None. None.
Episode 3 The Burning Mill A Mill is a mundane but rather
perfect metaphor. It's life going in circles, the
same cycles of birth and death, and when we're looking at things
like this, blood and revenge and such, things like that.
Like the wheel Danny wanted to break.
In original Game of Thrones show, a windmill keeps on
turning around and around, but in this case it can turn even if
it's burning. Maybe a regular wheel can too,
but this one's way up in the air and it's a lot more spectacular
and cool. Are sure sign of times changing
is that neither the Blacks or Greens have an official Master
of Whispers until this episode. It's a parallel escalation, but
it's also another cycle because the Master of Whispers is not a
new position, it's just come back around again.
The story continues to expand in this one.
More characters are added, more locations are added.
A lot of them are familiar, but with changes and we're seeing
them in a different timeline. Existing characters that we've
been focused on so much are starting to spread out.
They're not in the same place anymore.
That gives us more to talk about, more connections to be
made, more details to discuss. As the last vestiges of
resistance to war fall away and the inevitable approaches.
There's a creepy dream and a cursed castle.
Some dragon action. Real Dragons, that is, And a ton
of dragon history, meaning Targaryens, the ancestors, and
their potential lesser known children are featured today and
named often. And we've got all that and more
on this episode of History of Westeros podcast.
Are you just going to keep going longer until I finally say
something about it? About what?
What?
It's a windmill. It just keeps going and going.
Anyway, hello and welcome, everybody.
Welcome back to another review episode of House of the Dragon.
We're very excited to be here. Always fun to be in the midst of
an ongoing season when the season's going quite well.
So we're having a good time, even more than we might have
every Monday. We do this during the season.
It's 6:00 Eastern and we do our reviews without spoilers and
Wednesdays. Some Wednesdays, not.
This week we have a deep dive on a specific topic.
Some Wednesdays like I said. And Saturdays we do our preview
episodes where we have predictions and spoiler talk and
stuff from the books that we saw that we don't want to mention
'cause it would be spoilery. But no leaks, never any leaks.
And of course, game streams at six Eastern on Fridays.
We're currently playing House Tarly, but we're going to be
restarting soon with a new house and if you're around you can
help us pick. If you have questions for us,
send them to us live here in the chat.
Asha will pick some of them up and put them for us to put them
up for us to talk about. Or you can send them to
westeroshistory@gmail.com if you are, for example, hearing this
after the fact. Not live.
Tell us what you liked most, didn't like, favorite
performances, Easter eggs, callbacks, stuff you've noticed,
themes, especially stuff that we missed.
That's always helpful because we can't catch it all.
We try, but it's impossible. And of course, thank you to
those of you who have been supporting us.
It's so hectic during this time of year.
We're having fun, but it takes up a huge amount of time.
So if you're a patron or a supporter or you send us super
chats during live streams, we really appreciate that.
But does anything help Spreading the word, Telling your friends
you are the best salesman, the best pitch for us?
If you tell your friends about us, well, that's better than
anything we could ever do because your friends trust you
and your taste, so we can't beat that.
It's pretty good for Ryan Condell to be talking about it
unsaid. That's pretty good.
That's true. That's true.
So Sean, we'll start with you. What did you think of the
episode overall? Let's get your just high level
view and your basic thoughts. High quick, high level view.
I loved it. I think it might be my favorite
of of the three so far. I wanted to follow up a little
with the Bernie mill. I don't know metaphor.
I was thinking about the idea that a mill often is grinding
grain like the power of the turning is.
The grind is sort of like the grind of war and we see bodies
ground up on the ground there after the the battle that
ensued. Also, a mill is usually, I don't
know, a symbol of prosperity. There's a matter of like, peace
or productivity. It's kind of in the mills, like,
you know, generating energy, product, food or whatever.
And for that to be burned up, there's a sign of war is kind of
tearing things apart, grinding things to a halt.
There's a lot. Of less food.
Yeah. Like that's food you're that's a
great point, Sean. Yeah, I really like it.
It's it's kind of a a metaphor along the lines of Eric Ark.
It's like a bigger version of that microcosm of the war and
what it causes and what it does to everybody and how it just
brings people in there. They don't even whether they
want to be a part of it or not, they're just sucked into it.
And to be burning is also symbolic of like, fire and
blood, right? That's we're sure.
I assume more burning is coming. You even talked about the idea
of the mill is up in the air, kind of like Dragons are up in
the air blowing up fire. I'll save this episode.
I think I, Reed and I spent more time discussing this episode
than the other two combined. And it's not because we didn't
discuss the other two. It just really stirred a lot of
thoughts of me about the idea of I I think of maybe the theme of
this episode was it's too late. It's there's no going back
there. And, and you know, maybe it was
too late a long time ago. I really love the scene.
Rainey's was like, well, was it when the boy was killed or when
the, you know, when the dragon killed your son or when his eye
was, you know, like how far back do you have to go before the the
point of return happened? I don't know if it was that far
back, but I do think they're past it now.
I think it's the sad summary of this episode.
Is that Renera going to talk to Allison Was it's just too late.
She had been like, you're right, I'll do whatever you want.
It wouldn't have worked on either side.
You know, she doesn't have the power to stop it at this, but
she can't stop the mill. The mill's burning.
The mill's turning. The mill's churning, and there's
no stopping it. Yeah, we do our breakdown
episode, short breakdown episode.
Just part of this part is our preparation.
And I highly recommend you check those out.
One sign that there was more to talk about along the lines of
what you say there's our breakdown episode is about 25%
longer. They're usually around 12
minutes. This one is so maybe around 16.
It's not, it's not fully edited yet.
But with that, I sent it over to Ash, who is the one editing said
breakdown. And I want to hear your take on
this episode. You know, it's funny.
I think I agree with you, Sean. I think this is my favorite of
three. I think it might have some of
the lowest lows for me and the highest highs.
Like I might have some of the weakest stuff for me, yet it was
still my favorite. Like just a couple of things.
So like even if I want a nitpick on on things and I don't think
the things I would nitpick on or even what you might guess, it's
just like I just want more of certain dynamics like Bayla and
Rayna. I felt like I felt I wanted more
time with Rayna and Baila, more conversation.
Too much was left unsaid, but I loved what we did get and I love
that we're deepening a lot of those relationships and dynamics
a lot. So I found that really great.
And I also like the spooky hair and hall stuff.
I liked seeing Alice Rivers. And honestly, my favorite thing
about it was the Burning Mill sequence.
I thought it was just very, very effective film making.
Like the way, like I found skipping the battle was the most
effective way to show how how quickly everything just gets out
of control. You know what I mean?
And so I I found it to be just a really effective episode in a
lot of ways, despite any niggling complaints I might
have. A lot of times too, showing the
battle can kind of glorify the violence and the heroism or
whatever, and maybe there is a place for that.
But I don't think this is it. That is not what they want to do
at all. They just want to show the
tragedy of it, you know? Yeah, and they don't.
And they cut away before it starts.
You don't even know who swings the first blow, what go, what
happens from there, How all these other people get involved
so much is left unsaid. But that stuff isn't important.
It's like, yeah, this is the cost of war.
This is what matters. This is.
And yeah, you guys are right. It was it was very effective the
way they just started small. You see, you're focused on the
one Bracken kid. The Bracken kid is a perfect
example, too. He clearly didn't want to be
there. He was like, I have to do this.
Like he was nervous. He was he was anxious.
But he's like, well, this is what a Bracken does when, you
know, when a challenge by a Blackwood, the weight of history
was on his shoulders and he was was a little dude with small
shoulders, you know, and yeah. So they're focused on him.
And then it backs up and you just see the the, the full
devastation. And then you just keep going.
You think, oh, wow, that's a lot.
Oh, wow, that's even more. Oh my God, that's so much.
Yeah, yeah, it was really effective.
I thought that was good. In terms of performance, though,
I think my favorite performance of the episode was a small bit,
but was was Aymond for me because I felt that you and
Mitchell showed just a lot of layers to him putting on his
armor while walking naked out of that brothel, you know, like
that was him arming himself. And I could just really see that
in him. So I I felt it was a small part
of the episode ultimately, but I think that was my favorite
performance. What about you, Sean?
For me, it's been Emma Dorsey hands down, by far every episode
this season and usually contending for top two or three
last season. But I feel like Patty's not
there and and she's getting featured more.
Oh, sorry. They yeah, they're getting
featured more. Renira's getting featured more
and a lot of times very nuanced stuff too.
That's, I think sometimes just, I remember Cersei.
I remember one of the best moments of acting and that I've
ever witnessed was as the boat that I ostensibly had Marcella
on. It was approach.
She realized, you know, that I still can't even quite identify
what she did with her face to go from hopeful to devastated, you
know, But I feel like Emma Darcy does that constantly be subtle
little shifts in her cheeks and her eyebrows and body language
and stuff that it just, it just blows me away.
Especially going back, watching it two or three times when you
get to pay more attention to the new one, once you've already
resolved, like absorbed, like, these are the plot points of
this episode and you're looking for symbolism or whatever else.
Those little subtle acting moments really come through to
me. Yeah, Emma's very popular, doing
super well. Our Facebook group polls, we've
been doing those again. This one.
Emma destroyed everybody. They got over 50%.
You're allowed multiple choice so people can vote for more than
one person. The next highest was like 14%,
which is one of the biggest overwhelming when we when Paddy
had his walk into the throne room.
That episode I think was one of the other ones that had the most
overwhelming like, oh, that one, you know, second was Matt Smith,
third was Ewan Mitchell and 4th. I usually don't mention 4th, but
I'm going to mention this time because it was Sir Simon Russell
Beale AKA Sir Simon Strong. So yeah, Sir Simon is Sir Simon
extra cool. He gets bonus points for being
Sir Simon in real life and on the show.
There were two changes to the intro tapestry, the death of
Prince Jeharis and the hanging of the rat catchers.
We've got a full episode breakdown of the intro crawl on
the way though, so we won't we won't talk about that from now.
We we got that covered elsewhere.
But Targaryen history, which is of course well covered on that
intro crawl as well, is particularly important in this
episode. Multiple mentions and influence
and vibes of Aegon the Conqueror.
Jahari's The Conciliator comes up almost as much.
Also, bail on the Brave and then Harrenhal.
The history of Harrenhal and the Targaryen role in that, which is
overwhelming. That comes up very big.
The writer of this episode is David Hancock.
He's been credited as a writer for every single episode of the
series, but as we know, they sometimes a single writer's
credited, but they never work on them solo.
So just take that with a grain of salt.
He's credited with this one, but he worked on all of them.
He's also a writer for The Crown, so he's worked with Matt
Smith before and some of the other folks on the show.
And you know, that's that was a very successful show.
The director is Gita Vasant Patel, who also directed the
finale of this season. So we're going to see her work
again. That's her other episode this
season, maybe more Harrenhal. I mean, we're, we know we're
going to get more Harrenhal, but we might this maybe it's in
episode 8 because of that. But anyway, Gita Vasant Patel,
as we pointed out in our preview episode on Saturday, has
directed a lot of comedy, a lot of really like seen alleviate
alleviating some of the tension or just equip that's funny.
Like for example, Mazzari saying it would be easier to kill her,
you know, things like that. There's a lot of little lines
like that, or. That was a funny 'cause it's
true moment, by the way, it. Was funny 'cause you were or, or
the throne. It's like, yeah, it's a big iron
chair made of sword. Big sword, big chair made of
swords. Yeah.
I can't even say it right, but it's, it was funny.
Anyway, let's go to Dragonstone. That's where the episode begins.
There. So shall we, Eric?
Ark's funeral is the first thing we see.
Jace argues for escalation. He's mad.
If this happened, he was probably friends with Eric.
Certainly sees him as one of theirs.
That was a strike at us. We got to strike back.
The escalations are escalating. You could say everyone except
Rainey's once Rainier it is. Get on with the war, you know.
And. Well, they have a point.
Are they completely right? No.
But they have a point. I just want to say technically
we don't really start here. We have a cold open.
Right. We have the the battle.
Yeah, you're right. We right.
We start here after the intro. You're totally right.
Good correction. Good correction.
The proper port point of the episode starts here.
But you're right. Yeah.
Battle of the Burning Mill is the cold open, and it's very
effective. So Rainey's admits.
Yeah, we got to try. But she even admits to the
possibility that might be too late.
And she speaks to this by saying, yeah, Otto would never
have ordered this. Otto would never have ordered
this crazy plan. This is someone young and angry
and vindictive ordered this, if not all of them or some group of
them. She doesn't know exactly who.
And that makes sense. But she's at the young, you
know, the young horses have the bit in their mouth or something
to that, that effect. I.
Think, she said. Hotter blood, Hotter.
Blood. Yeah, absolutely.
And this is pretty much straight from the book.
Rainier is delaying of the of the war, of escalating it.
The sources debate why. So the show has to weigh in.
And it's not really what the book suggests.
But that's OK. We like character development.
And she speaks to. Yeah, so the young people must
be in control. She proves very right about
that. And as you said at the
beginning, the chance to stop the war is indeed probably not
there, even though they decide they need to take that chance
just in case. It's there because it would
prevent so much death. It's even a slim chance to
prevent millions of deaths or hundreds of thousands.
Whatever that number you would throw out there is worth a try.
And you kind of respect the attempt, even though for as
viewers, we know it's kind of hopeless.
Some people don't respect the attempt, I suppose, but I do.
I definitely do, right. That's one thing I thought about
specifically. Even if it's only A1 in 100 or
one in a million chance, a one in a million chance to save 10s
of thousands of lives. Yeah, take that chance for sure,
you know? Yeah, and arguably it fits with
the the whole idea that, you know, so many things are rash,
so many things are done quickly without proper consideration.
This might be one of them. Going to King's Landing in in
disguise. Just because she's not going
there to kill somebody doesn't mean it isn't a rash decision.
You know, even though she's there for peace doesn't mean it
wasn't made in haste or without proper forethought as to the
chance of success versus, you know, what she's risking.
So yeah, Rainey's is a great line.
She says when the desire to kill and burn takes hold and reason
is forgotten, she speaks to the same concepts that the
Blackwoods and Brackens are exemplifying with.
We don't even know what started it.
They don't even know what started it.
Eventually there's going to be so many grievances, so many
traumas, that it doesn't even matter what started it.
You're in it now. Like the first thing doesn't
matter. You've both done so much damage
to each other that that is keeping it going.
The initial provocation is irrelevant now.
And that's true. That's true in life.
That's true for a lot of long running feuds.
And hard to hard to argue with. Rainey's there.
The Black Council's a little farther off the, you know, more
ready, shall we say. They're pushing really hard.
They even suggest Rainier hide herself.
She responds by suggesting that conducting the war without her
would be treason. Shuts that down pretty quick.
She has a line to Mazzaria later that really explains it.
She says hopefully you don't mistake mercy for pliancy, which
is what this is. This is mercy and they see it as
maybe pliancy or weakness. And that's interesting because
that's that topic comes up with her father, right?
Laurie says, hey, you know, people saw your father as
pliable and he doesn't want to be like that.
So it's kind of some sort of parallels are going on here.
You know, another parallel that's going on here, or maybe a
contrast? I feel like Renera is trying to
keep the Black Council in check. They're all raring to go and
she's trying to slow them down. Yeah, the Green council, it's
the other way around. Aegon is all raring to go and
everyone trying to slow him down, everyone in accounts like,
well let's be careful, let's get it together 1st.
And he's like, yeah, I'll just fly my dragon in there and like,
hold on a second, like. Wait, no, that's not part of the
plan. You can't just add that.
You know you could just add a dragon to the plan just Willy
nilly, right? And I think it's key to that.
That's part of why Rainey's supported Renera got Corley's on
her side because she respected the fact that she wasn't rushing
in. She's trying to avoid war.
And there was a moment when it kind of locked eyes.
I think that might have been late at this second.
There's there were two Black council meetings, if I remember
right, and I think it's in the second one.
But the first time I watched it, I was trying to read what that
connection was. And I think that it was
Rainey's. I don't know how to say.
It's assuring Ranira that you're in control.
Do what you think is right. And I think what you think is
right is what I think is right, too, which is try to avoid war.
Go talk to Allison. You know, don't dive in with
these Dragons. Yeah.
And that's a good point. Yeah, they're they're kind of
seeing eye to eye, even though maybe there's not a lot of
optimism. They understand what's going on
and they're not unable to really.
One thing I would say, there's a little bit of Jon Snow here
where he's not where she's not. Rainier's not doing a good job
of communicating this to her counselors.
She's just kind of saying, OK, I've heard your arguments and I
know what's best, but I'm not telling you why.
And that I would have liked to see her maybe try to explain
that more. But I think maybe they would
just argue with her. She kind of doesn't want to
because they're she's not going to be able to convince them.
So it's kind of pointless. Also, the the thing she's got in
the back of her mind right now is I'm going to sneak into
King's Laney and talk to the Queen.
Well, not this early, no. Way they're going to go for
that. They're not going to go for
that. I don't think she's thinking
that this early, though. Not this early because she
doesn't agree. She doesn't think of doing.
It. Yeah, once she opens the letter,
then she starts thinking about doing.
It I think in this first one to end with her kind of like
saying, hey, you guys are pushing trees in here and
Rainey's kind of backing her up. Rainey's the second one when she
brought I'll take your advice into consideration.
I think she's thinking about this.
Then she goes talk to Missari, right.
So one, there's no way they would be she's OK with this.
And two, she's got to keep it secret.
She, she can't let people know that she's even doing this, you
know? Yeah, and that's kind of what I
meant about it being rash. If she's not getting anyone
else's opinion or she knows they won't like it, which is why she
doesn't ask. And so, yeah, it does look like
they're making that mistake, seeing her as pliable or weak
when she's just trying to be like a good king or queen
Jairus. And that's the name drop that
Rainey's makes. Like, look, look who had the
longest reign. Jerry's, he was the wisest one.
He was peaceful. Look what she's trying to do.
We've talked about Rainier having a split role, both queen
and a mother. Well, she takes steps to resolve
that somewhat and focus on the queen part, try to set the
motherhood aside so it's not a distraction.
But of course, it's very hard to do this.
She doesn't like the idea of herself hiding, but sending away
the kids and the young Dragons and eggs, that makes sense to
her. They're very close to King's
Landing. Lots can go wrong.
Having them somewhere else makes sense.
She's sitting there alone in in the room that had her kids and
you get that sense of loneliness and that's pretty moving, I
think when she's sitting there very sad and and without them,
of course, that's jumping head a little bit.
She has to actually send them away first here, which is what
we're talking about. She puts Reyna in charge of all
this, right? That's a big deal.
And it comes back to one of our main themes because it's both
duty and sacrifice here. Like you have to go do this
thing that you're not happy about, but it's really
important. It's a really big duty.
And she's like, I don't want to be a mother figure.
You know, I'm a teenager. I want to go fight, blah, blah.
Which understandable. But her tune changes when the
eggs get introduced to the mix. She's like, well, we also need
you to carry care for these eggs.
And that's that's huge, right? That's for her.
That's like, oh, OK, well, this, I still don't want to go do
this, but it, it kind of leaves her in in awe.
And, you know, it's interesting. There's three eggs in the book
and they added a fourth one, which I don't know what that's
all about, but we but it's been confirmed by the director that
they had conversations with Ryan Condall and others and they're
they're saying these are Danny's eggs.
Yeah, and one of them is Visaris Egg.
Little Visaris. Of course, right little Visaris,
'cause he doesn't have a, he doesn't have a dragon right now.
Yeah, and three of them are Danny's.
I initially thought they weren't because I was thinking of
Danny's eggs from the book, and Drogon's egg is black in the
book. So I was like, there's no black
egg, this can't be Danny's eggs. And Nope, Danny's eggs were
never black in the show, or none of them were black in the show.
So yeah, it's the light blue one there.
That would be Viserys. Also, they would have darkened
and shifted as they turned to stone.
That's true, I suppose. Yeah, that's true.
They are carried off, they are put aside and in this kind of
chamber thing now, it's not easy to see them, but there's also
two Dragons in cages, little Dragons.
There's Tyraxies and Stormcloud. Tyraxies is Joffrey's dragon and
Stormcloud is Aegon's dragon, little Aegon.
And of course, as we just said, Viserys just has an egg, a light
blue egg. And there the plan is Rainier
says hit right, Prince Reggio. That's the Prince of Pentas that
we saw back in season one. And yeah, he shouldn't be Prince
anymore, but whatever, he's probably still powerful or
whatever. Maybe he's still Prince.
I don't think they usually rule that long in Pentas, but that's
OK. Small detail.
And that's the guy they stayed with when Lana was alive and all
that. So they have this connection.
So presumably Raina Rainier expects that he'll say sure,
come on over. And then they'll go from the
Vale to over there. They'll take ship from
presumably Gull Town, which is the big port now.
Baylor and Rayna part. It's always unnerving to see
siblings part in a Game of Thrones type production, right?
You're like, will they ever see each other again?
You're always kind of like, that's the first question we
talked about. Goodbye, brother.
Well, this is kind of like goodbye, sister.
I don't know. What do you think, Sean?
You, I know you have very little to go on here, but do you guess
they'll see each other again or is this going to be, is this the
one of the many tragedies we're we're setting up for?
Yeah, I, I might not have that much to go on, but I'll tell
you, I do have quite a few thoughts.
One is that this is a bit of a gamble in the 1st place.
Like, let me, let me back up and even say that the idea that
Renera is like trying to, you know, relinquish some of her
motherly duties for her queenly duties.
But in a way, this is in itself a motherly duty.
She's trying to protect her kids like she knows their targets,
Like there's already been assassins in both castles
targeting, you know, so getting them to safety makes sense on a
certain level. However, the deal with, with the
Veil was they're going to send a dragon to help protect them and
she's hoping, well, maybe 2 little Dragons, you know, like
we're not quite sending what we promised, you know, And so I
wonder if the Veil will keep their agreement and, or be safe
from assault from other Dragons. I, that's one thing I do have to
go on is I, I know the veil doesn't get burned down, but
that doesn't mean a dragon doesn't land in there.
That's happened historically before.
Otherwise, and they might get embargoed or who knows, whatever
else. Also, they're assuming she's
going to be safe on the voyage there, that Dragons won't
attack, spies or assassins won't find them, there won't be a
shipwreck or something on the way to Pintos.
There's like a lot of things have to go right for this and
she is basically putting her legacy or the Black's legacy,
maybe even the Targaryen legacy on Rainer.
All our eggs in one basket, you might say you.
Know it's funny because all the. Rest of the eggs.
Well, yeah, that's that's The thing is that Ryan Condell in
the behind the scenes, in the inside the episode, he says this
is he says this is Rainier and not putting all her eggs in one
basket because she's splitting them from Dragonstone.
But I just don't see it that way because I see it as she is
explicitly sending all of her kids except for Jace to the same
place right now. Which really really seems silly
to me. Personally, I would split them
right from the get go or I would keep one with me.
Simply I know she has Jace with her but I would keep.
To jump in, they are being split.
The idea is to go no, no, hang on, let me finish.
They are going to the Vale and then Joffrey's supposed to stay
there. The other kids are.
So they are being split up, just not immediately.
I just think they should split now.
I don't even think you send them off in the 1st place together.
I think you already you. I think you split them a bunch.
OK, well, I mean, the plan is to split them quickly, she says.
I need to. Put them in two baskets you're
waiting for. You're waiting for a letter to
come back from the Prince to get permission to go over there.
You can't go there until you have permission.
This was a sudden decision to send them away.
So the alternative would be to wait for the prince's letter to
come back to there and have some of the which isn't that
different, Like they're they're more.
Yeah. OK.
Well, that's I, I disagree, but that's it's debatable.
Let's let's move on. There's pros and cons to either
approach, but yes, yes, that's my other thought here too, was
that, you know, like you said, this is like this party like
here's all of our treasures, here's all our family by now.
I hope you make it safe. Like I, I am fearful, especially
I, I, you know, I, I, I don't know details, but I, I get the
idea from the fandom that, you know, this is a tragic,
gruesome, awful story. There's already been a child
beheaded. Like, I don't think it's crazy
that someone goes to Pintos and burns up whatever castle they're
in or goes to the veil or catches them on the way.
Like, I'm scared for all these characters.
That's all I'm seeing. I am super scared.
This relationship is really interesting between Baila and
Reyna. They're being split and they're
twins, yet so much of the reason of them splitting is
circumstances out of their control.
Ashay, there was really interesting behind the scenes
preparation done for this conversation, wasn't there?
Yeah. In an interview with Gita Patel,
she talked about how in order to prepare Baila and Reyna's
actors, Phoebe Campbell and Bethany Antonia, to really feel
the, I don't know, depth of their relationship and the
weight of their dynamic. She had them, like, argue with
one another at length and and build up all of these different
resentments and and whatnot that they would have had for one
another. That would lead Bayla to seem
kind of casually haughty and Rayna, like, she kind of always
got the short end of the stick. And like they would just feel
this, this dynamic between them and I did feel that, which is
what made me want so much more of seeing than like snipping at
each other. See, I wanted more conversation
and less of Raina, just in thought.
But I did Phoebe Campbell, they did definitely show how
dissatisfied Reyna was with this situation.
I think, like, I think they did a good job at showing it.
And I felt for them. I felt for Reyna very much.
Same, same. They were not wanting to be
sidelined and well, the duty was the duty.
The sacrifice is the sacrifice. The moment when Ranieri was
presenting this mission to her, she's really hoping that she's
she'll just be on board with it. You know, she's like, please
volunteer for this. And her response is like, yes,
Queen, I'll do what you're making me.
You know I can't. Promise to make you happy, but
this is really she's. Dutiful.
She doesn't tell Reynira she's unhappy with it.
Yeah, yeah. But she does let on to her
sister. But she is clearly like she does
what she's told. And that's the one of the other
things they talked about is how Bayla is kind of the rebel in
the relationship and it kind of irks her, needles at her that
she gets rewarded. She gets the dragon, she gets to
do everything and and Reign is the one who has to go be
nursemaid to these kids. I didn't even catch that.
That's kind of a parallel between Allison to Renera,
right? Allison feels like I'm doing
everything I'm supposed to do, and she's running around
breaking the rules. She gets to be queen, you know?
You see that? It's a big absolutely parallel
here. I wrote several other ones
alongside Allison and Rainier as a parallel to them.
It's also Robert and Stannis are similar.
Robert was very loose and easy and great at fighting.
He doesn't have a dragon, but he's got kind of the equivalent
of an inborn dragon. He's a way better, a way better
word than Stannis. Stannis was none of those
things. He's not loose, not easy, not
great at fighting, you know, not great with talking to people.
Yeah. So the rule breaker versus the
guy that does what he wants. Everything works out for him
until it until it doesn't. Ditto Jamie and Cersei, though
really neither of them are big on rules.
The point is, Cersei says if she had a sword or was a man, she
would get away with the things Jamie does, etcetera.
And technically Bail is the older one.
So it is kind of the, you know, the the older, the older sibling
gets everything in the society like this, that vibe is there as
well. Let's talk about Drift.
Mark Rainey's brings dinner to her husband, reminding us that
they are one of the few reasonably functional couples in
the entire story. This set wasn't planned for
rain. They were not supposed to film
the scene in the rain necessarily.
It just kind of happened and they just, you know, went with
it. You know, it's, it's an island,
things would happen. Why not just hey, it's rain.
It's funny 'cause this is supposed to be a dry dock and
it's, you know, that's, that's not literally dry.
It just means that it's a place where ships are built on land.
But it was very much not dry. It was a wet dock and it was
huge. It's an enormous set.
There's very little green screen in this thing.
The only stuff that CGI is the stuff way in the distance.
Like none of the what's on screen now is all practical.
That's all real. Only the like horizon and the
buildings in the far distance are green screen.
So it's it's really big. And that says something because
there's also the massive set Harrenhal, the massive Red Keep
and there's just so many huge sets for the show.
Corley's refers to Rainier, his lack of action as well.
He's also like wondering when they're going to get to it.
He said he calls them the Ditherers of Dragonstone.
Rainey's doesn't mention that she's one of the ones arguing
for the delay, but that's 'cause she's got another thing she was
talking about. She also doesn't remember again,
she also doesn't expect the last ditch attempt to work just so
there's no point in her arguing with him about it.
But she presses him on the matter of Drift Mark and he's
kind of changed his tune. It's kind of annoying her.
I think he was fine giving Drift Mark to Luke and Luke was like,
I don't know anything about ships.
I get seasick. But, you know, he just, that was
the situation. But when it comes to giving it
to his younger brother, who's the same, he's like, I don't
want to do that, you know, or Reyna, who he's like, I don't
want to do that either. I'm like, but what's the
difference here? What's the problem?
He doesn't have a straight answer.
And she's like, well, what are you going to do?
Those are the only two options. She's like, we'll figure it out.
She's like, what do you mean we'll figure it out?
What the hell are you talking about?
But he leaves. So like, the discussion's over.
So yeah, let me get your take on this one.
Sean, what do you think is going on here?
This, this whole, like, Driftmark plot?
Is this really, really hiding some stuff here?
They're really keeping there's some unresolved things going on,
huh? I feel like Reyna should
definitely be it for multiple reasons.
One, the actual Valerian bloodline, if there's any
concern for that, she has it, right?
And two, they're trying to buck this idea.
If it has to be a male that inherits, well, you have this
woman that can like, I can't believe that Corliss is even
like wavering in any way about this.
And never mind the fact that like she's like, we don't have
to. You're about to go off the war.
If you die, then what do we do? Like, that's the whole, that's
like this whole dilemma comes from that, right?
Like that. It's just, this is just like a
smaller version for the Valerian House.
But that's the whole dilemma going on with the Targaryen
House, right? Yep.
He's just making the same mistake as Thesaurus, except
maybe even worse by not even. Maybe it's better by not even
decided at all. Maybe that means Rainey's does
get decided if he dies and it and I don't know, but it it
definitely seemed like he was being inexplicably
uncooperative. Like maybe he doesn't want to
face the reality of it or something, you know?
I don't know. Maybe he's got some other idea
up his sleeve or something. I don't know.
Maybe. All right, let's talk about the
Riverlands. We talked about the Burning Mill
a bit already, but there's some more things to say, of course.
The first of all, the Riverland. Why is the Riverland so
important? Well, it's been brought up by
both sides as the most important region for several reasons.
Part of that is simply that so many of the other regions have
already decided for one side or another, so they're just, it's
settled, at least for now. The Veil is marching for the
blacks, so it's the North. The West is for the Greens, most
of the Reach is too, but not all of it, as Allison and Otto
discussed regarding, you know, with regard to the Tyrells and
all that. So that's that's a developing
situation. But most of the Reach seems to
be for the Greens. The Crown lands.
Well, that's about to be fought over.
It looks like Cole is headed to some nearby Crown lands houses
with his plan. Now, Baratheon's a little
interesting because they're for the Greens, but there's no word.
They don't mention that there's troops massing or troops on the
marsh. It just doesn't mention which is
like that's and they should have a tighter connection than most
of these because there's a marriage alliance.
There's a Amond Baratheon marriage already.
Well, betrothal. It's not a marriage yet.
Iron Isles is up in the air, but no one's going to go there to
fight over it because it's so far away, so remote.
You know, maybe a dragon could go there and burn it.
But Dalton Greyjoy has been mentioned.
So you know, that is a thing. It remains to be seen what role
the the Iron Isles will have in the show, but we do discuss the
red Kraken, Dalton Greyjoy in a separate episode, scripted
episode with Radio Westeros that's available to patrons and
subscribers. So both of them talk about all
these things, the river lands that makes that not only are
they in in the center, which can enable them to maybe cut off
some of the other armies, but they're the closest to King's
Landing and they're undeclared. So they must be claimed.
It's it's a huge amount of soldiers up in the air.
Yeah, I was going to say being in the Sinner is is very
important because if the Lannisters want to bring their
armies across to King's Landing, well, they got to pass through
the river lands, right? Almost any army that needs to
move from one territory to another has to cross through
there. So either being stopped, you
know, having to fight their way through there versus facilitated
on the way through there is huge.
Yeah, it's very huge. Yeah.
Like, for example, if the Greens controlled the Riverlands, the
North wouldn't be able to get their troops through or the
Veil, they'd have to either take ship or something like that.
So if they So the contrast is if they do control the Riverlands,
they've got an easy time bringing those troops through
and maybe bringing them all together which.
Is surely the West your troops from coming?
Yeah. And cutting them off from King's
Landing. So it's a really big deal.
This this is you can you can understand strategically why
both sides have reached a similar, if not nearly identical
conclusion. Now, here's a funny thing about
the numbers. Damon mentions that there's
40,000 swords in the Riverland. That's considerably more than A
Song of Ice and Fire, but there's a sensible and simple
explanation for it. Robber's Rebellion was 20, less
than 20 years before the beginning of A Song of Ice and
Fire. A lot of people died in that.
And at this point in history, not only has there not been a
war in the Riverlands for a long time, not since Megor fought
some faith in there, and which wasn't nearly as bad as the War
of 5 Kings, there was the Golden age of Targaryen rule, Jaharis
and Alicean. That we're not that far removed
from where the Riverlands prospered, probably as much as
it had in probably 1000 years given all the war-torn eras that
came before it and ruled by other kingdoms.
So that's why they're so strong right now.
There's also the strong possibility that the numbers are
being inflated. Like, you know, if it's 37,035
thousand, they're going to round up to to 40.
Like they they well. Sure.
But that would be true for all the regions.
So that's I don't know if that probably just comes out in the
wash, but anyway, it remains to be seen.
And of course people will die in the process, But it's that's a
lot of soldiers that one side doesn't want the other side to
have and would certainly like to have on theirs.
People like iron rod and Sir Simon point out that the black
woods and brackets will use any excuse to fight each other, and
it's hard to argue that this creates compelling
responsibility for a would be ruler.
Ranira learned that just saying I want Prince Aymond that was
went horribly wrong for her. She did not intend for that kid
to be killed over that, but she nevertheless she takes part
responsibility for it. We have the same thing here.
This is Blackwood kid who is named Davos apparently.
And a little word on that, it's Davos Blackwood and Aaron
Bracken according to the subtitles.
But Ryan Condall told us in the interview that we did.
So y'all may have heard this already, but for the rest of
you, and this bears repeating anyway, they don't give names to
a lot of these characters. They didn't name William
Blackwood and Gerald Blackwood in season one, those two that
fought each other and and the kid killed bigger bracken guy.
They did not give them names. A different part of the show
team like the marketing department somebody gave them
names and Ryan's like Oh well we didn't do that because they
don't want to give names that conflict with cannon.
This is their way to just kind of dodge that.
So at least these are names that aren't used.
So they're just this is just some other brother or some other
cousin. That's fine.
It's not a big change. It's it's a we were.
People are annoyed more when they take an existing character
and use them differently, which they didn't seem to do here.
There's definitely difference between book and show version of
of this battle, but the results pretty much the same in terms of
how it's going to affect the greater picture.
If I remember right, the context of what Ryan Condell said was
not not just that they don't want to like disrupt established
Canon, but they want to keep their options open for future
Canon, like new shows they make later.
They might want to be able to say this or that person was this
or that person's ancestor battle, whatever.
So they don't want to pigeonhole themselves by naming them now if
they don't have to, so. Good point.
So the Blackwood kid Davos, he calls Egon no true king while
his equivalent Aaron Bracken says Rainier is a baby killer.
So they're already like arguing over the blacks and greens and
using it as leverage to restart their own fight that even they
don't remember what started it. And it's it's good detail here.
Remember what's said at council? Not just at council in the green
council, but at Harrenhal when the mention of Grover Tully
comes up. Yes, that's another muppet
Tully, Grover Tully. They're they talk about how he's
his his vassals aren't obeying him.
And what does Davos Blackwood hearsay?
He's like F the ass eyes because Bracken's like, well, the ass
eyes at river run. He's like F the ass eye like so
he's basically saying that he's like, I don't care what the what
Lord Tully says. We're not, you know, this is
that disobedience. Of course, starting a fight is a
bigger act of disobedience, but it goes to show that the little
bits of disobedience of we're there to to set up this bigger
act of disobedience. And I like how that's very
consistent throughout greens and blacks and just the way the
metaphors are used. It's interesting too.
It comes up later. Damon hasn't heard of it.
He's like blackens and brackets hate each other.
He's like, whoa, you're like the one guy who hasn't heard of this
man. But it's I like it.
He's just, he's a Targaryen. That's just in his bubble and
doesn't give a crap about the history of Westeros.
He's deeply rooted in Targaryen history, but he doesn't care
about history of the Riverlands or history of the Veil.
That's none of that. This goes right past him, but
it's kind of shocking to hear that he doesn't know anything
about. He's like, why do they hate each
other? It's like he hasn't even heard
of this conflict. He not only does he and many
Targans live in ivory tower, but he went to live in ivory tower
on another continent Even so. Yeah, yeah, right.
It's more like a, it's closer to an Obsidian tower, really.
But hey, you know, same difference, same point.
So I love that. Yeah, it's really good job with
this and I'm curious where it will go.
Let's go to Harrenhal. Let's let's go nearby the
Burning Mill over to Harrenhal. How freaking cool was this
landing scene, the flight in darkness through the clouds with
the approach over the Isle of Faces and all those shots.
Just super cool, right, Sean? This was really awesome, wasn't
it? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
The I, I got to say that was that that the perspective of
Damon looking down his dragon at the castle beneath him.
That's I don't know, I'd like I just I believe he's riding a
dragon. I don't know how else to say,
you know, like they they're, they're coming at it from all
different angles. It's I, I feel like in the past,
they it it's been coming along for a few years, special effects
and camera work and everything, but just more than ever.
It they don't have to. I don't know how to say it's
like fudge anything. They don't have to like show
them get in a saddle and in it that for now on the cuts are
always right from the chest up. You see you see every angle from
every direction fully. You know, it's really they're,
they've immersed the Dragons into reality.
Yeah, it's fantastic. There's lots of history here.
Damon is repeating some history or or or at least channeling it.
Valerian when he burned in Heron Hall with Aegon as his writer.
You're making it about Valerian, not Aegon.
Came at night as well. He attacked at night to make it
harder for them to shoot at him. Smart play.
And the first tower he burned is King's fire tower and it was
called that because the King was in the tower when it was burned.
King Heron. And well, that's where he lands.
He lands on King's fire tower to arrive to announce his arrival.
And it's like, yeah, OK, that's not symbolic.
Another dragon landing on the very place where the king
landed. And he's maybe not quite as
dangerous, but in some ways maybe is more dangerous.
And it's depicted in the intro crawl.
We've talked about it quite a lot of history of Westeros.
This is a pretty big moment. The the burning of Harrenhal and
Aegon's Conquest, all that. But as he's walking around the
castle, he gets down. No one's there.
No one's no one confronts him. He's walking around with his
sword and the behind the scenes it said that he wants a fight,
like he's looking for a fight. He's almost disappointed that it
was so easy. And he comes up on the spot
where the great Council was. And that's a really great
moment. He's looking out over the over
the railing there. And it's it's right before that
trailer shot. We've seen how much time for the
lights coming through and he's he's kind of moved.
He stares at it for a minute. He looks at it.
He's probably remembering what happened and how important that
moment was. There's also how strong banners,
you can barely see them on either side there.
That's dark and so you can't see the color that would be present.
And how strong has the the colors of the Trident, the
blue-green and red, kind of like your shirt there, Sean, but
you've got yellow instead of and that's Star Trek, not the
Trident. But hey, close enough Star Trek.
How strong? Pretty.
Similar. They both have s s Yeah, yeah.
It's also worth noting those banners are part of probably the
discoloration is from being burned.
Like the edges look black and frayed, there's probably soot
and such on them from probably the fire that Laura started,
right? Yeah, good point, Good point.
Yeah. And there's echo Y sounds.
There's. It's supposed to be ghostly, and
you're supposed to get a sense of why the place is considered
cursed. There's a flight of bats, which
is pretty cool. That's the sigil of House
Lofton, who will be the next house to rule after the
Strong's. And they have a sigil?
Yeah, they have a single bat as their sigil.
And then the house that rules after the Lostons is the Wentz
and they have 9 bats as their sigil because they were
household Knights of the Lostons.
There's weirwood roots growing in various places inside.
We did confirm those are weirwood roots.
It's just that the heart tree is expanded enough to to
breakthrough the castle and and all that.
And note to weirwood itself, it's stretching towards the Isle
of Faces. Shout out to Glidus, I know a
few people caught this, but he's the first one I saw to catch
this. That it looks like it's reaching
towards it's, it's others, it's it's community, it's it's
networked over there on the Isle.
That's a great catch and a great thing for them to have put in.
You know, Game of Thrones and George Martin in general is
thought of as sort of this fantasy drama adventure, which
it is. But I think if you're going to
put another attached to the next qualifying genre on there and to
Martins writings in general, it's probably horror, maybe
mystery, mystery and horror, and I think both those were
demonstrated well in this cinematography, like it seemed
like this was spooky or wait for something to jump out of the
corner for their moms to be there.
Damons a little scared, even if maybe it's confident, ready for
battle, but it's this isn't what he was expecting.
Does that make sense? This sort of like dark abandoned
raining hallways and. And sure enough, it gets a
little bit more specifically haunting in the next scene or
one of the next couple scenes. But.
Yeah, the only other time he's probably been here is during the
Great Council and that's when like all the Lords of the realm
were there so it would not have had this vibe of being empty
and. In fact, it was almost like a
city cause all the Lords and their entourages, there was like
10s of thousands of people maybe had converged on Harrenhal for
that. And now it's just this empty,
abandoned. And that does also add, I didn't
even think about that. But it adds to his how
perplexity is by how abandoned and fallen the the state of
disrepair that it's in is the term they used, you know?
That's why one of the things I like so much about this spooky
Harrenhal sequence was that there was kind of an under an
undercurrent of of humor actually in it.
And that he's like waiting and thinks it's all spooky and then
he gets in there and it's just like his family at at dinner.
So Simon and he just like speaks to him and he's just kind of
like underwhelming and like, so there's just like, I found it
humorous. It's so mundane.
He's like, yeah, this place is creepy, but we're normal.
Yeah, we're just having dinner and I'm not going to fight you.
I mean, look at you. You.
You have that armor. You have a dragon.
Like, what am I? I'm an old guy.
Like, I'm not going to fight you.
Come on. So yeah, he says I'm claiming
Haranol. And they're like, it would
appear so it's like you want some paint peas.
So it's so it is funny. Yeah.
So it's like, sorry about that. Yeah.
And part of the reason this this scene is so funny is you got
some really talented actors going to work here.
This is Sir Simon Russell Beale, who our friend Robert, AKA in
Deep Geek. A lot of y'all have seen his
videos. Very popular channel.
We write videos for his channel as well.
He told me that just today actually, that Sir Simon Russell
Beale is like the guy in England for theater, for stage acting.
He's like a generational talent OR is recognized as such for in
the Shakespearean circles and all that.
So a this, there's got to be more of him.
They didn't one off him here. And of course, why would they?
It looks like there's clearly more to come in this Harrenhal
B. That's part of why the scene is
so good. The dialogue is so good.
You got just some some extreme talent going here, someone who
really knows their business. And it yeah, it is a great
scene. He he, he nails nails.
He kneels his sons kneel with him.
But Alice Rivers done doesn't not.
She walks in and kind of gives a look and he looks back at her
and then just kind of looks back and is ignores her for the
meantime. We'll come back to her in a
minute. Let's talk about Alice Rivers
separately. He points out how damp the place
is and he's and, and and that's really important and apparent.
It's like, oh, yeah, well, that's that's true.
He says, well, your kin is Lars strong.
Like, how am I supposed to feel about this?
Like, oh, that dude Clubfoot, he's no Lord of mine.
That's a pretty convincing repudiation, wasn't it, Sean?
It was and the first watch I noticed that he, he, there was a
pause when he asked about it. Right.
And remember too, I was already wondering, like everyone's
heading to Heron Hall, but the Lord of Heron Hall is at the red
key on the side of the black. Doesn't he have any say or, or
opinion or control or anything over this?
And, and it seems like maybe not me.
He's too caught up in the intrigue of the, the, of the,
the, the, the Capitol and the war pending then this, this
house that he inherited, which maybe isn't his ambition in the
1st place. And maybe he'll get to it
eventually. I'm curious exactly what he
thinks about that, what what's going on at least in with his
hopes or intentions. But.
But whatever they are, he doesn't.
He's not connected. He doesn't seem he's too
physically far apart and doesn't seem to be.
I haven't heard any stories of him sending Ravens or control or
this guy seems to have disdain for him.
So when Damon first asks him, pauses a moment and and Damon
says something to the effect of, you know, you know, he's sitting
on that false council da, da, da.
And then Simon speaks up and lays in Doloris.
And the first time I thought that he was holding back because
he wanted to make sure he didn't say the wrong thing to Damon.
He want to make sure he knew what side Damon was on.
And once Damon would seem to be against him.
OK, I'm against him too. But when you watch it a second
time, I feel like he was going to say all that no matter what.
He was just waiting. He didn't want to interrupt, but
he's just waiting for a chance to talk.
Yeah. He seemed pretty genuine about
his frustration with Laurie's and maybe would have been a
little more tactful if he thought that Damon was on the
other side. But I think he was going to make
it clear that he didn't respect or trust that guy at May, maybe
him in at the risk of his own life, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, I think also him referring
to Laurie's clubfoot speaks to the the sense that Lares might
feel from his family that he is not maybe beloved and I don't
know, but I, I, I would guess that I would guess that Simon
would have called him Clubfoot even before he killed his father
and brother is my point. That's entirely possible.
Yeah, that's entirely possible. Maybe that's part of why Loris
didn't have as much trouble doing it.
He already felt like, screw all those people, they don't respect
me. Maybe.
Maybe he's, well, murdered them. It does give a little extra
credit to his, his arson guy for starting getting the fire going
and all that. You know, it's like, boy, that
arson guy is good, maybe. That's what he's in jail.
For Yeah, well, maybe that's why they should have kept him there,
because he's already burned down to big ones, you know, So it's
it's it's pretty convincing. Like I said, you seem to agree,
but Damon's taking no chances. He refers to how easy it would
be to kill a dragon rider with poison.
At this point in Targaryen history, we don't know anyone
who was killed by poison, except maybe Amy's.
But that's that's only a possibility.
And it's definitely not even. Yeah, it wasn't even necessarily
poison that killed him. It's not clear, but there's no
obvious example of some being killed by poison.
So, yeah, you could read that a certain way.
That could be foreshadowing or it could just be common sense
because, yeah, common killing someone with a dragon, that
seems easier than trying to kill the dragon, especially in
battle. I love this overhead shot of the
dining room table. Really cool.
It kind of shows the distance between them and just the
emptiness of the place and just how much extra space there is.
And just, it just looks cool. And it is a little bit of visual
storytelling as well. Damon tells Sir Simon he wants
to repair the castle and make it fit for armies to gather and
eventually take the throne. And he's like, oh, wow, that's
pretty ambitious, but OK. It's that it's it's interesting
the whole your Grace thing. What did you read into that?
Sean? He wants to be called your
Grace. And it's not normal for the King
Consort to be called Your Grace. So is this him being what
Rainier has said or is this him just wielding extra authority
because of the the bits about, oh, well, we're all
disorganized. We, you know, we're in
disrepair. They're ignoring their Liege
Lord. Is, is, is or is?
Maybe a little of both. It might be a little of both,
kind of like I said before, I think that that Damon is, you
know, acting on behalf of Ranira because it lets him have more
power. But if she doesn't, if he'll do
things she doesn't want, he'll he'll he'll do whatever she
wants and whatever she doesn't want, all in her names.
That makes sense. Like he, I did think that.
I did think that it was very hypocritical when Simon called
him my Prince and he corrected him to your Grace and he's like,
well I just assumed since Ranira is the queen that I would call.
He said, well, that's the peril of assumption.
Well, what should he have done if he had called you your Grace
in the 1st place? That also would have been an
assumption and more of an assumption that you easily could
have chastised him for also. So I feel like this is also
Damon being a bully in addition to being a hypocrite and
basically seizing more power. It's it's all the things about
him that frustrate me. We're all happening here.
One other thing, as much as I overall wanted to like overall
did love the scene, the performance, everything, the
writing, but I wanted to like Simon Strong there because he
seemed understand the potential danger.
I think he like walked the exact right line of not just being a
total coward. Does that make sense?
They would have lost respect from Damon if he'd been like,
don't kill me, please. You know, like I think he knew
that he needed to be lordly but also be subservient.
And I think he did a really good job.
And so I was starting to like this guy.
And it also makes sense. Maybe he's not.
He's a lot of sorts mad that Loris killed his family members,
but also it's insulting by comic Club Fit rubbed me the wrong way
a little, but he was also a little too happy to call Damon
Your grace. I feel like he's like, oh, cool,
good. We're going to have a man as a
king, Renee or is not really the queen, you'll be the king.
That seemed to be what I was getting from their interchange
and. I didn't get that.
That's interesting.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I definitely did not get it that
way. He just, I thought he was
playing along like, OK, you're you're Grace now.
I didn't read anything extra. That's interesting though.
I suppose a little of both for him also.
Yeah, yeah. So definitely more to come
there. It's really interesting.
One other thing about the scene that I thought was notable and
very subtle is that he points out how the Bracken Blackwood
conflict happens in part because Lord Grover Tully doesn't have
control over his vassals. Just like Lord Jasper Iron Rod
is going to point out the same thing because he's sick and
infirm. This upsets Damon a little bit
because people did the same thing to his brother.
They were like they were, they didn't do what they were
supposed to do. They were a little slack.
They kind of got away with things while the saris was sick,
especially Otto, especially while he was on Milk of the
Poppy, things like that. So Damon is very sensitive to
that whole thing is like, they should still obey even when he's
sick. And so that's it's like, yeah, I
thought that was pretty cool. Like under the radar, like
sneaky little. That's the kind of thing that's
going to annoy Damon. And he was already, kind of,
he's already annoyed. Yeah, both in general he's
worried about, I don't know, his his brother's legacy or the
respect brother God or didn't get.
But also very specifically his brother said Rener is the queen.
Yes, that's why are we even having this war.
He should have listened to what the king said.
Just because he's sick doesn't mean that not to listen to him.
Very good point. Yeah, Let's talk about the
dream. The dream was very cool.
And it begins so mundane, like he's just a dude in his room
that's annoyed by all the dripping.
It really is a very good way to fool us into thinking he's
awake. Like, did not see the dream part
coming until it's really obvious that it's a dream, Like, until
it's really not a dream, until it obviously is.
You know, maybe you could figure it out by the weird thing with
the feet and the shaking of the door.
But I I just thought it was clever how they built that up
and then all of a sudden you're like, whoa, Millie Alcock, what
the hell? And she's they were going the
haunted direction. You know, I thought that was
going to be the ghost of. Ghost of Fair enough.
Strong or something you know? Burning ghosts, Yeah, Arya talks
about burning ghosts when she's there.
That's that's something that Old Nan tells her about.
Technically it's fiery spirits, but same thing burning ghosts,
right? And she accuses him.
Wait, hold on. We backing up?
Did you did you have an immediate guess as to who who
might that be? Or are we just like, who is
that? Or was it just too quick for you
to even think about it? I thought it was Emma.
I thought it was his. I thought it was Emma at first,
which not Emma Darcy. I mean Emma Aaron Viserus wife.
Yeah, as he was coming up from behind, I, I mean, I just
thought it was going to be some other resident of the council,
you know, maybe a, a Princess or a chambermaid or, you know, it
didn't occur to me that it was going to be a significant
figure. I was, I was going to say a
minute ago, like I've heard the name Alice Rivers, but I didn't
know that was Alice Rivers in that that room a moment ago.
Yeah, Alice Rivers with black hair that tells him he's going
to die there. Yeah.
So she accuses him. It's a very.
It's like his subconscious speaking to him.
It's really well done. It's it's efficient.
It tells speaks directly to what's on his mind and what he
should feel guilty about. I think she accused.
She says you're always cleaning, you're always leaving and make
and I'm left behind to clean up your messes.
And she's sewing Prince Jerry's neck back on And he is he is
stunned. He's moved.
He's he feels guilty. I think it looks like that all
these emotions. And it's like also the moment
you realize it's clearly a dream.
And he also, and behind the scenes reveals that's when he,
the Damon, realizes it's a dream too.
I think they were already looking for a shook.
He was. Shook.
Yeah, he was very shook. So he comes to while staring at
the heart tree, which is another just wow, 'cause we all
associate dreaming with heart trees.
So that's just a really cool moment.
Somehow he's already set his sword down.
It's sitting there leaning on the root to his left and which
indicates sleepwalking, I guess. He looks genuinely afraid.
He's looking around like, what the hell just happened?
He's outdoors. And like, she comes up, Alice
Rivers walks out and says, you will die in this place.
And he looks afraid. And this is a man that didn't
look afraid at all when soloing 100 pirates, you know?
So that really says something that he's shook here.
What do you think, Sean? Is Alice Rivers saying telling
the truth, that he's going to die there?
I mean, I I don't know what makes her think she knows that,
but I don't think it's a wild guess to make, right?
Maybe she has an actual prophetic ability that she's
seen of it. But also it's just a safe guess.
Like he's someone putting himself in harm's way.
Wars on the way armies are meeting at this strategic
location, you know, like it's a. When she said in this place, she
meant Westeros. You will die.
In this. Country in this world.
Big enough to. You are not a more.
Lands might have been, you know. Yeah, so.
So that is Alice Rivers on screen there.
Yeah. Sean, you, you don't know hardly
anything about her. We'll save.
We'll talk about her more later because it would be hard to keep
it unspoilery without saying more about her.
But a few things we can say is that she's played by GAIL
Rankin, veteran actress that's been in shows like Glow Rivers
means she's a bastard, right? A Bachelor of the Riverlands may
be of how strong and in the book that suggests, but even the book
isn't sure. So it's another one of the
things where the sources aren't clear on her on her heritage or
how old she is. So it's kind of neat.
There's a little bit of mystery around her and very curious to
see how the show handles the rest of her.
Any any other comments before we move on?
Quick, I don't know, joke. I would have put more in her
prophecy if rather than saying you will die in this place, she
said you will die this season. That would have meant more to
me. Yeah, I think if you are looking
for more talk on Alice Rivers, you're going to want to tune in,
especially on our Saturday stream or preview stream when we
can talk spoilers, because I just think it's going to be so
hard for us to speculate much without dealing with that.
But no, she is very much unknown.
Like there's a lot of directions they go with her.
So even as book readers, we're a little a little unclear on on
some details. Like she could be the bastard
half sister, for example, of Laurice and Harwin, but she
might not be. She might not be.
We don't know for sure right now.
And so that's pretty cool. It's possible the show will
decide to tell us that like they sometimes the show weighs in on
things like that, but this is one of those ones.
What I would not assume that in other spots they kind of need
to, but not necessarily this one.
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historywesteros.com. Couple of questions from y'all.
Hannibal the Dragon says why didn't she send any of her
children to Winterfell or hide out at the Wall?
If, you know, Dragons can't go beyond the Wall, that's a safe
place. Yeah.
I mean, look, right here does the same thing that makes the
same decision. Like that's an ally up the
North. She could have leveraged that
she doesn't leverage. And maybe that would have been
safer to hide them up there. Maybe she just doesn't know.
She wants to go somewhere. That's that she's experienced.
I mean, she didn't go to Pentos, but she has, yeah.
I don't know it's it would have been a good choice, but I think
she wanted to keep them maybe more in contact or more raised
in a place that's got more similar culture.
But it would have would have been a fine option.
But we're not told why we're not, we're not given some sort
of like decision process where she pros and cons all the
different locations that they that they could go.
I can imagine one reason might be it's just farther away.
It would take longer to get there, longer to retrieve them,
longer to get messages about them and maybe just we have
heard a couple hints of winter coming so might not be safe for
a baby in that cold weather. Again, maybe she still should
have, but there's a little I do see reason why she did it.
You know, yeah, that would be my thought.
Well, that would be my thought is that she doesn't want to send
them up north and it's harder to get up there.
It would take longer. A lot of details with that.
But also, I think if if she had a conversation with people about
this, where she talked about like, we'll hear our options,
what should we do? And that had been like a topic
between her and some folks. Maybe Jace would have suggested
it and maybe it would have happened.
But I don't think she even, I don't think it was ever a
conversation where she was like, well, let's what should I do?
She just decided to do this. And I don't know.
Yeah, I can even imagine her not having a conversation similar to
going trying to sneak in to speak to Allison.
She might not want that many people to have the knowledge of
where she sent her kids in the dragon eggs.
You might want to keep that under wraps.
But it seems like Jace is a safe person to tell, right?
Yeah. And once they do, it was a
pretty public exodus that they made.
There's, there were like 20 people there that know about it.
So I don't know, can't really expect to keep that much of A
secret, adding to my concern for their safety.
Another good aspect there is that Curtis Franks points out
that she has family in the veil. She's related to the errands,
you know, her mother, Emma. Erin was an Erin, so there's a
slight familial connection why she might feel that hurricane is
safest with, you know, some relatives.
Good point, Buttercup Bravo says the girls not being out to see
are partially on him here, him being Corley's.
They never show Laina or Laina are actually going out either.
So it's strange. Well, Laina and Lainor, well,
Lainor does sail that is he, he, we don't see him doing it, but
he's it's, it's, it's spoken of. He definitely sails.
Lena just loved to fly. So she just maybe wasn't much of
A sailor because she had Veigar. I mean, I don't know, I
wouldn't, I probably wouldn't sail a whole lot either if I had
a dragon. And that's kind of the same with
Joffrey and Luke, but not the same with Reyna, who explicitly
doesn't have a dragon. So yeah, they could be now in a
in a time of peace. It's a bigger problem now
they've they've been so close to the edge of war here for a
while. Like, when do they have time for
just sailing, just to learn how to sail?
Corleiss has been rather busy and he's been recovering from
his like, horrible injury and his ship is broken.
He doesn't have time for that. He did.
He did it before, but he doesn't anymore.
He also could appoint someone to do it.
Yeah true, and they being at war might be all the more reason to
get ready and learn and train. Like Eamon has a dragon.
But he studied history and philosophy and the sword like,
and it wasn't Visaras teaching him right.
Like you can have other people teaching the kids all these
things that they need to learn about.
If you, you know, it's it, I feel like it is, it's it's it's
irresponsible and or sexist of, of Coralies to have not prepared
these girls or kids or whatever for their roles, you know.
I mean, I would say it would it's sexist with you, except
that he didn't seem to do it to the Valerian boys either.
It's just irresponsible. It's.
Just irresponsible, not not purely sexist.
Well, and if we want to argue in his case here, he's like, well,
am I going to make someone a sailor who doesn't want to be?
Like, if they're not interested in sailing, I can't make them
be. It's not something you just you
force them into it. That's not going to make them a
sailor. You can put them on a boat,
they're not going to be. Well, we could have had a scene
in this scene, Corley could have said I tried and they didn't
take to it. They got sick every time.
Well, Josh, yeah, that's there. Or maybe with Reyna, not with
Joffrey though, 'cause he's like six years old.
And there are plenty of examples of fathers pushing their kids
into things they don't want to do, and they become good at it.
Anyway, right. But he's not their father.
They're they're not his kids. Yeah, I agree with you.
Otherwise, like if it was his own kids, he would definitely be
putting them out to sea 'cause they're Valerians.
Like, yeah, you got to go. I like, as I said, Lenor was a
sailor, even though he was a dragon rider.
He might have forced it on Lena if it weren't for the fact that
he had a son already that was going to inherit anyway.
Let's move on. Bill Sotherby says why is it not
normal? All the Queens who marry the
kings are called your Grace. Why is it different?
I don't know it it should they you're you're right.
You make a good point. Like Cersei was called your
grace. She's the queen by marriage, not
the, you know, not the the queen sitting on the throne.
So it's just not customary. It's it's maybe it isn't.
Maybe it is sexist or maybe it's or in not sexist, but implied
misogyny within the the culture because, well, he's never seen a
king consort before when there hasn't been one.
There's literally not been one in his lifetime or the entire
history of the Iron Throne. So he just, he just got it
wrong, I think. So maybe I was wrong.
I should have said it was not normal.
Yeah, I guess it probably is normal or there is no normal.
I guess it's even more accurate. There is no normal for that.
So he's like, yeah, you should be calling me your Grace.
And he might be right. He's probably is right based on
that, you know, for keeping it even.
Like, yeah, if the woman is your grace, then why isn't, you know,
they should both be your grace when they're the the secondary,
the lower ranked half of the couple, whether they're king or
queen. Anyway, Yeah.
Good call, Bill Sotherby. Maybe there's at least as much
an implication that Aegon or Allison are not Your Grace.
It's me, Me and Renera, OK. Yeah, 'cause in a, in a society
where there's no Queens, no ruling Queens, your grace to a
woman would never imply they're in charge, but it would to the
man. If you're saying it to the man,
you're saying, oh, you're in charge.
No, my wife is in charge, but I'm just, I don't know if that's
it. It's just one possibility.
Before we move on, Curtis Frank says in the UK the consort to a
queen, Regnan is a Prince because kings always outrank
Queens. Oh, interesting.
OK, All right, well, as we can, as we know, real world systems
are not identical to each other. King and Queen don't mean the
same thing in every country or Prince or Princess or yeah,
inheritance laws. And the real world can be just
as sexist as Martin's fantasy world, so.
In fact, it's based on that. Yeah, you're right.
It's based on real the real world version.
You know, one quick thing before we move on you.
You gave a shout out to my Star Trek shirt a minute ago.
What about your shirt disease? Oh yeah, I've got a cool button
down Blackwood shirt. Shay.
I got this for me. It's pretty.
Nice for you, really. You got it for me.
Well, I designed it for you and printed it for you.
I didn't like, you know, I made it for.
You yes, you did make it for me. Yes, yes, she did design it.
I also have she also made me a Golden Company one and a
Lannister 1. So I got I got the skulls and I
got the lions. And you have a greens and blacks
one. Oh yeah, Targaryen greens and
blacks. That's right, I forgot about
that one. I should wear it again soon,
Blue Fleur says. Alice wasn't eating at the
table, was she? No, she was not.
She walked in after they had already stood up from the table
and knelt and then she came in and just stood there and gave
gave Damon a stare. And then she wasn't there when
they're eating after she's gone. Yeah, she left.
Yeah, interesting and mysterious like her.
Let's go to King's Landing. We start in King's Landing much
earlier in the episode, but with Kristen Cole looking down.
And it was a trailer shot and it was like what, what, what are we
looking down at? Studying a map or what?
They cut away from Eric and Arc's grave just as we moved to
this. So it makes it look like he's
looking into their grave. And that in this sense gives him
responsibility for the ACT as well, which kind of neat a
little camera trick there perhaps.
But in the moment, he's not thinking about Eric Arc.
Probably in reality, he's just who knows?
He's got a lot of weight on his shoulders now.
I don't feel bad for him. But it is like from a human
perspective, anybody, even a guy like Kristen is going to be
like, wow, I got a lot going on. I'm I'm about to go right out to
war. You know, I've got this dark
secret. You know I'm.
Whoa, lots going on here. I got the impression he was
thinking about Eric and Eric a bit.
He was still haunted by like that.
That that's what I. Got totally valid, yeah.
I think he was thinking at least partly about that, but I think
you think about a lot of things. I think he's I think he's
overwhelmed, you know, I think he's maybe thinking of mistakes
and regrets that he has, but also I think he's got to pull
himself together to go be the freaking hand of the King.
And he I think he kind of knows he's not ready for the, he
didn't ask that. He wasn't like manipulative like
Loris, right? He wasn't angling to be Hand of
the King. And now suddenly he is.
And I think he's a little overwhelmed with it.
I think he feels obliged to try to do a good job.
But I think he's, yeah, he, I think he's overwhelmed with the
mistakes that he's made and, and the decisions that are out in
front of him. You know, you're so right, Sean,
'cause I, I got that impression too, that he was nervous,
anxious about this big, big first hand of the king meeting.
And especially because he's, you know, common, he's lower born.
He's not from a super high nobility house that the Coles
and he's Dornish. And we've talked a bit about it.
I don't know if we've talked about it on stream, but I we
were even wondering like how articulate is he?
Like, can he read and write? Can he read and write Well?
I don't know. But you know, he's generally not
the most learned guy. So for him in a meeting, I feel
like he would be really nervous. And I kind of weirdly, despite
last episode of doing so much to make us hate him even more.
I kind of felt for Cole more in this episode than I had in a
long time because I think, you know, it's it's a really
relatable type of type beat for someone to to be in a position
of high power who is surrounded by all this nobility, who just
is born to it and he's not born to it.
And I I felt for him and not being born to it like them.
I'm glad you said all that because it was thoughts that
were bubbling to me too, because later we even see him face a
little prejudice when Gwen comes.
Like, I'm so excited right off with a dornishment.
He was being locked a little. And and it's also, I think that
they are doing something with Damon and Cole that I think this
is the most sympathetic either of them have been in a while,
right? Both of them didn't make
particular mistakes or weren't particular jerks this episode
and were sort of faced with personal toughnesses.
I don't know how to say it exactly, but yeah, yeah, it
might not be enough for both of them to make up for the awful
things they've done in the past, but I think the show is making
an attempt to keep them from being straight villains to us
consistently, you know? Absolutely.
Yeah. And to build on what a Shay I
was saying and and as well as you, Sean, twice in this episode
he's forced to deal with upstarts who are less competent
than him, lower rank than him, but higher in the social order.
So they and they don't allow him to forget that like the first is
Aegon's new Kingsguard. He didn't even know they were
appointed until he meets them. And one of them's, like, sitting
on the stairs and gets up real slowly, like, OK, I'll stand up
now, you know? And then Leon Estremont, when he
walks into the room, gives him this just, like, super
disrespectful look like, you know.
All right, Cole. Yeah.
Look at this. Look like you're.
This is what you how you look at your Lord Commander your first
day of the job? Like this guy is he's like, no,
the King's my friend. I don't have to worry about a
thing. Yeah.
So they are totally lording over their birth over him, even
though he's had a quote, according to Gwane Hightower, a
giddying ascent. The gods have bestowed.
The gods have bestowed on him. Notice he says you didn't work
for that. The gods bestowed it on you.
You didn't earn that. Yeah.
There's so many little insults
and microaggressions against him.
Yeah. I didn't even think of it till
just now, but in the context of what we're saying, I bet behind
the scenes Cole has probably spent the last day or a couple
days or whatever preparing to be him.
He's probably like thinking about the battle plans, learning
the names of the different Lords, probably looking at a
map. He suddenly has all these new
responsibilities and it's probably partly why these other
night Kings guard could be selected without him being
aware. He's probably up in the tower
that he probably is literally living in new quarters, has a
new schedule, has new responsibilities, and doesn't
want to make a full himself. So he's trying to learn, trying
to do what he's supposed to do, and in the meantime, Aegon is
doing stuff behind his back and he's got to like, put all that
down too while he goes into this.
This meeting is Hand of the Cane.
So in case it wasn't clear, those are his three drinking
buddies, and so I've dubbed them the Drinkings Guard.
Yes, and henceforth they are the Drinkings Guard.
Someone in the chats called them the A goons.
That's good, too. These guys deserve these guys
deserve several nicknames. I think so, yeah.
Of the beer gardens, keep them. Coming y'all?
Yeah, so there's an argument in the council about how to use the
armies, where to strike first, and it just devolves.
And Allison has this great line. This council must rediscover.
Its discipline is if it's it's per its previous discipline is
if it's if it's to be of any use.
I love that, but it's not as good as her line to Cole when
he's like God's favor, the bold. And she says they did not favor
Sir Eric. Yeah.
Wow, that was great. And you still are pretty clear
in that moment. But a couple of other threads to
this episode, it seems like the two of them are falling apart.
A little bit, Yeah, a little bit.
How much of it is maybe they've become emotionally torn up over,
you know, the, the kid being killed or him or they neglecting
their duty, maybe leading to that.
But probably also Ellison frustrated that he's kind of
taking her dad's job. He took her job.
Yeah.
That, that that's probably going to affect them emotionally,
romantically, whatever else, you know?
Yeah. Well, and they're going to not
be as together as much and and that might expose some of the
fact that they are only together in the 1st place because they
neither of them really has any other options and they're around
each other so much. We talked about how that's just,
they have, they have a lot of negative things in common,
loneliness and chastity and forced chastity and social stuff
that's making them act this way. Yeah, so.
And they're both hot, you know. Before, if he was just, like,
standing outside her door all the time, it was easy for them
to succumb to temptation. But now, if he's in the Tower of
the Hand, he can't just like, right quick run over to
Allison's room and run back. You know what you know?
Yeah. It's a lot.
Lots of new dynamics are going on in their lives that are
playing out in this council meeting.
Yeah. So the argument happens.
There's Iron Rod and and Sirt Island and or while kind of go
at it a bit. Like I said, Iron rod has a
couple of great lines. He's he's snarky as usual, as we
can expect that from him. He's called iron rod.
But really you should be like iron snark or snark rod.
He's got so many lines like that.
What's that Iron tongue? Iron tongue.
There we go. He he says he brings up the
infirmity of Lord Grover Tully says it very snidely.
He also points out the Blackwoods and Brackens will
fight over anything, which he's right.
He's right about kind of both those things.
He also says, yeah, we replace like I, I replaced 3
Kingsguards. I got new 3 Kingsguards replace
the ones we lost and and Iron Rod goes one needlessly we might
say yeah. We'll dig it, Cole.
Yeah. He's such a snark.
I love it. There's House Stark, but he's
House snark. Actually, he's House.
He's House Wild, but I'll call him House snark anyway.
So one of the arguments he says he's like they're it's like this
is Brackins and black ones are fighting each other.
We can't, we can't call this anything other than that.
He's and Aegon slams the dagger into the table and is like,
they're going to call us like I, you know, you call it what you
want. I call war.
And so will Dragonstone. He's pretty much right.
Rainier is still holding back, but most of the people in
Dragonstone are saying that. So he's, he's mostly right.
He's impatient. We see that come out every once.
He's not as impatient as he was because things are kind of
happening. He's gotten to make some moves.
He's named his Kingsguard. He's he expects his plan to go
out. He's already expecting to fly
out to battle too at this point. And that's when they start to
push back. Cole repeats the plan he had
with Aymond and secret that they're going to gather a small
group, take on some crown lands, houses, build their army won by,
you know, house by house. And then eventually they have a
big enough one that they can strike W for Harrenhal, but they
don't know Damon is at Harrenhal.
That's an important factor. They just have agreed that it's
the most important place to go. But there's a change in the in
the planning here. When Cole says Veigar and Eamon
will stay here and Amon is twirling a coin, which is
probably the same coin he found under the table after the
assassination attempt, He stops twirling.
Like, I wasn't expecting that, like I thought we were.
I thought I was going with you. And he's annoyed at that.
But he mostly controls himself. He doesn't get mad like his
brother. He just the only sign is the
coin thing that he stops flipping it.
And then it kind of the the role reversal happens where Aegon is
argued or given the order that his brother's going to stay and
then Eamon argues why Aegon should stay so that for the
same, it's like, oh, you're brave.
You know it's brave of you, but we got to protect you.
And Aegon doesn't take that well.
He takes it the wrong. He takes it as a stab at his
courage or his capability in war, rather than just the smart
thing to do with the king. You know, he doesn't see it that
way. He's like, oh, egg on. the
Conqueror went out. Like, you know, all these other
guys went out. Damon goes out.
Like, why shouldn't I go out, you know?
He doesn't take it well, but he, well, sort of, he does take it
because everyone else, when he said that, everyone at the table
was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
But he's going to do it anyway. But when when Amon speaks up,
Aiken's like fine, I think he decides he's he's waffling
still. It seems like he decided to go
anyway, but then Larris convinces him not to go anyway.
But I do think that it was interesting.
The control that Allison or Otto were hoping to have over him,
Aymond has over him. And Aymond was not only
disciplined enough to not himself want to go right out and
attack, but to also use the control he has over his brother
to keep him from doing it. Is that real?
Did you guys both have that take?
I saw I had such a completely different take on that Aymond
interaction with Aegon. My take on it was that Aymond
was specifically, he was trying to go to Aegon into the field.
He wanted him to go. He he thought it would work and
it was going to work until Laurie's did go in and undercut
him. That's I, I to me, Aegon Aymond
was like OK, well, will you go then?
You go. You mean so it was kind of like
a Cersei standing up and demanding that Robert not fight
in the tournament and just to make sure that he would.
Yes, it was exactly that. That's how I took that.
I think you're right and I just missed that.
But maybe, maybe the next episode will will fill us in on
that. I don't know.
You could be wrong, but I think that's a very, very good.
I think he stopped. That's why I think he stopped
playing with Coin. He was like, I got to stop.
I got to try to manipulate my brother right now.
He's like, he, he, he kind of went into manipulator mode right
there. That's very interesting.
I do like that call. I think you might be right.
I definitely didn't consider that.
But once when I now I'm hearing I'm like, yeah, this is that.
That makes a lot of sense. And that is what you would say
if you wanted him to go to get him to go.
Just like that's what Ned realized when Virus put it to
him that way. So Loris when he when Loris
comes to Aegon and tells him that there was a kernel of truth
there, Allison wasn't doing that.
Eamon was, I think like I think Eamon did want him out of King's
Landing and potentially killed and Allison didn't.
So Alaris was doing a half truth right there.
And I think Loris was just kind of saying that because he knew
it would be effective. I don't think Loris actually
knew that Eamon did that. It just happened to be what
Eamon did. Well here's a couple things if
you are correct, which I wouldn't argue too strongly
against because I still think it's if I can make a pun here,
two sides of the same coin. Ayman is able to control him
better than anyone else to counsel.
He might be doing it a different way than I thought, but the
point is I think he's better controlling Aegon than anyone
else to counsel. But.
But there's the argument I would make against you though.
It's like, what if Aemon didn't say anything?
It it seemed like Aegon was going to go and no one was going
to be able to stop him and. Well now, but that's a no, but
that's how it ended. That is how it ended.
Sean, remember that's what happened.
Aegon says I'm as fierce as any of them and no one says
anything. They all stop the argument and
Allison's like she has nothing to say.
It's it's like how she stopped short of comforting.
She has nothing to say. And then the scene cuts away.
There is nothing more after that until we later come back.
He's already put his armor on and that's when Larry's gets him
to not do it. OK, so Noah, so I think that's
what makes me think of Shay is right, because he says I'm going
and then that's the end of the argument.
No one argues further. I read it as and again I can see
it that way easily, but I read it as he was trying to save
face. Like I won't go but if I went I
would kick as much buttons. But he doesn't say that.
That's not what he says he says. He doesn't say I'm not going.
He doesn't agree to not go, but you might be.
I mean, you might be right. That's still.
But I think for now, I think I'm going with the Shay's
interpretation. I think she's right.
Yeah, he he immediately agrees. He says he's going to go, and
then the next time we see him, he's getting his armor on as if
he's going to go. No one has stopped him.
He's he's on his way. Like even his Kingsguard thinks
he's going. Even after he talks to Lars,
they still think he's going and he's like, and he says, OK,
maybe I'll stay back. Anyway, we'll talk about that
one in a minute. Let's move on briefly to talk
about the the scene with Helena in in front of that.
It's pretty short, but it's it's meaningful and it gives us a
little more insight into her character, which I think just
more people are going to be like, boy, this really like
Helena, you know, she has this insight into, well, you know, I
have better healthcare. That's she doesn't say it that
way, obviously, but that's that's the long and short of it.
She has better healthcare. She's the best healthcare there
is in this society and almost no one else does.
So of course they're going to lose more kids than than someone
in her position would probably. Like.
There's always the randomness of it, which is what Allison tries
to point out. She's like, no, you still have a
as much claim to grief as anyone, which is a fairway to
put. It's like, yeah, like just
because they as a group lose more children, there's plenty of
mothers that have never lost a child and plenty of Royals that
lose lots of children. So it's still on a case by case
basis. And that's part of the dynamic
here is Helena's trying to like, think of herself as a group of
people or a royal. Like all Royals, she's not just
an individual here. And she's thinking of the common
folk as as a group, as a collective, rather than just
individuals, which is, you know, how she has to, she doesn't
really know a lot of other people.
And it's just just her perspective.
And I I think it's really neat. However, I don't know, wealthy.
However fair her state of life is compared to other people's
state of life, it doesn't mean she can't be sad that her kid
died. I think that's what Allison is
saying. But I do appreciate that Helena
has this sort of awareness of the state of people's lives
outside of her own. Like, it is sad thought that
these people out there don't have the same support.
And they're like, they probably have kids that starve to death
sometimes. Like, maybe it's random, my kid
got murdered or childbirth maybe doesn't have as much to do with
how wealthy or poor you are. But there's no chance of my kids
starving to death. And the common people do have to
face that kind of thing. So all that still seems a little
wrapped up in her trying to deal with this grief, right.
And, and and maybe there's there's definitely worse ways to
do it, but it still seems like there's a little suppression
going on. She's not really accepting it.
You know, I think that's. True, it might be part of just
she had her mind works a little differently, but I think that
element is there. Yeah.
It's a little like putting herself stepping outside of
herself to to maybe not feel it as much.
I'm not sure, but there there's also while she's telling some of
these telling, you know, giving her opinions to her mother and
talking to her, there's there's some more of her.
She got a cricket, a bunch of crickets in a cage that she's
looking at and just being a bug girl, like she's a bug woman
now, no longer a girl, a bug mother, right?
And she abruptly forgives Alison, her mother.
And Alison's like, what? I love how Elena takes it
literally. He's like, I said, I forgive
you. I was like, no, I didn't not
hear you. I'm just stunned that you said
that. But she said, I love that she
takes it literally. OK.
So is she. It seems like the obvious thing
is she's forgiving her for sleeping with Karsten Cole.
But is is there more to it? Do you think there's multiple
apologies going on here or is there?
Yeah. What do you think, Sean?
I'm curious what both of you all think about this.
I suppose there certainly could be other things, but I took it
to just be Chris and Cole. I gotta forgive you for I, I
don't know, maybe for not being as good a mother as you could
have been or some more big picture thing like that.
But all the things that could have been, it's got to hit
Allison pretty hard no matter what, right?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I agree.
It's totally Kristen Cole. And yeah, you could, you could
probably read an undercurrent of, yeah, forgiveness, general
forgiveness for poor motherhood and getting them into this whole
just whole debacle in the 1st place, as we'll see at the end
of the episode with the the misunderstanding.
You could, you could even, you could stretch it to say she
forgives her for the situation or something.
But I think it it, it definitely is meant to refer to Kristen.
But I don't think any statement like that can be read without
the, like general sense of like, I forgive you in general for
anything. I think like she's not holding
on to any grudge against her mother about anything is the
point. So it's a nice thing to do to
absolve her mother of that Guild.
Or to try to, anyway. It won't necessarily.
It may not work. She may still feel some guilt
over it cause Helena. Doesn't feel more guilty than
ever. Yeah.
Helena doesn't know all the things that Allison has done.
You know, other things she might be forgiving her for are like,
yeah, you, you know, you stole the throne and that's why this
is all happening. Like you were.
You played a role in that. You played a big part of that.
Or, Or even simpler, much simpler, she's, she was
complaining a little bit about she's that horrid procession
where I had to, you know, because she's like, she forgives
her for making her go do that, you know, 'cause that was,
that's who argued her into it. She said it was the other people
who were making her do it. But Allison's the one who comes
and tells her to do it and that we're going to go together and
it's our duty and. It might even be that might be
another piece of the forgiveness is your hypocrisy.
Like you kind of pushed me into going on that procession 'cause
you said it's my duty, but you aren't doing your duty.
And so I forgive you for being a hypocrite, you know.
All right, let's return to Aegon then let's talk about him
getting dressed for battle. We see him wearing Aegon the
first Valyrian steel armor. That's not a thing from the
books that there is no Valyrian steel armor from Aegon that that
was ever talked about, but it's believable enough that there
would there there would have been Aaron damp hair who sees a
suit of Valyrian steel armor says it would cost Kingdom, but
that's just his, you know, his estimation, whereas Martin
Rainier says it would cost a castle.
Well, it depends on the castle, I guess you know, maybe it
depends on the Kingdom right on the Kingdom.
So neither of them truly know. I mean they're neither is like
this isn't some official pricing guide, right.
This is like this isn't a catalogue.
They quoted the the Amazon price for Valyrian steel armor.
So look at this armor. Shay's putting all these
different images of it. It's so cool. 20 weeks to make.
They said it took and it's it's way more detailed than you can
tell on screens. That's part of why we're showing
you these shots here. And if you haven't watched it
behind the scenes, this is one of the things they feature
there. It's very cool.
So Larry's comes in and quips with Red Ned Waters there saying
begging before begging a private word with Aegon.
And this is so expert level. This is like a chess master
playing against a person who's never played chess before.
He comes in and he's like, hey, bro, your garden's full of weeds
and you've got no gardener. He's like, will you be my
gardener? And he's like, well, yes,
actually good idea. You know what a what a great
suggestion. You honor me.
And he he says he knows exactly what Aegon's levers are his the
things that he's, that, that affect him the most, the things
that, that, that touch his pride or that he's weakest on.
And this is his self esteem. He's OK.
So here's something that Tom Glencarny himself said that
Aegon, that's the actor playing Aegon.
Of course, he, Aegon is maturing a little bit, not fully, but
just enough to realize that he's a fraud.
He's starting to be aware of his that he's, he himself is a fraud
and he's lashing out and be insecure about it and trying to
make up for that the whole flying with the Army, which is
why there's a decent chance that he's being egged on in that
because it is a pretty straightforward issue he has.
It's pretty observable. No, he's being aimed on.
Nice. Yeah, he eggs on aim and and the
Squire aim and aims on him. Yeah, anyway.
Yeah, I, I had that thought in that scene, in fact, that maybe
even when we're talking about the best performances of the
episode, it was it was they're. Oh, great.
I feel like I, I maybe it's even unfair that Renero just gets so
much more screen time. So I pick her.
But but the moment when he was looking in the mirror in the
wake of this scene, I felt what he said later on that he's
realizing he's an imposter. He's like looking in that I, I
even wonder what else might have been going on there.
Like, I wonder if there was there was a little fear, if he
was a little afraid to go riding off into battle with the dragon.
And thank goodness I don't have to.
I have an out. I need to stay home and make
sure my mom doesn't usurp my power.
Like he's like, oh, thank God, I don't have to go risk my life
now. I wonder if there's at least a
piece of that in that that moment.
But certainly he's thinking like I'm no egg on the Conqueror.
This isn't really my armor. Maybe as you wondering is a
liar. He's manipulating me.
Like he's warning me that people are manipulating me, but he's
just manipulating me, isn't he? I don't know.
He doesn't know what to do about it.
He doesn't he doesn't know what's true.
He doesn't know what he can trust.
He doesn't know what he's supposed to do.
Think about the moment, too. I it comes right after this,
right? Does it come right after?
It's right in this moment when the guards like, hey, let's go
get drunk. And go to this the brothel.
And he's like, wait, you guys, they're supposed to just want to
about celibacy now, right? I'm like, Oh yeah, right.
Give me a break. I think Aegon in that moment is
realizing it. All this sort of like pomp and
circumstance and lore and legend of Targaryens and the Iron
Throne and everything. He's it now.
He's it like he grew up. Even if he might have been
dismissive of it, he knows that the Kingsguard aren't supposed
to have wives or kids or whatever.
Like, it's still this institution that he's familiar
with, and now he's kind of in control of it, and he sees that
they're not doing what they're supposed to do.
I bet there's a little bit of guilt in him, Like, I screwed up
the Kingsguard, didn't I? What am I even doing?
I don't know what I'm doing. But in the end, he's like, oh,
well, screw it, let's go get drunk.
Like, get some drinks. Responsibility.
He's matured a little bit, but not nearly enough, right?
Yeah, that's, that's well said. Yeah, he's he 'cause he's when
he's looking in the mirror, it's this is a grave look.
He's not preening. He's not like, oh, look how good
I look. No, that is, he feels the
weight, the literal and metaphorical weight of that
armor. He is no egg on the Conqueror.
I didn't quite read the oh, I don't have to go out and fly to
war part the same as you. I I agree with pretty much
everything else you said, but that part, I think he really is
eager to go fight. I think he really does want to
prove himself. I don't think he's afraid of
battle. Maybe he should be, but he's I
don't think he's afraid of fighting.
I think they can. Coexist.
I think they can coexist. I think he can be excited for
war but also have a kernel of relief to him.
I, I, you know. 'Cause he's so ready to go.
He's like, yeah, I'm a fly with Cole.
Like it didn't, it didn't come off as afraid.
But though I think you're right there, there could be a little
bit, there could be some insecurity mixed in there.
That's why he's so eager to prove himself.
Renly and all his summer soldiers were all eager to go
too. Yeah, However dead they ended
up. You know that's true.
So I am very much looking forward to seeing Lars in the
council room from now on. Right.
He never tried to warm his way in with Viserys because he he
knew that not a guy he could manipulate in the ways that
would be important to him. And and that and not to mention
there was already someone that had Viserys on lockdown and
that's Otto Hightower and when? Otto even had Missouri kind of
filling out roles. Yes, that's true.
Yeah, he already. Yeah.
So he was kind of waiting for his chance.
Now he has it and he's going straight to the top.
He's like, I'm not negotiating or working my way through
Allison anymore or any of the other council members.
I'm going straight to the man and becoming important to him
and he will start coming to me. And yeah, so it's really
expertly done. And I agree with you as well.
The the the looking at he, he looks at his drinking's garden
is like, this is on me. But he's not consistent with it.
Like like you said, once he gets a drink in him for several
drinks and then he forgets all about that as we see he's he's
outright wasted in this next scene, which doesn't start with
him, but we're going to talk about the bar scene.
I I absolutely love the scene. Alf is like norm from cheers
everywhere. He's like comes with like, Nah,
Alf. Hey, you know, they're all
everybody's so happy to see him. He's a good storyteller.
He's the guy at the bar that everybody likes.
You know, he's always getting free drinks.
He loves the attention and it's pretty rare that we get APOV
like this. We don't have a lot of
characters like this, you know, lowborn, not, not rich.
You know, they don't have they don't have a famous house.
Although he does, apparently, According to him.
And it's just that he's not directly connected to him.
Yeah. Does he?
That's that's the one of the questions I have for you.
But hold on a SEC. He tells his heritage story to
his friends here, and they're doing it for the benefit of this
Dornish guy who's buying them drinks.
And there's Samson KO from our flag means death.
And that's cool. He was.
On. Yeah, and he's on the crew with
Christian Nairn, AKA Hodor. So our our another reason to
watch. Our flag means death.
So he claims to be Bailon the Braves bastard.
That's the father of Damon and Viserys.
Let's first examine Bailon the Brave and see if it's even
possible. Bailon's wife, Alyssa, who was a
Targaryen, it was his sister, died in the year 84 and Bailon
lived until the year 101 and never remarried.
It was his death that prompted the Great Council.
Don't forget he remained unmarried.
So that's a long time of being unmarried.
So he definitely, he says he never was able like no one could
replace Alyssa and he, you know, honored her till his death.
That doesn't mean he didn't go to a brothel.
I didn't have needs or get lonely, right?
Like some people say no, he would never do that because he
loved Alyssa so much. Like, we don't really know this
guy that much, you know? We know him from a history book
and even Tywin Lannister, who like loved Joanna so much, is no
is is pretty strong. Like I mean we know he
definitely slept with women, but he also probably slept with more
than Shay. That's my point. 100% yeah, I
totally agree. So and and of course that
doesn't mean this guy was anything like Tywin, that the
point is, yes, unmarried, long, long term unmarried.
Are we sure this this guy really never slept with anyone else
again ever? Yeah, not very likely anyway.
Possible though. Anyway, so it certainly fits,
like you can't dismiss this just on who his father was.
That certainly works. And we have that scene in season
one where Viserys mentions how he and Damon would go to the
brothels when they were young. So it's like, well, maybe, you
know, like their father did that too.
He calls himself a dragon seed, which is an existing term that
has not been yet said on the show, but it's been around a
little bit. It's a term for not just
Targaryen bastards, but the descendants of Targaryen
bastards. Anyone with blood of the dragon.
In the books, he's all the white.
But it seems that though it seems like they've dropped the
white part, He's just grey, kind of like Gandalf the White going
from Gandalf the Grey. But he argued and they they,
they frame this cleverly. He says this means nothing since
Jace has brown hair, right? That's a fairpoint, right?
Like not all Targaryens do have, you know, the silver hair.
Even some half, half Targaryens definitely have other color
hair. Not that this means he is, he is
who he says he is, just that the hair colored is not an argument.
Again, it's not a deal breaker for the argument.
He calls himself the grandchild of Jaharis the conciliator,
which would be true if he's Bailon's son.
And it's yet another name drop of Jaharis.
It's the second or third time that name gets dropped in the
episode. And he calls Rainier the true
queen. So he's definitely siding with
quote UN quote, his family. And what do you think, Sean?
Is he But your read, is he telling the truth?
Is he not? Like on one hand, if he's not
like, sure, people can tell the story.
If he is, maybe that makes the story more interesting.
Like the meta is an interesting consideration here.
But yeah, tell us what you think.
I think it's possible that he believes he's telling the truth
that makes sense now. It still could be true or not
true, I guess. I also guess it is possible that
he's is that it is true, but I think about how he could know
that it's true that pretty much the only way is like his mom
told him and or maybe someone is not even his mom told him.
Yeah, yeah. I just think that it doesn't
matter that even if it's true, it doesn't matter 'cause he just
can't possibly prove it. And I think that it's he seems
to have a little bit of AI don't know con artist in him, right.
Like it's like, hey, hey, you want to tell the story?
I don't really feel like it. Well, maybe if you buy me a
drink, I wonder how many times I told this story.
How many people in that bar, do you think it's just those two or
three guys at the table? Or do you think everyone in
there knows because he can't wait to tell everyone because if
you're going to buy him a drink for it, and maybe it's part of
why he's popular, but it is risky to go around say this,
right? So like, if it, I don't know, I
can't, I don't like this guy, whether it's true or not, I
don't like this guy and I think he's going to cause trouble and
or get himself killed, so. That's so funny, Sean.
I didn't expect you to not like this guy.
I like that he has the gift of gab.
I find him entertaining. He clearly has some dubious
morals and that he's stealing, but he's also not necessarily
well to do so. Can you really?
I had so much fun with Alf in our breakdown, writing our
breakdown because I just refer to everybody as their relation
to Alf. So Aegon is now Alf's nephew,
and right here is all sneeze and egg on the conquerors.
All's great, great, great great grandfather.
They're all as everything is framed from Alf's point of view.
Yeah, it really cracked me up editing the breakdown as I've
been going through it every time he says that Alf is really
giving me shades of Glendon Ball in A Night of the Seven Kingdoms
Fireball, which is why I would have thought you might like Alf,
Sean, because you love Glendon Ball.
And I feel that he's got some similar themes going on.
Maybe not as much of A art of gold passion to him, but I I
feel the dynamic is similar in that for those unfamiliar, I'll
just say real quick, there's a character in A Night of the
Seven Kingdoms, the Duncan Egg books, Glendon Ball who believes
he is the son, the bastard son or, or just son of a fireball, a
very famous warrior, and claims it.
And it's kind of made fun of for it.
But Glendon Ball stands up to ridicule and torture over the
integrity of who he believes he is.
Which once again might not even be true, but he is confident and
proud enough of it that he is willing to die over it.
This guy is angling to get a free drink over it like.
Lots of free drinks, yeah. So Tracy McMillan asks, was the
serving girl waiting on Elf and Company Diana the one who was
assaulted by Eggon? Yes, that is her that the one
that the guy spanks and that's how we see her because he spanks
her and she like gets shocked and gives us a chance for the
camera to focus on her for a half second.
She. Can't escape being assaulted.
Can't escape being assaulted, No.
Yeah, and Allison told her to go work somewhere far away.
She clearly didn't go do that. But anyway, I don't blame her
for not moving. It's hard to move in this, you
know, to leave, go to a different go, move to a
different city, you know, like it's hard to do in this era when
you're a. Comedy her limited world.
This might be far away. You know that's true. 2-2 miles
away is pretty far when you've only ever travelled the castle.
So it's a a moment of like awe and shock when Aegon just shows
up at the bar with his drinkings guard and Alf is like facing
him. They're like, there's your other
nephew and he's like, he looks legitimately scared.
Like he's he's like, because like you said, Sean, like
telling these lies or these truths.
Either way, it could get him killed.
So he's not wrong. Like that's the one of the the
most honest things he probably said.
There was like, this is the kind of thing that could get me
killed. That's the part that's true.
Like, like that's definitely true.
Even because if even if you're right, even if he's making it
up, it's it's dangerous. So we don't see Diana's reaction
to Aegon showing up. She'd be like, Oh my, what the
hell, this this guy, she might just go hide in the corner or
something, but we don't we don't see it.
We. Just see her serve him.
Oh, is that? Oh, we do see her serve him.
That's it right there. I didn't realize that happened.
Oh my gosh. She turns her head away.
She's like don't notice me, don't notice me.
Yeah, well, she just comes up and probably.
Gets. His drinks and then walks away
It's. Yeah, he probably doesn't even
notice. He might not even remember.
Yeah, I mean, he's wasted. He's super wasted at this point,
so he may not remember her. And he's drunk, So there's two
double whammy there. So everyone's happy that the
King's coming in to buy them drinks.
And everyone except all who just, like, just looks like he
just had a brush with death. And that then they quickly move
on. We see them, you know, have
their drinks. And then we just.
Brothel scene, right? We head over to the brothel and
this things get a little more serious over here.
This episode had Millie Alcock, but this scene truly had all the
cock. Yeah, Tom Glenn Carney shows off
more excellent drunk acting skills, mostly laughing at his
brother. And this is pretty cringy
because it's so mean, right? Like, it's like, this is this
is, this feels so like, talk about, like, mocking your
brother, making fun of your brother.
Talk about bringing back trauma from when you're young.
Let's not forget that he blames Luke and Jace for the prank.
But we know Aegon was the mastermind of the pig prank in
the 1st place. He just kind of got away with
it. Like, they didn't, you know,
like his mom confronted. He's like, no, I didn't, you
know, trying to do that. And he and she was willing to
believe that, you know, in in retrospect, she probably should
have pressed it more. I mean, like really, you're
blaming the Valerian kids, the strongs.
You always blame them, you know, But I mean, to be fair, they
were a part of it, no doubt. They definitely went along with
it. But Eamon is proud and and he's
triggered by this teasing. He says she means nothing to me,
but does anyone believe that? The other guys might and I think
he said that very calculated because right, exactly.
I think he needed to say that because he learned he paid
attention to what she told him before.
Is like, you angry Princess, cause trouble for regular people
like me and and like Damon telling the story about, oh, I'm
going to marry Missouri. She's pregnant now.
Like that could get her killed. Like if he says the wrong thing,
if he lets Aegon and these other people think that she's
important to him, she becomes a target.
That's true. She becomes one of their toys.
She goes she's in danger. He need, he's passed for her
sake. He has to pretend like she
doesn't matter to. Him.
Yep, has to take. Hold of him, but he was really
protecting her and that's part of what he was struggling with.
He wanted to lash out at his brother.
He wanted to defend his honor or her honor or, or avoid this
embarrassment, all these things. And he's like, anything I do,
even if it's justified, it's just going to get her in
trouble. I I just got to get out of here
and pretend like I don't care. I'm not sure that mattered him
more than his own pride, but I definitely think that's in play.
Who, you know, six of 1/2 doesn't have the other, and he
calls him Amon the Fierce and he's just mocking him and he's
laughing so hard. No one else laughs.
The drinking guard don't laugh. The Squire does not laugh.
Sylvia obviously does not laugh either.
I think one of me in heaven was like averting their eyes through
the whole situation. Yeah, the Squire, by the way, is
referred to as like Piggy or something, which I think might
make he makes me think he's from House Hog, which is a crown
lands house. And the hogs do have various
circles association with Targaryens.
There was a Sir John Hogg who fought.
We saw another Hogg. Did we?
Oh well, the pink, the pink dread.
No, in this episode too. Hog where?
Were the other ones. Oh, Aziz, my sweet summer child
who are. Oh, the hogs, of course there
were two in this very scene. Yes, she or she's referring to
male members. Yes, yes, Penai, yes, I forgot
those are called hogs sometimes. So is Aegon mocking his brother
just 'cause he's a Dick? Or is it in part some of his own
insecurity coming out, hearing what Laurie's told him and like,
trying to get back at him a little bit?
Like it might be? I think there's does he, does he
hammer his brother with this much mockery?
If not for that, Or maybe he does it anyway.
What do you think? I think it's mostly because he's
drunk. Honestly that's what I think
maybe a combination of drunk and the reason he's drunk in the 1st
place is he's trying to avoid his failings and
responsibilities and whatever all else insecurities.
Yeah, yeah, that sounds about right.
So Blue Floor asked. The new Kings guard were the A
goons, right? Yes, the drinking's guard, the A
goons. Yes.
Those are his three buddies that were sitting by with him on the
throne and giving him nicknames that he hadn't earned.
Yeah, those same three guys are in the Kingsguard.
Yes. Like what?
Yeah, I know that's confusing to some people, 'cause this Sean,
not a book thing. He doesn't do that in the book.
So we're we're we have no idea where it's going with that.
Probably nowhere good. These guys don't seem very
competent, but maybe they'll come up with some spicy new
nicknames for him. They're good at that.
I can I say this might be jumping ahead a little, but I
think that this does piece together well.
I remember thinking it was a little dubious that Allison
could go to the Sept and and Rainier Meter and the Kings
Garden not be more aware. Isn't there be too many eyes and
too much protection? No.
If this is the King's Guard, none of these yahoos, they don't
know where care. They're hungover.
Like these guys aren't really keeping the proper care of the
royal family. It was also established that
they wait outside for her, which is why it worked too.
The whole the Sept thing like that's the how they did that in
season one. Like they don't go in, they give
her privacy. They're standing right outside
the door, which should be safe enough, but.
They still let a lot of other people come in and out and
someone sat right next to her. It might be a security leak, but
they are. They don't see it that way, at
least not right now. OK, so let's talk about we're
we're actually almost to that scene.
Let's talk about the marching out scene.
Kristen Cole heading out with his army.
Allison meets Cole as he's leaving.
And this is touches back on what we were saying earlier.
There's a little bit of tension here.
We get our intro to Gwane Hightower.
There's more tension with him because of all his rudeness.
It's kind of funny though. It's hilarious rudeness.
It's like this guy really does play the role of the upper class
Snooty kid quite well, which and we, we talked about this guy
before Freddie Fox's name. We were very excited for his his
appearance. And we were not disappointed.
He was Speaking of snarky, I mean, this guy, he nailed it.
Yeah. It helps to make Kristen Cole
look more sympathetic when you put a jerk like this in front
of. Them right, That's a very good
point. So Gwane says he's been on the
road for three months. What timing?
He just misses his father's dismissal.
I mean, to be fair, that would be like what the hell like man,
I traveled all this way if my dad's just left like two days
ago. Technically, we've seen Gwane
Hightower before. He was in season one, episode
one. He was in the joust.
Damon challenged him directly. He was like a pick.
He's going to choose a challenger, that guy.
And then he cheated against him, right?
He used his he lanced his horse. But that wasn't Freddie Fox.
That was just some guy in a helmet.
I mean, not just some guy, but it wasn't Freddie Fox.
Otto noticed Allison and Cole, right?
We all seem to catch that. Otto gave Allison and Cole a
look when they came into council chambers right after sleeping
together. Gwane notices Allison give her
favor to Otto, to Kristen, and Kristen's kind of being like,
she's like, she doesn't look like she's thrilled about doing.
Yeah, it was pretty reluctant. She Yeah.
He was a little annoyed at her for making Wayne announcement.
Yeah. He was a little annoyed at her
for making Wayne go with him. So I think he was kind of like
needling her a little back, like, well, then send me with
your favor, you know, because it's not him.
He's not your favor. Yeah.
He did that a little publicly. He let her get a little distance
away. So he had a raise her voice,
raise his voice for her to hear him.
And and so now it's awkward for her to turn down the Lord
Commander in hand. He kind of forced her to have to
show him some respect, if you will you.
Know I completely agree, Sean, I thought I thought that he he did
that as well as kind of a show of of of power, the little
little bit he could to put a little pressure on her there.
And I, I found it to be a really brilliant parallel counter
parallel to season one, episode one when Kristen asks Rainiera
for her favour and she gives it so happily and readily.
And Allison also just looks taken by the the pageantry of it
all and the idea that, oh, I want a boy to ask for my favor.
And, and in here now she is getting asked for her favor.
And it's it's, it's not everything she wanted.
Well, Damon asked for her favor in that scene, remember?
Yeah, that's true. She Yeah, that's true.
And she looks back at her father, like, is this OK?
And he's like, he doesn't say no, but he's like, that dude
just cheated against your brother.
Like, don't take his favor, I think.
I think she got it afterwards. Yeah.
So anyway, so they ride out in their very small army.
Now, here's a question, Sean, I asked you this about Baylor
Rena. Will Cole and Allison ever see
each other again? More like anytime there's a
parting, it's a it's a worthy question.
Like, there's so much death in these shows, you know what's
your It's obviously a pure guess, but maybe there's context
clues from the way the story is playing out.
I will say I hadn't considered it with him.
Now that you asked me, I'm like, Oh yeah, there's a good chance
not. But I hadn't thought about it.
I wasn't as worried about him. And I don't know if that's
because he's with the whole army and he seems to be a more
important character on screen, or if it's because I guess I
hadn't considered like the Reaper cut, like who would be
the next hand? Is that Bars's angle to get in?
Yeah, the drinking's guard clearly right.
Yeah, yeah. Stick with the Kings guard for
hands, you know. Yeah.
I, I hadn't considered, Yeah, that he might not come back
either. Yeah.
So, yeah, so we'll see. Yeah, we'll see.
I just wanted to get your take on that.
Yeah. As they leave, it's a small
army, which explains why Rainey's nor Baela see them at
first. Baela obviously sees them not
long after, but that is explained by the small size of
the army. And that was the point, Kristen
says. We go in a small group, add men
as we go, when we're out of sight.
And as we see we as as they leave, we see Cheese's body
rotting as a crow feasts on him. A feast for, well, one crow
anyway. Presumably there's more crows on
the other bodies, so it's it works.
Moondancer here. We see several trailer scenes
get resolved and clarified. Gwane, acting like a member of
the drinking's guard, wants to be comfortable have drinks on
campaign being real Snooty about it.
Acting like Cole doesn't have authority over him and Cole has
to ride out personally to stop him, which I appreciate.
I know like some people see that as just.
Would he really do this himself? Yes, he would do this himself.
He wouldn't send a messenger. They would ignore the messenger.
They almost ignored him. So they don't think anyone can
tell them what to do. So yes, he's got to let go.
Be authoritative about it. They're resisting his authority.
Something tells me after the scene they're going to listen to
him a little more like to Gwaine's credit, he does seem to
back down after realizing he's screwed up and he thanks Cole
for saving his life. So it's it's a really fun scene.
Ryan Kondahl said that the design for Moondancer was there
were two notes he gave David Bowie and tiger striped green
punk rocker with a Mohawk, which is related to David Bowie.
So that's Moondancer's design. We stand.
She is so cool. I love how she notices them.
It's like there's like a little glint of of armor in the
distance. It's not like she can't really
see them that well, but the shining armor is is there and it
lets you know that if they just covered themselves in cloth, it
might also help stay unnoticed. But anyway, so going at night
will certainly solve that problem as as Cole says, that
was pretty cool. I like that.
It was a neat little way to bird's eye Dragon's eye view.
And later that gets brought up. The whole bail is good eyesight
thing as as kind of a as a moment of diplomacy.
But we'll come back to that. Yeah, Gwen says good showing,
Sir. Kristen, you know, like and
thank you, you know, and call takes the opportunity to his new
found leverage of saving the man's life to be like and no
effing Inns, you know, like, all right, now you're going to
listen to me, aren't you? And we'll see if he does.
But you get the sense that he's gone, at least in the short
term. I think that did also add a
little bit to, I don't know, maybe Cole's experience and
these guys privilege when he warned him when they were about
to hit out, he's like, it's going to be a tough ride and
like, oh, whoa, I'm excited for a tough ride with you, you
Dornish. But then, but now they're on a
tough ride and instead of sleeping in camp with everyone
else, they're going off to the end.
He's like, look, I told you it's going to be a tough ride, man.
It's not a vacation. Yeah, he wasn't expecting to get
attacked by a dragon, but that nothing tells you like you need
to be more careful than that. Like that's a brush with death.
So I don't know if you noticed this, Sean, but did you hear
Baylor or putting in her dinner order right as she got to the
tree line there When she pulls up to the tree line, she goes
sea bass and then fly. That's.
I heard she said something. I assume it was Valyrian.
Yeah, it's Valyrian or whatever. Yeah, it is.
But it sounds like sea bass. So it sounds like she was making
a dinner order anyway. So she goes back and then we see
the report of this encounter. We'll call this the Back Back in
Black Council section here. Rainier's council again.
Just so ready for war. Obviously they were already so
ready, even ready for Dragons. Now they're even more ready for
it after this 'cause they have this straight up indication that
there's an army on the March and Bale is quite sure about it.
And remember the earlier insubordinacy there was.
Alfred Broome laughed at her the first time.
He doesn't laugh this time. But they're still not like who
would laugh at. No one would laugh at Aegon,
especially not I mean, they didn't laugh at Amond either.
Like laughing at Rainier is just a good way to show that they're
not taking her seriously. There's this little little
misogyny probably and contempt for what they see as weakness.
Like if she was like all aggressive and warlike there
might still be some of the misogyny, but they would not be
laughing at her in action, that's for sure.
But I but they're not entirely wrong.
Cole has taken the field and is making moves.
I don't necessarily agree with their strategy, but the inaction
is a bit of a problem. They don't know Damon, they
haven't heard back from Damon. We know his plan is in motion.
Stuff's happening now. Broom's plan that he suggests is
pretty similar to what Cole, Amon and Egon are doing.
He's just like, let's just go intimidate houses.
Go out there, start intimidating houses and make them follow us.
He's not quite as region specific or and he doesn't even
have an army. He just says they should send
Dragons. So it's not a fully fledged
plan. It's not a very good plan.
It needs more work, but he's not wrong that as we said at the
beginning, yes, it's good to try for peace, but from our
perspective, from the viewers, we know it's too late.
We know it's too late. We've seen the Army's March.
So but we but Rainier wants to take that last stab at it.
She's like I I appreciate this quality of her.
She's not letting them make her mind for her, which shows that
she's not weak, right? That in itself proves he's not
weak because she's standing up to them.
She's like, Nope, all you're you're all arguing against me
and I don't know, and I'm, but I'm the queen.
I decide, you know, So I, I respected that.
It's it's it's like that line in season 1A.
Reluctance to murder is not weakness.
A reluctance to unleash Dragons isn't either.
But once the war has started, you can't half ass it.
You got to go. I'm I'm realizing as we're
talking about this, there's some parallels going on here.
Do you remember when she was a cup bearer for Vasaris and then
and Coralie just wanted to go attack the step stones and
Vasaris said no, no, I don't want to get mixed up in war with
everyone's a little frustrated with Vasaris not wanting to get
mixed up in war. Now here she is.
They all want her and and she offered up in that moment like,
well, why don't we send a dragon rider, you know, like, oh, we
don't necessarily have to declare all our war.
We could send a dragon over there.
And now that's what her whole council is telling her.
Look, send the Dragons, man, push our power.
And she's like, Oh no, no, I don't want to do it.
Just like Visarus didn't want to and Visarus also, when was it
Damon? I can't remember now if it was
Damon or Cordless that pressed him.
So like, you need to do something.
You're not doing anything. I did do something.
I sent invoice, I offered treaties.
I've mobilized ships and said it's not like go to war or
nothing. There are other ways to take
action. And that's what's Ranira can't
tell them this, but that's what the action she wants to take
first, she wants to try before the Dragons is go talk to
Allison. Like, Renee Rainey's put that
seed in her mind and that's what she's angling for this moment
because I think she knows how bad it's going to be.
Like, I think she realizes that is eventually the path that
they're on is the Dragons are going to just start fighting
each other. And we just can't.
We just can't let that happen. However unpopular or stressful
or risky or whatever other plans there are.
It's got to be the last resort. Well, to be to clarify one thing
you said she isn't she's saying that out the Dragons, yes, but
she but the armies are marching. She knows that she's not.
She already knows there's going to be a war of soldiers at this
point, unless there she's basically only trying to stop
the dragon part of it. She knows, like I don't think
she thinks she can even stop even she can stop the armies,
but the armies can easily be drawn back on their own.
Once there, they take orders. They can they'll do what they're
told for the most part, and it's not it's not a it's not a simple
thing. And and we think about Valyria
as well as same thing is true. There we talk.
We have an episode on ancient Valyria and the Roinar with with
Nymeria and her and that whole business of the Roinar being
destroyed and her fleeing. Well, a big part of that is same
thing happened there. There were lots of conflict
between the Roinar and the Valyrians before the Valyrians
actually sent Dragons. There were army, there was
fights with armies and all this stuff forever before Dragons got
involved. And there weren't Dragons to
fight back. It was only Dragons on one side.
Even when they were the only dragon riders, they still didn't
send them for a while. So yeah, this is a long standing
strategy because your Dragons, the the fear of them is worth
more than what they can do in battle because there's no risk.
If you never put them in battle, they can't die.
And then you always have that threat and then you always have
that leverage. Once they go into battle, you
might lose it. Even if you don't lose it, what
do you. You.
So you you burn down River Run, and now you control River Run.
Oh, no. Yeah.
Why do we? Yeah.
You're gonna kill all your people that you're trying to
rule and protect. It's it's just the worst.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I said I was looking forward to seeing Lars on the Green
Council, and now perhaps we'll see Missouri on the Black
Council. I suspect the other members will
look down on her. And then they'll probably look
down on Lars too, for his deformity.
But though he's noble. So this will be a different.
This will be more misogyny and low born, which and which is
probably going to hit harder because they have more they can
pick on her for in the society. And Mazzaria wants a reward for
saving the queen after Eric Ark. Fair play.
That's like, how much is the queen worth?
Yeah. I mean, you do deserve a reward.
But mostly she says it's Rainier's mercy, her restraint
towards the common folk. That's why she wants to team up
with her. That's why she's like, OK, now
I'm on your side. But she also has no mercy plan
for the Hightowers. That's something they seem to
agree on. Mazar is like, yeah, I have no
mercy for the Hightowers, the common folk.
Yeah, but no, not the Hightower. And of course, this parallels
Aegon stuff. So we don't have.
She's not explicitly called Master Whispers, but yeah, I
mean, yeah. What is your general level of
trust here with Mazzaria? Do you think?
Like, is she mostly what she says she wants to protect the
common folk, or is there a little bit of other ambition
here? Is it true what she said about
wanting to be a person of consequence?
Is she back to that now? Yeah.
Like just give me a a one minute take on Mazzaria.
Yeah, I have a hard time reading her.
My my inclination is to trust her.
She seems to have fundamentally good motivations, but she has
also been dishonest and and I don't know, manipulative,
selfish, other things in in the mix that like the The thing is,
in this current scenario, I think the worst she could do is
like trying to run off with some money at a key moment.
Like, I don't think she's going to, I don't think she's going to
sabotage Rainier in any way. Does that make sense?
She doesn't. Have loyalty to the Greens?
Yeah. Why would she change sides?
Yeah, That that's that part. Part of what makes her safe, I
guess. Yeah.
I may not fully trust her, but I think she has enough value and
the damage she could do was low enough that it's worth trusting
her. Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does. So there's this brief
conversation they have about sea smoke.
Mazari asks. Are they always like this?
And Rainier says, this one's been restless lately.
We saw sea smoke circling around.
Yeah, Adam of Hall before. And oh, I correct him.
I was like, wait, am I going to say the wrong name?
I always, Adam and Alan always mix them up.
And she, Mazari has interesting insights.
She says maybe, maybe he's lonely.
And Rainier seems taken aback by that suggestion.
But there's, it doesn't go anywhere.
She just thinks about it for a second, and it's like, she never
considered that. And I wonder, it's like, oh,
maybe, maybe that could be it. Well, two things there.
One is some people think this could be a clue that Lenore has
died off screen and Sea Smoke is now lonelier.
I don't necessarily think that has to be true.
I think it's just Sea Smoke is has been lonely and has gotten
lonelier over time and all that. And it makes me wonder too one
of Sea Smoke and Cyrax hang out. Does that help with Sea Smoke's
loneliness? I don't know, but also I think
it, it parallels rain era right now actually, because rain era
is about to be all alone and a solitary dragon, you know, and,
and lonely. So I, I kind of feel that rain
era in this episode is feeling lonely and, and sea smoke is
too. But we'll talk more about Sea
Smoke, Aziz and I on our Saturday spoiler episode.
One other shot we saw from the trailer.
Speaking of of Cyrax is the sea smoke and Cyrax facing each
other from from very early trailer scenes pre season, so
that also perhaps presents a little bit of connection between
them. Let me tell you my read here now
I don't know where it's gone as the strong chance I'm completely
wrong, don't spoil me. However, they immediately cut
the immediate next scene after this viewing of Sea Smoke.
And maybe he's lonely. Cut to Rainier.
Well, to Rainier and Reyna. They cut to I think the next
image on screen is Reyna and it So to me, I'm like, oh, she's
finally going to get her dragon sea smoke.
That's that's my current predictions.
That would make sense. The I guess the problem is that
she is sea smoke going to follow her all the way to the Veil.
Yeah, maybe. Maybe she will.
That would make her safer. That, but the Veil wanted to
drag you to protect him. Maybe that'll be the dragon.
There you go. That would be a funny way for
that to work out. Like, hey, one followed us here.
We didn't. We didn't plan to bring this
one, but it followed us here. And there we go.
Yeah. OK.
Yeah, that'd be cool. So let's talk about the final
scene sneaking into the Sept. It's set up first by Rainier
sitting alone in her room without her children.
As we said, the whole queen without the mother, The
loneliness that you were just speaking to is a good set up for
this conversation. She puts away her children's
toys. She seems to be holding an idol
of the mother, looking at it and and reflecting on it, which sets
up where they're going to be soon in the Sept with the big
statue of the mother looking down on them.
So that's that's pretty cool. I just I want to say before we
finish it up, I'm I'm not going to say it now, but I have
several thoughts from throughout this episode that really get
tied together. I mean, throughout the series,
they get tied together in this final scene.
So give me a minute before we end it to you.
Got it. Put some thoughts together.
This scene is transitioned to from Sylvie, who's kind of like
Amon's foster mother figure as well, so there's a lot of mother
vibes here. She finally reads Allison's
letter, the one mentioned back in episode one, the same 1 Lord
Jasper mocked at the time, like Oh yeah, the apology for your
son's death, you know, like I'm sure she loved that letter.
And the moment she unlocks the letter, I mean UN unlocks,
breaks the seal, the green dress song starts playing, which is
Allison's theme song ever since the green dress moment in
episode 5 of season one, which of course is even, which is so
famous now that it's even in part of the intro.
So she finally, I guess, decides that this is worth her one last
try after reading this letter and seeing what Allison wrote.
And Mazaria's prior knowledge of Allison's movement is key here.
This is pretty well set up because yes, Allison has a
regular appearance at the Sept. This is pretty well situated,
pretty well established. And the Sept is where Mazaria
hit Aegon, where the showdown to capture him was.
So she's very familiar with the area, understands how it's used
by the Royals, understands its, you know, what goes on there,
knows some hidden rooms, I guess.
And Sir Stefan Darkland, who is, you know, Rainier goes with
Rainier as as her Kingsguard hot pretending to be a a begging
brother or a septon reading his book there, as you can see on
screen, he sits down like right where Cole dueled Aurek while
Eamon tackles his brother who doesn't want to be crowned and
says, you know, let me go, you know, let me leave and all that.
Too bad they didn't Then this scene wouldn't be happening.
Might still be We aimed instead. So this scene gives us quite a
few trailer moments. We were wondering about we Shay
and I talked about this way in the preseason.
There was this shot of Allison's dress and Rainier as dagger and
it was Rainier as rings. We're like, that's right near
his hand. That's Allison's dress.
What the Hell's going on here? Why are they in the same room
together? Well, now we know lots of
daggers in this episode. We got the dagger slamming into
the table. We got this dagger.
We got the dagger up the sleeve for sure, Stefan.
Yeah. Is it, is it spoilery for for me
to ask? This didn't happen in a book.
She didn't sneak in and have this meeting with Allison.
Correct. It did not Yeah, yeah.
This is something that yeah, this is this one was.
It'd be hard to say it's in the histories.
Like how would they know about the secret meeting?
You know they. Also didn't have such an
impactful close relationship in in the book so it wouldn't have
really even been on her radar to do.
Yeah, she was 10 years older. And yeah, it's yeah, they
weren't, they weren't close buddies.
They didn't grow up together. So as they're walking into the
city, there's a really interesting filmmaking technique
that Geeta Patel uses a few times.
She uses it the first time when they're going to the bar.
You have no idea who you're following.
You're like following a bunch of crowd and it's like, oh, it's
this brown haired woman. Then no, it's not.
It's it's this guy. Oh, it's off going into the bar.
They do the same thing here. You have no idea who you're
following. You're going into this, into the
gate of King's Landing. There's like a cart, there's
some people, there's some more people, and you have no idea who
it is we're looking at. And it's like, oh, there's
Rainier and Stefan. So it's pretty cool to show them
in disguise. Even we didn't see them at
first. Even we don't recognize them at
first from behind. They just look like any other
two people. And yeah, I like that was kind
of neat, neat little way to show just how blended in they were.
Now, let's not forget as well, Rainier snuck out in public with
Damon back in the season one also, like she was young, but
she had a little cowl. But she has experience being
Incognito and does have and, and has been out in the crowd before
without being recognized. So she'd be like, yeah, I've
done this and wasn't recognized. So when Mazaria says you'd be
surprised how little people will notice you if you're not dressed
up to be looking good or in royal clothing or whatever.
And she's like, yeah, good point.
In fact, I've done that before and and it worked.
So she was excited when someone told called her a boy like get
out of the way boy. He's like cool, he called me a
boy. That's.
Right, that was fun. And this was clarified nicely in
ultra scene as well. Remember the guy the Dornish
guy's like you don't look like Damon or Viserys and he's like,
how do you know what they look like?
Like, right, it's true. They don't know what the Royals
look like. Like there's no Internet.
Like what if someone in Dorne doesn't unless you see them and
maybe even if you do see them, you probably saw them from a
distance. Like when did you get close to
the king or the Prince? Like you probably didn't.
So these are good arguments to why she won't get noticed.
That said, I I still don't, I kind of don't love the idea of
the scene. It was a maybe a little
contrived, but it was so good. The execution was so good, and
it was very important resolution and very important
clarification. Now we know that Allison knows
it was a mistake, but she's so She's wrong about her
interpretation of the prophecy, but she's right that it's too
late to do anything about it. I completely agree with you,
Aziz. Not my favorite thing
conceptually, but I think that getting these these two
characters together is important in a lot of ways for the for the
story, for the arc of the the show, the series, etcetera.
I I can see it and I don't think it's the most contrived in that
Damon literally went to King's Landing recently.
We have seen this in A Song of Ice and fire.
People having this, Jamie went in like we've seen with Tyrion
and Jamie, like we've, we've seen this type of dynamic happen
so many times that I don't think it's crazy.
I don't think it's it's totally it's.
More of a trope I guess. Yeah, it's more of a trope.
Exactly. It's a trope.
I don't think it's it's a terrible trope.
It's not my favorite. I don't find it exact super
riveting. I don't find myself on the edge
of my seat about it. I'm not really worried about
Rainy Rd. getting caught here. Like what's going to happen?
Nothing's going to happen. So like, there's that for me.
But I think it gave them some really important story beats,
character beats. And it wasn't dumb.
It was it was foolish on Rainier's part, but worth the
shot. I still think like, I don't
think it was dumb of Rainier to try this.
I, you said it earlier, Sean, if she thought there was a one in
1000 chance, one in a million, like if there was some chance
that she could stop the war a bit, that that's worth it to me,
even if she's risking her life. And I do like to see a ruler
risk their own life when they're risking the lives of all their
people. So overall, I would say I give
the idea of it like a six, but like the effect of it like a
nine, you know? Quick, before you say anything,
Sean, just to add one more thing so you can have this to, to add
on to your your comments, is that the trailer shot for next
episode? There's one where Rainier
explicitly says, and this is something people wanted to hear,
probably some people. She says, I had to know that
there was no chance to stop the war, and now I do.
So now she can fully commit. She says that in the trailer.
So she was the last one holding out, along with Rainey's.
Everyone else is already doing it.
You know, everyone else is escalating.
Armies are marshalling all over the country.
The Greens are marshalling their Dragons.
They're conspire against each other potentially.
Yeah. So now Rainier is on board, too.
Everyone's on board now. It's the war is happening.
There's just no one's. There's no longer a single
person that's trying to stop it. And Allison says at one point
she swears on her mother's grave that that's what the Sarah said
to her, that he repudiated Ranira or named Aegon.
He didn't actually repudiate Aegon.
Named Aegon, repudiate Rainier. He named Aegon his heir.
And she's like, you're a liar. You're lying.
And OK, I swear on my mother's grave, which Ranira did swear on
her mother's grave back in the in season one about the issue of
hooking up with Damon. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, she was lying.
Allison honestly believes herself, although not after the
conversation is completed, but at this point in the
conversation, she's like, no, I'm telling you the truth.
So after arguing about that, Ranira just asks a question that
I was begging her to ask. I was like sitting there
watching the screen, like ask her, what did he say?
What did he say? Ask for particulars, you know.
And she says that she says, OK, what did he say?
What did my father say on his deathbed?
And and she says, yeah, he was confused.
He was Lily and he the Princess that with the Prince that was
promised. He mentions he she says the word
the Princess that was the Prince that was promised.
And the music kicks in. It's like, oh, there's that
music. There's the prophecy music, the
song of ice and fire dagger music.
And Rainiera's mood shifts quickly.
She's like, what? He say that because there's no
way she would know that term, right?
That's a that's like a code word that no one else is supposed to
know. So it really means it really
gives her credibility. It's like, oh crap, he really
did tell you about this, but she doesn't know the whole thing.
It becomes quickly true that or apparent that she doesn't know
the whole story of the song of Ice and fire.
She just knows this this little bit that Desaris rattled off.
And that's when Rainier a fully seems to get it.
He's she's like, OK, you already said he was kind of out of it.
So he's just kind of telling you these details and he's talking
about Aegon the first Aegon the Conqueror had this story and
Allison has that moment. She's like Aegon the the conch.
Oh, oh, right. I have some people joking about
this on Twitter. Like, you know, there's lots of
Aegons, right? But actually, there's not that
many at this point in history. At that time, there weren't as
there. Were.
Yeah. And there hadn't been many other
famous Aegons. And there's no other like Aegons
who are relevant now. There was Aegon the UN crown
killed by Meg. Or why would he be the one?
Aegon the Younger out of Rainier's daughter.
But why would he be the one? He's, you know, three years old
and he wasn't present then. Like, why would it?
It's not a great answer that it's him.
So, yeah, and there's hardly any other egg guns at all.
So, yeah. So that's it.
She and she actually spills a little bit of the strategy,
mostly stuff that's already known, but not, not one thing
that that wasn't. She says, yeah, Cole's already
on the March, which she knew my father's gone from the city,
which she didn't, but she sort of suspected because Rainey's
said he didn't. Otto didn't give this order,
this Sir Ark order. And she says, and Eamond, well,
you know what Eamond is. And she had already repudiated
Eamon for killing Luke earlier in the in the scene.
So she's like, well, of course you would repudiate that.
And then then Rainier back says like, well, OK, I'm sorry.
Yeah, You, you, you're on, you're, you're being honest
about that. You didn't want your son to kill
my son. But she's still mad about it.
So she has a hard time just. Yeah.
So I don't think that's a super big knowledge drop that she just
gave Rainier. But that's like going to go back
and say, yeah, Otto's not there. And whatever relevance that has,
it matters. But yeah, All right, Sean,
here's your here's your moment to you said you had some slots
saved up. Let's have that be our last
thing today, and we'll call it a night.
Let's say that it had gone how Ranieri won it.
Like remember what she said? She, you know, it was kind of a
joke when, when Allison's like, oh, so you can't just surrender
to me, you know, like it was so good when she's like.
You know, if I scream, you know what's going to happen.
Yeah, they'll, they'll they'll come and kill me, but I'll kill
you first. And Allison said, OK, well, then
what? And and that, that that kind of,
to me, kind of stirred all these thoughts I'm about to spout out.
The war would keep going. I don't think if Renera dies
suddenly, Damon's like, oh, well, I guess I'll bow down to
Aegon now. Right, Alice?
In fact, it probably stirs the war even worse.
And but you're kind of a point you made about like sending
Aurek to try to kill Renera, that the maybe it stops some
portion of the word. It would have happened, but
probably immediately Damon and Chase fly with their Dragons and
burn King's Landing. You know what I mean?
Like that What what next? What do you think happens next
after we die? What do you think happens next
in general? Because let's say that I agree.
Let's say I want the same path to peace.
You see, I'm not here to surrender.
I'm here to find a path to peace.
I'm hoping we can uncover path to peace.
Let's say that Allison's like you're right.
We should find a path to peace. I think you should be queen.
I'll go tell Aegon, right? No way Allison says that.
But say she does and say when she tells Aegon, Aegon's like,
you know what? I didn't want this anyway.
You're right. Rainier should be queen.
I'll give up the crown. Do you think that would just end
it or do you think Amon steps up, says no, I should be the
king and Chris and Cole says yeah, there's no way I've ever
been in the need to Renira and all the other wars in auto.
No one is just going to accept that that would not end it.
So maybe if Rennera says, you know, the path to peace is for
me to back out. I wish I'd just done this in the
1st place. I don't care about the crown.
I, I, you can maybe compare it like to Stannis, who wants to be
king, but realize, well, actually as king, I need to
protect the people. I need to start protecting the
people and not worry about being king.
What if Renera did that? She's like, you know what?
I'll drop my ego, I'll drop my claim.
And I'll just say, do you think at that point Damon is like, OK,
yeah, Aegon's a king and. Nope, you're right, Sean.
They wouldn't stop it. They're gonna keep this war is
gonna happen no matter what. And I think it was true three
days ago, 3 weeks ago. I, I I don't know at what point
they maybe theoretically could have stopped it from happening
and it and it makes sense to Renera doesn't know when she's
going to talk to Allison. She doesn't realize how out of
hand things got. She thinks Allison still has the
influence. Or, you know, power.
Whatever. To be fair, I think she hopes
she has it. I don't think she thinks she has
it. She hopes she has that.
Yeah, but but it's, well, however much she's hoping for,
it's even less. She doesn't know Kristen is the
Kingsguard now and how much she probably we talked about last
time. She probably didn't realize how
much Kristen has it out for her. And.
The. The the thing it's so sad to me.
This whole scene, I think is so revelatory of how hopeless it is
and has been as hard as we're near as trying and Allison two
they they can't. There's just not they can't.
There's nothing they can do. It's just past that point.
You knew from the beginning of the episode it was hopeless, but
this scene shows you just how hopeless it was and how hopeless
it's been for a while. That's a great point.
Yeah. It's because it's gone too far
for a while. It's already gone too far, yeah.
Let's say Allison hadn't misunderstood Visaris's last
words. In fact, what if Thesaurus made
it even more clear that don't? Forget the Council had already
plotted to take the throne anyway.
Yeah, exactly when. She went in there.
They didn't decide to do it because of these last words
Thesaurus had. That just made them feel a
little better. About that just got her and
they're gonna do it anyway. That's why she joined them.
She would have been. She wouldn't have joined in
otherwise, I don't think. Right, but say she didn't join
in. What?
What did she do to take a boat like a bandit go into?
Retirement. Yeah, I don't know.
I have no idea. And I think that's part of why
that moment when she said no mistake was made.
I think that Allison has already done what we're near our knees
now is just accepted. Like whether it's.
True. Whether I can control it,
whether I'm lying to myself, whatever.
Like in order to go into war, in order to protect my family, in
order to make these tough decisions we're about to make,
like Otto did when the boy was killed.
And rather than grieving it, use it as a political move.
Like Allison just has to be committed.
She just has to be committed to what's happening.
If it's a lie, we fight on that lie.
Here it is again. Yep, well said, Sean.
All right, folks, that's nearly a wrap couple.
One last thing I loved that Rainier also called egg on
Feckless. That was perfect.
She has the same word a day calendar that Otto had.
Yeah, so they only have one word a day, Calendar and Westeros,
they don't have variations on it yet.
Yeah. I like Dig Me Smollett's comment
here. Yeah, OK, yeah, dig me
Smollett's comment. Yeah, good point, lad.
I wasn't going to skip that, they say.
I thought Helena was forgiving Allison for some future act
because I always assume Helena's not in the present.
I really liked that idea, that which makes me wonder, like,
what awful thing could Allison do to Helena?
I don't know. So real quick, Sean as well, the
whole like, what are you going to do about it thing like which
we love from It's Always Sunny and like they bring that up.
It's like, it's such a great thing to say.
Like what do you do? And he's like, what are you
going to do about it? Like, oh, just ends the
conversation. In the trailer for the next
episode, Aegon is yelling at Allison and she goes or what?
And then it just cuts away like, Oh yeah.
So she realizes she can or what also like she's got or what
power like do you have or what privileges can you or what your
way out of this? Yeah, you can.
Some people can't. Yeah.
So she she might try to or what her way out of I don't know
exactly what, but something. So anyway, exciting.
We're not even halfway through the season.
Things are going really well. We're building up to the the,
the big payoff moments that will be painful and exciting.
And there'll be plenty more character work within that
though too. More history, more locations,
more fun. Thanks to all of you who support
us on Patreon or on Spotify as a pledge there, or those of you
who support us any of the other ways that you can access through
history of westeros.com. Thanks as well to Brand the
Builder for our awesome intro. It looks so cool and has I love
all those coins and those faces and those Dragons and that fire
and that blood. On behalf of Ashea and Sean, we
will see you next time and you know what to do.
Till then, Valerie Reedus and Valerie rewatch us
None. None.