men are. They really have no choice.
It's like die now or suffer a lot and probably die later.
You know, like what a great choice.
There's a really like a certain way that Kristen walks away
from, from that beheading. They like the the, the acting
from him, like the way his body language and how he walks away.
He does it with such a smooth motion.
You know what I mean? Like it's like he chops the head
off and like, normally you would expect someone to like chop a
head off and like, wait a beat. It's like he chops it and by the
time he's finished swinging, he's already walking away and on
to the next beat. You know what I mean?
Yeah, it is. You're right that that adds to
it. You're right.
I I have, I kind of struggle putting it into words.
What about this scene? Because it's so many different
little things that make it so dark and, and, and, but that is
a good point. Like his, his body language,
just his swagger. It's a dark swagger.
You know, it's something I've been thinking about for a lot of
these characters. It was something that was like
really congealing last episode that Ranira was finally
accepting. OK, that's it.
We're going to war. And, you know, once you make
that realization, you change your attitude about it, right?
And it's kind of what Lars was checking for with Allison.
And I think in a way she had, I think I said that last week when
she said that there was no mistake, you know, about like
how she interpreted Aegon's dream or whatever.
In that moment, I was like, there's no mistake because we're
doing everything on purpose. We have to.
We're at war. We can't like question our
decisions or feel bad about it. Everything we decide has to be
correct. It can't.
Full mistake that. Makes sense, right?
And I think that Rener is at that point now and I think
Cole's been at that point on the battlefield for weeks and he is
just a cold blooded robot killer now.
And it changed him, but when he but then after the rook's rest
that's going to that maybe has changed him even more because
it's not what he expected. But we'll we'll get to that in a
minute. But I think this that was
really, really good point there, Sean.
Really good take. One of the other things that's
ominous about this is Gwane Hightower has blood on his face
and he says nothing. He jokes always like the only
time he hasn't joked or needled called.
I mean, he did needle him about which direction they're
marching, but that was a little later, you know?
So it's just like some of that night of summer vibe is falling
off of Glenn Hightower here. He's getting hard and fast by
having it. Being in a real war and seeing
some nasty, bloody brutality like this is worse than it
looks. This is a thriving port town.
If it's one of the closest population centers to being a
city that isn't quite a city and it was sacked.
You can see the smoke billowing up.
Not only does this imply innocent people were robbed, if
not killed, Lord Darkland just says that's what happened.
He's like, you're sacking, you know, he calls it one of your
queen cities. He's still stubborn about who's
actually in charge here. He's like, he still says the
queen and he's like, no, you're, you're, no, that's the king.
You're lucky. You're lucky for this death as a
traitor. That's what Cole tells him,
right? Yeah.
Can I say I really liked it being a Darkland who insults
Kristen and and calls him Kingmaker again here and all
that, right, because dark House Darkland is known for being a
house that has provided the most Kingsguard Knights, including,
of course, Stephen Darkland himself.
So of course he's all in on Rainier right now.
But in traditionally they're a Kingsguard house and for him to
insult him as and the Kingsguard was very meaningful.
Good point. There's really no one that could
say you're not worthy of the white cloak.
And this is a guy who was just complaining about like their
purity and like talking to Eric and how he got him to to go to
the Dragonstone. So he cuts off his head in
response to, you know, like he executes him, spits at his foot,
calls him kingmaker. Kingmaker, by the way, that's
how he's remembered. And that's his nickname that's
carried forward. He's called a king.
He's called Kingmaker in A Song of Ice and Fire.
And you mentioned Stefan Darkland and the Kingsguard.
Yes, they do have the most Kingsguard Knights of all time
That that hadn't necessarily been established at this point,
but they'd already had three at this point.
They've already had three Knights in the Kingsguard at
this era. I don't think anyone else has
had two. And they end up with having
seven by the time of modern time.
So before actually then Aries wipes out the whole house so
there are no more Darklands. But so they're not going to get
a snake. But anyway.
Appropriate 7's the the full number.
Even Visenya didn't sack Duskendale when during the
conquest she let she let them, she took their money, but she
didn't sack it. She's just like, you give me the
money. To be fair, it wasn't civil war,
it was the conquest. So there was still, you know,
Anyway, so that's that really dark, really grim, really well
done scene. And most of the men who haven't
been killed, Yeah, they see their Lord executed and they're
like, well, join or die, I guess we'll join.
So Stefan Darkland learns of the fate of his birthplace and his
father, right when Rainier and him return from their little
commando mission there. But the moment is lie.
He's like, he puts his hands on the table.
He's like overcome, but Jace immediately is like, where have
you been, you know? And so that gets kind of pushed
to the side. Yeah, it was a little
inappropriate how he did it, but it really was how he's like, I,
I need to know. I can't wait any longer.
He is impatient. That was a that's, yeah.
There's another example. That's a perfect example of the
impatience. Yeah.
So yes, like, yeah, you should have maybe given that man a
minute, you know, like. Or even 30 seconds.
Yeah, more than. Yeah, more than two seconds,
which is. Yeah.
So Rainiera thinks to surprise them, she's like, all right.
They think I'm slow and sluggish and afraid to send a dragon
watch this. But that's Cole knew she would
do that. So This is why I'm like, yeah,
it's a pretty good plan by Cole. He knew.
And he also figured out probably which dragon they would send
because the same process of elimination that arrived at them
sending meilees, he could figure that out.
Like, they're not going to send Jace, they're not going to send
Rainiera, and they're not going to send Little Moon Dancer.
And who else is there? That's literally it.
You know, you reminded me of a point that I wanted to make.
I'm pretty sure it was last week when it went back and forth
between the councils. There were several times when
someone said they will come to the same conclusion.
Do you remember that? Yes, each council said that of
the other council. I, I think, I think, I think
Aegon said it when they're, when he was like, it's war and like
they're feuding anyway. This isn't war.
And he goes like, no, I it's, I'm calling it war, and they're
going to call it war too. Yeah, that was one of the few
times he was right. Yeah, he was right about that,
Yeah. And shoot, I wish I remember it,
but Renera did, you know, made oh, she was like, we can't send
dragon on dragon. It's going to be too
destructive. We can't do that.
And they'll come to the same conclusion.
And and they sort of had, they did not expect it to be dragon.
Well, I guess they did. They expected Rainier to finally
break that because they that was their only choice.
Like there's there's no land army for them to assault with
and a sea army that'd be crazy sending ships.
Like not only would that break their blockade because they they
already don't have enough ships for the blockade, but that just
makes it vulnerable to a dragon. So like, ships are the worst
thing to send against a dragon? Even expecting it quote UN quote
to be dragon and dragon, they still wanted it to be a surprise
at dragon attack on dragon, right?
They still hid Veigar. You know, even when they
decided, all right, we're going to have to use a dragon to fight
a dragon, they still were careful and sneaky about how
they did it. Yeah, and they're and they can
be sure like, and this is the thing.
It's a it's a win win. If they're wrong and they send
no Dragons, OK, no big deal. They win Rook's Rest, they
punish the Black Council, they accomplish all those other
goals. They just don't accomplish goal
4 ambush and kill one of the Queen's Dragons.
If they get really lucky, Rainier actually does come.
They're like, holy crap, she actually came.
They kill her and then they're like, yay.
If they send two Dragons, well, Veigar might could take two
Dragons, cause malice and you know, like it would be dangerous
if it was malice and Cyrax that would be But then they could
just maybe just go, OK, you can have Rook's rest back.
We'll back off and fight another day.
I don't know if they would have, they would at least have that
option. So that's why the plan is good
because like almost every outcome, even if some things go
wrong, they can still book a victory.
The problem was they baited a trap for a dragon and Sunfire
came. A gun was the bait.
Gun took the bait. It's like, oh shoot, I'll.
Tell you we've long talked about like, well, do we think 2
smaller Dragons fight a big dragon in different context, not
just in the Dance of the Dragons, but just like we talk
about like something attack Valerian or whatever, right?
We're talking about make or in the past, having seen this
fight, my money would be on Veigar.
Even with Cyrax and Malies versus Veigar.
I I, I don't know, like I having seen it.
I, I, I if I'm betting, I'm betting on the biggest dragon.
I disagree and This is why why I'll tell you because this was
sort of like Veigar and Sunfire versus Malies, right?
This wasn't like this was this was the biggest dragon and
another dragon versus one dragon, not not two versus the
one big dragon. Does that make sense?
Like Malee's was injured and distracted already when she
started fighting Veigar. So if she had been full up, it
might have been a closer match. And if she had a second dragon
there helping her, I I still think it's at least close.
I don't think she really damaged Veigar very much.
I think if Veigar had it been trying to like let Sunfire get
messed up, it would have been very different.
There's a few things in here that you all need to take into
account. I think that that affect this
discussion. One is Rainey specifically
wasn't trying to kill the riders.
That is stated behind the scenes.
She didn't want to. She still didn't want to kill
her nephews if he was trying to kill the Riders.
She was avoiding fire in general.
Right, because she didn't want to kill innocent.
People on the ground. Well, no, she 'cause she shot a
lot of fire on the ground. You.
Know she doesn't care about the small folk we've.
All that's established anyway, let me continue the so she she
wasn't trying to kill her nephews and but if they were if
the dragon, if the dragon riders are actually trying to kill each
other and not the Dragons, it changes the game.
Because if you do have a small dragon that's maneuverable, it's
entirely possible that you could kill the rider without getting
close to the big dragon. It's risk, but that is what she
tried to do. May least that is how she tried
to win by outmaneuvering Veigar. It didn't work.
Let me explain it further. So let's get a little deeper
into the battle because we skipped over a few things.
So first of all, Cole's like all excited about his plan.
He's like can't wait, you know, and Gwane Hightower's like, why
are we attacking in daylight? Like the Blackwater Bay is right
there, bro, they dragon control, but any second we wouldn't be
able to do anything about he's like they won't expect it.
He's like they won't expect it because it's insane, you know,
and he's like, what are you afraid?
And he does. He uses that same line that we
always love to say works so well in Westeros.
What are you afraid? But Gwen has the best response
ever worse. I'm rational.
I love that. I was like, yes, more people
should say that to what are you scared that response, But not
everyone is as quippy and and ready with response as Gwen
Hightower. So Rainey shows up and he's like
send the signal and Gwen Hightower's like what signal?
This is a great way of making the audience know.
It's like emphasizing what's happening.
Glenn Hightower is the audience. He asks all the questions the
audience would want. Like, so this was your plan.
Have Aegon. He's like, no, it's not my plan.
And that's the moment at which Kristen Cole switches from Hand
of the King to Lord Commander, the Kingsguard.
He ceases to care about the battle and only cares about
Aegon's life because a he's like, oh crap, this guy has no
idea what he's doing. He knows Aegon is incompetent.
He's probably already guessed these drunk if he thought about
it for a second. It's like that kids probably
drunk, you know, 'cause he's always drunk.
But what can he do? Like, owl right up there and
like, he can't do anything. So, yeah.
And if we back up even farther to build the sadness for all
this yeah, you've got them the preparation when they get ready
to launch like Rainy's looking at Mae lease with her cool like
tiara thing that I feel like is some piece of old Valyrian
jewelry it got got it's got to be.
I think it's Baratheon. It has antlers on it.
Oh, doesn't really. It's.
A new piece of headwear that's meant to, like, represent her,
her, her, her Targaryen and Baratheon.
Well, color be wrong then. That sounds that you're probably
right. Yeah.
Oh, you know what now? Her hair there is black.
She's got a little black thing on it, right?
I know. That's cool.
I know. I like that.
Appreciate her showing her breathy and heritage there.
And then Aegon, of course, is got his dragon.
Sunfire boops him. It's another little way to
humanize the dragon right before they wreck it, you know, to make
us sad. So both of the Dragons are shown
to kind of love their riders and vice versa.
Vagar, we don't see the preparation there.
We just see him see her hiding in the trees, you know, maybe a
mile or two away. I saw some people complaining
about this, like, how could you conceal the dragon?
It's like forest is like massive.
It's like square miles. Like yes this is a big big ass
dragon but do you have any idea how large forests are?
All those shots of the Dragons in the air flying, swooping
down, there's just like, sea of tree to the horizon, like, And
she's green. I don't.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like I don't see that's
not far fetched in the slightest to me.
Like for this is. Like it might be hard to hide
from satellite imagery, but it's not hard to hide from sold in a
castle 2 miles. Away they aren't, it's who are
all hiding in the castle. They're terrified of this army,
so they're not going anywhere. But yeah, they're all hiding and
there's no way they'd see this dragon.
So why didn't the Black send multiple Dragons?
Why didn't the Greens do that? Possibility?
We we covered that. I think they both know each
other's capabilities. Like they don't.
Neither side has a lot of Dragons, even though there's a
lot of riderless Dragons. But as far as the Dragons and
dragon dragonards, both sides know exactly what the other
side's arsenal looks like, and it can can put out a reasonable
guess as to who they're willing to risk and not.
So yeah, they're not likely to send Rainier.
They're not likely to send Jay. It's just like we're not likely
to send Egon. Oops.
You know, So yeah, they're not going to send Moondancer.
Like, she's tiny. And they saw her.
They saw how tiny she was. Like that would have been enough
to kill them on their. There were six guys on their
horses. But they're not going to.
They've already established not wanting to send her into battle
either, basically. So, yeah.
All right, the battle begins. I love how it's done.
It gets very thick very quickly with the Song of Ice and Fire
voice over, and it gets worse really fast.
Those poor soldiers. There's just like nothing we can
do here. We're just back, forward, up,
down. Everything is killing us.
And just as Eamon is about to join the battle and spring the
trap, Sunfire flies overhead. And Eamon is like, idiot.
He says it in High Valyrian though, because, you know.
I really liked that he said it in High Valyrian.
I'm like, I'm picturing like Eamon's inner monologue is all
in High Valyrian or whatever. Or I like it even more the idea
that he said it in High Valyrian so Veigar would understand him.
Because Veigar doesn't know English, you know, and like I
also have seen a lot of talk from you and Mitchell talking
about calling Veigar this older she dragon and comparing it to,
you know, Aymond, you know, having some like, like for older
women and mommy, she's like, he's like he finds it very
resonant. That's funny.
Yeah. He thinks it's very resonant
that, that his, his dragon is an older she dragon, as he calls
it. And the closest like person like
closest connection he has. Sylvie Yeah.
Well, yeah, he's saying the closest connection he has is to
this older she dragon Veigar and this older woman, Sylvie.
And yeah, yeah, mommy issues. That's hilarious.
So he tells Veigar to sit back down.
And I love the exhale from her nose.
It just shoots all the the plants downward and her the
force of her neck hitting the ground just when she just lops,
which sets up just how much, how much the wings beating and the
landing later, how much of A concussive force that creates,
which is just great. Now, I think there is some
intentional ambiguity through this, but it's worth noting that
he saw the signal already. Cole already sent the signal.
He's supposed to be coming, helping in a battle.
Then he sees Aegon and then tells Veigar to hold on, wait a
minute, let's not go yet. Oh, I agree.
He he's suggesting that he he did.
He wasn't delaying this. I don't, I don't think I agree
that he was delaying the signal. He started moving right away and
then he saw Sunfire and stop and backed.
Off right, exactly which I think he is.
He giving Aegon a chance to get killed on his own?
Absolutely. 100%. Yeah, 100%.
I don't see any other possible interpretation 'cause if he
wants to stop his brother from getting killed, he takes off
right away. He's like, oh, I better not let
this happen. So I don't think he's like, oh,
I'll stand aside and let him have the glory, you know, I, I
don't think that's it, you know? There is another possibility,
but if he takes off immediately, Rainey's might have just left.
If she immediately saw two Dragons are coming for her, she
might have left. He wanted to make.
Sure to get Rainey's he wanted to make sure, so he's got to get
her engaged first. Aegon might die.
Hey, that's his stupid fall. That's a very good point.
OK, yeah, she might leave. He doesn't know that she's
willing to stand fight like. As it turns out, that wasn't
something he could predict. Yeah, I think it's a little
bullshot. I think he went it's it's like,
you know, he's like, OK, the clearly the the best option for
me is either I get lucky and my stupid brother dies and I become
the king potentially, right, or he lures Braney's and gets her
locked in combat and then I take her like it's just it's clearly
the right choice for a few reasons.
He's not he's willing to lose his brother.
In fact, may be happy and looking to lose his brother and
the. Only way it's not the right
choice is if he cared about saving his brother's life.
Yeah, a very good, very good breakdown there.
Aegon arrives at the battlefield.
He can see Melis in the distance, and he's.
You can't say he's not brave. That's why he's like so.
Scared though. He does look a little scared.
He does Look at that face. He does.
You're right. Yeah.
He had liquid courage. And his lack of High Valyrian
arrives with him. It's it's funny how even his
dragon doesn't have a Valyrian name.
And there's Melis and Veigar and.
And Sunfire. Sunfire.
There's another Spanglish ass name, right?
Like. To be fair, Aymond and Rainies
didn't name Malieson Vegar, but still, the point stands.
So yeah, they're giving these cool, sexy commands like Ungos,
Malieson, you know, Umbas, Veigar, you know what?
They're rolling Rs and their cool, sexy accent.
He's like forward Sunfire faster.
I love the consistency there and then.
And then he's just like, it's how he responds to everything.
He just wants to run straight at it and smash it.
That's how he responds to problems and things he doesn't
like or disagrees with. But he just.
And this is the one Valyrian command.
He knows Drakaris, but he does it too soon.
He unleashes a gout of flame too soon, like I said, and Meilies
dives below it. And then when the flame clears
up, he's like, where'd she go? That's why you don't do that.
That's why you don't just run right at it and shoot flame.
Because they'll just, they now know you can't see them and
they'll take advantage of that. So it's unclear whether Rainey's
immediately took advantage of that, steered the dragon below
the flame and then came around and into his blind spot to to
attack from below 'cause he's like looking around afterwards
and he's like, you know, and she comes right in the one spot he's
not looking. So I feel like this is basic
dragon rider maneuvering and she knows he's got no experience.
Now book Rainey's doesn't actually have any battle
experience, Meili's does. So maybe show Rainey's actually
does have some battle experience 'cause she looks like she knew
what she was doing and had a plan and and choices that she
had made ahead of time, moral choices about who to kill and
what to do and what she was willing to do and et cetera.
I imagine she, like Amon and some of the other characters,
even if they don't have actual experience, still read the
books, made the studies, paid attention to their teachers.
Aegon did not right? And she might have got probably
not against another dragon, but some experience.
Maybe on the patrolling the blockade there, there might have
been some moments where arrows were fired or she's kind of burn
a sure a ship or something. I can see some some sort of
experience coming there. Yeah, this is almost certainly
the first sort of action egg on a scene at all, right?
Like on by contrast. So, yeah, I, I totally agree
with you there. And also she's not drunk, so.
But I think just letting her Dragon's instincts take over
might be a big part of it here. The dragon knows like it's these
are animals that live in the skies.
They have a better sense of the 3D environment that they're in
than a than a human does. So yeah, attack better than
fire. Yes, yes.
Right. Yeah.
Let it do it. Make its own choices rather than
just shoot flames straight ahead, you know, which it can go
in any direction to avoid that Up, down, left, right.
You know, it's really not a good idea.
Again. But again, though, that's not
just his experience. He's afraid, right?
Like you said, he's forced himself to be there because he
thinks he should be, not because it's a good idea.
And he's just. Yeah, I I agree with you, Shay.
It's like, and I agree with you too, Sean.
Like, he's a horrible rapist, but I still feel bad for him,
you know? I'm with you there.
I think some people might call me like an apologist or
whatever, but I do think like he was a young boy raised in a
certain type of culture. And yeah, I, I, I don't think
he's a good guy. I don't think any of these
people are frankly good. I don't think Rainey's is that
good either. I think she just killed a whole
bunch of people, right? Yeah, she may be better, but
that doesn't make. Her kill, like she's not raping
people, but I still think she still kills people.
So like, I don't, I don't know, like what your morals are,
whatever. But like he was a young boy and
taught that it was he was able to do whatever he wanted.
So like, I do feel for him and that he was raised a certain
kind of way and was made that way.
I don't think that Aegon was born evil and bad, you know,
like so that's where I feel for him.
And he does still have a close connection with a creature,
which I think any all, all of us humans find that to be something
that makes our heart hurt when we see like this animal human
connection and we see that like split and we see their
commitment to one another and it really hits US hard.
And it worked for me. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you feel bad for the Dragons, Yeah.
I, I, I want it. Part of me wants to feel bad for
him, but you know, part of me does a little bit.
But keep in mind, he's not just a rapist.
He also just hung all those rat catchers, right?
He's a murderer. He's he's so irresponsible, so
many ways and a lot of it, maybe you can chalk it up to, you
know, his, his poor upbringing. Maybe he wasn't born evil, but
Eamon isn't doing that stuff. Helena's not doing that stuff.
None of those kids got a good upbringing.
Well, to be fair, Helena was not I, I don't, I don't think it's
fair to to make the male female dichotomy here 'cause men in
Westeros are taught to be violent and aggressive, women
are taught to be the opposite. So it's specifically not her
upbringing because her she was taught the opposite.
Maybe she's a bad example, but there's still Amon is still
there. He.
Has all sorts of other problems. Amon's more likely to reach to
kill someone right? Like and maybe more more likely
than Aegon, but as likely as Aegon.
But what I'll follow up was saying is I do feel bad for the
Dragons. I don't care if you're a kind,
noble, generous person or an evil, murderous rapist.
If you capture a tiger and make it fight another tiger, I feel
bad for the tigers. Yeah, that's on.
That's not on the tiger. That's on the humans.
Absolutely. That's the humans, yeah.
Oh, a person is probably not capturing tigers and make them
fight each other either so. Probably not.
I feel bad. For these Dragons that are being
forced into killing each other because of these selfish,
greedy, immoral whatever dragon riders.
Yeah, absolutely. So another thing to keep in mind
here is that even with the commands that they're issuing,
Ongo, Strakaris, etcetera, they can't be too precise.
Like when you say attack to a dragon, you're not.
How does it know if there's like in the case of Veigar, which
dragon is he attacking? When you say like attack that
one, he can't tell him which dragon to attack.
You say attack in a direction that it's already pointed and it
attacks the thing that it's seeing.
If there's two Dragons, which dragon will attack will attack
them both. So that's just something to keep
in mind here. So when he's he's looking around
for Meili's Sunfire is and emerges from behind and grabs on
and and it's brutal. The damage they do to each
other, the ripping of flesh and screaming and bellowing.
In these moments, the riders become almost irrelevant.
Can you imagine a command being issued at this point?
What would it do? Like the Dragons are stuck
together because they might not even be able to hear it.
So sunfire almost hits the ground.
You can see the power of their wings is creates a rush on the
ground and the acidic black blood falls from these huge
gaping wounds from Malice's talons and burns a soldier.
It's. Terrifying.
Boiling blood even, right? Yeah, it's hot, boiling, acidic
blood. 200°, yeah. Yeah, that dude's screwed.
So they re engage, though malice attacks again, clearly superior
to Sunfire. Again, not trying to burn the
rider off the back, trying to kill the dragon, very crucial
here. And as they're still locked in,
where Sunfire is clearly losing badly, Aegon sees Vagar approach
and thinks he's been saved. It's this great ominous moment
that they've done with Vagar a few times where she slowly
emerges above whatever she's behind, whether it's Storm's End
or a cloud or the tree line here.
And he's like, oh, I've been saved, thank the gods.
And but then there's the slow build of Vegar's open maw and
the flames billowing inside. He realizes, uh oh.
And he screams. He's like, no.
And you can see that Ashay has this moment print perfectly
captured when he's screaming. So Eamon can't be precise here,
but he's clearly not worried about what happens with, like,
whatever happens, happens, bro. You know, like, I got to get
this. I got to get Rainey's here, you
know? Now Rainey Melis is older so her
scales are more impervious to flames, so maybe they took an
equal brunt of it and it just she just came off easier because
she's more resistant to it. Yeah, I would think she's more
resistant, and I would say that obviously Veigar's flame is
hotter than the hottest of the dragon.
Flame, yeah. And probably has the longest
range too. He can probably farther away and
hit. Like if they do do the head on
rush, Veigar is gonna win that because the blast will get there
first. Probably they won't do that
'cause they're smart enough, like you said, to dive
underneath or whatever. Yeah, one other.
No, I want to make it. If you were going to defend Amon
here is it. Aegon might just be dead either
way right? Like the if he just ignores this
and lets him just keep falling, Aegon might just be dead anyway,
so he might as well take out Rainey's and Melee's while he
can. And if that kills my brother
too, Oh well. But he's dead anyway.
That's kind of the point I was making with the precision of
commands. If he just says attack, what
does Veigar do? Does he attack?
How does he know who who Veigar's going to attack there?
There's two Dragons balled together.
Like how does Veigar know which one is friend and which one is
foe? She doesn't I.
I have a, a sort of a counterpoint to that cause they
have some sort of psychological bond and I don't know if it's
purely a word that said that they understand and follow.
I think there's some amount of emotional connection there.
Martin in this world has been very vague with it.
But remember when Emma died in season one and they had the
funeral and was it Cyrax burned the pyre?
But there was this people all over that's.
A good ceremony. And, and Renera was like
Dracaris and it walked over and burned just the pyre.
So it's some understanding of the command.
Maybe that's like our traditional routine had gone
through before that Cyrax somehow knew.
But how many times could that have happened?
I don't know how many Targaryens die so.
It's definitely a Gray area as to what the where the precision
the line lies. Yeah.
Even if Veigar did exactly specifically understand attack
Meilees, he is not able to. They're all intertwined, staying
around and fallen. So yeah.
Yeah, good point. So Sunfire gets the worst of it
whether or not the our bit about flames and resistance to the
flames is accurate. Think it probably is.
Either way, Sunfire's wings are burning, can't stay aloft,
plunges to the earth into the tree line, crashes down.
It's basically it's kind of an explosion, which says to me, and
when same thing happens to melees, it says to me that
there's fire like combusting inside them, getting ready to be
unleashed and when they. I also thought that there was
some sort of internal interaction of gases that got
released. That's how I see it.
But when they fall and it's all pushed out of their ripped neck
and their mouth and. So, so I think what I think is
happening is like you're like you're saying the flames were
already, some of the flames were already there.
But what I think is happening is the oxygen is what causes the
flames to burst in the 1st place.
There's some sort of chemical composition inside them that
when it meets oxygen, that's what causes the combustion
because fire is fueled by oxygen in the 1st place.
So that hey, we don't have to try to explain fantasy dragon
fire. But that's, that's how I attempt
to explain it anyway. It's not super important.
So Sunfire crashed into the trees.
Kristen Cole goes running in that direction.
Because remember, like I said, he has now become Lord Commander
of the Kingsguard again and is no longer thinking about the
battle all that much. He's kind of stopped paying
attention to it. He's just really concerned about
Aegon. I I want to make a point though,
but before that moment I think you're right.
He he has realized I got to protect Aegon, but he didn't
abandoned everything else because first he did make this
impassioned speech. He called all the troops forward
like your king is here, the seven are with us.
Everyone advanced it like changed the strategy and and he
kind of wanted to put everyone into motion maybe so that he
could then leave that leadership role and go find Aegon.
And also maybe on some level to protect Aegon because the
Dragons got it. If then some level they're there
to. More distraction.
Battle. They got to pay attention to the
soldiers in the castle, not just the dragon and da da da.
But I, I want to give him some credit as a leader.
Admittedly, I'm a Cole apologist.
You're, I'm on your side here, Cole.
I mean, I'm not defending his, I'm never defending his
personality, but he had a good plan here.
It just got bollocksed up by his own king.
And I think that he did a good job in the heat of a awful
moment, juggling his different priorities and responsibilities.
I think he handled it all very well with an incredible.
Yeah, I'm not complaining that he switched from hand to Lord
Commander. It's just it's just clearly his
priority shifted when he realized his very drunk, very
silly minded King is is on is in the area and is that's that's
becomes the priority. And I agree his priority
shifted, but I just want to give him some credit for not
immediately abandoning one responsibility for the.
Well, to be fair, he couldn't have.
Like again, we pointed out, What could he have done?
Like Aegon's up in the air, What can he possibly do?
Anyway, right. Yeah.
So he crashed into the trees and he goes rushing towards that.
And in the meantime, Melis and Veigar come together.
And since Cole, like you said, he announced he makes the
charge, the impassioned speaks, yells at Van.
I love how he said it, Van. So it's really like, whoa, he
practiced that one technically. He comes to after Melees is
dead. Yeah, he wakes up, Yeah.
Because this battle knocks him unconscious and he wakes up.
He's like, Oh my God. So he everyone kind of stops to
watch. Like, no one's even battling
anymore. No troops are trying to reach
the castle wall anymore, as far as I can tell.
They've all kind of run back and other troops on the wall are
like transfixed by the Dragons. And since there's no troops the
the the assault on the castle has abated.
There's nothing for much for them to do.
They're the soldiers. There's not very many soldiers
in in bowshot anymore. Did you get the impression that
Eamon was looking for Aega? He was like, oh, obviously
Rainey's will immediately leave now that she's seen this.
And like any smart person would leave, right?
So he goes immediately to go look for Aegon, I think, to go
handle that loose end. And then he turns around and
he's like, what an idiot. He's like, she's coming back.
OK, I'll go do. This she was.
Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's a very good
point, a very good take. And then very likely because,
yeah, I think he's like, this is 'cause that was part of why he
was like, God, this is all being screwed up.
We're not going to get to kill her after all.
Yeah. And she does she like, it does
look like she's leaving and she kind of like breathes in.
She's like, Nope, I gotta go back.
She kind of has that like, you know, this is it kind of look
on. Her face and I think really
powerful. It was really powerful.
Yeah, I felt like one of the major factors there was she
realizes what a menace Aymond on Veigar is.
And she's like, if I have any chance at stopping this in its
tracks, I should sacrifice myself again.
I think like I mentioned earlier, I think she did the
calculus of seeing how it simplifies things for Corley's
mainly and hopefully clears the path for Rain era.
If Veigar and Amond are out of the way.
It's it's worth it to her right? Like I don't think it's stupid,
I think she knows she's very likely to die, but if she at
least takes out Veigar it's worth it.
Yeah, I totally agree. I don't think it's stupid at
all. I mean, like we said, like she
did have a chance to win there. It wasn't like a Fort was by no
means a foregone conclusion. She was the underdog, but by no
means like you said, it could have resulted in both Dragons
dying, which is not an uncommon result when two Dragons clash.
Like yeah, she could have. Even if she didn't kill Veigar,
she might have crippled Veigar. Yeah, even if she could just
take a wing out and he can't fly anymore, he can still be a
significant battlefield peace. But he has to walk there.
He can't just. Fly Veigar's a she?
Yeah. She sorry, Veigar can't just in
one day be anywhere in Westeros. Somos you?
Know that's a huge deal like. Slowly with the holes.
She really would just be stuck at King's land and guarding it
in that sense. But but that would be a very
effective deterrent, as it was when she had wings or had wings.
I mean, she does still have wings, but in this scenario
where she doesn't anyway. So yeah, everyone's like with
everyone stopping to watch, you get to see the great overhead
shot of the Dragons coming together.
So I think what happens here is Meili's slash Rainey's is
baiting Veigar into a headlong charge.
Like, I'm going to do this. And Veigar's like, all right,
we're going straight at each other.
And then she tries to dive below.
And what I think she's going to try to do is circle around and
attack before Veigar can turn, hoping that Veigar is going to
not be able to turn as quickly, which is a reasonable guess.
Veigar is going to turn slower, but it doesn't work.
It looks like Veigar either anticipates this or just Malee's
just doesn't realize how long Vegar's reaches like those claws
shoot way out and grab them from the BTS.
They say that they were they they were trying to emulate real
life birds of prey who when they fight, they look like this.
They lock their talons and do the circle of death, spiraling
down until it's almost like a game of chicken, which is
appropriate since chickens are birds, but.
They don't fly the game of. Eagle, yeah.
They don't fly very well, so the eagle's better.
And so that makes sense for the strategy for for Melees to take
to try to go. They they might, she might like,
oh, she's going to expect me to go high because that well, I can
come back down and get the rider and the rider's vulnerable.
So she's like, oh, I'll go under instead and they won't see that
coming. But I don't know, Veigar was
just old and wise or I'm not sure.
It just didn't work either way. So they locked talons.
Melees gets the worst of it being smaller, but she gets in a
few good licks there, like the flames are going back and forth
and neither one is doing a whole lot of damage with the fire
things. But the the ripping of the neck
and the tearing of the belly happens, and Veigar is clearly
severely wounded, but not enough to stop flying or anything like
that. So they almost hit the ground.
Malice's greater maneuverability seems to come up big here, and
she's able to, like, pull up right at that moment,
appropriate moment in the spiral that causes Veigar to come
crashing down, hits the ground. The piece of luck for Veigar and
Amond is that it kicks up an enormous dust cloud, which is
that's not luck. That's going to happen no matter
what. That's been well established.
But she's facing the Cliff face, so that's why she just
immediately starts running. And of course, we get this in a
very interesting piece of filmmaking with Kristen Cole
getting knocked unconscious. It's black for a second.
He wakes up and it's slo MO Veigar stomping, crushes a few
soldiers, maybe a little bit of a call back to Korax.
He's crushing one of Damon's own men back in episode 3 season
one. It's like, oh, you thought that
was a big a big dragon? Foot, there's two people crushed
under this foot and you definitely could have fit
another couple under that. And so that's why she's able to
get aloft again so quickly, which Rainey's was not expecting
because she's she just jumps right off that Cliff face.
She runs towards the Cliff face, dives off of it, which is more
than enough to get aloft again. And then she stays below the
Cliff face out of sight. And that's when Rainey's is
searching around and looking. And then yeah, it's it's maybe
slightly contrived. It's a little perfect, but I
don't I buy it because of she can't see beyond the Cliff face.
She can't see down there, Amon and.
Veigar have one move and it's the surprise, surprise.
The giant surprise, Yeah. By the way, take note of the I
switched my posters out. I've got the Crouching Tiger
Hidden Dragon. Hidden dragon?
You even talked about a tiger today too though.
That's right. And you did, you know, you're,
you're covering all your bases Next you got to mention a Jimi
Hendrix somehow 'cause that's the other poster we have like, I
don't know how Jimi Hendrix fits into this conversation, but
you're up to the challenge, Sean.
So these. Dragons were kissing the sky.
Hey, you did it. That took you 2 seconds.
So she's, she comes shortly after she's searching around.
Veigar emerges. It's it's pretty clever, pretty
good ambush. You know, I'm, I'm cool with it.
Like I said, I think it works pretty well.
Vicious, just brutal. Like, Oh no.
And then the way she's got her jaws clamped on Melisse's neck
and the light slowly goes out of her eyes.
It's just heartbreaking. Great way to show the Dragon's
last moments. Just like, And then Rainy's just
gives herself up to the void. Let's go and falls and crashes
upside down. It's pretty clear that she's
gone. She was under it.
I appreciated that she attached herself.
She latched herself to melee, she said.
You know she was like, I'm going to be with my dragon until the
very end, right? Yeah, I thought that was
indicative. Yeah.
She's all in on this. Yeah.
And I was more sad watching it the second time because the
first time, it's so much to take in, like just the visual
spectacle of it all. Just, you know, my mind often
thinks about like the the filmmaking efforts to make all
this happen and, you know, the implications of this battle and
on and on and on. But then the second time I was
like, oh, I kind of like realized that she was like
looking back, that maybe she was looking back at Rainey's and as
she's dying her neck and oh man, I just, it was so sad.
Peter H Clock says why couldn't Rainey's and Maley's die
heroically defending the castle instead of implausibly not
noticing Veigar can drive. Contrived deaths are for GOT
season sport. I'm sorry Peter, I just don't
agree with you there she was. She did die heroically defending
the castle and she and I do not think that was contrived.
I think that maybe it was lucky that Veigar was coming back up
around the Cliff or waiting for that, but contrived Nah Nah.
Peter Edquac added another super chat and said there's no reason
not to check that Veigar's dead. That's exactly what she was
doing. She.
Was trying to scout. She's trying to look around.
I, I don't, you know, I don't know that there was a better
strategy she could have done here, you know what I mean?
Like I don't know that there's a place she could have gone to to
find Veigar without Veigar finding her.
But she was definitely looking for him.
They show her scanning the ground.
They show her looking at the ground, like looking, she sees
the impact site. Yeah, she's looking everywhere.
She's looking at the impact site, looking around.
And she doesn't, I guess, doesn't consider that he could
have jumped off like could have taken off off the Cliff and come
back around that way. She she might have even
considered that here. Here's a couple thoughts I have.
Is it 1 quote UN quote? Smarter things she could have
done was not have been so low to the ground when she crossed
over. Oh yeah, I do agree with that,
yes. However, the reason she was so
low to the ground because she was checking to see if Veigar
was dead. She had to be low enough to see
him on the ground. And even when she did cross over
the the castle in a Cliff, he could have been 100 yards left
or right. You didn't.
She didn't expect him yet. Now maybe that was lucky or
contrived for Veigar to have come up right there, but it's
also possible that Veigar farther out saw like got got got
over the Cliff, was turning, and could see the trajectory that
Rainey's was on dipped back down below out of her sight and timed
it to come up as she crossed. Over that is one guy definitely
considered that same exact idea and I think it's very plausible.
So there's a multiple explanations here.
We don't necessarily know which one is right, but with multiple
explanations, I just don't see how we can call it contrived.
Maybe a little, maybe a little implausible, but what do we know
about dragon warfare and aerial combat anyway?
None of us really know what we're talking about here.
Yeah, Here's something that we like to say on our show
sometimes, which is when you're trying to think about what
everything is a plot hole, whether it's contrived.
Can you take a moment and think about an explanation for how
that could have happened? If you can think of one, maybe,
maybe there's more than one even, right?
Like I I just I encourage everyone, anytime you think
something is a plot hole, you might just not like it.
If you actually think about it for a beat, you probably can
think of some explanations. Well said and you're right.
And to add to that, not liking it is 100% valid.
You don't need any reason. No one ever needs to defend
their choice not to like something.
Just say I don't like it, period.
You, not you, can explain why, but it is not necessary.
Your opinion is valid about whether you like something,
whether you give reasons or one reason. 100 reasons or zero
reasons? Another sometimes I'm able to, I
don't know, justify a plot hole if you will.
When I think about the idea of this is what they needed to
happen and the way they did it might have had some flaw that
bothers me. But is there some other way it
could have happened? Especially if that other way
would have cost more money or taken more time, right?
Like I could see why they did it this way.
Like sure, maybe she could have flown over and he dives up and
misses and so then they wrap up in the sky and they fall and
they shoot flames and you spend 7 more minutes to drag a battle.
But I think that makes the whole thing less exciting if you keep
dragging it on. Veigar needs to win.
Veigar won. Rainey's put up a good fight.
Etcetera. And Veigar winning is, of
course, the basic idea of Veigar winning is more than plausible,
you know, just in general, you know, anyway, aftermath, it's
kind of brief. And I think that's on purpose
because they wanted to really focus on the tragedy and the
fact that we are now in a world of dragon warfare, no longer a
world of human warfare. So I think it was pretty clever
to focus on Kristen Cole, the most important war leader in
this entire war, who isn't a dragon rider, right?
He is the number one war leader that doesn't ride a dragon.
He's arguably the number one war leader even among the dragon
riders because he's also handed the king right?
Like he's also. Sure, he has a.
Lot of other roles. Like, yeah, so it's a huge
parallel to the other Queen Rainey's.
So the the rather than the Queen who never was the actual Queen
who was Rainey's on Meraxes. Even a similar name, Dragon
Rainey's on Meraxes we. Saw it in this episode perhaps,
it seems. Yeah, that may, that might have
been why they showed Miraxis you're.
That's a very good point. And when Miraxis died with a
bolt through the eye, like we said, she fell on the hellhole
and broke its wall open, which is exactly what happens here.
So in Kristen Cole's case, he's unconscious when the wall
breaks. He was knocked out by the
concussion of Veigar hitting the ground, only wakes up after
Miraxis hits the ground. But when he wakes up, you can
hear that Gwane Hightower is taking charge.
You could he he he's ordering troops in the background.
He says in with me into the breach.
You can hear him give that order.
And I'm pretty sure there's some deleted scenes here because when
we watch the BTS, there's they are filming Gwane Hightower like
on his horse charging in that direction.
And we saw none of that. So be on the lookout for those
in the future because oh. Can you point out what you
noticed on Gwane and the other shot?
Oh yeah. Awesome little detail on Gwain
when he's arguing with Kristen Cole about plan.
He's not wearing his armor yet, and he's got a couple of
necklaces. One's a ring, which could mean
anything. It could be a wedding band,
maybe. But he's also got a Little Axe,
which is the sign of the warrior.
That is the end all symbol of the warrior.
So that's pretty cool. Nice little detail.
Love those little details, y'all.
So, and of course, as we said about the fire thing, there's so
much fire after Mellie's crashes into the ground.
It's a pretty substantial amount there, quite a bit all over.
So more importantly than Glenn Hightower's initiative to lead
the troops through the wall is Christian Colt's reaction.
And we follow him throughout this whole aftermath.
It's there's smoke and it's hard to see everything.
He's disoriented. He's like breathing heavily.
I, I think this is his best episode as an actor.
Like he's full of range, his darkness, his concern for his
king and his just reaction to the battle.
And this is just physical like, and the way you said he carries
himself in armor, like no wonder they cast this guy and he has a
little. Bit of a smugness to him when
he's talking to Gwane. And he's like, I do have a
point, you know, like he has a little bit of a of a humor and,
yeah, a little an element. He, we often don't see for him
because he often is lesser to other people, not really
superior to them. That's a great point.
Yeah. He really, he really shined in
this one. I've really like, you know, you
and me. I've argued about Kristen Cole
before, Sean, but I've never, I would never argue about Fabian
Frankel. Yeah, I was going to say, let's
not forget how handsome it is. That's another thing they
decided to keep true from the books, you know, Of course they.
Always. What about this guy?
Really handsome too, huh? Oh, man, So wow, this was crazy.
So yeah, it is, like I said, it is symbolic to his his
disorientation is mixed with this determination, but also
helplessness. He wakes up into a new world,
like he's unconscious. When he wakes up, it's it's a
everything has changed. It wasn't what he thought it
would be. Like I said, this is an
experienced warrior. That has had to deal with a lot.
He's not only deal dealt with battle, but he's had to deal
with insubordination based on his birth and ethnicity.
Like he's had to face that he's dealing with a royal family
that's highly dysfunctional. That dysfunction ruined his plan
here, like directly. And now he's going to look bad
for it. You know, in some ways it won't
be all his fault, but it's not going to look good.
This, this completely incinerated Bannerbearer guy
that Shay had on the screen a minute ago.
Like whoa. Like that hits him hard.
Like that's not something he could have ever seen on a
battlefield before. He couldn't have fathomed that
was even possible. I want to say a couple things
here. That scene actually bothered me
a little bit more than the contriveness or whatever, or
Veigar coming up and catching Meili's.
And again, I'm nitpicking here, but that guy's body, like the
flesh and bone of his body, how was that completely incinerated
when the wooden banner he was carrying wasn't that?
That doesn't. Make sense?
Is that a wooden? It might be a metal thing, the
dog. Cloth on the banner.
Yeah, there is cloth on the banner.
I don't have a shot of it, but it bothered me too shot.
And I was like, I was gonna roll my eyes.
That's exactly the kind of thing we're like.
But that that though, I think is like in an right.
It doesn't affect the plot, it's just an inaccuracy.
Yeah, it's just over the top or some kind, but yeah, over the
top. Yeah, but the other thing, and I
might be jumping ahead a little, but I just want we're just, you
know, giving props to Bobbing Franco that.
Frankel. Fabian Frankel.
Frankel, Frankel the when? When he kind of drops to his
knees there in front of Aegon. I'm just imagining all the
things going through his head, right?
Like he, he's got to be torn in so many directions.
Like we talked about like his, his role like sort of as a
battlefield commander. Like, I guess they won, you
know? Yeah.
Do they call this a victory? Yeah, like.
Yeah. And but remember they said that
about the about the. Battle of Burning Mill.
Rack and Blackwood battle too, like I don't know if we can
count that as a victory. And I think, I think you know,
what did someone else say that it it would be a Pyrrhic victory
was that? Yes, well, they didn't.
He didn't use the word pyrrhic, but.
OK, 'cause I I realized like there wouldn't be a pure victory
in Westeros. Ryan Condall used the the phrase
in the behind the scenes. They would, yeah.
They would never use it in the world, but he could use it,
yeah. Yeah, just like those dogs were
apparently Irish wolfhounds, those three dogs at Harrenhall,
but they clearly aren't Irish wolfhounds in world.
Isn't that right? Yeah.
But yeah, just see, he's got to feel like, you know, he failed
the king. You know, he's got to maybe is
he going to lose his position as Lord Commander or should he
resign a position should how is he, how is the rest of the king
going to react to this is the war you're going to keep going?
Like he's got to be have so many concerns both on like a big
picture strategy level, A tactics of the battle level, a
personal emotional level responsibility.
Like Allison? Yeah, What's he gonna tell
Allison? Oh my.
Oh, boy. Yeah.
And I, I forgot about this too. Like his range of acting, like
his shock and horror here at. Yeah, like does he?
And it's it's also worth noting that I, I think it was also Ryan
Condell or someone who wanted behind the scenes things where
they were trying to make the point that what they wanted to
see here from the POV of Kristen Cole is representing the
difference in the world now that the Dragons have been unleashed.
You know, not a world he thought he'd be in, not a world he, he,
he imagined it, but he didn't know it would be like this.
No one could like even the dragon riders don't didn't
haven't lived through this before.
So when he first walks up, when we first saw the scene, we
thought Eamon had his sword out getting ready to finish Aegon.
But on rewatch, like no that's definitely not the case because
he's putting his sword away before Cole yells anything.
OK, I have something I noticed here.
I want to say real quick. So I you notice that after this
he picks up the cat spaw dagger, right?
My question is, OK, he's clearly sheathing his sword.
And which made me think, oh, he's like, oh, I'm not going to
kill Aegon. He's doomed or he's not going to
have any more kids or whatever. Whatever he's thinking, he's
thinking he's as good as done. I'm going to rule, OK?
I don't need to fully kill him. I had a second thought though,
is that he sees the cat spaw dagger there in that moment.
So was he sheathing his sword because he thought it would be a
more meaningful death if he killed him with the cat spaw
dagger 'cause he sees that on the ground right after, like in
that moment. That would be an explanation for
why he would cheat it. I.
Can't say it's impossible, but I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know that it's true either.
You know what I mean? Like, it's certainly possible,
but 'cause you would wonder why does he even have his sword out
in the first place? There should not be any foes
around. There's no enemies.
There's no enemies outside the castle.
That's why I think he would have it out 'cause he was going to
put them out of their misery or take them out for to clear the
way for him. Either interpretation, kind of
different. Kind of the same, but a little
shades of difference. Yeah, so it is a little open to
interpretation. So like what I mean when I say
that we our initial impression was wrong, all I mean is that he
definitely wasn't about to stab him with a sword.
That doesn't mean his intent wasn't to kill him or that he
hadn't like a Shaya said. Maybe he just was like, oh I'll
just use dagger instead. My next point for y'all here is
that whether he was thinking he'd kill him with the dagger
instead or not, we know Ayman knows Valyrian well.
We know the prophecy is on this dagger written.
He might be reading it right now.
He might read the prophecy and know the prophecy.
And if he isn't right now, he might later.
Yeah. And of course, the prophecy is
incomplete. It does not have the whole thing
on there. There's just, like, one line of
it. So who knows what that could
mean if he just reads this one line, maybe it throws him off in
a entirely different direction. Maybe it encourages him to read
more. I don't know.
What do you think, Sean, about WE?
Love the idea of reading more. Val, reread it.
Yeah, I think it depends on what you mean by about Was he about
to kill him? Was he about to kill him in the
next one or two seconds? Definitely not.
No chance He was, I don't know, several steps away from Aegon's
body and he was lifting it up to sheath it before Cole called his
name. Like he.
Because like I said. Remember my voice.
The same. Thing.
He's sheathing it. He's sheathing it with a
weather, another weapon right in front of him.
Exactly. He might have been sheathing it
just so that he could bend down and pick up the other weapon.
Whether or not he meant to use that weapon to kill him also
might be a question, but it is weird that he had it out in the
first place. Maybe he's being cautious, you
know, It's a chaotic battlefield situation, who knows what could
happen out there. But it is weird that he had his
sword out in the first. Place.
Yeah, that's very telling. The fact that his sword is out
of laws. But I'm confident that he wasn't
a quote UN quote about to kill Aegon like in that stroke or in
that second. But he might have been about to
kill him like in the next few moments, depending on what he
saw or whatever. And that kill y'all like it
might have been a a mercy kill like if he was coming up to him
being like the the like this dragon and this like he might
have been about to kill Sunfire, right.
And hang on, like the idea, yes, it could be for his benefit, but
it also might be like, no one should live through this.
They're dying. They're in pain.
I, you know, like it isn't. And it can be both.
Yeah. Absolutely.
And maybe in modern times when you could like, medevac someone
on a helicopter to the the highest quality da da da, but
they're just in the middle of the freaking woods.
And well, no, they're going to take him into Rick's Rest.
Clearly that's where they're going to get the Rook's Rest
Maester is. That's his job now.
Then they'll maybe go back to King's Landing, but they're the
nearest maester is going to be conscripted into this role.
And that's the guy inside Rook's Rest.
Unless he somehow died, which isn't likely, but.
I like slow MO, pause, pause, play, pause, play trying to
there's just like one second of barely seeing the image of him
it and it's not clear if he's moving or breathing or anything.
It's hard to say. And so I think if they wanted
him to be dead, they would have made it clear to us that he was
dead. So that makes me guess he's not
dead yet, at least so. Yeah.
And having it having the uncertainty, can you can see why
that would create even heighten the conflict even more or make
some new plot threads possible? And him being even if he's not
dead, he's not about to like jump up and run into battle.
He's probably right. Probably burned and broke back.
And whoever know concussions, unconscious, coma like.
All sorts. Of any speaker.
Potential health problems. So he might he might become like
Grover Tully, right? Or someone else.
Eamon is probably effectively going to ruin his place.
Yep, he's becoming more like his father than he wanted to be in a
lot younger age, if that's indeed how it goes.
Think of that. Yeah, I like think about the
possibility that he could be wearing that mask of his, his
father's face mask with his to cover his burns or something
like that. All sorts of little maybe walk
in with his cane. I made that.
I made that guess a while ago. We'll see if it comes true.
It's not in the book, I'll say that.
It's just a guess that I might that have for the future of the
show. So, yeah, as we discussed, they
can't. Can they call this a victory?
How they spin this, how people will react?
So many reactions are going to come.
Blacks, greens, regular folk, people in between.
Wow. Yeah.
It's going to drive the rest of the season, among other things.
And we're looking forward to that.
RIP Rainey's. Rainey's in World was born on
the 7th day of the 7th month. The episode aired on the 7th day
of the 7th month. What the hell?
What kind of crazy coincidence is that?
There's obviously no way they planned that.
They couldn't have like, oh, we got to put it on Randy's cannon
birthday. We got to make sure that
happens. Like no, no way to do that.
So we will miss Eve Best. What a great performance.
She had a great like interview take on.
You know, you don't want to die, but if you're going to die, it
may as well be on the biggest, you know, on a big bad dragon in
one of the biggest battles of all time.
You know, it's like that's if you're going to go, that's the
way to go. Like, Yep, that's a great take.
Just like her takes in life. It's a great take in death.
And I hope to see Eve best in other shows.
And hey, maybe, maybe, maybe she'll be in a dream sequence or
something. At least at least we know those
are happening in the show. So it could happen.
You know, it's, it's one thing to to hope for a dream sequence
in a show that doesn't have those, you know, But hey,
they've shown it something, so maybe we'll get it over anyway.
It's an all timer of an episode. It's going to be interesting to
see how this one sits in the all timer battles category when
people do their ratings of the best Game of Thrones battles of
all time and things like that. This one will certainly be in
the discussion. I'm sure it's not everyone's
favorite. Where do you guys put?
It, I don't know yet. I have always have a hard time
picking favorites. So it's difficult, but I do it's
up there. I think I, I kind of, I think I
probably like it more than any of the Game of Thrones battles
because dragon battles are just so cool.
And I never, yeah, I've never, I never felt so much tension over
something that I pretty much knew what was going to happen
in. And that's really hard to do.
And I've heard that from a lot of people.
A lot of people have been like, yeah, I knew it was pretty much
exactly what was going to happen and it was still riveting and,
and maybe still the edge of my seat and still had me like
gripping my chair and. Had me yelling.
Tearing up and yelling. Yeah, we were yelling and
screaming at my. Heart.
I felt my heart just pounding here multiple times.
I was like, oh, anxious and physically, I don't know, alert
and pumped up. Yeah, I think, I think I'm going
to put it top three. I think I'm sure Hardhome is my
favorite. That's a.
Good one. And after that, I, I, I, I, I I
don't like Battle of the Bastards as much as some other
people did. I didn't like the battle, the
Battle of the Wall, maybe Blackwater Bay, all those like,
yeah, I guess Hardhome is my definitive favorite.
After that I'm not sure. Blackwater is so good because of
all the POV's involved and how many, how well it.
Pulls out of. Itself.
It is not as good as the dialogue between like when, when
like one of my favorite moments of all the Game of Thrones is
when the ships have been blown up and Stannis is like, let's go
anyway. And one of this, one of his
lieutenants is like hundreds of men will die and he's like
thousands like that. One of my favorite moments of
the whole show. It wasn't exactly battle, I
guess. I don't know it was it
Blackwater was kind of split up battle and other stuff was split
up a lot. But.
I'll say. This anyway come down I'm going
to say #2 for me after hard on. Yes, my favorite battle by a
long shot. I don't think any of the Game of
Thrones battles for me have ever hit as hard as this battle hit.
And it goes down to the sound design and the Dragons and like
the production team for that. Not like the performances, the
writing act, all of that, but it really, I think like the the
sounds of the Dragons being just just killed and the shrieking
and, and all and, and just whatever the sound design team
did, whatever they sampled, it really cut to the core of a lot
of people's hearts, I think and made us really hurt for them.
Even though again, I am team small folks, so I really should
be anti dragon and I kind of am like I logical part of me is
like people are going to use them like this.
They should be gone. But yet, Despite that, I was so
upset in this moment for Sunfire and Mailee's I, I was just just
heartbroken. Utterly and completely
heartbroken. So I don't think any battle in
Game of Thrones has left me feeling as heartbroken and as
yelling as much. And yeah, other moments in Game
of Thrones have left me feeling as upset and crying, but not one
of the battles. Yeah, that's a good way to put
it. And I think if you are, if it
makes you like something just going against your values, that
really says something. They really did a good job.
Like if they can convince you to like to feel bad for these
Dragons or for me to feel bad for Aegon, who I, you know, I
acknowledge terrible person was like, well, it really, it really
pulled something off. If you've feeling sympathy for
someone, you know, you don't usually feel sympathy for
feeling sympathy for violent, deadly animals that are used to
tyrannize people. Yeah.
That it's it's an accomplishment to pull that off, not to mention
just the visual spectacle of it all.
Mick Floyd sends a super chat, says I think Cole thought he was
going to kill him. That scream said it all.
Yeah. He was like, Amen.
Yeah, like he was, it was, it wasn't a hey, Amen.
Yo, you know, it was a what? It was a hey.
It had a it did have a hey stop kind of vibe to it.
Right, I think what whatever Eamon's intentions were, I think
we know what Cole thought of him in that moment.
And again, makes me wonder how much we don't see Cole's
reaction to what he, if he looked up in the moment and saw
the Veigar Meili Sunfire deal. We don't know what people saw.
We don't know what Cole saw. I think based on like, honestly,
like when you're that far away and the way like depth
perception works, I don't know that it would be damning.
Like, I don't know that from the ground it looked obviously like
he took out Sunfire. But it might have Cole might
have. Cole might know that he did
that. He also has the why didn't he
come when the signal was called? He let he saw his brother and
was late. Like that's, that's, that's
evidence for him thinking he's going to kill him.
Like from Cole's perspective, that's sketchy.
Like, oh, is he, is he going to kill his brother here?
So yeah, I, I, I can see that. So clearly they made it
ambiguous because we aren't sure we can see both sides of it.
Like that's the answer. They deliberately made it
confusing. Like, we're not supposed to
know, I think, but it's fun to talk about.
So. But yeah, I don't think we're
supposed to be able to figure it out purely from what happened.
I think that maybe will come later when we see how Amon's
reaction is and what else happens next.
And well, we're halfway through the season.
There's been a lot so far. It's been great.
We'll have a lot more to talk about, a lot more topics to
cover, and not to mention more episodes to cover.
So stay with us, friends. We are having a fun time.
I hope you are too. We'll keep the discussions
coming and keep our notes flowing.
Try to keep track of all these details, all these takes, all
these topics. And thanks to Brand the Builder
for our awesome video intro. We sure do like that.
Don't forget to check out our the link in the description
about City Winery. If you're in the New York area.
We would love to see you on August 3rd for the Episode 8
preview slash recap of the season and we will see you all
soon for the next episode. Oh, Sean, you have something to
add. Just one last clip.
However old Alice Rivers might be, I think she's voodoo child.
Hey, there it is. There's that Jimi Hendrix.
You got it. And you snuck it in right under
the wire. Well played, my friend.
All right, everybody, until next time, Valar re Ritis.
None. None.