From fire comes darkness. That's the tagline, the motto of
Season 3. It's a fitting name.
Nothing good comes from all this burning.
Fire consumes it, gives light as long as it has something to
consume. But when that's gone, yeah,
you're left with darkness. Nothing.
A recurring theme of the earlier seasons was mitigation.
Constraint or restraint or not constraint.
Containment, we should say. Viserys did a bad job of it, but
he tried to stop his family from fighting.
He had the right idea, just not very good.
The skills. There was some restraint, slash
compartmentalizing of the violence.
Even after the death of Luke, and even after Blood and Cheese
and then Eric and Arc, it was still mostly just the two
families going at it. They hadn't really dragged a lot
of other people into it, but by the end of season 2, several
families have been dragged into it.
Some have been murdered or had their Lords killed or their
places burned. And nearly everyone else is on
the March or on the sail, right? There's Northerners coming down,
southerners coming up, Sosians sailing over.
You got the Valerians at sea. I mean, it is really quite set
up to be like the Storm of Swords of the Dance of the
Dragons, right? This is the most deadly, the
most decisive when, when all that restraint and
compartmentalizing is replaced by the Game of Thrones itself.
This really is a when or die time to be in.
So it's pretty exciting and we got our first taste of how this
is going to hit the screens, which is June.
We're going to have it in June. We don't have the precise date
yet, but we'll breakdown what we have so far.
All that and more on this episode of History of Westeros
podcast. Hello, welcome to our first
trailer review of House of the Dragon Season 3.
I imagine we'll do a couple of these.
They'll be more trailers. The episode don't begin until
June, so they'll probably be some more shortly.
This was just a teaser, not a full trailer.
So at the very least we'll have another full trailer.
I can't remember a time where we only got 1 trailer though, so
we'll have more to talk about. But this is a good start, you
know? So this is not some regular time
that we're referring to. We are just doing these whenever
they happen. That's how we've kind of always
done it. But we are still in Night of the
Seven Kingdoms coverage right now.
It's kind of amazing that we're already talking about the next
show because it's already on already getting information
about it. So that's pretty cool.
If you have questions for us, hit us up at
westeroshistory@gmail.com. Drop a live comment here if you
happen to be live, or hit us up on any of our socials.
We're pretty much on every site. The the trailer is definitely
highly focused on the main characters.
There's Ray, Neera and Allison and Damon and Amon quite a bit,
a good bit of Aegon, some Kristen Cole and some Corliss, a
little bit of Jace of of a glimpse of Alan and Gwain and
Mazaria and Oscar Tully. Lots of soldiers, lots of
Dragons. There's Lord Ormond in all his
glory. That's one of the new characters
that we get a very clear shot of.
We don't actually see any of the dragon seeds.
We still haven't seen Darren, but we do see Tassarian, so we
know he's right there. And we don't see Otto or Alice
or any of the other strongs. But you know, there's a lot of
characters. They can't show them all in one
trailer. Makes sense that they'd focus on
the biggest ones. Here is a poll question for you
all. That way we'll reveal the
percentages and what you all picked at the end here.
Will we see the Cannibal or Grey Ghost this season?
Your possible choices are both Cannibal only, Grey Ghost only,
or neither. Yeah, and one of the reasons I
want to give you extra context before you give your answer.
Originally, Ryan Condall said we'd see all the Dragons.
Now, did he mean all, including the wild?
Someone asked him to include the wild and he seemed to indicate
yes, however, things have changed.
He's also indicated we'd see Mailor at one point.
So things change, right? Which, yeah, there's no Mailer.
So. And, and one other hint here is
that one of the shots we have, we'll look at later.
There appears to be Aegon appears to be looking up and up
as if he's seeing a dragon go above.
And well, that could be. So we'll see.
We'll talk about that when we get to it.
Let's talk about things in the rough order of the trailer
trying to piece together what's there.
It's a lot of battle scenes, so some of these aren't
particularly telling, but it's pretty cool that it seems to be
picking up almost exactly where it left off in in a sense that's
a little funny because that was like 2 years ago, but still you
I wouldn't see why they would want to skip anything here.
It makes sense to to pick up right where they left off.
In fact, we have amond the first shot Allison coming in.
This is 100% a call back to the very first scene after the after
Rainier flies her dragon and the, you know, great council
scene where she comes into the throne room.
There's nobody there except Damon on the throne.
And we have, you know, Damon Junior Amond.
And it's Rainier in that first scene asking Damon where he's
been. And he she's not suspicious, but
she still asks the question because he's been gone for a
while. They discuss where he is.
And here Amon is suspicious. He's like, where have you been?
And of course, we know that she was at the Dragonstone arranging
for a surrender. He's not going to be too happy
about that, however, both from the book and from a later shot
in the trailer or slash the behind the scenes photos that
have been released so far. There's a a shot of them
pressing foreheads together as if something terrible has
happened. They're bonding.
Yeah, here it is. She looks pretty sad.
He looks just more regular, somber.
She looks like she's about to cry.
So something probably very bad has happened, and that may
alleviate some of the split that maybe Eamon is feeling, but it's
also very, very fitting with Eamon's growing paranoia.
He's going to be paranoid. And in this case, he's right.
I mean, let's be honest, he's right to be paranoid about what
Allison was doing. You can.
Also see that it's during the scene we see in the trailer
'cause they have the same background of like the
fireplace. And that yes, and in that shot,
she's saying that it's only a matter of time before Rainier
ascends her Dragons. And she from Allison's position,
the reason she was going to surrender is not just to save
her children because she thinks they're losing.
And she's not necessarily wrong. I mean, she's like, OK, well,
they have all these new Dragons. They just got 3 new dragon
riders. And yeah, we have Vergar, the
biggest one. And yeah, we got my son down in
Old Town, but that's they way outnumber us.
And she's right, Right. So looking for a way to end the
war makes a lot of sense just from a pragmatic sense, not just
from saving her children, but there's that is obviously hugely
important to her as well. And then, like in the trailer,
this kind of is mirrored by Rainier telling her counsel that
Allison will surrender the city to her.
And we don't really see the reactions of everybody except
for Jace, who says you cannot trust her.
I we don't actually know who he's talking about, but it's
probably Allison. And yeah, like, they're right.
They're right. They didn't see what They don't
know her or their relationship. They don't know that Allison is
actually probably telling the truth.
But what they and they also Rainier doesn't know.
Is that, how can Allison actually pull that off?
How can she get all of her people to go along with that?
She doesn't necessarily have that authority.
So it isn't just that you can't trust her in terms of maybe
she's dishonest, it's can she actually pull that off?
So, and as we know from the book, this doesn't happen.
So this is just some extra setup intention, and ultimately
Rainier is going to take King's Landing by 4, so there isn't
going to be a surrender. Although Allison herself will
probably surrender the Red Keep, just like in the book, and that
will kind of be well set up by these previous negotiations,
that will not succeed. See Mazaria here too.
Yeah, there she is walking in. I wonder if she'll what her role
will be. She's probably going to have a
similar ish role, but she's not as you know, villainous.
She's awfully, you know, a lot of a lot of the villainy is
removed from a lot of the characters in from the in the
show, But there is still time and people can get dark.
We talked about that a lot last season.
There's a lot of evidence of Rainier getting darker and
Mazaria, my pusher in that direction as well.
Or maybe a little we might push each other, who knows?
But certainly they started to have a bit of a relationship or
at least flirted almost literally with the idea.
And I, I expect that to continue.
I doubt that was just a one off. I know that some people weren't
big on that, but we liked it. We thought it was great.
Like, it's a, it's a very, you know, standard way for one
person to manipulate another. You get intimate with somebody
and you can really push them to do what you want them to do.
It's a, it was a really human way to have power over somebody.
And it's an unusual aspect of people who have a lot of power.
Well, who has power over the people who have power?
Mazari herself has way less power on her own than she has if
she's able to get Rainier to do things.
Jenny of Cold Stone Creamery, one of my favorite commenter
names, says maybe the trailer is faking us out and Jace is
warning about Mazaria, which is possible.
I think it makes sense for him to warn about Allison, but I do
think Rainier I shouldn't trust Mazaria.
The reason I tend to like this theory and I considered it
myself as Jace says it to her as if it's almost a secret, like
you cannot trust her. It's like, I feel like everyone
in the room is going to be feeling that He's like, why is
he saying this quietly? You know, he's like, I imagine
like everyone on her council is saying that, you know, like, why
is he saying, yeah, so I can see that that it's, you know, a
Mazaria is is he's he's arguing about somebody else or warning
about somebody else. We have the shot of Allison
approaching the Red Keep. This is probably just her
returning. I mean, she's got a Kingsguard
with her. This is probably just her
returning from being a Dragonstone and walking right to
the throne room. But let's follow Allison inside
and discuss the rest of the Red Keep scenes, at least the ones
we think are in the Red Keep. There's a voice over of Amond
saying the king has abdicated the throne.
This line is given to us as we actually see Larius and Aegon
traipsing through a forest, both as which is probably really
rough going for them because they both have canes.
More on that in a minute. Then he says a new dawn is
coming, a new line of Unsullied kings.
Now, of course, he just means not bastards, you know, I guess
that's what the strong's are in the book.
He never goes as far as to call himself king, but he does rule
effectively as one. And you know, even in the book
he may have been aiming for it, but just being a little sly
about it, which might be what they're doing here as well.
We would see the overt nature of it more because we're getting
more up and close and personal with these characters than we
are in the novel. We don't see these intimate
moments between the characters in their bedrooms and in the
throne room when there's just two of them.
Those don't. Those aren't in the history
books, which, you know, why would they be?
On the other hand, restraint not exactly Amon's Forte.
He's not entirely alien to it, either.
He can use restraint as a strategy and, you know, he's not
someone whoever fell victim to, you know, being a big drinker or
other things like that. So he, he maybe restraint, he
has in some ways patience, perhaps not.
We have a shot of several Targaryen guardsmen drawing
their swords with their backs to the throne.
That's interesting just 'cause they're not Kingsguard.
Our best thought is this is coming during the taking of
King's Landing, that these are Greens, yeah, who are resisting.
They're red shirts, but they're green.
They're green, red shirts, Yes. They're quite clearly on team
Green cause of the color of that dragon there.
That is the yeah, quite, quite clear.
So the only reason I can imagine all these so many guardsmen
pulling their swords in the throne room is for that reason
if unless this is something that isn't in the book.
So that makes a lot of sense. Now we have Damon here, looks
like it might be the throne room, and he's in full armor,
and he's going out with some guy that looks like it might be one
of those guys. The armor's similar to the green
cloak. Those guys did have green
cloaks, didn't they? Were they green cloaks?
Yeah. OK.
So yeah, I think this is fitting.
So this is probably Damon and company cutting down the last
group of guards and then paving the way for Rainier to waltz
right in and sit on that throne where she may or may not cut
herself, like in the books. We have this next shot, I
believe, which is of Allison horrified.
She's outside, I think, but not in the wilderness outside.
She's just putting her glove hand over her mouth.
And yeah, it looks like maybe like a courtyard or city street
or something like that. This is pretty horrified.
Like her face is very horrified and.
She's looking up, then down. Yeah, up then down, which might
mean people have been hanged. In the book, her father and the
other small council members are beheaded, I believe, but
whatever. Like they're changing that to
some hangings. That's they could also just hang
the bodies up after beheading them.
That's that's a normal thing to do.
Another possibility is that Kristen's body is brought back
or her brother's body is brought back.
In the book, her brother dies in the city.
He's not out. He's not off with Kristen.
So that's just different. Anyway.
Now, if this is, you know, Otto or the small council, you would
expect Allison maybe to be in chains or to be in captivity.
Well, maybe that's just about to happen.
Maybe. Or maybe if Rainier just doesn't
bother putting her in chains because, I mean, she's no
threat, you know? So in any case, this is almost
certainly someone dying or something real bad like that
along those lines. So your guess is as good as
ours. Let us know who you think it is.
One fringe possibility is they somehow recover Jason's body.
And then Allison is even more afraid of what Rainier is going
to do. She's already afraid that
Rainier is going to come with her new Dragons.
And if Jace dies, then well. Yeah.
And yeah, a lot of people are thinking it could be Helena.
I hope not. I hope it's not this soon.
Yeah, it shouldn't be this soon, but it's possible.
Yeah, I got to acknowledge. We got to acknowledge the
possibility they could change the timeline on that.
Let us talk about Aegon and Laris now.
Earlier I brought up their canes.
I wasn't making fun of them for that, of course.
It's it's just really difficult and it's very not inconspicuous.
It's very conspicuous walk, 2 dudes walking around with canes.
Like, if you just have two guys in hooded cloaks, it's pretty
easy to not notice that or to not have much to say later.
Like, well, there were two guys in cloaks, What other
description can I give? But two guys with canes is,
yeah, that really stands out. So that's probably why they're
in a forest, because otherwise they would be noticed just for
that reason. If not, just some people might
actually recognize Aegon. Even though he's, you know, a
bit burned, he's not burned so badly that he's unrecognizable.
So, you know, the Cape here, the cloak, all makes sense.
Even though Lars isn't bothering with that.
He's not as well known, I suppose.
There's another shot that I believe is related to their
flight to their escape. It's a shot of Aegon stabbing a
man after some desperate struggle.
The man, Aegon's on the guy's back while the dude is reaching
for his sword and Aegon stabs him in the side.
There's a few other bodies around as well.
So there's been a struggle. I think Laris is off to the left
there. You can maybe see his leg.
So something comes up here. This is bit of a a brouhaha.
I'm guessing this is on Dragonstone.
It's like it might be a beach. Maybe this is when they get to
Dragonstone and they're recognized by some fishermen.
They have to kill some people to stay inconspicuous.
So that's my best guess is this is after they get to
Dragonstone, or maybe this is them stealing a boat from
somebody to go to Dragonstone, something like that.
We also have a shot of Aegon in what appears to be a street.
This guard to the left is definitely looking at him.
I don't know that he, you know, was going to do anything about
it, but it's notable that someone is noticing him.
This is not King's Landing. Don't forget that they have
already left King's Landing. We saw the last scene of them
was in a Raven cart going who knows where exactly, presumably
somewhere that can then take them to Dragonstone because we
assume that's still where they're going, given the book
plot. So it looks like we're actually
going to get to follow them a lot more, which is a difference
from the book. And I think that's kind of cool.
In the book, you just, we don't know where they are.
And eventually they just appear on Dragon like, oh, they're on
Dragonstone. OK, it looks like we're going to
be following them step by step, which has some some potential
for some interesting stuff to happen.
The perhaps most interesting part here though, this scene of
Aegon it, it might be right after he kills that guy 'cause
he's on his knees, but he's looking up and he keeps looking
up and he keeps looking up. That's a dragon, right?
I just cannot imagine what else it would be.
So This is why I was asking that question in our poll at the
beginning. Are we getting Sunfire and or
cannibal or great? And it could be Sunfire.
We could have been misled about Sunfire.
We, I know Shay and I both had a little bit of hope that that was
a misdirection or no? I've always thought that there's
no way Sunfire is dead in the show.
That's what I'm saying, yeah. OK, yeah, I know, Mr. I.
Right, the show is getting misdirection.
Yeah, I've always been fully confident that Sunfire is alive.
Yeah, I guess is my point. Yeah, so this could be Sunfire,
but maybe more likely it's grey, goes for the cannibal, and then
Sunfire appears. Couldn't he see Moondancer and
Bella? That shouldn't be anytime around
here. Doesn't he see?
Wouldn't he see them around there?
Around where? Around Dragonstone?
No. I mean no.
More than he he's got no more reason to see them than any of
the other Dragons that are there, like like Vermithor or
you know, any of the other dragon.
Why? Why would Moondancer be more
likely? Because that's the fight that
happens. But that's like way later.
I just mean that's why she he would see her.
But OK, anyway, I don't I, I, I doubt it's Moon Dancer, but
you're right, it's certainly possible.
So I think that's all the shots we have of egg on.
So let's actually talk about Dragons somewhere right next
door. There's always a lot of shots of
Rainier, just like they're always the shots of Allison.
That's just a a go to for these trailers is to show their facial
expressions. A lot of times there's with
Rainier in Rainier's case is like fire lair a lot of times
behind her. And sometimes it's very telling,
even though it's just a facial expression.
For example, there's a shot of her later where she's crying and
we can all kind of guess what that means.
This one, though, I'm not so sure, You know, slow cut back
looking up, she kind of looks hopeful or happy.
Yeah, that's maybe right after she returns from Allison talking
to her and is is upbeat about the possibilities that won't
last for not much is going to go swimming lean for her this
season. We have an interesting shot of
her like beating on a door like she's been locked in or locked
out of something, which I wonder what that's about.
The one theory I've heard that I really like here is that her own
guards or Jace maybe makes more sense because Jace is the one
person that could get away with this authority wise since
Damon's not there is they go off to the battle of the Gullet and
she wants to go too. And they're like no, you can't
go. You got to stay here because
she's already wanted to go into battle before and they were
like, no, don't do that. And so it makes sense that they
would try to stop her again. And we know it's a room on
Dragonstone and probably specifically her chambers
because it's in previous seasons.
As you can see here, we've seen the runes on the the walls the
Valyrian ruins. Yeah, that's good.
We it's, it's nice that we have these nice contexts.
Glyphs. Yeah, glyphs I've misspelled.
But regardless, yeah. So we and then we have the shot
of Rainier crying, which, yeah, that's got to be post Gullet.
That's got to be the loss of of Jace and Damon's voice over is
saying this is the moment you become queen where it's almost
like, yeah, they're kind of selling it a little bit as the
tragedy is what's going to make her become queen.
But I'm pretty sure this voice over is right before they take
King's Landing. They're just splicing the two
together. This is that sounds like a pre.
I mean, she's about to literally become queen when she takes the
Iron Throne. That sounds a little more likely
for this moment, but it's a it's a good voice over to put I'll
cross a montage. So that's probably what's going
on there too. Now we have another shot of her
with Damon. So they're actually together.
So he does apparently, you know, he comes back.
That could that's obviously going to be part of the setup
for them taking King's Landing but their hair very elaborate
look at his hair. He's got an elaborate braid.
She does too. Ours is particularly elaborate
this this is the vibe of mourning He's very serious.
This is not like romance passion vibe.
It could be, but I, you know, the hair to me implies something
bad. Maybe.
But of course they could be getting dressed up to take the
city. They're like, yeah, we want to
look good to take King's land. I figured.
He'd want his hair a little bit manageable for for flying
around, right? Sure.
Yeah. I mean, he usually has his
helmet on. But you're right, it was, you
know, it could be related. Absolutely could be related to
that. So this could be yeah, this this
absolutely could be her flying braid because this would keep
the hair out of her face too. So that makes a lot of sense as
well. Anyway, both those things are
likely to happen, meaning the they get together before taking
King's Landing, and we know King's Landing can happen.
What we don't know for sure is that they will be together
shortly after Jace's death. In fact, I kind of doubt that
because he's still busy in the Riverlands and there's a ton of
shots of him in battle and in other battles and stuff like
that. So yeah, I don't know how much
they, they can't push the going back and forth thing too much.
We are looking forward to going through the season with you all
in June. We're not sure what the start
date is, but you can certainly participate with us and get
behind the scenes access and bonus episodes by joining us
over on patreonthatspatreon.com/history
of Westeros. You, we have a variety of levels
that you can choose from. Include that to give you things
like titles and access to our scripts and notes and to our
voting for future episodes and other stuff like that.
So you once again, you can find the link in our description.
And you can also just go to our website where there's lots of
other ways to support history of Westeros.
You can find the link, for example, to buy a Shaya's Knight
of the Seven Kingdoms tour shirt or her Dance of the Dragon shirt
and a little more relevant for this show and a lot of other
ways to help us like shopping through our Amazon links,
etcetera. Just a quick note on the
difference between the shows, you know, like we're, we're
really seeing this, the difference between House of the
Dragon and Knight of the Seven Kingdoms under different light
because what we've always done their different stories, the
style is very different than even the type of setting, like
the of the book itself, a history book versus a novella.
And here it's really drawing those comparisons out and giving
us the opportunity to think about them.
It's really easy to love Dunk and AG and Raymond and Lionel
and Baylor. They're just less grey.
It is a little more traditional in terms of heroes and villains.
It's still got that George R Martin, you know, even the bad
guys have some good. Even the good guys have some
bad, etcetera. Nobody's perfect, but it is a
little more traditional in that sense.
This show is just a bigger challenge in that regard.
The material's less complete. They have less prose, it's less
episodic. It's way larger in terms of
production and scope and casting and and there are fewer
characters that you just really, really like.
You may love the way they're acting.
You may love the portrayal. You may love this guy, but it's,
you know, you get what I mean. Like the type of love we have
for Duncan characters like that is not the same that we
generally have for Rainier and Allison.
It's a different type of interest.
I think I may not be using the same words you would use, but I
think you get where I'm going with this.
That said, Season 3 does present maybe the best opportunity for
characters for us to genuinely root for characters that we
actually think are good people and, and rather than just people
who are interesting or movers and shakers, you know?
And not all these are new characters, but ones who come
more to the front. Like Bayla Ashaya mentioned
Bayla Moondanz before. Whether or not that's her in the
scene, we'll get more of her this season.
And she's pretty likable all the way through the novel.
I, I, I mean, all through the history books.
And I presume that's going to stay the same here.
It has been so far. So that's someone to root for.
Adam Valarian is another one. This is Alan right here.
We don't have a shot of Adam, so we got to go with Alan.
Alan's pretty cool too, though. You know, we, we can respect the
difficulty he's had in his upbringing.
Corliss hasn't been a good father to him.
He's he's a pretty, he's easier to root for than most, I'd say,
even though he's kind of gruff and humorless.
He's got a good reason to be. We're going to have Black Alley
Blackwood. We don't have a shot of her yet,
but that's a character that's been a fan favorite for a long
time. I don't think we're getting
bloody Ben, unfortunately. I I.
Black Alley is cast as the actress Annie Shapiro, and just
a fun fact, she's friends with the actress who plays Tansel.
Too tall. That's cool.
Constantly commenting on each other's posts.
That's very cool. Small world, love it.
Here is bail on moon dancer. I saw some people guessing,
maybe I was just. Are we sure this is bail on moon
dancer? Couldn't that be Reyna and sheep
stealer? Like no that is definitely not a
sheep stealer. Ain't no chance.
That's David Bowie, moon dancer A. 100% Sheep Stealer we saw at
sheep show at the end of the season and sheep Steeler was
very, very distinct and not that at all.
So while it's possible sheep Stealer will be in this battle,
I mean, we don't see the dragon, the other dragon seeds and they
are almost certainly in the battle.
So there's just a lot that we haven't seen here yet.
So yeah, looking forward to Black Alley, looking forward to
Adam, looking forward to Bayla. And yes, I also do enjoy the
villains and characters that I don't root as much for, Let's be
clear. It's just I wanted to draw that
distinction. I'm looking forward to Oscar
Tully, who I cosplay and who I made into the thumbnail for this
very episode, but also because seeing Oscar implies seeing all
of my other Riverlanders, including Black Alley.
That's a good call. I forgot to mention Oscar is
someone to root for. That's a genuinely good kid.
Like he handled himself so well. He was a he was a highlight of
season 2 for sure. Here he is.
Yeah. This is the one shot we get of
him from the trailer. Extremely bloody Riverlands
army. You can see a Blackwood shield.
You can see a dairy banner. Damon is just, you know,
disheveled but looking badass in his armor.
And you have a whole bunch of other dudes.
Oscar is very bloody, too. Both of those swords are just
like halfway blood up to the down the blade there.
Yeah. It's just they've been through
some stuff here. And of course, we know the
Riverlands campaign is like that.
It's really nasty, really bloody.
There's. We can be very sure that they
are going to compact some of it. There's just too many battles in
the novel for them to do them all.
There's no way they can do all that.
I got to give them some leeway there.
So in that sense, we don't know exactly how it's going to go
other than it's devastating to both sides.
Lots of people die. There's a shot of a really cool
shot of some Valerian men looking in anxiety here.
The world's move on to the the battle of the gullet.
Actually, we saw the bail and moon dancer shot and and to to
remind ourselves Moon Dancer isn't in that bat.
That's why people were like, hey, maybe that chief stealer
just trying to. We see a lot of that in the
fandom. Don't fall victim to that.
Don't make yourself think it has to work like the book.
We've already seen too much evidence that it's not that it's
going to be different from time to time with Light of the Seven
Kingdoms. That's a much safer assumption.
But no matter what, we just have to be open to the fact that
there's going to be changes. Yeah, so sheep Steelers might
still be in the battle Moon answer definitely has been added
to the battle. So this shot of Corlise that
Ishaya has on here, this just got to be Jace's death.
I just, you know, it just feels like it.
He's just like, whoa, he's just he's just lost for words.
Doesn't know how to. He knows it's terrible.
Nothing he can do about it. Looks kind of helpless.
You know, he's not a man that's just going to start crying in
the middle of the battle. But oof, that's bad.
That's his blood. You know, sort of yes, it is.
And well, there's a shot that I mentioned a second ago.
We have well, this one. We'll look at this one.
Jay sat, Jay's flying around. And this is a very telling
moment because in the full version of this, when there's
actual movement, you can see Vermax get real close to the
water, his tails dragging in the water.
And as we know, or if you recall, or if you don't, I'll
remind you, in the novel, we're told he flies a little too close
to the to the sea. He gets a little too close.
And that's when they're able to get him.
And it's flying too close to the other ships, flashed to the
ocean, all that stuff. So, yeah, so this is this is
ominous. We all know it's going to
happen, but adding extra build up is just, well, that's what
makes it entertaining. That's what makes it good.
That's what makes you feel something.
When you know something's coming and you still feel it.
Well, that means they did a good job with it.
Yeah. So here's this thing I started
to mention earlier that I got to say a little confused on here by
throwing different things out at once.
The shot of the Valerian men getting close to the rocks while
their ship is just full of arrows.
Just full of arrows. So clearly they've been in
battle for a minute here, and you can see blood on the deck, I
think to the left and in full motion.
When this shot is in video. It's a there's a big lurch,
which presumably is them suddenly steering away from the
rocks because, yeah, I, I you don't have to know much about
ship to know that they don't like to be near that at all.
But look at all those arrows, man.
This is, is what a fight this is going to be.
This is really going to be something.
We do get Jayce yelling Drakaris in the in the trailer as well.
We also have an interesting shot that it's hard to figure how
it's related because we got Corliss looking sad or dejected
or whatever you interpret from his facial expression.
A minute ago. He had his helmet on, but we
have this one where he suddenly whips his head around, doesn't
have his helmet on anymore, and he looks very startled and look,
he's looking straight up basically like is that doesn't
it kind of have to be a dragon? But why would he be startled by
a dragon? Like what dragon is going to be
attacking him? He might be confused if Bayla's
not supposed to. I'm not attacking him.
He might just be. I mean, it might be a misdirect.
Like he's like a sucking dragon and he doesn't realize Bayla and
Moon Dancer. Yeah, he may not know who it is.
Yeah, he might think it's an enemy until he realizes
otherwise, but in that case, what?
Yeah, maybe they come later. Like something like a projectile
coming at him. It doesn't have to be a dragon
like he's looking up and something can still be attacking
him from a different angle. My other theory is, look at the
guy in the back right behind him.
That looks like a man of the Trierarchy.
That does not look like one of his sailors, doesn't it?
Right. So this might be boarding
action. He might be on someone else's
ship or they might be on his. And if he's on someone else's
ship attacking it, then they'd be like.
Oh, maybe that could be a guy jumping down from a higher level
at him, right? Maybe.
I think that would be a really stupid thing to do because it's
just a wooden deck. You know, you would hurt
yourself really badly. I don't think he would react so
horrifyingly like that either. But maybe maybe I'm like, we're
just throwing ideas out here. We'll see what happens.
We also see good men falling off the ship and going under the
water. Yeah, we see a ramming action
here, and that's definitely a Valerian sailor falling in.
So this is a Triarchy ship ramming A Valerian ship and some
hapless well they'd say he was ironborn.
He went into the water where In full armor.
But then we also see this shot of them on the beach.
On the beach it looks like Triarchy men are being chased
inland, which is they might be trying to escape and they get
caught between two armies here or something.
This might relate to the burning of hull and high tide that we
know happens in the novel that happens during this battle, that
some of the Gullet, some of the Triarchy ships land there and do
serious devastation to the drift mark Lance.
So yeah, I guess I think this is probably drift mark because I
don't know where else they land during this battle.
I don't know where else there would be sailors putting down.
But it's a bit confusing. There's like, you know, battle
going back and forth. It's hard to tell what people
are even doing there. So other possibilities exist.
Let's go back to the Riverlands. We had that one shot of Oscar
and Damon all bloodied up, but there's a few more shots here.
We have an interesting shot of Damon.
He's turning to look back as armored men kind of surge
forward, not necessarily running, but they're moving
forward. Is it maybe they're getting
ready to go on the March or I'm not sure, but they definitely
seem to be in the field. Damon is not in full battle gear
though, but these other men around him are armored.
So I'm not really sure what's happening in that moment.
Anyway, let's move on to the map.
Let's move on to the map with the tokens on it.
This one I'm very curious about because I saw some people
claiming that this was aimed, but I really don't see how it
could be aimed because the gauntlet that slams a dragon
down, well, it's a gauntlet that slams a dragon down.
And Eamon doesn't wear armor. Hey, we haven't seen him wear
armor a single time. So when this dragon is dropped
here, yeah, it's almost certainly Damon.
So he's describing some sort of Riverland strategy, what we
think we have here. See that little triangular thing
to the left there? I think that's some sort of to
represent like boats that are to ship men across the Red Fork or
perhaps a different river, but probably the Red Fork because
there is a battle of the Red Fork.
This is, you know, the border between the West and the
Riverlands. So this could be Damon's
strategy for holding the Westerlands in check.
It could be related to something else.
But those little sort of Hershey's kisses with little
spikes on them, What I don't those are those supposed to be
like Light Infantry or those helmets with Spears.
I don't know what that is, but you can tell by all the things
massed to the left that there is a a lot of army over there and
it looks like there's lion heads in the back.
So I do believe that's the army of the Westerlands that's being
represented here. Really spectacular shot of a
Vergar burning people in Harrenhal.
Speaking of things that will happen in the Riverlands, very
much looking forward to seeing some Vergar, but also just
really looking forward to aiming to Alice Rivers.
There's no shots of Alice Rivers in this trailer, at least none
that we caught, but obviously she's a big part of the season
and her portrayal's been really fun so far.
I hope that continues. We have another shot.
We have that shot of Damon's face and helm.
It's probably part of the same voice over speech that he's
giving to her. He says you are the Queen of
Dragons. You have an absolute power
within your grasp. This all feels like getting
ready to take King's Landing. Just like, you know, talking her
up, getting her, getting her ready for that, you know, battle
speech type thing. Not sure, but that's what I feel
like it is. We've got a variety of Damon in
battle shots. I don't know that we need to go
through all of them. There's just various shots of
him. That ache has been showing.
Castle in the background, a shot of him finishing somebody off,
stabbing downward. It looks like they may have
attacked a camp or something like that because there's a
bunch of fires around. There's no sign of Karaxis, but
there is Karaxis in other shots. So he's using Karaxis in some
battles and not in others. This shot of Karaxis, wow, those
jaws are wide. I mean, Dang, we knew we had a
long neck, but woo, long boy is also a wide mouth.
Dang, very, very cool shot. I like that Damon does not
appear to be on his back in this shot, but that doesn't really
mean much. Oh, he is.
Oh, he's just behind the horn, isn't he?
Just the, the angle is funny, isn't it?
Cool. So anyway, that'll be fun to see
Damon and Craxy's in the in the Riverlands.
Oh yeah, there he is. Very clearly there is Damon.
Yes, so let's see, let's move on to the other part of the
Riverlands. Kristen Cole.
We have less shots of this, but one that's really cool.
We have him him out of armor with a dirty, concerned face,
kneeling down, and then when it cuts back, it reveals this huge
Vegar footprint. That's interesting because we
know in the book that Cole and Amon don't work together even
though they should. And so this is kind of like Cole
realizing that Big R has been here or yeah, I'm not really
sure, but it's a really cool shot.
I mean, Dang, that foot is big. It's a, it's a Jurassic Park
vibes, isn't it? And then he's looking up, you
know, he's like, well, I guess this dragon was here recently.
He doesn't look like he's seeing a dragon, but you know, he's
kind of like scanning the sky, maybe looking for one.
I don't know. There's also a shot of him
fighting and he looks like he's wearing the same clothing.
Kind of looks like they're misadventures throughout the
Riverlands that won't go very well.
Yeah, here it is. He's this is his I just killed
someone face like the guys on his slitting his neck or
something like that. So it looks like he's really
grimy and beat up, which is fitting because it's supposed to
just get worse and worse for his army until the end.
So that seems to be fitting. Asia mentioned the Northmen.
Let's talk about that briefly. We've got a host of charging
Northmen. It's pretty cool.
It's only like a 2 second shot or even less, but it looks
really cool. You got some Stark banners, you
got some maybe other banners, but we weren't able to make out
in the other ones. It's just possible there's
Manderly in there. But the Winter Wolves, you would
maybe not expect to have any Manderlys amongst the Winter
Wolves, certainly amongst the the people that come to support
Rainier because we definitely have Torin Manderly.
I don't think we're getting Medric Manderly, but we are
getting Torin, and so that means they'll be showing up to to help
Rainier in King's Landing in that Northman shot, there seem
to be storming. They seem to have a ladder, like
a scaling ladder, which to me that means they're storming a
castle, but I don't know of any castles that the winter wolves
storm. It could just be a hold fast or
I could be misinterpreting what I'm seeing there.
So over to the right leg, see there in the middle there.
It really does look like a ladder, doesn't it?
But it might not be. It might not be.
Anyway, either way, we know there's going to be battles with
the Winter Wolves, and that's going to be exciting because of
just how savage they are. And we haven't necessarily seen
any things like that, like a really heavily armored bunch of
old guys that are actually trying to die.
So that should be that should be pretty fun.
One of my probably my most maybe my most favorite, but the shot
that I think is the most artistic of the entire trailer
is this shot of an armored man who kind of has the same armor
silhouette as the guards in the throne room, but without the
Cape. So he's might he he isn't
necessarily the same. He's somebody.
And it's just so cool. He is his fire and blood in
action. This guy's swinging his sword
down, probably killing somebody. He's probably the killing blow.
And there's just all this fire behind him that really almost
has to be dragon fire. This also really looks like
King's Landing. Ashay and I have been to
Casseras. That's where the majority of the
King's Landing scenes are filled, at least in the streets.
And it really looks like that. In House with the Dragon.
In House the Dragon, not in not in the original show, that's
true. So.
It was in Game of Thrones. For other other scenes, visit
Casseras. It's beautiful and you really
will feel transported. Yeah, it it's Split.
It's split time with like, what was that place in Croatia?
Dubrovnik, Yeah. Yeah.
Dubrovnik, but for House of the Dragon it's pretty much all
Casseras, so they might just kick up the violence a little
bit here. I say that because there's no
actual burning of King's Landing during Rainier and Damon's
taking of it, but they could easily just kick up the balance
a little bit. There is rioting, so you know
this might be related to the rioting.
Gwain Hightower dies during the taking of King's Landing in the
book when the Gold Cloaks turn on the greens.
But Gwain Hightower is off with Christian Cole, which doesn't
actually suggest he's going to survive, because Kristen Cole's
probably going to die out there after the Butcher's Ball, and
quite possibly Gwaine Hightower will die with him.
We can always hope that Gwaine is taken hostage instead.
He's very valuable as a hostage. Potentially, but I don't know if
they would just make that changes for the heck of it.
Sorry Gwaine, you're probably dying too.
Let's talk about the Reach. It's pretty much the last
location we have. We got most of the action in the
Reach, at least early on. It stands to be in the far
South. As they March towards the
action, we get a really cool shot.
Tassarian, We got a Hightower man.
We got tents. The tents kind of matched
Tassarian. That's kind of cool.
I guess those are more greenish, but they look kind of blue.
And there's a dragon keeper, which is a great detail.
I love that. Like, yeah, Darren couldn't
handle his dragon all by himself, especially as a
teenager. Yeah, He needs a little help.
Right. Sarian's in kind of like an open
cage. Yeah, this.
Is a little closure. I think as well because I mean
Tasarian sleeps next to Deron's tent, so maybe Deron's tent is
just next to this cage. They can't, they can't have her
like accidentally squashing the tent with a, with a, you know,
an errant wing or something like that.
But she looks great. Yeah.
She looks like the kind of the same model of like the original
Dragons from Game of Thrones. She looks like Danny's Dragons.
She looks like, I guess kind of like kind of like Drogon.
I think probably the similar model as we know, not all the
Dragons look like that. So maybe I'm wrong, I'm not the
best with these dragon designs, but that's what it reminds me
of. So this is probably pretty far
in the South. Still, they're getting ready to
March. An interesting thing that
happens here is a a rider runs off really quickly, which could
mean that they're sending a message or getting ready to go
into action. Not exactly sure.
Now here's a great shot. This is Lord Ormond Hightower.
Very cool Hightower armor with the like.
It looks kind of like one of those old school like religious
reliefs where you got people standing in their on their
altars or their in their different panels at the
Hightower in the center. And I don't know who those
figures are on either side, but there might be like some of the
seven or something like that. Maybe they Rep or maybe they
represent the Citadel and Old Town or I don't know.
It's very cool though. It's very, very high tower.
It needs to be, needs to look really rich and fancy and it
does, but it's also artistic. So that's that's even better.
So that's a big ol army he has, isn't it?
You can't see Tasarean in this shot, but Hightower host is huge
heading towards Tumbleton. That might be I assume we get
Tumbleton this season, but maybe not.
It's hard to say. Probably first Tumbleton this
season, maybe second Tumbleton next season, maybe only one
Tumbleton, maybe they compact that into that.
But the 2 battles are so different, the participants are
so different. So I hope, hopefully we still
get both. Yeah, like I said at the
beginning, the trailer was mostly battle shots.
You got armies, you got Dragons, you got the main participants.
So it's, it's harder than usual I think to glean things from
this than a lot of other trailers we get.
But this is not a trailer, it's a teaser.
That's kind of the point. We'll get more detailed shots
when we get a Fuller drop, an actual trailer instead of a
teaser. So that will probably be, you
know, in a few months or something like that, and we will
be all over it when it happens. Y'all?
Any last takes, Ashaya? Anything you want to say about
this poster here? Yeah, not about the poster,
although I think the poster's pretty cool.
Has kind of an A lot of their promo art has this kind of
uncanny quality to it. She's just surrounded.
It looks like very she's in danger.
But yeah, they're clearly showing that she will take the
Iron Throne. Yeah, that's the throne.
Yeah, you know, clearly in the poster.
But the thing I wanted to point out was that they did a little
short on the Game of Thrones, Thrones TikTok, YouTube,
Instagram, wherever you engage with the social media where they
had Dexter Solancell and Peter Claffey watch the teaser for
House of the Dragon. And they gave the disclaimer
Dexter has not watched Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon
because he's 11. Yeah, but they watch it.
It's cute. Dexter calls Raniera his his
granddaughter and quickly corrects himself to grandmother.
Yeah, grandmother, but yeah. Yeah, just a cute little thing,
so check. That out you want to see.
Fusion of the two shows. That's hilarious.
Yeah. I love, I love the the idea that
they can interact like that, that the ACT, the cast, that
gives them a great opportunity for fun things like that on
social media. Having two shows and maybe even
more shows later that they can do fun crossover social media,
things like that. Great.
That's really fun. I'm so excited for this show.
I think this will be a great season.
I think the source material is a lot stronger than season 2.
I didn't dislike season 2, but I still have the opinion that I
think season 3 is set to be stronger for that reason.
Makes for better TV. Yes.
Makes for better TV. Yeah, both for a lot of reasons.
Not just that, But yeah, as I Shaya said, that's the good way.
Good, succinct way to put it. And I just feel really lucky
that we have two Game of Thrones TV shows on in the same year.
I mean, yeah, like, wow. Not just two Game of Thrones TV
shows on in the same year, also on A Song of Ice and Fire play
premiering over in the UK at Stratford upon Avon this summer.
So potentially at the same time as House of the Dragon, we are
also going to get the Game of Thrones, the Mad King play.
It was renamed by those of you who knew as the Iron Throne.
They renamed it there. Was never going to be the Iron
Throne then. Yeah, yeah, we're emphasizing
the Shakespearean tragedy. So The Mad King is kind of a
perfect title for that, I suppose.
Can you believe one of the screenwriter or one of the
playwrights is Duncan McMillan? Like how on the nose can you be
as a Shakespeare playwright to be named Duncan McMillan?
Like you may as well be Duncan Macbeth.
Yeah. So I, I feel really lucky.
I hope you all have that positive feeling about this.
I'll just like, take a moment to think about how lucky we are to
have so much from our favorite or if it's not your favorite,
one of your favorites. Certainly our favorite.
And yeah, just take a moment to reflect on that and how how
special it is and get hyped because, you know, we've got a
few months still, but it's going to be great.
And the future is bright. And it's not just because of
dragon fire, but partly because of dragon fire.
We'll see you all for our final review of Night of the Seven
Kingdoms and our postseason coverage, then a bunch of book
coverage, and then we'll dive into House the Dragon season
when it arrives. Can't wait for that.
And we'll be doing it all alongside you, all behalf of a
share. You know what to do.
Until then, get yourself ready. Reread it, Valar.
Reread it. Byron Blood, that is.