The Queen, whoever was, you know, I like a little word play
with my episode titles or just in general.
It's the Season 2 finale. Many plots come to a head, a
turning point if you will, for many of those plot lines, while
others are just getting started. There's a big power shift as the
Greens struggle internally while the Blacks seem to reunite and
rally together. For now.
There's potential issues down the road with some of the new
additions to their team, but for the moment, it's going all
right. As Ryan Condall said for the
start of the season, the season is going to feel like an early
Game of Thrones season. Less flash, more character
development, more set up. It certainly had that.
Season three is primed to be a lot like a Game of Thrones
season three or book three of A Song of Ice and Fire, when a lot
of those big setups paid off and no episode carries the weight of
the season's expectations like a finale does.
And while this episode wasn't originally planned to be a
finale, there's a little bit of shenanigans and the and the
writing side of the HB OS production and their demands for
how many episodes would be in the season.
It certainly has the setup of a finale and and the end episode
montage is very worthy of finale.
That's the kind of thing you often see when there's going to
be a big break. You see a lot of you kind of
remind yourself where you're at with a lot of different plot
lines. Get a little view over here, a
little view over here, kind of just check in with everything.
That definitely has the feel of a finale now.
No episode of House of the Dragon to date I think has had
more supernatural elements, or at least overt supernatural
elements, and a lot of the existing supernatural plots in
particular came to a head, especially if we're thinking
beyond Dragons. But it also had character shifts
in part due to some of those supernatural elements.
Some of the most dangerous characters have reason to be
even more so, while some of the more peaceful ones are openly
talking about ultra violence towards innocence as a war
strategy. Nothing supernatural about that.
It's just straight up dark. So it's very weighty, you might
say, both of those things coming together in different ways.
We'll talk about all that and more on this episode of History
of Westeros podcast. Hello and welcome back
everybody. We're going to discuss the
season as a whole separately, returning to our familiar
offseason time slot. So my pitch about our when our
live streams happen, our is going to change now because
we're going to be back to Sundays at our time slot of
three Eastern. And yeah, we're bummed if the
season's over and it won't be back for two years, but or maybe
around two years. It may not be two years, maybe
like 1820 months, we don't know. But we don't have to wait two
years from our Westeros content, unlike last time because there
is going to be Night of the Seven Kingdoms coming next year.
So we're back to a sort of every other every year experience for
prestige Game of Thrones television.
So that's great. Even though, so that's the
that's the good side of of the season ending is that we don't
have to wait nearly as long for more content.
And of course we still do. Our game streams at six on
Friday over at twitch.tv/history of Westeros.
Sean, how's it going? What you, what you got?
You got a black and red shirt there like me, I've got house
Cole. Aren't you pleased that I'm
wearing a House Cole shirt? I love Kristen's speech so much
so I had to give him the nod even though I'm critical of the
man. He he had a great episode, so
respect. Aziz was debating between a
Green Man shirt and a household shirt and Kristen Wand.
What a strange, strange comparison.
That is right. Well, we should have worn our
Green Man outfits, even antlers and all.
That would have been pretty funny, yeah.
I guess this is a sort of a Targaryen shirt.
It's like black and red with three Dragons.
I think this is a Sandrixian shirt.
Yeah, it is a Sandrixian design. It's her.
It's her Targaryen sigil shirt. So yes.
Heck yeah. And if I could Segway, by the
way, those Kristen Cole comments into I'd, I was a guest on the
Silent Sisters podcast. For.
Episode 7 that's out. I think Shay might be able to
put a link. You could Google it or it's on
Twitter or whatever, but but we almost titled that episode
missin Kristen because Kristen Cole wasn't in it at all.
Yeah, it wasn't about the dragon seeds.
It was about the lack of Kristen Cole.
That was the that was the key feature of episode seven.
Yeah. All right.
If you have questions for us, send them to us live here in the
chat. Ashaya will pick up some of them
and you can also hit us up at westeroshistory@gmail.com if
you're catching this after the fact.
A lot of y'all have been sending us emails lately, so apologize
if we haven't responded just yet.
But we do have opportunities to cover some of those questions on
our episodes. Like I said, during our season
wrap up episodes, some of that will happen and we're going to
do some other show related content based on some of the way
these topic, the way some of these topics ended.
And, and certainly we're going to talk about some of those
things as individual plot arcs and get really deep into some of
the material. But for today, of course, we'll
do our typical coverage of the episode with no spoilers and
point you in other directions for other discussions like I
just did. Thank you to everyone who
attended our City Winery event in New York.
If you are ever there, you can, which is City Winery in Chelsea,
you can, it's on the pier. It's very nice.
You can buy our wine bottles. There's wine bottles where they
have our labels on them. There's Shay's got some pictures
up of the event. And you can, we have signed
bottles of wine there at the bar or at the at the winery and you
can buy them and we got a little kickback if that happens.
So you, if you're ever there, you can just see it and be like,
hey, look, there's Aziz and Shay's signature on a bottle of
wine. It's pretty cool.
Pretty fun experience for us. And yeah, we don't do a lot of
live podcasts outside of live streams, which, you know, from
our own home. So that was a fun experience.
But except for the leaving part. And that gets to why we're doing
this episode on Wednesday instead of Monday.
A lot of you are aware that Delta Airlines has been having
some issues lately. Well, those issues started in
early July or mid-july. Well, they're still happening.
We got stranded at the New York Newark Airport for almost a full
day. Like in the airport for a full
day. Not like we went home and then
came back. No, we were in the airport for a
full day and that wasn't great. So we had to change the time of
our stream to Wednesday. Jill, 47, sends a birthday cake
sticker. Well, thanks Jill.
It is a Shaya's birthday or was yesterday, so it's pretty close.
Yeah, it was. Lots of people wish me happy
birthday in the live stream chat.
Thank you all. And I wish a happy birthday to
my birthday twin, Jordan Rannells.
Oh. Yeah, who shares the same
birthday and who wished me happy birthday first of all in the
chat so. Oh, very cool.
Yeah, it's a long expected soundscape.
Shout out to Jordan there. So this, this episode did suffer
a bit from HB OS directives, which they forced to change from
8:00 to 10:00. That's why people were, you
know, that's why the show, the episode only, the show only had
eight episodes. It wasn't the plan.
They wanted to have 10. And HBO came down on them pretty
hard and said no, only eight. And we wondered about this.
Why? Well, just today, like literally
an hour ago, HBO, Warner Brothers released their earnings
statement. Apparently they lost $10
billion, $10 billion. So when people say this, maybe
the the golden age of streaming prestige television went too
far. Well, $10 billion too far,
apparently. So now it doesn't really make
sense to me that they would make the season worse as a way to to
make more money, you know, to make up for that, you know, So I
don't really don't quite understand that logic.
But it isn't the only show affected by that.
Apparently The Last of Us is also was also cut from 9
episodes to seven. And that show was extremely
successful too. I haven't watched it.
I know you did, Sean, but apparently it's going to have
the same problem where it might have a kind of a a finale that
doesn't quite feel exactly like a finale.
Part of that was affected by the rider strike too, because when
they were told they had to cut it down, they didn't have the
opportunity to to make some of the necessary changes because
the rider strike was happening at the same time or near the
same time as this directive came down.
So don't blame. My point is don't blame the
showrunners. Blame HBO.
And make sure you, if you're gonna complain, let them know.
Don't do that. Don't make your show worse.
It's not gonna make you more money.
You're not like this is. Yeah, it's not.
Seems kind of silly actually, but what do I know?
I don't know anything about running a big media
conglomerate. It seems like a mistake though,
from where we're sitting anyway, 'cause it's it does just goes
beyond taste. Like that's it's affecting the
ratings for the show. Like how is that good anyway?
You know, this is a little bit of a tangent, but I was thinking
a lot about the idea of all the production design.
It's anyone who's watching that House the Dragon built, you
know, with everything shows kind of everything that goes into all
the filmmaking process. I wonder if, you know, I'm sure
there's not this direct correlation, but I'm sure part
of that $10 billion they lost was an investment, right?
Like all of this stuff they put into the volume and the
technology to have flamethrowers set people on fire, all the
stuff they're setting up for the House the Dragon special
effects. Will they get to keep using that
next season and maybe for other Game of Thrones shows and
anything under that umbrella? You know, they're going to get
to keep on using a lot of this lot of these studios, the sets
for King's Landing and everything, which is all so
impressive. And I, I hope I, I, you know, I
guess if they have to cut some episodes better than canceling
the whole shows. But I have high hopes for
Dunkin, Egg and the next season of this and everything else.
Absolutely. Yeah, me too.
I think like I said at the beginning, I think, I think a
lot of people forgot that or didn't know that.
Ryan Condill said, yeah, this is going to be a season that it is
based on character development and pushing the story forward
before it gets to the big like exciting moments, the big battle
action and things like that. So, and this is a reminder
folks, Game of Thrones, the original show had one on screen
battle in the first two seasons and and in A Song of Ice and
Fire 2 on screen battles in the first two books.
That's it. Most of the battles were off
page. The only battles in the Song of
Ice and Fire on page were the Battle of the Green Fork and the
Battle of Blackwater. That is it.
All the other battles were off page or off screen.
I've said this a million times it, you know, I, I get that it's
exciting to see the action and Dragons and everything, but me
personally, that is not why I'm watching this.
You know, when it comes and they do it well, I get excited.
But if that's all there was, if there's just a battle action
dragon scene every episode, I probably wouldn't still be
watching this show. You know, I watch it because I
care about the dilemmas these characters go through, and these
action scenes are more meaningful when I care about the
people involved in them and the repercussions that we'll have
and on and on. Yeah, like the Battle of Rooks
Rest was amazing, that regard because like every character had
a compelling reason to be there and conflict regarding their
being there and just the like, you knew that whatever happened,
it was going to have a huge impact.
Yeah. And even still, 1/4 of the
episodes had a big dragon spectacle. 2 out of eight
episodes were like huge bombastic spectacles between the
red dragon and the gold and and the red sewing.
I, I, I don't know, there's a lot.
I think they should just be more open about how much these
individual scenes cost so people could have a better idea.
Like people complain about certain aspects of how the
budget goes. Like how much do you think that
cost? You know, Like I don't even
know, but I would like to know too.
My complaint about budget and all that, and it's one of these
and I talked about off the forehand and he even tweeted
about which is why did you need to dedicate budget to making a
new White Walker scene when it's going to be really expensive?
You have a treasure trove of of existing White Walker scenes
from Game of Thrones, and it looked bad.
It didn't look that good. Jacked up I didn't.
Know the the other people that had been making White Walker
scenes had experience with it. This was a new team.
And then you could see behind the scenes they were like,
whatever they said. Oh, some of them, but.
It was still that bad and they still brought up how much money
it cost and I just. Yeah, they should have just
reused foot. Yeah, we have White Walkers at
home. They should have just Yeah,
yeah, I agree with that. Now I can.
Now, on the other hand, like refilming the Daenerys scene,
that makes sense because we didn't have that angle you need
to see seeing her from behind. That makes sense.
Like you don't want to know the face of this individual.
So that and that one probably wasn't even 1/3 as expensive to
reshoot because it's just a a hunched over woman.
I guess that there are dragon CGI in that moment, but still.
Anyway, a lot more of this discussion will save.
Let's let's let's not talk about this anymore, Sean.
Let's talk about this later. Let's get into the details and
then save a lot of this for our actual wrap up episode.
Let's stick to this episode as much as possible.
Tell me what you thought, Sean, over all of this episode and
your best performances. That's how we like to start.
Let's kick it up. Over.
I loved it. I I think I have more notes on
this episode than I have in the past few episodes as far as you
know, as an indication of like the thoughts stirred in me or
whatever. And I think I think I have to
give Alan of Hall credit for his performance this episode.
It was kind of spread out and I want to give it to Emma Darcy.
Every time they're featured, I'm inclined to to pick them.
But but he was so outstanding this time, and it was kind of
based on the set up so far. He's been so reserved and stoic.
For it to all finally come out like this scene in episode one
wouldn't have been that meaningful.
But to build up through the course of the series to come out
like this was really powerful. Totally agree.
I loved Abu Bakar Salim's performance here and I I tweeted
at him specifically like man, you crushed that scene and all
of our feelings. It was so good.
I totally agree. And and with what you're saying
too about how the build up meant everything there, like this guy
was holding it back and finally he just couldn't hold it back
anymore and had to unleash Michelle, what about you?
Yeah, I definitely chose Abu's performance as Allen as my
number one spot. And you, you absolutely hit the
nail on the head with how it's a when a character has held back
and been restrained for a long time, when they finally unleash
it is very powerful. And it makes me think of my
favorite television monologue, which is the monologue from
15,000,000 merits in Black Mirror, where he also is like
the character is silent like almost the entire episode.
And then finally, when he unleashes this huge monologue,
it's so powerful, right? And so I think that was part of
it, But also the difference is in Alan's character from the
book and that this is like a 30 year old man who's had to raise
his little brother and it's a lot weightier of a of a life
he's lived a lot harder. And all of that.
It was very powerful. I want to also give a shout out
to Fabian Frankel as Christian Cole, because I thought, I mean,
frankly, he was speaking very bleak poetry.
Like, frankly. Yeah, frankly.
But he was. He was.
His words were beautiful and moving and dark and his
performance was so good. And yeah, I loved that scene.
And I want to give one final shout out for humor to Tom
Bennett as oh, because that is also a really impressive
performance to, to ride the line of, of earnest and trolling and
being funny and not being too campy with it.
And I, I, I loved it. I thought he was very funny.
You know, even though I didn't vote for Fabian Frankel, I still
think that scene was one of my favorite of the whole series.
That even like Game of Thrones included that was that that
speech he gave, I thought was, I don't know, powerful and moving.
I. I, I wrote the whole thing down.
So when we get to it, yeah, we'll be able to re relive it as
best as we can. And yeah, and a lot of people
I've seen comparing it to Shakespeare just the way that
was written. Like, yeah, I'm not a
Shakespeare expert, but I can, I can feel that vibe.
I personally also picked Abu and Fabian and, and in our Facebook
poll, Emma and Thea actually beat them both.
Emma, of course, just like you said, Sean just just always
wins. Like she, they're just so good.
It's just like, and I think about that, it's, it's
interesting to compare them to Emilia Clarke, who at first
Emilia Clarke, I was a little critical of her acting, but she
just won me over in the long term.
It's just, but Emma just hits the ground running just amazing
from the get go. And I think I was, I mentioned
this to Shay earlier today. I was like, Can you believe
Emma? Darcy's only been in 13
episodes? Like there's only been 18 total.
Millie Alcock was so good, too. That's part of it.
So just the character. Raniera has been amazing since
the beginning, and so is Allison, but kind of
overshadowed by Raniera, in my opinion, personally.
And maybe some people's mileage may vary.
Of course, we all have different tastes.
But yeah, Sophia Saban, of course, is not usually at the
top. She doesn't have as big a role,
so her performance is harder for it to stand out when some
episodes she's barely in. But this one really stood out
for a lot of people. And it was also a real, a real
combination of of her character and not just of her performance
because well, as we'll discuss, this was the first time her
prophecies were like understood and, and part of the story
rather than something for us to see is foreshadowing.
OK, Before all her prophecies were for the, for us watchers,
but now they're part of the story and it's affecting how
people take action, which is a big change.
Most episodes we handle location to location, but this one we're
going to do in order the scenes that they come in because I
think that was particularly important this time around.
I think the the the writers really paid a lot of attention
to how to connect each scene to the next one, and I want to try
to preserve some of that as we talk about it.
Can I also say that from AI don't know a filmmaking, maybe
editing perspective, I think it did a lot to kind of establish a
tone with the pacing to culminate in that montage at the
end. I think they did a really good
job with the the pacing of the cuts back and forth.
I think I agree with that. Yeah.
Boxy sends a super chat, says you are dismissed.
Bitch. What?
That's that's referring to Alan not being this, but he's like,
no, I'm going to tell you what I think.
And Coralie's is going to is going to listen to it.
Yeah, I can't wait to discuss that scene in more detail.
Well, let's start off where it starts with the intro.
There is a thread passing through many Dragons.
That's the difference in the intro.
This time, basically every dragon I think that's been in
the show so far appears at the end.
And then there's ash instead of black blood.
I think it might be black blood still, but I think it looked
like ash, like scorched earth. So as I have said several times,
we have a a mostly written intro episode that we just have to
tweak based on the last few sets of changes and then we'll have
the full thing for you. We start with the triarchy.
Our lead into the building where the conversations are taking
place is a monkey of all things. We get a monkey as our guide
there, sort of our our camera angle to start.
It's kind of neat. Can I say by the way, just
again, talking about the film making every now and then I, as
I watch this show, I can't decide is this a real image?
Is this a, an actual camera filming the coast off of, you
know, Spain or something or CGI. And I, and when that monkey came
in, I was like, that monkey looks real.
Maybe that was just a smooth transition of a real monkey into
a CGIC. Maybe the whole scene's real.
And sure enough, in the behind the scenes that is a real monkey
that had an animal handler and that so on, so on.
Like I, I, I don't know how much credit I should give to the
House of the Dragon or the, the state of filmmaking technology
in general. But the the blending of of the
real imagery, the real characters and the real sets and
the CGI stuff, whether it's something in the background or a
dragon or whatever it is, it's becoming more and more seamless
and. Beautiful.
I totally agree. And that's one of the things I
think the show is just amazing. So I think when people like, you
know, that when people complain about the show, they're
complaining about the story. No one ever seems to complain
about the acting or the music or stuff like this.
And I wish people would conclude that when they judge the show as
always, like, well, you just don't take that for granted.
Like, how can it be when all when all these factors are like
a pluses? If you don't think the story's
an A+, well, that's fine. But how does that make the whole
thing nothing? You know, I mean, the story can
be that bad. Don't get me wrong, I don't
think it is, but. I'm going to say I think there
were a couple of egregiously bad VFX shots in this episode.
We did just talk about the White Walker being kind of crappy.
OK, Yeah. Fairpoint Fairpoint at the end
the scene with Scirocco and and Thailand on that ship.
Awful looking, don't even. Put them on.
I didn't notice, but I I believe you.
So I I I generally stunning show some of the most incredible
cinematography. Maybe an A+?
Yeah, maybe. An A+ but somehow a couple are
DS. A couple.
Yeah, if you write, if you, I'm giving an overall grade.
But yeah, if you're talking about individual scenes, yeah,
yeah. Also keep in mind if you're
grading this like the Olympics, right, that you have like
difficulty and execution. Sure, they're maxed out in
difficulty, so sometimes the, the execution might miss, but if
they're missing because they're doing something so difficult.
And you know, I had a little comment that it's not that
important, but it came up again about the, the white Walker's
scene, which again, maybe it wasn't worth the budget they
spent on it, but I'm a little more forgiving because it's part
of a vision. So the vision or Damon's
interpretation of it might not be clear or accurate or good or
whatever. Does that make sense?
I I can well. That doesn't explain why it
doesn't look good though. It just doesn't look that good.
That's that's the problem. Like that's it's not the
confusing, it's not like what is he seeing here?
No, it just doesn't look that good.
Anyway, we can talk about that scene more when we get to it.
There is. Oh yeah.
And about the monkey, I wanted to say something funny You you
referenced behind the scenes Jefferson Hall, who plays
Thailand. And of course his brother, Sir
Lord Jason doesn't like monkeys and so he didn't really like the
monkey. There's a little bit of David
Schwimmer on friends vibe because David Schwimmer also
didn't like that monkey because it was difficult to be a scene
partner with the monkey and Thailand.
Jefferson Hall doesn't didn't go so far as to say I hate that
monkey like David Schwimmer did. So funny.
He just was like a little uncomfortable.
He was also uncomfortable with singing.
He said that was the worst part. That was worse than the monkey
was having to sing because he's like, I'm not a good singer.
You know, he's like, I hate this part.
And and a reminder that this actor was also Sir Hugh of the
Veil back in season one of Game of Thrones.
So he's just this guy's been around.
He's also in Vikings. This is the first time where I
see why they bothered to cast someone who was in Game of
Thrones. This whole time I've been like,
you know, there's a wide world of actors out there.
You really didn't need to, but he really does show the range of
these two twins very well. You forget that Jason and
Thailand are the same person. And, and it's something to be
said for like, well, we've worked with this guy before.
We know he's competent, professional or whatever.
He knows maybe, maybe he's got a little bit of a head start.
I don't know. Maybe not.
Maybe that doesn't matter at all.
But yeah, I, I'm kind of with you there.
It was a little, it's a little strange to reuse an actor, but
when there's a small role like that, yeah.
Like most people, the the 99% of people wouldn't even notice that
that was Sir Hugh unless we pointed it out.
Next season, they're going to cast Robert Downey Junior as a
White Walker. That's funny.
So there's three speakers facing Thailand and these are each a
representative from the three nations that make up the Kingdom
of Three Daughters. The pretty safe assumption that
the blue bearded guy is from Thai Rash because that's what we
associate with dyed beard as a Thai Rashi thing.
The rough voiced guy I kind of assume is Mirish because by
process of elimination, I think the white guy with blue eyes is
Lyseny, which makes sense. These guys seems to have blonde
hair poking out from under his little hat there too.
So he's I think I think that narrows it down pretty well, but
we don't actually know for sure because those actors are listed
on the IMDb page without names, without roles.
It just has their actor names. So I don't know.
Anyway, not super important. Thailand is uncomfortable and
they said in the behind the scenes that that was part of
what they were trying to do is make this place's non Westerosi
as possible to make this rich Lord, you know, counselor guy as
uncomfortable as possible. Put him out of his element as
much as possible. I love that they're just like
your castle is the stables are made of gold and you're all this
and he's like he doesn't even try to tell them that's complete
nonsense. He's just like, yeah, but we
need all that money. Like, I can't convince them this
isn't true. They're not going to believe me.
It's again, you cry poverty like.
So finally they agreed. Yeah, we'll do the step stones.
Finally, I'll give you the step stones.
Yeah, it's like, again, like you have to.
The step stones come back again. And he's like, they're just a
pile of rocks. He's like those pile of rocks
y'all fought over, like all of season one.
They're clearly worth more than some.
If y'all A, you're wanting them now and B, you fought over them
so much before they're clearly more than a pile.
And he says, and you're like, you're just going to go right
back to charging exorbitant fees to get through there, aren't
you? And he's like, better than
losing. It's kind of like like, yes, in
other words, yes, we are going to do that.
We are going to basically be pirates again.
You know, you called us pirates and we didn't like it, but we
didn't argue. So, and they're like, all right,
fine, He, he, he gives up, you know, like, fine, I'll give you
the we'll give you the step stones.
A king might, you know, shred, you know, play me alive or
whatever it is he says or hang him.
And they're like, wait, hold on one more condition.
You have to impress Admiral Shirako Lohar.
So this is Abigail Thorne of Philosophy tube, the YouTube
channel. And also she's in the acolyte
and Balder's Gate 3 as the voice of Nocturne.
And I love that this is a maybe a little hint there, a little, a
little nod because first line Abigail says or Chiraco says is
what kind of man are you? A poet, a philosopher?
You know, and there you go, philosophy too.
But there you go. So Abigail is a lesbian trans
woman. And here they're calling her
him, but in the behind the scenes they refer to her as she.
So maybe they them maybe non binary.
It's OK to be confused about this because they haven't
exactly made it clear. Yeah, I I think that if you're
if you don't watch the interviews or BTS stuff, I think
your read of this character would be that this is a person
who's living as a man with he him pronouns.
But Abigail Thorne has made it clear that she refers to the
character with she her. So I think I I'm just going to
think of it as like femme, non binary.
You can use either pronouns depending on context, etcetera.
Seems to into women and men because seems to be flirting
quite a bit with Thailand and trolling him a little bit,
razzing him as it were and Abigail spoke about how she
ships the two of them Thailand. Literally on a ship.
But she ships the two of them and she had a really good a
really good quote here that I want to that I want to read
where she says I wanted to go back to the small council and
just be like you guys all said that I was worth nothing.
But here's my girlfriend and she's queen of the pirates.
F you and I go, that's right, babe, F them up.
So I don't know, I think it's cute.
I mean, I'm I'm into the dynamic.
I kind of like character who gives another kind of stodgy,
stuffy character a hard time and opens them up.
I don't know. I'm I'm on board.
Yeah, seeing him get in the mud, that was fun.
And some people didn't like that scene.
Thought it could have been, you know, that time could have been
used for something else. I don't really get into the
whole scene accounting. Like if we hadn't spent two
minutes on that scene, we could have done this or that.
I'm like, yeah, I guess. But I enjoyed the scene.
Yeah, maybe it's not the best scene ever, but like, yeah, I
don't know. I liked it and that's all I I
don't really need to go beyond that.
So I agree it is nice to see like a a rich kind of stodgy
kind of guy get hazed. It's for lack of a better word.
They were trying to like bring him down a notch, you know, and
it it worked out. To his credit, it kind of he he
played along pretty well and did what was needed of him.
Oh yeah, he did. He sure did.
How many wives? How many wives do you have?
I love how he's not against it. He's like, wait, how many wives
are you talking about? You didn't you to say we're
leaving tomorrow? Like how?
Like, jeez, like I just said, I wanted to get a a bed and a flag
and a wand. Then you make me wrestle.
Now I got to do that. Like where is all this energy
coming from? There was another really good
quote where they asked about like, how many wives in the
interview, you know, and Abigail goes, well, there's wives and
there's wives, aren't there? I figured that maybe by the time
we see them again on the prow of the ship, maybe Thailand is one
of the wives at that point. You know, a wife can be many
things. Wifey, he's totally wifed up.
Yeah, yeah. Can I say a couple things about
this scene? One is that the show in general
is really heavy and dark. I mean, Game of Thrones was too,
but there was more. There were more light hearted
characters and moments. There's not much of it.
It's not like there's none. I definitely appreciate the
comedic elements, but I feel like I seem like this does help
to counter some of the tragedy that is pervasive in the show.
It's a fairpoint, yeah. And also.
As I was saying, I, I think it helped to kind of like balance
the pacing as we lead up to the, the kind of montage at the end.
This is a little bit of an extended scene and it might have
been doing something else here. It's been 20 ish years since
that fight in the step stones when Damon went down there with
Corliss and everything right 2218.
Maybe more like 15, but yeah, something like that.
Yeah, long enough that most of those sailors probably weren't
there, probably don't remember it.
And there was a little bit. I wonder how much of this was
supposed to be showing us the the sweet summer children.
Like, they don't realize the war.
They're about to go into a dragon.
Like, yeah, let's go get Corliss.
Come on, everybody, fight, fight, fight.
And they're about to get burned to death.
You know, I wonder how much of that's going on.
Here, well, they don't know and neither does Thailand about the
dragon seeds yet. So they probably have the same
information that the blacks don't actually have much going
with Dragons right now. So that I don't know that they
would have agreed so easily if it weren't for that.
So they're, they're kind of not the Thailand's misleading
because he doesn't know either, but they're kind of going under
false pretenses here without the, without the, the full
information. But I think you're you're, you
make a decent point there that, yeah, a lot of them wouldn't
know some of them. But, but some of the fighting
was more recent. Remember, they've been fighting
over, but it was only recently that, that, that it was
finished. Remember, Corliss got injured.
That wasn't that, that wasn't 15 years ago.
That was like finishing, but Damon wasn't part of that.
Right, Dragons weren't involved. Right.
So this was just that was just coral.
That was just naval activity. So, yeah.
And that's what they said. They didn't mention getting back
at Damon. They mentioned we're going to
the seasnake rue the day he, you know, but they didn't.
Yeah, no, no mention of Damon. So that that's who they
remember, that's who they've been struggling against for so
long. And he's kind of the eternal
villain to them. He's an older man.
He's been the the dominant presence for so long and has
this big name this there's all this glory that he just in this
episode decides to eschew for for more.
Or maybe it was when Rainey's died that he's on that track now
of doing things for other people and less about himself.
But again, we'll talk about that when we get to it.
So the ship set sail pretty quickly.
That was my one. One minor complaint I have is
like, that's an awfully large Armada to just get up and go.
You usually would need some more preparation, but.
And that's how you could have solved my issue of that terrible
ship scene is just don't put them on the ship yet and have
them still just on land. We'll sail later, you know.
Yeah, that makes some sense. So yeah, we do see them in the
montage later. I have the whole montage written
out, so at the end of the episode we'll just go through
that real quick and see all the things we talk about.
But hey, Sean, are you going to be surprised or expecting in 20
years for a a host of blonde pirates to show up in Westeros
and start menacing the Seven Kingdoms like those look like
Lannisters? What's going on here?
You don't think Thailand's kids would be born more virtuous than
to be a parrot? I love how she calls him Tywin.
That's the first name he gets. Is Tywin, Yeah.
She calls him Tywin, Tyrod and Thiamine.
Yeah, it's not a name we've ever heard of.
Yeah, we haven't heard Tyrod, I don't think.
Yeah. And then she and then she calls
him Thailand. She actually does finally say
Thailand when she's like accepting him or whatever.
And also there's one at one point he says it's Thailand.
And it says in the subtitle, it says futilely in parentheses,
it's it's Thailand, like futilely.
That's an adverb. Now.
I love it. I didn't never used that word
before. Anyway, so there's the scene
kind of ends with her giving a toothy grin.
And it's a great transition to Vagar's toothy grin having just
devastated sharp point. So this is the seat of Bar
Emmon. If you watch the watch the
behind the scenes, Ryan Condall made an oopsie.
He said this is the seat of House Massey.
It is not. But it is one of Rainier's
allies. It's one of her key allies.
It's not a, it's not a functional mistake it.
Is on Massey's hook. So, yeah, yeah.
You know House Massey lives on Massey's Hook, but not at sharp.
Points and they might even be Bar Emmon might even be sworn to
Stone dance. I don't think they are.
I think they're both sworn to Dragonstone.
But anyway, it's not a mistake in the show.
It's just a mistake that Ryan made describing who this seat is
because the in the show they refer to that as Bar Emmon's
seat. In other times prior to this,
like Maestro Girardi says that Bar Emmon is, you know, raised
their banners for Rainier. So this is it's all fits anyway,
Despite that little mistake in the behind the scenes.
So not much to see here or to talk about.
Rather, it's just a quick shot of sharp point being burned and
and then it comes up later in the conversations.
Is is. It just weird.
It even just seemed like he's just kind of hovering.
He is just looks like he's kind of hovering.
I noticed that too. I don't see why a dragon
couldn't just flap in place. Birds can do that.
A Hummingbird, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I think he's on a Cliff face.
I think he's just like landed and looking over, I think.
He was perched. Thank you for that, Sean,
because it really was bothering me, the idea of just like
stationary dragon in the air. Yeah, Sean, you wonder about
this. Is this what's your take on
Eamon just flying off and just burning a town?
You know, like that's not cool. Yeah, I not that it's unexpected
necessarily. It's not cool to burn towns,
kids. You heard it here first.
Just say no when Eamon comes to you and he will come to you,
everyone of you, in your homes. Helena, it was first, but he's
going to come to you next. And she said, no, he's like,
well, maybe you will help me. It is, I mean, it is something
that is part of war and it's part of why war is so bad.
And it's something that, you know, Ranira is facing as well.
And it's something that I hope that Ranira or some of these
characters could simply circle the city. 1 strafe run through
the outskirts burned down a farm, some small.
You know, rather than like level the Main Street with fire.
Just show the potential, show the threat is is what I would do
if I was would. That be a situation war.
Would that be a not? Try.
Yeah, I don't know, I I think it would because I think that it's
especially because part of the the dynamics going on here is
that you can only be in so many places at once.
Yeah, so even with a bunch of Dragons that the other side has,
they still have to know where Veigar or Amond is, right?
So he could fly to some random town, burn it and fly to some
other random town if they happen to guess the right place, and
intercepts with three or four Dragons with OK, maybe they can
stop him. But until then, what do they do?
This is it. You know what I mean.
And and at the flip side, the other Dragons could do the same
thing. And I think that's what Raniero
was saying or Corliss was saying.
I don't want to get it too much. We'll talk about later, but but
strike now. Like if we go attack at Old Town
and Atlantisport or whatever, Veigar can't just hang around
King's Landing to defend it. There's other places to go
defend. And we can keep hitting other
towns with three of our seven or whatever Dragons.
And he can only stop so much, even if Elena went with them or
not. What this leads to is thousands
of innocent people just randomly dying as the dragon riders try
to distract each other or catch each other, whatever it is, and
so off, Phil. So if you're going to do that, I
would hope at least you try to do it in a way that threatens
the potential and not actually burning the town.
Well, the problem with the problem with that strategy,
Sean, is that then you're more afraid of the other side 'cause
they can do worse to you. You're like, well, both sides
have the ability to burn you out if you don't take their side,
but so if you're not going full scale like Eamon did here, then
you're going to fear the other side even more because like,
well, this side only burned us a little, then the other side will
burn us completely. Also, it doesn't remove them as
a military threat. If you do that, if you if you
burn the whole city now this this city can't help Rainier at
all. So they're no longer part of the
war. So I don't know.
I mean, I see what you're saying, but you can see why it's
there's a reason to destroy it, even though it's not moral.
But like you said, it's a part of war.
He. He's not exactly just destroying
stuff, right? But like I'm saying, what is he
just saying? He's not just just being just
needlessly, like, wantonly destructive, like, oh, I love
this destruction. He could have stopped it
destroying the port, only he could have just destroyed the
port and maybe like the barracks, like the military
stuff and just left the population alone because they're
not participating in the war. Like, what's he worried about?
Some levees, some farmers with pitchforks, Like that's not,
that's not really a threat to him, you know?
So I think this is an important scene to me personally because
this is the moment in the show that Eamon has crossed over in
my eyes from love to watch him hope for some moments of
vulnerability. You know, whatever my opinion
was, which was I was never a Damon fan fan.
I knew the darkness, etcetera. This is the moment where I'm
like love to hate him, think he's despicable, think he has
has killed a lot, a lot. Again, the battle of Rooks Rest
was a little bit different to me.
It was it wasn't that moment and this is it.
And then it gets worse and worse as the episode goes on, as he,
you know, the manhandles Helena and is pushy with her.
But I still love to see him on my screen.
I'm still a huge fan, Mitchell. He still serves.
Yeah, all of that. You're you're right, but I don't
know. He killed a.
Whole whole lot of people ruined a whole lot of lives.
It's like what his mom said, like you're insulted, you're
beaten, you're embarrassed, so you go hurt people.
It's it's it's pretty classic like psychopath or sociopath.
Like he things don't go his way, so he goes and hurts someone.
And now, yes, there is even even.
And that's true even with this as a military target, which it's
it's partly questionable, not entirely.
So yeah, anyway, let's move on. What's a lot about the burning
of Sharp Point? Larry's and Aegon?
Like I, like I said, transition from a burned city where people
are screaming to a person that has been through that.
And I like how he's like, or while maybe we could have a
little bit of rum and he calls him a good man, I think he's
just calling him a good man 'cause he's once the rum.
He's like, you're a good man, Come on, give me that rum.
But he's not wrong. He is one of the most decent
people left in King's Landing, which isn't saying a lot because
he has been partied to some kind of shitty things, but generally
he is. Yeah, he doesn't have so much
baggage on his shoulders like this guy.
Like, compared to other people, like, yeah, he's his, his bad
deeds are pretty minor, I suppose.
So the news comes in, Lauris comes in and gives him the
scoop. He's like, well, your brother
just ran off and burned a bunch of innocent people.
And. And Aegon's response was to call
him a, a mad C word. He's like, what?
And then he's like, no, really, Rainier really did find 3 new
dragon riders first. He didn't accept it.
He's like, she really did that, huh?
He's like, yeah, that's that's what word we have is.
So he's confused about that, how that's even possible.
But before he doesn't, before he can really think about it,
Larry's pushes this hole. We got to go.
Ayman will kill you. He doesn't beat around the Bush
anymore. He's like, he's he will kill
you. It's not like he might kill you.
I don't. I'm worried about what he might
do. No, he will kill you.
It's very straightforward, and it's hard to argue he's wrong.
Like, what do you think, Sean? You think you think Larry's
exaggerating a lot or a little? Because he's definitely not
exaggerating completely. Or maybe not exaggerating at
all, Maybe. Yeah, I think he's making a a
very reasonable guess as to what might happen, but presenting it
like a given fact. And so I'm not sure.
I think it's a a little bit of an exaggeration.
But the other part is is a little easier to believe, right.
He's when he says, well, what if you if you arrest your brother?
Well, then what you're going to do against Rainier has seven
Dragons. He has no answer for that
because there is no answer for that.
Like no so so Larius plan and to leave and let the two sides tear
each other apart. It.
Might be a decent plan. It's a little a little bit of
Jorah and Danny to it doesn't he's like run away, run away
with me to the east and we'll live well until well.
It's also got shades of Kristen Rainiera and Kristen and Allison
and Allison and Rainiera. Yeah.
Anyways. There's a lot of run away with
me. Examples.
Yeah, there's, yeah. Allison and Helena want to run.
Yeah, I don't know. Helena isn't like, where are we
going? But Allison's, yeah, talking
about running away. She both times Allison has asked
that she doesn't actually say where she wants to go, but we'll
get to that later. Yeah.
So, yeah, Sean, go ahead. Let me let you weigh in here.
One thought here, especially the way they transitioned from AM
and burned in that town to Aegon laying there with all those
burns makes me wonder if Aegon maybe has had some sort of
internal growth that he may feel some empathy for the people of
that town. Like maybe?
He know how he's been through it himself, yeah.
Exactly when he knows the sort of pain and suffering that comes
from it and also in line with him telling or while he's a good
man, like you're really helping me, I'm really suffering and
you're really helping and you're a good person for that.
Like maybe he just wants to run but.
Could be both. Yeah, I think a lot about Theon
in the main story, you know, the song of main song of Isafire
novels and how I I feel like frustrated with his his arc, if
you will, is reek that for all the suffering that he's gone
through, I don't think he really regrets the mistakes or the the
the real mistakes that he made, if you will.
I think he regrets the turn that things have taken.
Maybe he even regrets betraying Rob.
I don't think he regrets raping any of the girls that he raped,
right. I don't.
Think that all this. Suffering has made him re
evaluate the type of man he was before.
He doesn't feel bad about betraying the Starks, you know?
Or not just Rob, but Sansa too, Yeah.
But but even that is sort of like a decision of loyalty among
the nobles. It's not he's I still don't feel
like he actually has respect for the rights of other humans.
You know, I don't, he's never said it.
We've gotten his POV and I feel like the all the suffering he's
gone through doesn't make me forgive him because I don't
think he's acknowledged the things that he's done wrong.
Sure and I was thinking the same thing about Aegon until this
scene. The whole time was like all
right this is really sucky for him but I don't think he even
remembers that he raped that girl or killed those rat
catchers. I don't think he has any remorse
for his lack of morality, but I think maybe for the first time
here he is having a little bit of empathy and.
Think that I don't, I don't have, I mean, I, I, I was with
you up until that and that. I don't think Aegon, I think he
feels badly about the situation he's in, but I don't think he's
thinking about him assaulting Diana, for example.
Are you saying he didn't? Think he's girly, thinking about
the fact that he cannot sleep with any girl again.
Right, right. I think about a lot of things
and I said he might. I don't know if he has, but I
feel like he might be starting to consider what the rest of the
world lives like when you just don't have the power to walk
into the king and tell everyone what to do when he's.
Losing his, losing his physicality.
Well, no, no, I think you might have misunderstood, Sean.
He wasn't saying he she was. He was thinking about those
things. He was saying he wasn't thinking
about those things. He wasn't thinking about Diana.
He's saying he's thinking about the burn victims because they've
experienced the same thing, right?
Isn't that what you're saying? Which might lead to him to think
it. Might eventually lead to think
about Deanna, but it hasn't yet. Yeah, that he wasn't saying
that. Feeling for the burn victims.
Yes, I but when he brings up how his his cock bursts like a
sausage, I don't think he's thinking, oh good, I'm never
gonna do that. Deanna, I agree.
He's not thinking that he's. Thinking I sure would sleep with
Deanna again if I could. You know, 100% agree, yes.
Well, here's the other thing he might be thinking about.
Maybe not, but that Laura should be thinking about.
And then I'm thinking about he can't have an air now, what's
what's Lars in game? Say Lars takes Aegon away and
the greens and the blacks do tear each other part and Aegon
is able to show back up and everyone is so happy.
He has bastards, Sean. There's a very easy answer
there. He can legitimize one of his
bastards. Yeah.
I mean, that's not necessarily what's going to happen, but he
doesn't have to. And also, he can just name an
air. He doesn't have to have
children. It just has to be some other
Targaryen or some other person with blood.
That's not that hard of a thing to get over.
It's not, it's not a, it's not a deal breaker.
I I, I kind of wanted to agree with you, except that's what
this whole war is right now. Someone named their Aaron is not
being accepted so. Well, that's a lot different
than at the end of a war when everyone's tired, which is what
he said he's like, well, they'll be well, they'll accept you as a
hail you as the guy that can put on a stop to all this.
So which is much different than in a time of peace where that's
what it all got started. Can he though?
What's he gonna do to put his well?
That's the remains to be seen. We'll have to wait and see.
Yeah. So can he?
I don't know, like with Larry's help, maybe.
But like, things are gonna be a lot different when they if when
Slash if they make their return. I just can't be help but be
suspicious of what Lars's plan is here, other than we just got
to get out of town before we die and we'll figure out the rest.
Later. Well, yes, that is it.
I think that's all that I think that is the majority of it is
that they're both not safe. Aymond isn't giving him a place
in his regime. He's and Aymond is running
things horribly. So it's time to get the heck out
of there because he can see the direction things are going,
especially now that they're outnumbered dragon wise.
But does Lars want to come back with nothing?
He wants to come back with a person that might be able that
still has a claim to the throne because that's a that's a route
to power, which is what he's always wanted.
He's always wanted power. We don't know why he wants
power, but he clearly does want it.
So the names get thrown. He brings up the sobriquet.
He's like, you could be Aegon the rebuilder, Aegon the
victorious. And he says Aegon the realms
delight, which is a book Easter egg.
That was Rainier's nickname in the books.
That name was not used in the show for her.
I'm. Trying to think in my head,
Canada, this is that Rainier was called that in the show and that
Aegon was was admitting to kind of really wanting to to be in
her role as like the one the king had chosen and all of that
so that I don't. Know I'm choosing to.
Believe that rather than Aegon coming up with that out of his
head out of nowhere, that he was really thinking that he could be
everything that, you know, Rainier had been to the the
realm. Yeah, I I can see that.
I can see that. So the next thing we cut to is
Reyna in the veil. Now Reyna in the veil pops
several times. This is this is the one
exception to us going scene by scene because there's just a
bunch of like four, maybe five or six of these scenes where
she'd goes drink some water, She's sleeping in the cold,
she's running over a hill. None of these are even a minute
long. They're really quick.
It's very serious Daenerys vibes lost in the wilderness trying to
find a dragon that hasn't actually accepted her yet.
She has called that in season one.
Oh, she is. OK cool.
I just said like a couple times maybe.
What by the by the street performers?
The street performers. OK, Yeah, it is a common name.
Yeah, of course. Like nobles are going to call
her that. But either way, she is called.
OK, I guess I just forgot. Cool.
So yeah, Danny vibes here with Rayna.
And it's easier for Danny in some ways though, because Danny
has a prior connection to Drogon, whereas Rayna's never
even seen this dragon and of course it hasn't seen her.
And and Drogon isn't wild for decades before this scene.
So it's not going to be easy for her to tame this dragon, I
think, which is why it doesn't end with her doing so.
It shouldn't it? It can't just be that simple.
Anyone who has read the books had to have been a little bit
scared of her drinking this water.
I. Was like Danny's like, Oh no,
don't get the Danny bad, bro. This is a cool mountain stream
though, yeah? You know, Danny also, if you
will, had it easier because she'd have more experience
roughing it. But you know, she might not have
had it easier at the beginning with the the the Dothraki horde,
but after being with them for a while she would be a little more
used to the wilderness and thirst.
Good point. Danny crossed the red waist that
she has some serious experience and and deprivation and yeah,
going without water and all that.
Yeah, Raina does not have that. But I was one one thing that I
found pretty odd here is that or maybe I don't find odd.
I feel like something's being ignored.
The rest of her party and maybe even everyone in a veil should
be out looking for her. There should be some real
concern. I can't believe that they just
like where'd she go? Oh well.
And just kept going to. I can believe they haven't found
her though. Like why would they?
Why would you assume they found her though?
This is. What I don't get about this is
that she's very privileged. She's like one of the most
senior people in that party, if not the a senior person.
I think she could have just told her party, oh, I got word that
I'm supposed to go tame this dragon or whatever she's
supposed to do. And she could have had a pack of
supplies and she could have gone off.
I don't think anyone would have argued against her again,
because I think she is the most in charge person in that group
of people. So yeah, I agree.
I I kind of just wish she had handled it differently.
I don't. I'm not surprised at all that
she hasn't found. I just wish one of those cuts in
the scenes was the captain of that guard and like, we've got
to find her. Go tell Lady Jane where's.
Bayla. There's going to be all kinds of
drama going on with the people in this.
I guess it's. Just not important though, like
the there's this whole who cares about that captain?
Like, like, So what if they're looking for her?
Like, you know what I mean? Like, that's all I see.
Like that's the kind of scene. Yeah.
Well, we can assume they are, but we don't need to see it, you
know, like that. That is one I would put counting
on. Why do we need to see these
people's searching for Reyna? That would be a waste of time in
my opinion. I agree we don't need to see it.
I think you're right is these we should assume, Sean that they
are looking the veil is large. They cannot find her.
She's a single girl. I still can also wish that they
that wouldn't even be an issue. If she had just been a liar and
just told like I would have I would have found it more cunning
of her. You know, if she had maneuvered
things so that like, they gave her a pack and set her off with
well wishes, I would have admired her canniness and and
and. I'm not sure that I don't think
I'd buy that though. I don't agree with that because
like they like Jane gave them specific orders like you've take
her to the boat. Like why would she just have
separate orders that countermand what their lady told?
Her, I think she could have told Jane that and Jane would have
said, oh, you got a letter from Rainier, OK.
But she would know like either the letter, the letter goes
through Jane. Jane sees any letter that goes
to Raina, it goes to her maester.
She's not going to. I don't think she has that.
Lie harder Reyna, get some supplies, don't be out there
with. With I'm not buying that y'all,
but I I do agree that there's some flaws here, but I don't
know about that one. Anyway, let's not get bogged
down on this is a very small thing.
Let's move on. So possibly in episode one of
season three, this will conclude, but I wouldn't bet on
that either. I bet it's gonna take a little
while for her to win this dragon over.
This brings me to my complaint of this scene.
My major complaint is where the the Veil, the clansmen would
know she's there. The Veil, the the clans of the
Veil are all over. And she's gone a lot of ways
without in in apparently encountering a single soul.
That part I have a little bit of an issue with.
But yeah, what are you gonna do? Maybe the clans noticed.
Steer clear of this Dragon's hunting area.
Maybe that I did that did occur to me, but it seems kind of
unlikely that they would be that worried about this dragon
considering it's so new and probably hasn't killed any of
them or anything. Maybe it has.
Dad, I just I am bothered by in the press conference that Ryan
Condell gave, he just is very cagey about the condensation of
of this character with the book character of Nettles, which
seems pretty obvious at this point.
And I I feel that his caginess has given people hope for
Nettles to still exist in season three.
And I just think we needed give her up for lost and I wish he
would just be honest with us that no.
Well, I don't know that he's not being honest.
I think he maybe they just haven't written it all yet.
I don't know that he's fully decided yet.
Maybe maybe it is and he is just being cagey, but I'm not
assuming that. I don't know that they've
decided. Fully.
I'm going out there and saying if Raina fails to tame sheep
Steeler because she's already tamed by nettles or something
happens here, that I will be so on board.
That'll be the funniest thing they could have ever done.
That seems unlikely, but I'll be cool.
That's. Hard, but I I don't think it's
possible and I wish he wouldn't give me that glimmer of hope.
I would like to just spend the next two years.
That's interesting. I really don't see it as that
glimmer. I really, that's not how I see
it at all, but I get that. I'm not saying you're wrong to
feel that way, but it doesn't give me a glimmer frankly in.
Discord channels on, Twitter on and everything people are using
that quote as proof for. Well, maybe we will still get I.
Mean people were saying that people were predicting that this
scene would end with her finding Nettles already on sheep
stealer, which was very hopium like that never that was never
people are very people are just really hopeful for Nettles.
I agree, but some of that is just people are really.
Hopeful. Like if he just said in that
interview, no, there's no nettles, stay tuned for what we
do with Reyna. Like that would cover it, but he
just really could not. Well, maybe there, yeah, maybe
there is a Nettles and it'll be something else.
Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, let's move on.
I I only have this vague idea in my mind that Nettles was a
dragon rider that wasn't Targaryen and I guess she's.
Another dragon team. Period.
But yeah, I, I, I didn't really know that Nettles was even from
this time period. But so I I don't have the right
context and maybe I don't even want to know too much more, but
I wonder if Nettles could be like an Obi Wan type character
that guides her or something you know?
No, that wouldn't work. That wouldn't work.
Some people have even had theories about this means that
like, Raina's gonna have like a secret persona, you know that
she is going to not let people know that she's Raina Targaryen.
And let's talk about this in a non spoilery episode 'cause
we're we're already talking over what Sean can can process you.
Mean a spoilery episode. Yeah, that's what I meant.
Yeah, painted table hue in. Oh, let's go there.
He was telling Alf they're supposed to be learning verbal
commands, but Alf is kind of already leveraging his position,
but not for anything serious, just to have a little extra fun,
which I think that's kind of funny.
He's basically like testing the limits of how in trouble he can
get. There's a certain, like,
realistic cunning to this. Like he knows it's like wisdom
amended and immaturity rolled into one.
He knows that he's got leeway now.
They're not just going to execute him for being rude like
as as they would have for being when he was just a commoner,
right? Like that you will get executed
for just rudeness to a Lord when he was who he used to be.
But now he's a dragon rider. He's got a lot more leverage.
And like a young person, he's kind of testing those
boundaries. Like what can I get away with?
What not, you know, which is that's why it's like immaturity,
because it's like, dude, you've got this position of power now
and all you're doing is it just to see how many noses you can
tweak and how much, how many little birds you can eat.
Like that's, that's very unambitious.
It's, it's like your ambition is to just kind of see how much of
A jerk I can be and how, how you know, like that.
But that makes him kind of very interesting character here.
Like this is just a a a real wrench in the system.
These nobles don't know what to do with this guy and even the
other dragon tease don't know what to do with this guy.
Hugh is like he's still thinking of himself as a commoner.
He's still the fish out of water in in a way he has adjusted less
than ulf has, which I think is kind of interesting.
Hugh is like, I don't want to waste my new found status on
being a drunk uncle, but he's not leveraging at all.
He's just, you know, he's kind of apologizing for ulf which he
doesn't have to do. He's Ulf doesn't have any,
doesn't reflect on him directly. He might indirectly.
Though he might. Indirectly, yeah, He.
He sees how Chase is getting mad at him.
He doesn't want to be lumped in with him.
You. Know yeah, where whereas Adam is
just like, I don't I don't have anything to do with that guy
Like he doesn't I got he's nothing nothing like me.
And so that's kind of how I looked at it Like there's Alf.
Hugh is apologizing for Alf, while Adam is just like keeping
his distance like putting a distance between them.
And so they're they're all having and they're they all had
ambitions or dreams. Maybe weren't even maybe
ambition isn't even the right word because it's where they are
in life now is a place they could have only dreamed of.
They never could have really expected to be here.
No, no ambition amount of ambition would have gotten them
to this place. So the social status and power
they have is immense, but it's hard to quantify or or even
qualify. Like it's on completely new.
There has never been bastard dragon riders, never been these
lowborn drag. Well, they have been bastard
dragon riders. Chase's one.
They've never been lowborn bastard dragon riders before.
And yeah, like Rainier or later is going to offer them
knighthood and that seems like they could do better than that
maybe. But you know, it's a start.
So it's a bit of a red flag though, for all things are going
to his head a little bit. And you know, it's we get that
comedic relief of he lives here, you know, like the Prince.
So imagine that he's like he lives here.
This is his castle. Of course.
What do you mean? Imagine that?
And Alf kind of puts his foot in his mouth here because he
doesn't know just how upset Jace is.
Jace doesn't like being compared to them.
He doesn't like how they threaten his station and Alf
just says all these things. He's like, we're so alike.
Well, your hair is as dark as they say, gives them a hug, says
we're cut from the same cloth. That's like these are like all
the things Jace is completely anxious about.
And you know, all of us. No idea how how much he's
putting off Jace. He's like, you think you're
being friends with this guy and you're just making it worse.
So. I've really gone back and forth
on my interpretation of ulf's vibe during this scene, you
know, because I first thought he was just purely earnest, that he
just totally fumbling through it, foot in his mouth, you know,
he had no clue. I think after a few watches, I
think he knew that this was razzing, that this was trolling
Jace. I think he underestimated how
much of an enemy he was making by doing it.
I think he thought, like, I'm going to tweak the nose of this
noble. Maybe he'll warm to me.
This is how you make friends. You know the boys, we give each
other a hard time. This is funny, right?
Like, I, I think he, he was, I don't think he was totally
clueless to the fact that Jace was going to be bothered by
that, but I think he totally didn't realize that Jace hates
his guts. Now I've gone back and forth.
I've been thinking he's a total oaf who's totally clueless,
thinking he knows and he is messing with him.
Because he said who? Who like, whose business is it,
boy? And then Alf goes, Alf, he goes,
that's the Prince. And he stands up like as if.
He's here. Imagine that.
Like that's like, who could be honestly serious about like,
imagine the Prince lives here. I think he's joking.
Well, that part I think he's joking about, but I don't think
he was joking about not knowing who he was.
Like I think he, like he knows the dark hair.
He knows who my point is. He knows who just Sarah's
Valerian is, the Prince who doesn't like his heritage and
his dark hair at any point that he's talking to him.
I think he knows his identity, his persona, you know what I
mean? Like he doesn't think Jacerys
Valerian loves his dark hair and rumoured bastardy.
I don't think he thinks that of Jace.
Sure, that's my point. He knows him as a person.
Yeah, I think he may not have known who the the person that is
that walked in was Jace, the Prince.
He may not, but I think when he realized it, if not before.
He continued to tweak, I think. That he is, and we're cut from
the same clause then. I agree like that's what I
started by saying. I said he's tweaking him on
purpose but I just. I only thing I'm disagreeing
with is that he didn't recognize him.
He didn't know who he was until you told him.
That's the only thing I disagree with.
Otherwise IA 100% agree. With what I think again, he's
he's totally miscalculated here though.
I agree with that too. He tweaked.
He went too far. He tweaked too too hard, too
much meth. And add adding to it two other
factors. One, that sharp point just got
burned down. So this is like a somber moment.
He just couldn't have known that, right?
Yeah, Jace was already a react. You're right.
Jace was reacting to that. And how is all supposed to know
that this horrible thing just happened?
And also Ultimate has a point. He's like, look, we're about to
all go into war. Let me have a little.
Let me enjoy the good life. I might not be.
I might be dead in a few weeks. You know, it's a very good
point, that point. I'm totally with Alphon.
Yeah. You might be with Alphon that,
but you might not say that in front of the Prince, at least
not in that way. And he didn't realize the Prince
was overhearing that. Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, that that I wouldn't have said those things to the with
the Prince in in your shot. Yeah.
As the Prince, as Jace, I wouldn't have told my new dragon
riders, oh, look at this awful thing that's just becoming a
little angry. Like that was obviously Jace
losing his temper, being inappropriate with them, not
doing something conducive to getting them hyped up to go into
battle at all. Yep, I agree and this is all
pales in comparison to the biggest and darkest shift of
all. This actually comes.
This actually moment comes a little later, but I want to
bring it up now. When Rainiera, the plant tells
them the plan is to just burn Old Town Atlantis port, which
are two, the second and third largest population center in the
entire continent. Now, maybe not the entire
cities, but it's not clear still.
That's like, whoa. Now part of this is like you
said, Sean, part of this is strategy.
She doesn't have a land army. When she makes this plan, she's
like, well, we have our advantage is Dragons.
Let's use that. That's where we can.
That's where our advantage is. Let's make use of it.
They're making use of their Navy at sea blockade, blah, blah,
blah. They don't have a land army, at
least until later in the episode she finds out actually, you do
have a land army. So hopefully this changes her
mind on this burning of Old Town Atlanta sport plan.
But at the moment, she's like, well, this is what we can do.
Mazaria, as we'll see later, Mazaria is going to kind of
encourage her to it in Missouri, but she's also kind of wavering.
But we'll come back to that when that scene actually occurs.
Those are two of the biggest population centers, but there
are also ports there. It is also possible.
I mean it would still be devastating and and lots of
innocent people would die, but she could just burn the ports
and the ships of. Those.
That's true, yeah. And not level the city's the
entire population. And that would still be
crippling to their war efforts and to morale and send the
message, hey, look what we can do.
Veigar can't be everyone at once.
On and on. I hope that that would be part
of her plan too. Yeah, I could see that, and I
hope that's what she meant by just disabling them militarily.
Yeah, 'cause that is that would probably be pretty effective.
And burning everything would look make her look like a
monster, and that wouldn't exactly win people to her 'cause
so, yeah. Moving on, Bogsy says ulf had
more little birds than virus. Yes, he said, Yeah, Yeah.
A little more on that when we get to the dinner scene, but
yes, he did. He had a lot of little birds.
Driftmark. Let's go to Driftmark.
Rainiera and Corlis discuss Adam and Corlis's ship, and they
just. Yeah, meaning Adam and Corlis's
ship, not Adam and Corlis's jointly owned ship, Adam.
He says Adam is a man of integrity.
He says it's reported to me that Adam is a man of integrity.
And then kind of under the radar, he says, I don't know the
man to my regret. Like, Oh yeah, To your regret,
huh? Yeah, 'cause he's your son.
Yeah, Yeah. So that's a very loaded
statement that Rainier has no idea what he's talking about,
but it's certainly us watchers caught that probably.
You know, I wonder what the age gap is between Allen and Adam,
because it obviously points to, like, the idea of it had Adam.
I mean, yeah, yeah, he had Allen and then came back years later
and slept with her mother again, got her pregnant again.
Do we think? The gap is that bad.
Huh. Do we think the gap is that
large? I think so because it's implied
that Allen kind of raised him. Well, sure, but he could be
three or, you know, he could just be like two years older to.
Me, I would guess he's like as much as 10, as little as five,
but I would guess he's at least five years older.
Would be my my gay. Pinned it smaller, but I don't
have a lot of reason for that. But yeah, anyway, maybe they'll
let us know at some point. So this is a big character shift
for him in an episode where a lot of people have shifted
mostly for the better. Allison shifted for the better.
Corliss is shifting for the better.
He has more shifting to do. Damon shifted for the better,
big time. Rainier is not shifting for the
better. Rainier is shifting to the
worse, and a few people are encouraging her to that, but
we'll talk about that later. Corliss is eschewing his former
self of realizing some of the the criticisms that were levied
to him were accurate. And the main one was that he was
pretty selfish. He was mostly about his own
glory. Naming the ship after himself.
Who does that? Who names your ship after
yourself? Right.
Like the s s Aziz. Like, I'm not doing that.
Come on. The s s Sean.
You know, I kind of like the s s Sean.
It sounds like stuttering, though.
It's this Sean. Yeah.
I. Think you'd be better off using
pink in your ship? Yeah, the Sean snake.
There we go. The sea snake, the Sean snake,
Just throw an N in there and it all works.
I've done that a lot, a million times.
The S S dance. The s s dance.
I like that I've done that so many times.
By the way, y'all when typing our notes, I'll type the Shawn
snake by accident to do it again.
So he's realizing that that he was selfish even and he says all
I do now I do for her. You know cuts a Rainier.
She's that's why he named the ship the Queen who never was
renamed it from Sea Snake. You know, that's sweet and all,
but how about do something for your sons?
I'm saying yeah, you. Should probably appreciate that.
Yes. Can I say two things about this
One, it's kind of a weird like for Rainier, like I would feel
weird about the name the queen who never was like as the queen
who's trying to be like that. Would it's a kind of a loaded
name. I don't know.
I would feel awkward, frankly, a little bit.
But also I just want to take this moment to say I hate the
name of this episode. The Queen, whoever was I if
there's I don't think I've ever disliked in an episode titled of
Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon more than I have disliked
this time. Why do you hate it so much?
I just think it's it doesn't roll off the tongue, it's
clunky. What is it like the Queen,
whoever, What? Like it's just a weird title
like. Explain it to me.
I think it refers to Daenerys. Explain the meaning to me.
It's about Daenerys and Rainiera I.
Think it refers to Daenerys because she's the queen that
they're all dreaming of, the future queen that they're all
dreaming. Of that's not even really like a
turn of phrase, like who says whoever, queen, whoever was?
It's not even really like a a a. Who Who is permanent?
It's the the one who's always there, who's who's eternal and
always. It's always been that way, yeah.
Sounds clunky. So there's a, there's a little
interesting minute here where we, we, we see a couple
different angles of it being brought up of dream fire,
Hellena's dragon. It's introduced a little bit in
the scene to which helps set up the future scenes.
Mentioning dream fire even Rainier is basically like dream
fire. Like she hadn't forgotten the
dream fire existed, she just didn't think she mattered
because Elena doesn't like to fly and and and of course he's
like well don't be so sure that she won't be compelled.
Case in point, Heyman just trying to compel her.
It isn't working, but Coralise isn't wrong to consider the
idea. So this is another like to me,
this is Corliss is a good hand. He thinks of things like this,
things that he's experienced, he's been around more.
He's a more aware he's older. You know, he's he's especially
military matters. Something I wanted to say
earlier about that scene with Loris and Aegon.
He warned Aegon that, you know, what do you do with seven
Dragons show up? And in my mind, it would be
funny that someone might correct him.
It's like, well, six. You can't really count Damon.
But by the, by the end of this episode, like, well, eight,
'cause there's Damon and Lana's going to get one too.
Or not. Lana, Rayla, Rayna.
Yeah. Yeah, you're right, That is the
difference. Yeah, 'cause that's what I was
going to bring up. Like Corliss says 6 Dragons and
but but Laurie says 7 Dragons and some people like.
Why was it a discrepancy? Yes, Lauris was counting
Coraxes, you're absolutely right.
Whereas Rainier, whereas Corliss was not good catch.
So neither of them are counting the two baby Dragons to rack
season Stormcloud. But Fairpoint, they're not.
They're they're useless in military right now.
So then we cut over to Harrenhal.
This is our first Harrenhal scene of the episode.
We have Damon sort of amongst the troops doing very I love
this little opening scene where he's like, I don't actually have
any sheep left, but we got a lot of pigs.
Do Dragons eat pigs? Corrects.
He prefers pigs. He loves eating cops, even
though Damon's a cop #1 cop I don't know.
Also, this is Damon doing a walk and talk.
Yeah, there's a couple of walk and talk in this episode.
Yeah, Amon does a walk and talk later.
Yeah, you're right. Just some walk and talk here.
So that's a pretty cool scene there.
You can see like they're doing stuff for getting army ready.
You know, that makes sense. And then Alfred Broom arrives
and it's like Alfred Broom is here to see you and he goes.
Interesting. Yeah.
I wonder if he thought that it was interesting that Raniera
sent a messenger or that Alfred Broome was the messenger that
she sent. What?
What house is he from, by the way?
Klaus Broome? Who?
Where are they? What's their banner?
Who are they? They're in the Crown lands.
OK. Yeah, yeah, Crown lands pretty
sure so which is usually they're loyal to the the Crown, but the
Crown is divided right now. So we don't know why he's like,
he's like, I would never support the Hightowers.
We don't know why what his grievance is, but.
He said it a couple times too, but I'm starting to not believe
it. Well, he, he not only did he say
it, but Ray Nearest said it was like, I know you would never
support the Hightowers. He's like, not where I live, you
know? So yeah, it's been pretty,
pretty clear, but not the reasoning behind.
It he hates redheads, he. Hates redheads.
He hates high towers. He's like, no, low towers only,
yeah. I wonder if Damon knew that this
guy was maybe a little sexist or a thorn in in Rainier's side.
I wonder if he thought interesting she found a way to
get rid of. Him, I wonder.
What Damon thought about that. Yeah, I think, yeah.
Yeah, I agree with you. There's probably multiple things
in mind. That sounds like the kind of
thing you say when there could be multiple reasons for
something is you just like summarize.
It was like, oh, that's interesting because there's a
lot of possibilities here as to why she could have done that, as
you just very well explained. Good take, Sean.
So then so they'd go outside to have a conversation.
And as you said, as we talked about earlier, there's this the
voice over and he's like, traitor, right?
I was trying so hard to figure out where that voice came from.
But yeah, I can't recognize the voice.
It's when you hear one word, it's hard to make out the voice.
It was a male voice, I guess. But even that wasn't like super
clear. Yeah, I wouldn't have known that
it said traitor if not for the subtitle.
I just heard a sort of a whisper of sorts, you know?
You know, man, a theory of sound in a background.
They reacted, but I didn't know that it was a a specific word
spoken right. It's pretty interesting.
And and so he's trying to convince Damon to turn on
Rainier to be a king or not to turn on her, but to put himself
above her. But Alfred is no match for the
old gods because Damon's kind of been, they've been working on
him this whole time with Alice and everything.
And then just a little if, if Roman gotten there earlier,
maybe he could have pulled this off, but it's too late.
They, the old gods want Damon to play his part.
And it's a big part. But as we learn, it's not the
part, which I suppose we already knew.
But he needed to know that Sir Simon overhears this
conversation. Since Damon doesn't just
outright reject him, Sir Simon fears the worst fairpoint and.
You know what this reminded me of?
That's C where Tyrion sees Danny and John, the boat sex scene.
You know it's like the framing of it of like this.
Anyways, I'm like I I love Simon snooping.
Wow that's hilarious. Great catch.
That is really funny. Boat sex has so many good
memories, not of not of the quality of the season, but of
the humor of that moment. Look for Lex in the Super chat.
Says I'm behind the stream watching at 1.35 X.
But in case I don't catch up, I wanted to thank you for your
amazing coverage and sorry I missed the pure event.
Thank all y'all. As they say in the South, yes
all y'all, it's a good word, the Red Keep yes, there's Ashaya's
mentioning the other walk and talk, which I even put it in the
notes that. Way as I predicted when he got
rid of Council Ball, that soon would be the end of tedious
meetings in the beginning of a of Amon's West Wing Walk and
Talk era. You called it.
You did well, Point Ashaya. Iron Rod informs him how Rainier
got her dragon. I was like, well, they just
sailed up and, you know, asked for Targaryen blood.
He's like, lock down the boats. Like, bro, it's too late.
Like what are they? You think they're still looking
for dragon riders? Like they don't.
I don't think they have any Dragons left to find riders for.
So it's kind of a so it's like kind of a thoughtless and
mindless order. He's just like kind of kind of a
version of lashing out like you did before.
Iron Rod is like, Are you sure? Like that doesn't seem like the
smart response, like this is just going to make things worse.
He's like, well, we all have to make sacrifices.
It's like, oh this is not good. Where I love to hate Eamonn,
Where I'm like, Yep, Yep, he's not a good ruler, he's not a
good man. Yeah, he's just not good.
He was. Failed by his culture and by his
family, but he is a failure. He sucks.
And a lot of this is fear he's losing now, but he doesn't want
to like show that he's got to act tough.
I guess. I mean, is that part of how you
interpret this, Sean? Or is it just Do you have other
other thoughts and and instincts here?
Yeah, I think it's maybe, I don't know what word of
aloofness, like I think he's just in his ivory tower.
He just doesn't understand the effects this will have in the
population. He's just not thinking ahead.
It's just on a lot of levels it's, I think it's a mistake.
You're right, he it does speak to how he is up in an ivory
tower, but I think it also speaks to just a general
callousness and, and youth that he is not thinking forward.
Like it's, I think it's multiple reasons that that's making him
make this bad decision. And I think also the fact that
he just doesn't want to face it. Like I think he doesn't want to
face head on that things are looking dire for him and his
side, right. So like if you have to actually
address the issues, then you have to face that.
It's a fairpoint. It's not far from the same thing
that Aegon did, right? A rat catcher killed my son.
Kill all the rat catchers. The small folk are going off to
help Rainier now. All right, punish all the small
folk. They, they're just like this
blind mass that you just treat as one and don't realize they
all have different motivations and personalities and needs and
and power as a whole. When you if you're going to
treat them as a whole poorly, they're going to treat you as a
whole poorly. Yeah, as individuals, they can't
do much to you, but as a whole, they could potentially do quite
a bit. As Mushroom said, in Fire and
Blood, you know, 1000 rats can take down a lion, he said.
And he said he's seen it, which like, really?
He's like, yeah. And and Fleabottom, they show
all sorts of weird stuff and weird shows.
And yeah. Anyway, so he goes to find
Helena and he finds her with Allison, and she's telling
Allison that she was happier before she was queen and.
I know Allison is in a rush here, like she needs to like
tell Helena what's up, but like, can't you just take one moment
and be like, me too, Helena? Like I felt the same way.
You're not alone. Or just just just.
Her conditioning is so heavy you.
Know like Allison agrees with her.
You know, Allison was happier before she was queen.
If she I I just wish that she had just said me too just
something. But again, I understand that the
reason she doesn't say anything is because she has to tell her
immediately. Like, what if we got like and
she hardly has any time to have this conversation before Aymond
comes in, right? Yeah, they don't get to finish
it. You're right.
She says she's happy before the 1st Queen.
Allison says hey, what if we run off together and Helena's like
where? And then Aymond arrives so
there's no answer. And then even this, it comes up
a little bit later and and Allison still doesn't have an
answer for where maybe she doesn't want to say.
Helena's kind of smiling when she's thinking about like, the
idea you know, of, like, where would she go?
Like as she asks her, she seems a little pleased with the idea.
But it makes me think that I can't help but feel that as some
prophet dreamer, Helena has to know whether she goes to SOS
ever or not. Maybe she would know something
about that. I don't know.
I don't know about that because I don't, you know, she can't see
a lot of you know, she can't see everything.
She may know that she's in some foreign, strange place and she
doesn't know what it is. She may have had this vision and
now Allison's asking her, do you want to go somewhere?
She's not necessarily asking Allison, Oh, where do you want
to go? She's asking Allison, oh, where
is it? I've been seeing in my dreams.
That might be the question. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I guess it makes sense. I I don't see it that way
because she's not speaking in the she often speaks in the past
or the OR or the future, and she's speaking in the present
tense for this one. Where would we go?
But anyway, it's all possible with Helena.
But I, I interpreted this more as she's interpreting.
She sees a lot of these big events, but that doesn't mean
she's seeing just everything, you know, she's seeing like the
big epic events. I don't think she said a single
thing about herself. We know she's seen things that
are referred to her, like she sewed her own son's shroud ahead
of time apparently. But I don't know that she's
seeing everything else. She would be some of these
questions she wouldn't even ask in the 1st place.
You know she would already know. Like I said, she would already
know. Well, she's like, I know we're
not going overseas. That's not going to happen.
Mom, I have seen the future or she knows exactly where they
are. You know, one thing I wondered
about this scene, aside from Helena's potential visions, is I
think Allison's got a plan. I think you know, when she was
floating in the lake last episode, staring in the sky and
suddenly kind of came to him and came back home.
I think she's been plotting some stuff out and I think there
might be some if thens to her plan or maybe some changes she
didn't expect, like Renera have a new dragon riders and Eamon's
overreaction or whatever. But but I, I don't think this is
just a, a random conversation that that she's having.
I think she's got a plot. She's got a plan for taking
Helena somewhere. We see the plan right, 'cause I
mean, we see her go to Rainier. Isn't that the plan?
Well, yes, I think she's got different parts to it.
And I think that the plan might have changed because when she
talks to Reneera, she says Helena will be queen, she'll be
in power, and she'll turn it over to you.
But if Allison gets Helena out of there, she can't do that.
No, no, no, no, Sean, you're misunderstanding.
Hold on. Let me cut in then.
She is saying Helena will be Queen when you arrive and then
Helena and I and Jahara will leave.
That's what she said. She said, yeah, yeah, I see.
And then she and then out and Rainier was like, where will you
go? And she didn't really answer.
So yeah, that's the idea. But so you're not.
I do agree with you that she's working through a plan here, and
it involves saving Helena and Jara and just saying, Oh well, I
can't, I can't necessarily save my sons.
Now, of course, when the final scene begins, she's still trying
to find a way to save Aegon, but she kind of concedes that no, I
can't do that either. So I think at this point she's
trying to save Aegon too. Yeah.
So yes, everyone that is her sacrificing Daron.
Amen. And I think, as Aziz said, she
thinks Aegon is so broken that he could be saved.
But I, I get, I think just the whole time she's not thinking
that Daron and Amond will be spared.
I think that's that's the sacrifice.
Yeah, there's three sons for a son, or whatever it turns out to
be. You know, on top of that, she's
probably written Kristen Koloff too.
He's probably going to die in battle or executed or whatever.
Three sons and a lover, Yeah. The part she already knows is is
Amon's plan, men's plan to go meet Cole in the field with with
with Vegar. That's or he already knows that
or she already knows that part because that was announced
council like episode one or two. No 5 actually 5.
So yeah, just Monty Python. Yeah, right after Rooks Rest is
is when that came up. So Eamon physically tries to
drag Elaine is like get on your dragon, we're going to war right
now. What a strange thing.
Like I'm dragging you off to war, like literally dragging you
off to war. And she's like slick at me.
Right, like how are you going to force her once she gets on her
dragon? She burns you bro.
Yeah, like, you know, talk about not thinking things through
like. Or she just flies off somewhere
else. Like how can you coordinate to
get her to do what you need in battle?
How are you going to get her to go where you want or breathe
fire from the dragon when you want just.
He's desperate, he's desperate. I just want to give you credit,
whether you meant to or not, for saying he's going to dragging
her off, dragging her away. That was not on purpose, but
I'll take credit anyway. So, and Amens justification is
here's like they've sinned against our birthright.
They gave them Dragons. You know, that's a sin.
It must be punished. And then it's like, well, I
don't want to do that. I don't want to burn anyone.
It's like, well, our wishes come second place to survival and
victory. You know, it's like, well,
clearly that's the only possible thing we can do here.
And Allison's like, no, I'd rather lose, actually,
seriously, no, I'd rather lose rather than break her mind, like
turn her into a monster or have her live in suffering the rest
of her life because she knows she killed all these people.
She would rather be dead than do that.
So, so would I. You know, I'm I'm going to stand
for her because she's not as articulate as as you are, Eamon.
So I'm going to stand for her. And he's very put off here.
He's like his eye gets really severe and he doesn't cry, but
he does later. And she says she accuses him
again of just taking out his frustration and his
embarrassment on innocence since it makes you feel strong, which
may be strong wasn't the right thing to call him, but.
But still, she's right. She's 100% right that that's
that is what he does. We've seen it a lot of Times
Now. And I guess she's kind of given
up on trying to get him to stop that and just calls him out on
it instead. Yeah.
It has follow up when Eamonn and Helena meet alone that that's
where the weightier moments happen, I suppose.
So. Yes, exactly.
Let's talk about Cole and Gwaine then Talk about a weighty scene.
This was a big one. Yeah.
So we were really curious what was going to set Gwain off here,
like looking at the trailer, like, what is why is Gwain so
mad? What is Chris?
Because we know Kristin's lines like his his Shakespearean
lines. And we're like, what is is this
going to upset him? Like why has he got his sword,
his neck? So it is over Allison, which
makes sense. Gwain.
So he loses the he he sees the kerchief and loses his temper.
He's like, that's my sister. You know, I could send you to
the wall and he's like, you could would stay in the
Hightower name for a generation because as usual, he's thinking
of he's thinking of Alice. And he's like, well, it's not
her fault. Like she didn't break any vows.
I broke vows. But she didn't, you know, she
was a widow when we slept together.
And and he's like, why don't you just not, you know, have desire
for women, you know, like your other brothers do that.
And he's like, do they? There are a lot of Kristen's not
wrong. I'm sure some of them do.
Some of them really are that disciplined, but a lot of them
are not. Not that this is a great excuse,
but he's not wrong that a lot of them do that.
I loved Kristen saying saying to Gwain that Allison had saved his
life multiple times because this was like this really brilliant
moment in which Gwain was forced to like reckon with the idea
that his sister, who he doesn't know who's just kind of this
object to him of like female, you know, honor and chastity and
all of these things. Like she's not a person.
She's not a person to him really right.
Like he is defending her honor without thinking about what
Allison wanted here. And so like when Kristen says
she saved my life twice, like Wayne, like really like you can.
And the actor Freddie Fox, you really see in his eyes, like him
reeling with like, oh, wow. Like I, I totally miscalculated
what this relationship is, what this dynamic is, the very idea
that my my sister has saved a man's life twice.
Like how can he even conceive of how Allison could have ever
saved someone's life? I feel like that was so mind
blowing to him. I loved it.
Yeah, great Taga share. And I think this is where we get
a little bit of a hint of a deleted scene.
He says he she saved me twice. One of we know that when he was
about to kill himself in front of the heart tree.
The other is from the headsman's axe, which is presumably from
when he pummeled Joffrey to death.
And it was only because of her intercession that Viserys spared
him from execution, which we hinted at the time was like,
it's not hard to imagine that Allison got him off because
he's, well, I got him off. That's not what I meant.
Got him cleared of charges because hey, Viserys is a
pushover B she wants Kristen Cole at her side.
He's her protector and her champion.
So he she didn't want to lose that.
This is before they had a relationship, but she may have
already been attracted to him because I mean, look at him, you
know, and and vice versa because, you know, look at her.
I mean, it's easy to see that. Part but I I wonder by the way,
because Cole was very careful in how he worded things that if he
might have got Gawain to doubt whether or not they had actually
had sexual relations, he never quite admitted to it.
And I think that moment is saying she's saying my life wife
might have been enough to justify what was clear emotions
between them, but maybe it wasn't romantic.
He he he brings up Sean that that she didn't break any walls
because she's not married like she's not married to the.
Yeah, he said. Whatever I may have done, she
didn't break any ballots. So it's he, he kept it vague
enough that. It's vague, but it's pretty
straightforward, I think. Like he's not, he's not saying
it, but it's. Yeah, but but he's if nothing
else, he's giving Gwain what's a.
Little bit of reasonable possible denial.
Yeah, you're right. That's that's that's true.
I agree with that. That definitely is important to
not just be like, yeah, you're right, we're screwing.
Yeah, I was banging her all the time, bro.
Like, sorry about that, but we just couldn't keep it in the
pants, you know? Yeah, it was just lust, you
know? Like what?
I'm gonna, I'm going to definitely kill you now.
Man, what poetry that Kristen is spitting here.
Like the words that he's saying are beautiful.
So good. Yeah, No wonder that he's in the
trailer, right? It was like, wow, this is a good
setup. Like, it's dark as hell, but
it's so good. Yeah.
The line is the Dragons dance. And the.
And men are like dust under their feet.
And all our fine thoughts, all our endeavors are as nothing.
We March now toward our annihilation.
To die will be a kind of relief, don't you think?
And Gwaine is just like all his anger, just like he just plops
down next to him and doesn't even look at him.
Like, you really just took the steam out of me there, bro.
Like, morale is the most important factor in leading
soldiers. And this guy, just this guy has
no morale at all. He's duty, but no morale.
He's like, Yep, we're going to die now.
That is not what you want to hear from your commander.
You know, I wanted to point out that was somewhat of a, a theme
I felt of this episode was that the Greens are losing morale,
for lack of a better word. Like Aegon has kind of given up
on his life and Lars is trying to keep him motivated, but
Allison just wants to run away from everything.
Cole feels like it's have nihilistic attitude about stuff.
In the meantime, the blacks are like, hey, we got some more
Dragons, let's eat these birds, let's go.
Hey, Damon's with us too now. Like they're getting fired up
and the Greens are becoming demoralized.
Yeah, it's a real reversal of of who's winning.
Yeah. And that would put you in a dark
state of mind, I think even if you or someone like Rainier that
has a, you know, struggles with harming innocence, maybe less
and less, but still struggles with it.
And someone like when you're when you're losing, it's all,
it's all harder. So yeah, what a what a brilliant
scene. Just one real quick thing before
we move on. For this, I wish that Allison
would relieve me of all charges. I would also like a handkerchief
like that little AH on it, you know.
So heading over to Bayla and Jace, Baila, as usual, is the
mature one. She's got the right attitude.
She did therapy on Corelise. Now she does it with her
betrothed. Not that Jayce doesn't have a
reason to be upset, he does, but he's not handling it in a
proactive way. He's not handling in a way
that's pragmatic. And Baila kind of sets him
straight on like, look, if you, you're right, you're the heir.
And if you're worried about being replaced, well, be the
heir, be more prominent, do the things that an that are expected
of an heir. Now, to be fair, it's he's not
given a lot of opportunities at some of those things, but just
be by her side, be seen with her back, her decisions, that kind
of thing. He's not really doing that.
He's kind of moping. And she calls him out for that.
He's like, oh, you're moping, you know, and he kind of is
moping. I I do wonder what book he's
reading, but yeah, he's just kind of staring at it.
Yeah, he's. Looking directly like past it.
Yeah, you're right. He's look at that.
But he's just playing the like a grieved teenager very well here,
look at that. He's like, everybody sucks,
nothing's good. Yeah, he's listening to some
blue. Steel, blue steel, blue seed and
blue Reed. He's got he's got earbuds then
he's listening to some emo, some some pop punk is going in those
ears right now. So she says, do you think you're
the only noble heir whose sire is not their noble father 'cause
he's like, you know what I am, I'm back.
He's like, it doesn't matter. She says.
Carly said the same thing. You know, history doesn't
remember blood. It remembers names like you're a
Valarian cause the world thinks of you're a valarian.
Your blood doesn't matter. Now with Targaryens, it actually
does matter. But that aside, I love how this
relates to Shirak Alohar and Jason Lannister who just sire
children on someone else, right? You said Jason Lannister.
Oh, sorry, Thailand. My bad.
Yes, thank you for the correction.
Thailand. Lannister, Tymon, Tyrod, Tywin.
They have many fathers, actually.
Can you imagine if Scirocco's like he's a twin?
Oh my God. Oh yeah, she doesn't know that
yet. I don't.
Know that she would know he's a twin that's this funny little.
That is really funny. He needs to get twice as many
wives now. They won't know which is is that
Jason's son or is that Thailand's son?
I don't know. So it seems to, it seems to work
like Jace's attitude does shift somewhat, though maybe not
entirely. But by the dinner, he when ulf
upsets him, he keeps his calm, he, he chastises ulf but he
isn't like aggressive or like angry about it.
He just says what he needs to say is like, you know, be better
friend. You know, he's a little, he's a
little bit of English in there, a little bit of like needling
him, but he's, it's nothing like I will hang you and have your
body eaten by the dogs. You know, it's it's he
definitely has toned it down. He's not quite as mad.
So I appreciate that. He might feel a little more
hurt, too. He, he, everyone else sees this,
right? There's a little bit of him,
like you guys all see this. I'm not, I'm not being mean to
him for no reason, right? Everyone else, you guys were all
OK. Yeah.
It's not just me. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's see dinner with dragon
seeds. This is our our let's talk about
this scene, very important scene right here.
It tells them they have responsibilities that they will
be made Knights if they do really well.
Again, as I said before, maybe this is a little light for
dragon riders, but it's just a start.
You know, you can start with knighthood, maybe work your way
up. But it's an important thing, you
know, when you're when you have a lot of power, you have to be
taken care of. So Alps manners are a topic of
conversation. The reactions are interesting.
As I pointed out before, Hugh kind of apologizes for him.
Adam distances himself and and ulf just keep kind of keeps
going. He's trying to needle them a
little little sarcasm, little joke.
He's like, you guys need a sense of humor.
You know? He's right.
Yeah, I say one as people in the
chat have been mentioning, he did eat over 30 quails.
That's what the little birds are here.
He ate over 30 quails in the filming, which is was very funny
in the BTS in the house the Dragons built.
So I clipped it while we were stuck at the at the airport for
18 hours. I made a little TikTok clip of
it and my little TikTok Scott like almost 700,000 views on
TikTok and Tom Bennett retweeted it, reposted it.
So that made me happy. Off, off, off.
The comments keep cracking me up because so many people hate OLF
and lots of people love OLF. Some people are horny for OLF
which is funny. But a lot of people hate OLF and
their comments just really make them sound like real life.
Like bootlicking peasants I have to say because they're like This
is why you don't invite the help to eat with you.
And I'm like OK, OK then but. But Adam is awesome and like,
like, what do you mean? Like he's objectively great so
far, I mean. Yeah, people, yeah, I, I, they
say that with their whole chest. Yeah.
And I, I think it's, it speaks a lot about people's perspectives
that they would blame ulf's yeah, up upbringing on this and
not just him being kind of kind of bad.
And this is in the same scene where Rainier is like, yes let's
burn Old Town Atlantis port. So I don't know why ulf is the
problem here. Thank you.
Like, yeah, I was happy to see
Hugh was the one in the scene who was like, I I sounds awful.
Like he, he, he, he did not seem to like that idea.
It's so brilliant now that I'm thinking about it and I don't
even know if it's intentional because this is such a real
world thing. People so often just push aside
a really good point 'cause you're rude about it.
Like OK, it could have been better delivered, but like it
doesn't. This is we're talking about like
genocide or mass murder here. Like, I'm sorry, I'm rude about
it, but like, come on, like that.
Can't we get past the rudeness to like deal with this?
The death of the potential death of thousands or hundreds of
thousands of people or whatever the number is.
Like that seems like it's more important than some root table
manners, right? Like that's this isn't even
doesn't even register in the scheme of things.
But interestingly, the reaction to her saying that if we move on
to to their reaction to being told they have to burn these
cities, Bayla and Hugh object. Adam and Ulph say nothing and
Jace backs his mom up like, Yep, it's terrible, but it's got to
be done, you know? So it's like, Oh yeah, I don't
know how to feel about that. By the way, in terms of I know
why that TikTok went viral, Shaya, because it's contagious.
It went viral and off backwards is flu.
There you go. Once it ends.
Hugh backwards is them, backwards is Mata.
So yeah, none of those work, right?
See. Yeah, you only get this quality
quality analysis from History of Westeros podcast.
I wanted to get one line in when told them they could use a sense
of humor and he is kind of right.
They maybe could lighten up a little, but he could use a sense
of humility as well, probably. Yeah.
I think that's true, I think. That's me in the middle.
But this also brings me to the other thing is that she tells
them that she'll make them nights.
Excuse me, They're dragon riders.
I think you give them a lordship and I think that that's very at
LAX. How can she think that they'll
be happy with night like knighthoods?
And how can she not think that someone else will try to bribe
them? You have to take care of these
people or they will leave you so.
That's be very. Concerned when he says best make
us Knights then I'm like even if she made you a knight, someone
can make you a Lord. All of like I don't know.
I had a sense of dread at her just offering them the bare
minimum like that. Silver wings a goer too, so.
Silver Wing is not a goer. He doesn't know.
Love that line. Silver Wings a goer.
We'll take on Vegar. Like maybe you are drunk.
Yeah, on one hand I I largely agree with you, but on the other
hand, they got to prove themselves.
They haven't really done anything yet.
They just got the Dragons what they do with them, you know?
Adam said. Like there'll be a chance to see
who the coward is. Yeah, I.
Agree, but that's what you say. If you acquit yourself honorably
throughout the war and you make it through alive, I promise you
you'll get your own castle. You don't even have to say which
I think if you one of the green castles, yeah, I think I think
that is a too low of a bar for a dragon rider and any any person
would offer them more and I'm very worried about this low ball
offer. Yeah, I mean, right here I said
that you have been entrusted with the power few have ever
known, yet you are outranked by all these people, these like,
lower level Lords, you know, It's like that does confrate a
weird conflict, you know? So one other little tiniest bit,
Hugh, I almost did it too. Olf actually did thank the
serving girl when the little birds were finally brought to
him again. Easy to miss that.
So he was at least polite to the serving.
Girl, that's good. I like that.
I like that point a lot. Aziz 'cause I mean he is really
rude, but I think he is being rude to the nobles who he kind
of Loki hates. Like we have seen him throughout
the season be kinda more of a populist.
I mean, I, I still think once he has the power, he's not gonna
give up the power, but I'm glad to see him not just be a jerk to
a serving girl immediately. I agree.
Yeah. So Master Girardis comes in and
sort of interrupts the scene and changes to pivots it to
Harrenhal. Ray Rainier is like she's
frustrated when she hears that Sir Simon is fierce treachery
and she says I will not allow it.
It's going to go there. It's time to just confront him.
And that I'm glad to see that Now it cut to her saying I'm
going to bring Adam. Now you it's easy to understand
why she chose Adam. She doesn't know Hugh very well.
Alf has been rude so that's kind of easy to not choose him.
He also is probably drunk so it's not the best time to bring
him. She doesn't want to put all her
eggs in one basket by bringing Jace.
Plus Jace's dragon is small and she probably wants to be
intimidating, so that also eliminates Bayla.
So Adam is really the the best call.
But Sean, you have a really good point here.
Like Jace seemed kind of put out by not being brought.
Maybe he should understand. But Rainier could have explained
herself a little here, huh? Yeah, he wasn't just put out.
He was left out. Like here comes the maestro with
this message and she gets up and walks away to discuss the
message in private. And Chase is like, hey, what's
going on? I'm the heir.
I'm your son. I got a dragon.
And. And as far as I could tell, she
didn't announce what was going on.
She just said, Adam, come with me.
And Jace is just sitting there, like, what the heck.
Like not only did I not get to hear the message, not only is my
mom going off to do something with someone other than me, I
don't even know what she's going to do.
Like Raniera could have, should have easily said I need to go
meet Damon at Harrenhal. Jase, stay here and make sure
the dragon riders are ready to go.
I'll be back in a week or something.
But she didn't tell anyone where she was going or why she didn't
involve Jason anyway. And and in front of these noobs,
he's trying to assert himself overall.
You. Better listen to me and that was
like, your mom doesn't even respect you, you know, like
you're. Right after bail is like be by
your mom's side and he's like, she's not, she's excluding me.
Yeah. He looked more hurt than angry
there. He looks kind of concerned,
confused, hurt, but not not mad, which that would have been, you
know, fair too. But yeah, it was more.
He's like my mom's replacing me with Adam.
So but it but like we said, it does make sense.
It just should have she should have just taken the time to
explain it to him. But more on that.
Let's let's take a quick break and then we'll come back with
Haranol. Dom Tartaglia sends a super
chat. Hey Dom, shout out to folk wise
YouTube channel he says. I thought of Aziz and the BTS
because Tom as Alf is to quails the same way Mark is as Illyrio
is to blocks of cheese. Yeah, our friend Mark Swan, I
love to comment on this. He ate during the performance of
of 6 Queens or just was it 6 right?
Just called 6, is that right? Yes, it's Queens based on 6.
Oh, that's right. OK, yeah, I don't know the
original. That's why I get confused.
So Queens is the name of the musical they rewrote in A Song
of Ice and Fire format. It was brilliant and Mark played
the role of Illyrio and he he ate a whole block on stage of
cheese just to so we would know who he was like a little gag,
but he actually ate a whole block.
It was crazy. It's Charlie Kelly like eating
his heart out. Like even Charlie couldn't eat
that much cheese. Very impressive, very
impressive. So yeah, friends, we're going to
we're going to have a lot of coverage after the season.
We've got several character based episodes we're going to
do. One's going to be on Damon.
We've got some other ones planned.
We're going to figure out we've got to get our schedule all
together. But we're doing, like I said,
we're doing a show wrap up episode on Sunday.
We're going to do a book to show episode.
We're going to do Dance of the Dragons Part 7, the book only
version with Radio Westeros. We've got lots of content coming
and if you want to sign up and be a part of it, get advanced
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Patreon is right there as well. And of course, our website
actually features a lot of other things, which is like such as
our episode sorter. We have so many episodes now,
it's nice to have a little way to find what you're looking for
rather than just scrolling through our feed and or our
YouTube channel. It's kind of be kind of hard to
find things, so that's nice. Wait, Dom said he ate two blocks
of cheese? What?
OK, Charlie Kelly isn't even in the same league.
That's off level commitment to the bit.
Yeah, that's two like 2 quails per take, two blocks per
performance. That's dedication cheese.
It's a lot heavier than a quail. Damn Jordan Ellis Reynolds,
shout out to long expected soundscape and other projects.
You are doing a new one for real time as well.
That's really cool, he says. Would love to hear a talk later
on about the final piece of music in this episode.
All must choose. Oh yeah.
Well, yeah, we'll do that during the the montage section.
I will. I will talk about that 'cause I
was very pleased by that as well.
And now that the soundtrack is out, we have, well, we have
titles like that one, which we didn't have before.
Tyrannall. Yeah.
Let's talk about Harrenhal. This is a really interesting
moment, Sean. Alice awakens him.
He calls her a witch again. He's like, you never do you ever
sleep? Which she's crying.
Did you catch that, Sean? That her eyes were, like,
watering? They weren't tears running down,
but the eyes were watering. I, I didn't at first, but I did,
I don't know, 4th watch. I think I noticed when it when
she turned from the other angle that it seemed like that her,
you know, her not just watering, but like tears on her cheek, you
know, beneath her eye, down her cheek, it looked.
Like, OK, yeah. Yeah, it was on her face.
You can see it on the. Face.
Oh, it was. Yeah.
You could see it yourself. I undersold it.
She was crying more than I said. My only guess here is because
the heart tree is is bleeding too.
Is that the heart tree is crying.
So she is too. She's like In Sync with it.
But other than that, I I'm not really sure.
Do you have any other takes? My guess was that she that these
visions are, are similar to everyone who's having different
prophecies. It's hard to piece it together
and understand it, right? And I think this course that
Damon has gone through at Harrenhal with her, she's going
through it with him, if you will, right?
And she has seen him grow and evolve and become the person
he's supposed to be. And now she sees that he's going
to die tragically. And it's sad.
That's what I think. OK, yeah, he's she's like a he's
like a son that she's been raising right to be a good
little father just follower of the old gods.
Yeah, be a good little piece on the board.
And now. But also I have to watch you
die. Yeah.
That is, I can buy that. That's I.
Like that interpretation, Sean, whether it's about Damon
specifically or about she just witnessed all of this death and
destruct all of what Damon just saw.
And it was very emotional for her to see and seeing the
sacrifices that were going to be made and all of that.
I think that's one really good interpretation.
Probably where I land. I guess the only real other
interpretation I would see is that she's she's upset that she
has to kind of show someone not worthy of such a thing and she
is like that is the only kind of alternative explanation I've
seen out there. And I think I prefer the former,
but I I don't know that I see much of 1/3 option.
Yeah, I didn't really even see a second option until Sean gave
that one, which I think is pretty good, but I've seen some
other ones. I just didn't really like them.
But I think, I think both of what you all said is are pretty
solid. So she leads him outside for I
guess what it seems to be a final dream.
Maybe not final final for now, but certainly a big climactic
dream, that's for damn sure. And I wrote down her speech.
It's great you want to read it to show you.
When you came here, you were a closed fist who wished to bend
the world to your will. But you've discovered, I think
this world will not be governed. There are omens here for those
who seek them. You do not scoff.
He says I am no longer inclined to.
I am pleased to hear it. Do you wish to learn then what
is given to you? All your life you've sought to
command your fate, but today you are ready.
Yeah, it's ready to give in, to become part of the network,
maybe not a permanent part of it, to see your future, to see
the omen here for those who seek them.
And yeah, I mean, this is where I have to say that we have a way
more to say about this because we need to look at Damon's Ark
as a whole to to really understand this moment.
But beyond that, the scene had implications for a variety of
magical related subtopics that we'll also have to focus on
separately, but probably not in one episode because there's,
like I said, a variety of different magical tendrils have
been shot out here and has affected what we see about
things. Just seeing the Green Man is
amazing enough. But for now, to summarize
briefly what a lot of those discussions will revolve around,
remember that Damon hated the supernatural so much that
Rainier is Bear's suggestion of it, of the prophecy coming from
Beceris. He choked her.
And then when she Alice brought it up in a few episodes ago,
like, well, it's the old guy. She's he's like drivel.
He yelled it. He's so worked up, so mad.
So this is it took some work for him to get to this point.
So I for those of you who thought this this arc was maybe
a little stretched out too long, I don't think so.
He had to go some undergo some serious character change.
And you can't just have that happen quickly.
He's this is the the person he was.
His whole life has to change, and he did.
Whether the change will stick, we'll see.
But they certainly look pretty strong.
I didn't even think of it till just now, but if you could
compare this to, you know, A Christmas Carol, right?
Scrooge's. Gotta.
Evaluate his whole life right and it it You can't do it in one
scene or even one episode if you will.
I, I think that that the screen time that Damon and his ark and
Harrenhal has taken is probably on par with the screen time of
Scrooged or A Christmas Carol, one of those movies, you know
about that. I bet they're, I bet it's even
less time than you took to watch Scrooge go through his growth,
you know? That's a yeah, that's a great
comparison. I love that.
So the actual vision let's let's go through the points.
As I said, somebody's we'll have to expand on and talk about
later. But if we just talk about the
images that happen here first she see he sees the Green Man
and if you got your subtitles on, the Green Man is like making
clopping sounds. It's like you can hear.
It's like hooves, which Mitch indicates.
There's hooves and there's like a grumbling sound like the the
Green Man makes a vocalization that's like a a kind of a roar,
kind of a grumble. To me, the Green Man looks very
small, which points to this being either child of the Forest
Green man all just possible in the books as well, or bet some
sort of in between point between the children and a human, some
sort of inhuman creature. But they look, it looks very
small to me. And I, I kind of did think of
the Green Man as being one with the children, but like in all
their own sect. So I don't know.
Yeah, that's how I see it too. Like the Order of the Green Hand
or, or specific type of Knights. And I think the the green manner
or an Order of the Children. I I see it that way too.
Yeah, I think I answer this. I'm glad to see this as to be a
small figure. Yeah, yeah.
If they made it a human form, that would have been that would
have gone against kind of our head cannon so far.
I think this I think this was a good choice.
So he places his hand on the tree.
And if you if you watch how he does it, his hand kind of swoops
up. So he, his hand passes over
George RR Martin's face. This is very meta.
He's seeing a vision of the future.
He's reading George RR Martin's mind.
Like, he's like, the creator is telling you what's going to
come. And that's part of the fun of,
of them referring to it as a story because, yeah, that's all
there. So you get, this is like, you're
getting George's CHEAT SHEET. You're like, here's what's
coming. You're like, here's what's in
his head. But it's also like the flowing
SAP is like the flow of time, and he's rooted in it, and it's
flowing around him while he's stuck in place.
So I think that's a really cool like symbolic way to show it.
So he puts his hand on it, the blood flows there, the tree
starts to grow and expand. His eyes bulge out a little bit
and we pretty quickly see a man in the throne of the tree.
And it's it's blood Raven, which is the same character that Bran
personified as the three eyed crow or three eyed Raven in the
show 3 eyed crow in the book. And this is shown to us visually
by him having a crow shaped or a Raven shaped birthmark on his
face which the three eyed crow emerges from.
So that should tell you a lot. And for our book readers who are
like where? Why does he have two eyes and
show cannon blood Raven? This red Raven thread crow in
the show had two eyes in Game of Thrones.
Yeah, they kind of. Think they're going to do into
this, and I don't know what they will do in A Night of the Seven
Kingdoms, what they'll do with Blood Raven.
But I feel that whether this actor is the actor we see in A
Night of the Seven Kingdoms or not, which is not for sure, It
would be cool if it was so that we don't have four Blood Raven
actors, right? That was Blood Raven.
It'll be the 4th. How many faces does Blood Raven
have? Yeah, instead of how many eyes?
But yeah, that is the line. You know how many?
There's a big quote about him having to do with his, you know,
eyes. But I just, I think if they want
to be consistent with show cannon, they were kind of stuck
with this. I don't think.
I don't think they just chose to mess it up.
Yeah. It really bothers me when people
say that this ruins his character like they ruin Blood
Raven. Like what, taking giving him a
second eye and not having his eye missing doesn't ruin the
character. That's the most over the top
thing I can imagine saying about this character.
Like he's still incredible because because he has two eyes
doesn't change anything. Yeah, he doesn't have the Odin
vibe anymore because he doesn't didn't give up his eye for
knowledge. You can't use the thousand eyes
in one song anymore. But that's it.
That's all we lose. Everything else about the
character is still intact. And I agree that if you're going
to blame someone, don't blame House of the Dragon, blame Game
of Thrones. They're the ones who made him
two eyed. They they're the ones who threw
that off. Anyway, rant over.
I will say that you can justify stuff again in mystical visions
like this because it might not be properly transmitted to Damon
or blood. Raven might envision himself
with two eyes, at least at this point.
But again, we've seen him with two eyes in the show.
So I mean you're you're what you're saying is maybe they will
go ahead and take a second eye away later, but I.
Given the possibility. I really don't think so.
I think if they were going to do that, they would do it here.
Yeah, I think we all need to accept the fact that a Knight of
the Seven Kingdoms, Blood Raven is very likely to have two eyes
and people are going to be mad. But it really doesn't have a
strong bearing on him at all. He still kind of looks like a
freak to Westeros. Like George still matters to it,
right? Is that he's treated worse for a
lot of reasons, including his appearance.
He looks very eerie and creepy to people.
And I think he's still and he's a bastard of course, but like
there's a lighter, an aesthetic part part of it that I think
also has is off putting to folks.
Yes, so they can find other ways to make him off putting.
It's that doesn't you know, he can still look certain ways to
make him kind of dark or whatever.
And yeah, so we go into the so the the three eyed crow emerges
from his face, which I thought was a really cool effect.
We go and we sort of go into that eye and we emerge from the
other side of it as a direwolf. We don't see the direwolf, but
if you're sort of paying close attention, you can tell that
it's a direwolf because it's low and there's adding sounds and
then it kind of jumps up into the bargain.
Brand. White Walker here.
Yeah. Yeah, I like someone who's like,
this is just like at the very beginning of the long night.
So he doesn't look as old. He isn't quite as wrinkled, you
know? But I just think something
missed the bar. The OK, by the way, the other
thing about Bloodraven I forgot to mention is some people have
the theory that maybe they didn't have him missing the eye
because people would think it's Aymond.
Yeah. Which is like, I mean, like,
sure, but like, I think that's a happy accident.
Right, right. I think that's more likely that
it's just they had to stick with what the first show did.
They can't, they can't really get around that.
Yeah, I think that's more likely.
But but it does kind of work. Like George even had Bloodraven
get good with the bow again. You know, even after losing his
eye, he's like, well, he sucked at it immediately after losing
his eye, but then learned it, relearned it.
So it's like the loss of his eye is it's really not that big a
deal. In the BTS, they really patted
themselves on the back for this White Walker thing and talked
about like, everyone had to be on set to see this White Walker.
How how did how many people were on that set and no one said
y'all it looks bad I'm. Sorry, but like.
I don't know how anyone can defend this White Walker, and it
doesn't really impact my enjoyment of the episode at all.
It's. Just one.
Image yeah I still I'm pro the episode as a whole but I can
still just be honest and be like I laughed when I saw the picture
of this. Yeah, we're like, that looked
weird. Yeah, it was like a little
goofy. He's not wrinkly enough.
Yeah. So then we move forward and we
see we emerge from the die wolf eye view.
Like I said, we have the White Walkers and we see this scene,
which is dead Dragons, or I think it's multiple dead
Dragons, other corpses, there's muck and Merc.
So when we talk spoilers, I've got my thoughts on what the
scene is, but I'm not going to say what it what I think it is
now, because that's that's not for Sean's ears.
But I would like to hear your interpretation of it.
I'm scared to ask too many questions, but I will say I did
look at this a long time trying to decide if I should be able to
recognize this dragon. And I didn't go through the
effort of like trying to pull up images of a bunch of other
Dragons. One because I didn't want to
accidentally spoil myself and two, because it's difficult.
But I couldn't conclude. Did this look like any certain
like it? It doesn't looks like it is not
Vergar. It is not cracksies.
It's not certain Dragons for sure, but I can't tell which one
it is. But also it looks to me and in
the background, you know, it's very hazy and misty and dark,
but that looks like Herrenhall to me, kind of just in the
basically in the center above the dragon that looks like an
outline of it. Looks like a castle.
I'm not sure that it's Herrenhall, but it looks like a
castle. I'm not sure either, but that
was my best guess. And you know, later Helena tells
Amon that he's going to drowned into God's eye.
And it seems like Damon's seeing his own death here.
So I wonder. And we know things are
converging at Harrenhal. So that's kind of where my mind
went for all this. That's right.
The good, good call. So yeah, he's walked through the
carnage and then, yeah, he eventually plunges in himself
and becomes fully immersed. And in the BTS, they do confirm
he's seeing his own death. And it has to be this moment
because the next thing is the red comet.
That's not his death, right? So 3 eggs in the fire is the
next thing we see, which is we were wondering what that all
season long and how about that It is actually Daenerys.
We see a couple shots of the comet.
Yeah, a couple shots of the comet.
Yeah, you're right. Then then we get so this is the
future and we get the Mother of Dragons.
This is how we know we've jumped forward the red comet, like
Damon falling into the water is him, but then jumping forward
with the red comet and eggs in the fire, and then Daenerys, the
Mother of Dragons. So.
But then it goes back to the present, which is Rainier on the
throne with dancing fire light on her crown and Damon looking
up at her, and there's no conversation this time.
There's no High Valyrian or no begging or pleading or or
anything. He's just in the dream.
Yeah, we're beheading or trying to grab the crown or any of that
thing. The crown doesn't hit the
ground. None of that.
No sewing on neck, none of these horror scenes, Just finality.
But then over his left shoulder, just like it was for Amon's when
Amon was staring at the throne, not in a dream, but over his
shoulder. There's there's Elena.
And she says it's all a story and you are but one part in it.
No, you know your part. Then he takes his hand off the
tree and he still hears one last line.
You know what you must do? Boom.
Pretty cool. I like that vision.
You know, book versions of visions can do so much more
because it's words. But this was pretty solid other
than the low right white Walker. I really like this.
And I thought it was a a fitting culmination of of Damon's long
journey here. And we'll come back to it
because we're like, we're we're doing this linear.
So it pivots to Helena looking the exact same way with the same
expression on her face and the same clothes on her balcony.
It's pretty sweet. And given that there's so much
Damon Aimon parallelism in the show, having Aimon appear next
is like, oh, you know, that's kind of neat too.
So that's by the way, that's one of the other things we'll want
to talk about. The fact that Helena was present
in a weirwood vision is a little unusual, but it it does speak to
our Sean, our long standing theory of different magical
sources all porting into the same magical central, you know,
repository. But let, but let's not get into
that now, because we we've, we're already way over time here
today. So we'll save that for another
time. So Eamon appears and just again
tries to get her to see his way this time.
He's like, mom doesn't understand us.
We're dragon riders. We're different.
She doesn't get it, but we get it.
And she's like, no, will you burn me like you burned Aegon?
He's like, wait, that's that's a lie.
That's treason. I saw it like whoa.
So here we go. This is the first time other
than in Damon's dream, like 30 seconds before this.
Where? Her prophecies are directly
impacting people's view of her and changing the story, and
people are acting on it. And so that's a big change.
Is that what did you think of this moment there, Sean, before
we even get to the rest of what she says?
Yeah, I, I suspect, by the way, that Damon was or sorry Aymond
was hit so hard by this because he I, I think maybe some other
people too are kind of aware of her visions, that she does seem
to have something supernatural going on.
And it because it would have been easy for him to just
dismiss it. So he didn't he seemed to listen
and and care about what she said.
So this is the first direct on screen announcement of one of
her visions. But I suspect that he has
observed or heard or had her tell things in the past that he
may be similar to Damon kind of blew off, but still living his
head rent free. Does that make?
Sense the next line is Aegon will be king again.
He sits on a wooden throne. He has yet to see victory.
And you, you'll be dead. You were swallowed up in the
God's eye and never seen again. And he just he's so back footed
by this. He's so blown away.
This is when his eye starts to like cloud up a little.
He's almost crying. And he's like, I could have you
killed. He's just so doesn't know what
to do. It's just so like final.
And he can't make an argument here.
He's just he's just faced with a person that can see the future
that he didn't know could this was possible.
And she's telling him that he's it's all hopeless for him.
Like it wouldn't change anything.
Wow. But very dark, right?
Like this is a guy that lashes out when he's thwarted, and he's
been thwarted repeatedly, and now he's thwarted by like the
heavens themself. Like it's terrifying to think of
how he might react to this in the long term.
Yeah, I just wanted to talk about this scene a lot.
Everyone who listens to the podcast knows I love the I love
thinking about the Helena Amond dynamic.
And you might wonder, did I love it?
Did I hate it? I loved it.
I this is like the darkness that I wanted from this dynamic.
And you can tell how heartbroken he is.
He I think he really thought he would he would talk to her.
She would see reason. They would fly off together and
win this war. And he had this this kind of
childish fantasy, immature fantasy of what he thought it
would be. And he doesn't really know his
sister that well, like he thought, and he just thinks of
her again as an object, just like Dwayne kind of thought of
his sister Allison as an object and doesn't see her as a person.
And I just thought it was so rich.
I loved so much about it. I had made me want to reconsider
every scene with Helena. And when she's speaking, is she
speaking to Blood Raven? Is she speaking to Bran?
Is she speaking to someone in the net, you know, like Alice?
It really makes you think about every scene with her
differently. So I loved all of that.
I don't love her just saying what happens to Amond.
I prefer it when she's a little bit more vague with it, both as
a viewer and for show people and as AI Don't know.
Yeah, if I had to give my criticism, I, I didn't love it
being so on the nose and so clear.
I, I, I, I have to see how Amond reacts in season three to
knowing this and how he speaks to people that he might interact
with. The jury is out for me on
whether that was like an effective choice or whether it
kind of makes everything seem futile.
Yeah, it might make him lash out more.
It might have the effect of making him worse because like
when he he goes and burns sharp port, when he's defeated, slash
embarrassed or outmaneuvered or whatever.
This is like his being told his whole life is going to be that
his whole life is a failure. You're not going to win.
Like that's just that's so heavy.
Yeah, so I'm you're right. It's it's so much depends on how
he reacts to this. Just knowing that like you, you
put yourself through so much. As he said, he studied, he
worked, he thinks he deserves it, lost his eye.
He has the biggest dragon. And now the person he thinks,
the only person he thinks who should understand him and
support him is saying, no, you're wrong, you're going to
die. God, that's hard.
That's hard for him. So one thing about the prophecy,
one thing you can, I don't know, get away with and still be
vague. And any prophecy is saying
you'll be dead. Well, yeah, everyone's gonna die
eventually. Is he gonna be dead from old age
after? He said you'll no, she said
you'll be swallowed in the gods by she gave a specific Yeah.
That that does make it more specific.
And she said after Aegon returns, she said after before
Aegon returns, you'll be dead. So it's not far in the future, I
don't think. She says Aegon will be king
again, he'll sit in a wooden throne.
He is yet to see victory and you you'll be dead.
So again, I the whole point of prophecies is they're vague and
Shea is pointing out this one maybe is a little too specific
but even a specific it is Aegon. I don't expect this, but I'm
just saying if Amon wants to find a way in his mind to
interpret the prophecy, like we're like, yeah, Aegon will
return in 30 years and I'll be swallowed into this God die by,
you know, a flood that happens when I'm helping rebuild
Herrenhal. Aiming the rebuilder of
Herrenhal, yeah. Can I point out the the the line
I did like of hers when she says Aegon will sit on a wooden
throne? He hasn't seen victory yet.
Because I felt that that was a little bit nicely, it was less,
it was less clear, but it makes sense.
Aegon can't can't walk as well anymore that he would sit in a
chair or a wheelchair, a wooden throne.
But I want to bring it to the other thing that it made me
think of, which is that Helena might have seen something to do
with Bran, Bran Stark, who was in like a wheelchair and a
wooden throne of the tree. And if she had, if she she maybe
has interpreted her vision slightly incorrectly still, or
maybe she did correctly see Aegon gets a wheelchair, but I
wanted to throw that out there. For now, he's sitting in the
carriage, which is a wooden throne of of sorts, too.
I wonder if that might be what he was referring to.
Yeah, he might be in a a carriage of some sort for years,
right? Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. So it's an interesting set of
comments for sure. Like a Shaya said, we have,
we'll have more to say on it later.
We'll have to consider keep thinking about it.
I'm sure we'll have some more thoughts later, but we go back
to Harrenhal, Cyrax and Sea Smoke arrive.
We were really looking forward to this scene all season long.
We were like, wow, it looks like Rainier is flying to Harrenhal.
We got the God's eye there. It was a beautiful shot.
We didn't know Sea Smoke was part of it until the trailer,
but that adds a lot to it. Another example of the really
good transitions because we go from her Elena telling Aymond
you will die in the God's eye, the shot of the God's.
Eye. Good point, very good catch.
Yeah, I totally glossed over that for some reason.
Now sea smoke stays in the air the whole scene, which
presumably is to guard against worst case scenario, like
Rainier is going into an uncertain situation here.
And you know, there's nothing like a an extra dragon up in the
air to make sure things don't go wrong.
Someone had a like a a fall back plan, right?
But I was a little disappointed that it didn't come up at all.
Like Damon and Rainier didn't discuss this new dragon.
She's like, who is that? You know, let me tell you.
That's that's that's Adam of Hull on sea smoke.
Damon didn't even act like. Damon wasn't outside.
He was inside. He didn't even.
He has no clue. He didn't see it.
He's like, you'd think she would bring that up.
Like by the way, I've got a bunch of new dragon riders now.
Like either way, that conversation didn't happen and I
kind of wanted it to, but whatever, not a big deal.
I still love the scene. I wish it had been included in
some way, but I can imagine that Damon is being updated from
Dragonstone even though he's not sending updates.
That's true. You're right.
They have been saying that pretty much all along, that
they've been sending messages to Damon.
He's not responding back. So yeah, that's a fairpoint.
Maybe he does already know. Either way, it would have been
cool to have them talk about it. But, you know, not a big.
Yeah, just one line of him acknowledging, hey, good job or?
Whatever, you know, I love how Cyrax follows her.
She leaves Cyrax outside, but she jumps up on the rafters
there and is like looking down over them as the army's all
gathered. That was pretty cool.
So Rainier is like, or Damon's like.
Well, I didn't expect to see you here.
You know, he's like, looks like you've done pretty well here for
yourself. And like, they're sworn to me.
He's like, and she, I love this. She steps back and says, and to
whom are you sworn? It was a very good way to do it,
nice and efficient and puts him on the spot there.
And he approaches her and speaks High Valyrian and says, the
world is not what we thought it was.
Winter is coming. We cannot stand against it, but
somehow we must. And High Valyrian.
And she's like, you sound like my father.
This is the this is the first of two times she's going to be
completely surprised by one of her closest people in her life
saying something a big turn. Like she's going to be very
surprised at what Allison says. She's very surprised at Damon
saying these things. Like Damon being about the
prophecy is like what? Like last time I brought this
up, you choked me, you know, like this is she says, you sound
like my father. He goes further with it.
He's like, yeah, your father chose you to steward all this.
So yeah, I'm. He says I saw it like, kind of
like how Elena says I, I saw it, you know, or I saw you.
It's very similar and it's really great.
Yeah. It's almost the opposite of old
saying the perfectly wrong things to Jace Damon is saying
the perfectly correct things to. Exactly what she wanted to hear.
Yeah, yeah, I love it. And she's.
She doesn't want to, like, celebrate too much because she's
happy, but she's still to be queenly.
So she's like, leave me again at your peril.
And he's like, I could never. I tried.
Well, that's great. I love that response.
That's really good. And then he hypes up the troops.
The roar is huge. They're all for her.
It's great. You know, 100 for every one of
us who follows 100. Yeah.
He, I mean, when he gets, once he gets past the politicking,
he's very good at leading the actual soldiers like this
party's really good at Alfred Broome likes moves to the back.
Like, yeah, you see, he walks out.
He leaves right there, as I would too, if I were him.
Also, I want to shout out to Simon Strong's reactions.
His his face, he's like. Shocked it was a little bit like
Otto's slow clap at the dinner. You know, he's like over Helena
like it was it was more of a mini clap, but Simon's was more
of a slow clap, like a but not a sarcastic one.
Like normally the slow clap often is a sarcastic one, but
he's like, all right, this is going.
Well, like, I can't believe this.
I guess I should applaud. Yeah, he's like, all right,
well, that hell, that went way better than I thought.
All right, so Rainier has overcome, but also relieved.
It's huge. Like, we were talking about how
she had a Navy and an Air Force, but no Army.
Now she does. Maybe she doesn't have to burn
landsport and Old Town now. What do you think, Sean?
Is she still going to do that, or is maybe that that changes
things? Not imminently, I hope.
I, I, I can imagine still sending the Dragons to those
cities just as a threat. Just let them be seen.
Like just that in and of itself. She even said herself she hoped
that the Dragons would be enough to stay the enemy's hand.
I think that was the close to the the line that she said that
just having these superior numbers hopefully would be
enough for them to be like, oh, we can't win anymore.
But it doesn't seem like that's going to do it.
And Aemon went and burned a city.
So yeah, I guess we're going to have to actually strike, if you
will. So she goes back to Dragonstone.
Mazaria and Raniera have a conversation.
Looks like Sea Smoke and Cyrax were kind of playing in the air
there. I think that's who that was, but
I'm not sure if that's who that was.
If anyone has different idea on which Dragons those was, I'd be
curious. But you know, not the most
important thing, but it's worthy curiosity.
Now, Missouri is worrying me here that she's like, as I
alluded to before, she's kind of encouraging Rainier to do some
of her worst things. She's basically telling Rainier
that you can't do anything wrong.
The gods are on your side. So like all your actions are
approved by the gods, which is really you don't want that much
leeway. You don't want that like
approval of all atrocities ahead of time.
Like it's the. Other way around.
The gods are on your side because you're doing the right
thing. I.
Hope so, but. Cause and effect.
So and she's got a like a not a point, but what she means is
like everything's working out now, like the the gods just gave
you more dragon riders in a way that seems impossible.
Damon's now just suddenly on your side because of a vision,
right? Like that's this is all.
Everything is supernatural about this.
It didn't seem possible. So the impossible is becoming
possible in multiple ways in Dragons and Damon's behavior and
prophecies. So it's not too hard to see why
this is getting more and more like to her head.
Like, yeah, all these things are going her way.
Oh, I was going to ask, did you clock the during the Raniera and
Damon reunion? They're like, he tries to like
do that thing that they do kind of in their, their wedding
ceremony where they put their heads together and she, she
rebuffs him. She kind of says, no.
I mean, it's not the time really.
So I don't know that I want to read into it, but I, I, I mean,
she does theoretically have a lover at Dragonstone and is not
trying to, maybe she wants Damon on her side, but not in her bed.
I don't know. Maybe he hasn't fully forgiven
her, or maybe or she hasn't fully forgiven him, or maybe she
just doesn't want to show that to other people.
Yeah, that remind, I'm glad that reminded you of the the wedding.
Good thing too. I like it, was very similar in
the shot. I had to watch it a few times to
see what's going on there. But yeah, like I thought maybe
at first, the first time I saw it, I thought it was just just
like, like they had a moment, but I didn't.
I didn't tact at first that she stirred away first.
But yeah, so I agree with you there.
I just so you know, I, I didn't pause, play, pause, play it, but
I did take note of that and I couldn't decide who was veering
off. I couldn't just, it seemed like
they were both leaning in to do it, but then didn't.
I couldn't decide it was because Damon maybe realizes an
appropriate need to turn to the crowd or she backed off because
she didn't want that public show.
I I didn't even consider till just now when you guys are
bringing up that it might have be connected to her emotional
attachment to Massaria. I didn't even think of that.
Could be, could be. So, yeah.
Does Massaria believe her own lines here?
Does she really believe that the gods are on Rainier aside?
Like, that's another part of me that thinks this is a little bit
manipulative because I don't know that she actually genuinely
believes that. I think she's just saying that
to pump Rainier up to give her confidence, which isn't
necessarily super dark, but definitely just saying, yeah, go
ahead. Whatever war crimes you need to
do, that's fine because you must prevail.
You're the good guy. So you have to win.
Like, well, if you do whatever you're not, are you actually the
good guy or are you just as bad as them?
Rainier points out how many innocents will suffer.
This is what you said earlier, Sean.
She was like, expressing some regrets or some doubts, like,
but who's going to suffer? The innocents Will Mazaria says.
But that's OK because in the long run, you're a person of
peace and they're people of power.
So in the long run, it's better for you to be on the throne,
even if a lot of people die in that process.
Which in a nutshell, that argument isn't terrible, but
like, well, you can definitely go too far with it.
Like it's, it's not just like an automatic, like there's a
slippery slope there. That was, again, I've expressed
something I thought along this line a couple times, but if
Ranira in war taxi cities but does minimal damage and minimal
casualty, she finds targets that don't have huge population
centers or lets the Dragons, you know, rotate around two or three
times before they go down and stride to get people a chance to
evacuate. Like where Emma just goes after
city and burns it to the ground, especially if they win like it
if if, if she can get the the Lords of Old Town and
Atlantisport whoever to bend the knee and Amon has no more
support in the war ends. Like, you know, I I think
Missouri is, you know, if you look at it very coldly, very
auto Hightower, like ironic for Massaria to what way gets the
least people killed? You, your methods and you
winning will get the least people killed.
So I guess you should do it. It sucks that anyone has to be
killed, but given we're at war and Dragons are going to kill
and you know, given the way it's going, it's better for you to be
in charge both of these armies and after the war is over
because you are a good person and will kill less people if you
can. That that's how I want to read
what Missari is saying and what what I hope will happen is this
shit. We go back to the last shot I
show you. I wonder if that ship is
supposed to be Allison. Yeah.
Definitely. That's the whole point is like
Mazaria looks and like, oh, it's her other, like her real true
love. I didn't catch that is Allison.
And it's like the kind of the that is the spanner in the works
of Mazaria's like grip on Rainiera is Allison and her
influence. I think it's extra meaningful
that it's like a shot of Mazaria looking over and seeing the ship
coming. But yeah, that's Allison
arriving. And I wanted to bring up about
the Dragons. Some people in the chat, I think
what I think that this is Vermax and Moon Dancer based on the
wing color and the fact of like Bella and Jace being together
and that their Dragons might be a little bit bonded and paired
and be playing with one another I think it looks like.
That's what I thought at the trailer and then I changed my
mind after seeing them fly together and was like, maybe
just still see Smoke and Cyrax because they've been hanging out
a lot lately. But but yeah, I.
Think I'm totally down Sir. It's pairings like it would be
Sea Smoke and Cyrax where it would be Vermax and Moon Dancer
and we don't think it's Silver Ring and Vermouth they're.
Too small for that, yeah. Exactly.
So that's why if you're wondering what we don't think
it's that third pairing, but there are three kind of pairings
of Dragons right now. Like they all kind of have their
their their buddy system. That's true.
So it's a bit of a role reversal from the last time we discussed
the Master of Whispers and their monarchs because we had less
trust of Larry's initial goals. But now it's like, well, I don't
know about his long term plan, but the getting out of King's
Landing, absolutely. Like, you can't beat Rainier's
Dragons and your own brother might kill you.
So that that part of Larry's plan, yes, makes sense.
Mazaria is now pushing Rainiera to be like, darker and more
aggressive. And that could be kind of plow
through her own doubts. They look, yeah, you you got to
get over these hesitations and say, yeah, go ahead and kill
people. It's fine.
So moving forward to Rainiera asleep.
Interesting. Missouri is not in her bed.
Something to take note of. I wonder if we will eventually
see that I'm in fact, I'm guessing we will.
But you know, Royals don't actually share beds with people.
Even even married couples at this level don't sleep in the
same bed like thesaurus and Allison didn't share a bed most
nights, I don't think. But it's also kind of
complicated because like she doesn't exactly have a lot of
privacy. You know, like her, she's always
got maidservants and kings guard just knocking on her door in the
middle of the night and like doesn't really have that
expectation of like she can't have a relationship on the down
low very easily. So that's also that's something
to consider about that as well. This is a little bit of a
parallel. We got Damon being woken up in
the middle of the night by Alice.
Now we have Rainier woken up by Alice sent and a non magical
person, but still an important moment.
So as compared to the other secret meeting of Allison and
Rainiera, I find this scene far more contrived, but way more
impact on the plot than the meaning of the Sep.
So it's kind of little little, maybe a little less good in some
ways, but more important in other ways.
And one thing we talked about ahead of this was the Orwell bit
where she goes to Orwell for passage, which at first I was
like, why does Orwell have any like secret means of ingress
here? Like how does he know?
Like of all the people, like why does he this the guy to go to to
get through the blockade? Because right here getting
through the blockade is no problem.
That's her blockade. But like, how does does Allison
do it now? They could have just had Allison
show up at the blockade, go hey, take me to the queen and they
would have done that. But she's trying to do this on
the sly. So they that's not why.
That's not. That's why they didn't do it
that way. Yeah, she doesn't want Laurice
or Amond or any of the other, you know, people within her
party to know that she is betraying them effect like she's
she's not effectively she is this.
Is treason. This is treason.
Yeah, straight up. Yeah, that's why for me
personally, I, I, I, I didn't, I wasn't bothered by the initial
Sep scene and I'm not bothered by this scene.
I just think we only needed one of these scenes.
Personally, I think the conversation that they had could
have been one scene at this moment at the end of the season
or at the beginning. I I don't know how they could
have played it. Had to be this one, because
there's actually an actual plan here.
Yeah, it actually the other one, they just were like, well, we
can't do anything so. And in order for her to have
this plan, I guess she needed to know that from Rainier.
But I don't know. I think they're writers.
They could have figured out a way to do it a little bit more
efficiently. Is it really for me?
I think that. It could be a writers strike
thing. They didn't have time to go back
over. Somebody sings and.
I think that they would argue that this was the effective and
efficient way that they think that because the story is about
Allison and Rainiera that they should bookend this the show the
the season with an Allison Rainiera scene and an Allison
Rainiera scene. So I, I, I, as much as I think
that it wasn't the most effective or efficient thing, I,
I do think that the writers would argue that again, I, I
don't think that they chose what they think was bad.
Frankly, I just, you know, if, if I were going to cut a scene,
I would, I would condense these to one.
I. Agree with that.
What do you think, Sean? I like both the scenes.
I, I don't have a big problem with either.
I think there's fair. I, I, I think it, maybe it's a
little contrived, the idea that they could get over there
secretly, but if they wanted, they could have brought us
through a bunch of meetings and secret costumes and smuggling on
the boat. They could have showed it happen
and I would have bought it. I'm glad they didn't spend a
bunch of time on that. The important thing is that they
have these meetings. And I think in the first one was
the realization, I think by both of them that war is inevitable.
There's nothing we can do to stop this.
It's out of our hands. And then in this one for Allison
to realize I don't want to be part of it anymore.
I'm willing to sacrifice my life or I need to save my kids.
It like that she's removing herself from this and and
connected to that. It's not so simple.
Like you know when Rener is like what?
So you just you're just going to quit.
It's not that easy. It's too late.
You can't just quit. And Allison basically says, yes,
I can. And Raniera says, well, OK,
fine, you can, but not and you can't quit and save your son.
Your son's got to die. There's no two ways about it.
And Allison accepting that. And I I don't know how you could
have had both those pieces of each meeting happen in the same
meeting. So I'm OK with them being
haven't been separate meetings. I think a letter could have done
the trick. To me, I think that it is
information that conceivably could have been communicated
that way. I think so too.
But then you eliminate their ability to win best actress.
I think you take away this dramatic moment in the
cinematography and everything that comes.
With it there is that, but also like, again, it's treason.
She doesn't want to send a letter that I mean.
The first letter, sorry, sorry, sorry.
The first one, which I get that Rainier is trying to keep it
super secret or whatever, but I don't know.
I think the first meeting is what I this meeting I think is
the more important meeting too. Yeah, yeah.
I think this is the more important, but like in that
other one, and again, this maybe isn't even important, I made a
big deal about it, how it wasn't really effectively that
important. But how does Raniero make
Ranella and Allison make the realization of the
miscommunication of thesaurus's last words right one.
Maybe it would have to be a series of letters back and
forth. The moment when she asked me,
what did he say to Tiffany? They could have done that in
this scene. Why can't they do that in this
scene? Maybe they could have done that
in the scene, yeah. I think people would think that
that Alice had needed to have the doubt planted in her to get
to the scene, but I think that if they had a back and forth of
secret letters or something, I think that could have been
compelling. You could have seen their faces
during these scenes. I think it could have been
filmed and shot and written in a way that worked.
You can have them read it with the other person's voice, like
being the reading like that kind of trick.
You can do a. Lot I think with communicating
via letters. The problem is, again, whether
they think any, everyone's going to read the letters they're
sending. But again, I think that that's a
writing problem. I don't think it's an
impossibility to have done that as plausible.
Or at the very least, I think it's as plausible as a secret
meeting. You know, like secret letters
are probably as plausible as secret meetings.
Like they, they both run the same issue if people will find
out what you've done. Yeah.
So Allison apologizes without actually saying I'm sorry, but
she says she's been wrong. And she talks about, like, very
similar to Kristen Cole in a lot of ways, how talking about this
life of duty has really blown up in their face.
It's not what they thought it was.
Now she thinks she has a way out.
Kristen's like, I got no choice. I'm marching to my annihilation.
That's where diverges a bit. The difference is she actually
thinks she has a way out. But she does mention him.
She's like my what? My father, my what?
My husband, my lover. And she's like your lover.
Oh, and she gets on her case a little bit about her right.
Here, jumped on that so quick. Yeah, that virtue, Roniera the
1st. As soon as you're a lover,
that's what she jumped on. Yeah, it wasn't the other stuff.
It was like, oh, you hypocrite. You know, it's it's too funny
the name of that lover didn't come up because oh, boy, she
would have been even had an even stronger reaction to that.
But so far that's a secret that's being maintained.
It may never get told. But so, yeah, like you said,
Sean, she has to eventually. She thinks she can have it both
ways, like and Rainier basically calls around, you think you can
just do all this and still have it your way with minimal
suffering. He's like, no, your son has to
die, have to cut his head off and everyone has to know it.
Everyone has to see me do it. It has to be spread round the
realm so everybody knows for sure that it's not like a trick,
that Aegon is really dead. So she agrees after a pause.
And then then Alice and and Rainier is pretty surprised.
She thought that would be the end of it.
She's like, oh, she's not going to do that.
She says, oh, well, you've, you have changed.
You know which this this could apply to a lot of characters in
this episode. Damon again.
Yeah. Allison, yes.
Rainier as well, maybe in the wrong direction, but yeah, other
characters. Too.
A beautiful little call back was in the middle of this
conversation. Allison, you know, kind of
facing the fact that Aegon is going to have to die, starts
biting your nails again. Yeah, that was good.
Nervous tick, if you will, from before and it when Allison does
concede that is part of what's going to happen it Raniera
starts to cry. I think the Raniera knew it but
also didn't want it like this is she Raniera told Jason a couple
episodes Like I just like all of this.
I don't think Raniera wants any of this either, but she just
doesn't feel like she has any other choice.
Yeah, the the prophecy is part of it.
Like she has to win. Yeah.
And so the other, the other way I would describe the difference
between this and Kristen Cole's situation is that Kristen Cole's
going down with the ship. He's like, I've got my duty, I'm
going down with it. Allison's like, no, I'm not
doing my duty anymore. I'm not going to do my duty.
I'm going to do what I think is right, which is that's the big
change for her. And what she thinks is right is
to, yeah, turn on her own family to save her own family, the ones
who can be saved. She's like, well, I can't save
everybody. I'm save the innocent one.
She said women and children first and only.
And she said that to Amy. She's like the one most
deserving of your protection and they're the one that you're
putting in the harm's way. Like she's the one that you
should most be trying to protect and keep out of all this.
And so, well, if you're not going to do it, well, then I'm
going to. Yeah, I know a lot of people I
think harshly of Allison for sacrificing her family, her sons
and turning on them. And, you know, and I, I think
Allison thinks harshly of herself for it.
I, you know what I mean? Like, I, I don't think she's
like, I, I did the most noble thing.
She's like, I have, have betrayed my family to, to save
my, the rest of my family. I don't know, I I think
Allison's bigger biggest hater is Allison.
Yeah, maybe. I mean, Raniera is turning on
her family, right? Allison's sons or Raniera's
brothers, you could argue. Her, her family turned on her
first. Like she doesn't want to do,
like she wouldn't have done this and doesn't want to, but she
feels that they have turned on her first.
So I don't know it's a true like the people might think of
Raniera as a kinslayer for doing this and, and all of that.
So it's a pretty problematic thing she has to do.
Like, you're not wrong that it's rife with issues, but I think a
lot of people would say he committed treason, you had to
kill him. I, I don't, I don't know how
much that exonerates you as a kinslayer if in this situation,
right? Yeah, hopefully you shouldn't
get someone else to kill him like Jace can't do it either.
I mean even if someone else does it like didn't she give the
command? Like even if she has her
headsman do it like. We don't know how that works.
Victorian himself was like, does it work if someone else does it?
Is that Kinsley? He asked the question.
He didn't know the answer and neither do we.
We don't know how how the gods view indirect kinslaying.
Maybe we have to be sending someone to the wall.
Maybe that would be the the solution instead.
Steve Van Preen had a great comment here about the bit in
Dance with Dragons where Illyrio is telling Tyrion no, no you
can't. He's like, Tyrion's like, oh,
crown Marcella, he's like, to crown her is to kill her.
So he's he's he's he's wondering about this here, especially in
light of Allison not admitting she wasn't happier as queen.
But the vibe was there when Helena said she was happier
before she was queen. So now Rainier, so now Allison
is helping Rainier become queen with this plan, which I don't
think she's doing it to get her killed.
But it's like, well, you're putting her in this position
that has it's not actually going to be good for her.
Probably to be the queen. This might be the best choice,
but it's still a great burden. And it makes you kind of
corrupts your morality and makes you do things that you wouldn't
necessarily do. We just talked about Helena
saying she was happy before she was Queen and knowing that
Allison felt the same way. And last episode, we had Viserys
telling Damon that the crown crushes whoever wears it to be
careful what you wish for, Renera.
Yeah. That's true.
You're right. That owl, I think Rainier feels
that same way. She is crushed by the burden of
it, and that's why we see that beautiful shot.
I think of her that in the final montage, you know, where she is,
I think crushed by the weight of all of her history, the scrolls.
She is part of the scrolls. But I think like, it's impactful
to me that she's at the bottom of it like she is, oh, over,
like under the weight of all of that.
Almost makes her a footnote. Yeah, yeah, right.
She's trapped in this little position of history and just one
little piece of it. And that was such a beautiful
shot. And then the way they cut
immediately from that to Allison out in the wide open, the.
Freedom that she was saying I was perfect.
That was that was awesome. Yeah, I think it no matter what
criticisms any of the three of us say about this episode, when
you come, when you bring up shots like these two paired with
one another, how how beautiful, rich and meaningful.
Like not just beautiful, but again, with they just have
layers and layers of meaning to why the shot looks so beautiful.
I don't know. My, my, my criticism seemed to
just like melt away in the wind a lot of the time.
Like I'm like, whatever I would say, I'm like what?
It knocks it from A10 to a nine or a nine to an 8.
To me, it's still a phenomenal piece of television.
I yeah, I don't understand any single thing in any episode of,
of a, of a show with this level of production quality.
How can one single thing ruin it for you?
Like, I don't know, that sounds like that's a no, no offense to
anyone, but that's AU problem. Like I don't I don't have that
issue. It takes a lot.
It takes a lot for some this many elements that go into it,
acting, planning, cinematography, just things like
lighting and scripts and the music.
God, the music was so good all season long.
Like like those things help. Like it's not a yeah, I don't, I
don't get focusing on one aspect of it as the as the deciding
factor. I think we all have said, I
thought negative things about both of this episode and the
season. And I don't think we're just
like, oh, love it, love it, love it.
No negativity ever. But I think we're just able to
just kind of shake off the bad stuff and focus on the, the
honestly, the the scales. Like, I mean, we saw Orwell
weighing the scales or whatever in that scene.
Like to me, like the scale of positive next to the negative,
like it's so outweighs it. I, I, I, I, I have to say it in
the podcast because I, I, I should get it all out of my
system and make you all feel heard that there is like, you
know, there are things to quibble about, but I, I, I urge
you all to just like, think about them so much good.
Yeah, and if you allow one thing to throw it off for you, then
you discover new things that you didn't know.
Your opinions are already set. And you won't you, you're rooted
in that. You can't like.
Oh, actually, this is better than I thought.
But if you've already decided, yeah, you got to have, you got
to have that flexibility because you might have missed stuff, you
know, missing things might change your entire view of
things. There are things that could ruin
it, you know, like if you got a brand new car and then someone
scraped the hood with your key, you wouldn't be like the car's
ruined. But if someone like slashed all
four tires, like even then it's not really ruined, you know what
I mean? There are things that could ruin
it, but scraping it with a key that does not ruin it 1 little.
Unless they scrape it like a a swastika, then that's you can't
drive it for a little while. It's still not ruined.
You have to get that buffed out. Yeah.
We've gone down quite a rabbit hole here, I think.
At least we're pointing out that swastikas are bad, right?
It would be would be a problem, but I was like, actually, that's
a good thing, no? Clearly not one thought I'm
happy for this little tangent we went on and I'm so happy we got
to Shay. I love that you had those photos
ready to go 1-2 after another. But but I wanted to say one of
the things about Allison's sacrificing of Aegon, is it in
light of Kristen Cole's speech earlier that death is sort of a
relief and the misery that Aegon is in over his life.
Laris is trying to give him some hope, but Allison doesn't know
that. And Allison may not even be
aware of how far his recovery is coming, right?
Like Laris might be hiding that from her and she might think
he's worse off physically and psychologically than he is.
And it might be a little bit of putting him out of suffering to
have him be be killed. And you know, again, that
doesn't make it easy or happy or good even, but adds to the
understandability of Allison's decision.
So what do you think will happen though, when Rainier if if,
assuming this all happens, Rainier takes the city and
Hagan's gone, is she going to believe that Allison had nothing
to do with it? Yeah, that, that is a a tricky
piece of it like I'm not sure. What would happen?
Yeah. Yeah, even if if Aegan was
there, I'm not quite sure how that plays out.
She shows up, she executes. Him like right away.
That's what she would do. She would execute him very
publicly. Yeah, like she said.
Let's say Allison and Helene are there, and Helene is like, yeah,
I guess, whatever. And she executes him.
Da, da, da. I still don't think Amon's like,
Oh well, I'll bend the knee like he needs to be killed.
Amon's gone. The idea is that Amon is not
there. Amon is out in the field.
He's out in the field and he's out in the field and a Raven
comes and says hey, Aegon is dead.
Yeah, he still needs to be killed.
That's what you're saying. What?
Does he do I think he still might burn cities down or go
attack? See I.
Don't. You're not wrong.
Ayman will not just give up.
You're right about that. Yeah, like or you shouldn't
expect him to anyway. Aegon being gone makes it even
more difficult for Raniera to really claim she's won the crown
back, Yes. Because he's still out there
somewhere. She blames Allison or not, which
it seems like she will. I don't know how she could not
and how I don't know what effect that will have on her.
Maybe she'll even, maybe it'll like lower some of her respect
for the Greens in general. She might be more likely to do
something vindictive or destructive, you know, as a
feeling like she was betrayed by Allison, or maybe more worried
about some kind of trick coming and do something more aggressive
to like stop some sort of retaliation.
She might be more determined to burn armies or up or whatever.
But that's why I pointed out that I that she was really
surprised when Allison actually agreed to to let Allison's like,
oh, you've changed. Like, well, she's going to be
like, oh, I was wrong. You weren't, you didn't change.
You just lied to me. You know, that's I think she
might think that. Yeah, I think she's going to
call her a liar and it's just going to be very, very tragic
because I get ugly. I swear.
I didn't. I don't.
Yeah, she didn't. Yeah, I did.
And Helena is going to get the brunt of, I think, a like, well,
Allison too. But I think Helena, who might
have been treated a little bit more warmly and let go free as
was the plan, is instead also going to be stuck here.
Yep, house arrest, something like that.
So let's go through the things that will be in the montage.
Actually, one other line. Rainier tells Allison that
she'll be painted as a villain, a cold queen, which you know,
what is Rainier going to look like in the long run?
So back to that, that shot of the Rainier as history.
There's a fantastic crossover from Game of Thrones episode 3,
season four, which you should not watch because it will tell
you, it will give you a huge spoiler, but it's looks a lot
like this. It's got the same crisscross
pattern there and Joffrey is telling, I think Marjorie or
Sansa about what happened in the Dance of the Dragons.
And it's got the same backgrounds.
So it's pretty sweet like that same like cross work thing
there. It's that's at King's Landing,
not Dragonstone, but it's still the same view.
So I love that Easter egg. Very, very smooth and subtle
there. So the actual montage, let's go
through all the things that are in it.
We'll put some of the images on screen, but not all of them.
You can do all of them. Wow.
OK, you're ready to go, huh? OK, cool.
Well, I'll go at a pace that you can handle here then.
First we have Allison leaving. There's actually several moments
of Allison leaving throughout this, kind of interspersed along
with Reyna searching. Those are the two things that
keep kind of keep popping back up.
We have the dragon seeds getting armored, all three of them and
yes not. All three ulf does not get
armor. He is in like a diplomat's garb
and and Adam and Hugh are in armor notably.
That's a good point. That's a good point.
He chooses not to wear armor. He chooses to wear like a
doublet and with a little cross and A and a Cape.
But the other two have armor. That's a good point.
Yeah. Eamon doesn't wear armor.
Damon does. Some of the.
Yeah, It's just a matter of they have different preferences when
they're riding their Dragons. Good point.
So, Jason? Neither, notably, he's all
stressed like Jace, really. Oh, yeah, he kind of is.
Jordan Rannells says that this was the song is called All Must
Choose, kind of like the the theme of the season, the
marketing. And what's interesting about
this song is that it is a medley.
It's it's almost made for a montage.
We've heard parts of it throughout the season.
You might have heard a chunk of the reigns of Castamere, but it
wasn't the original reigns of Castamere.
And I was wondering, like, I'm wondering about this, like, oh,
I guess it's just a mod, a variation on the Rains of
Castamere. What I think happened is all
those little bits are part of this one long montage song that
we didn't know was one song that we've heard snippets of.
And now in this version at the end, we hear the song go all the
way through where it all these different themes come up during
the song. We've got the Stark theme comes
up when we see the Starks marching at the Twins.
We hear the the Rains of Castamere variation when we see
the Lannisters, but then we hear other there's other just
different parts of music at different times.
We have Damon and Armor looking at his assembled river Lords
encamped, which we thought this was like episode three or four.
It turns out to be episode eight.
We have the Triarchies fleet with Thailand and Lohar in their
final moment, which was pretty cool, which you said, Yeah, the
CGI, you can see the yeah, it does look a little, I don't
know, those look a little thick. Yeah, the shit.
Why? Where?
Where is everyone? Where are the crew mates?
Who? Who else?
Well, they wouldn't be up front like that.
That's not where they stand. Like the crew is manning the
sails. They wouldn't be up front.
The the, the, the steering's in the back.
Yeah. That's that's.
That is a remarkably clean no clutter.
No, not that ship. That's what I think.
It looks weird. It looks sterile.
It looks like a set ship. It looks just like a sterile.
No, it does not look lived in to me.
Yeah, that I agree with for sure.
You know, so we have Allen and Corliss both taking boats out to
the Queen, who never was. I was almost calling to call it
the Sea Snake, but it's been recommissioned.
And then look at that serious look he has on his face.
The end of the episode, still what Alan and Corliss you.
Want to talk about it more? Yeah, we just, we only talked
about it at the very beginning like to say we liked it.
I we didn't really speak in depth about it at all.
OK, sure. Corliss has the look on his face
like he's very serious because he just got called out by by
Alan. I think that's definitely part
of what's going on with his his expression.
Although he is riding off to war or sailing off to war, so
there's a lot of things on his mind.
Probably. I love that he adhered his hand
to the queen, pin to his armor. I know that is cool.
I like that. Then Reyna again, this time
actually finding the dragon, which is pretty cool.
We were told sheep sheep stealer in the book is is ugly and this
dragon is I don't know about ugly, but it's weird looking.
You know, ugly is a super fair description.
It's like models. The skin is uncut is like UN is
inconsistent. And rough, maybe rough the word
I would use. Funny looking I guess.
I don't know. Look at those wings.
Like look at how the wings end. Yeah, they're all jagged and
weird. Yeah, weird details that.
Yeah, it is. That beauty's in the eye of the
beholder, but like it's jacked up looking like it looks funky.
That's why no other Targaryen claimed this dragon.
I was like, I don't want that one.
It's ugly. Terrain is like a little
Taggart. It does look bad.
It looks dangerous as as hell. Like, yeah, you don't mess with
that. How is she going to pull this
off? But I do suspect she will.
But I'm curious to see how they do it.
Hopefully she doesn't just walk up and that's all it takes.
But she is Targaryen, so she has a head start on, you know, some
other people. So Otto imprisoned, Whoa, we
found him, but we don't know where this prison is.
So found him. Kind of not exactly found him.
We, we, we spotted him. We don't know where this prison
is. We don't know who's got him.
There's a lot of possibilities. It could be anyone from Laris
himself, which would be weird for Laris to like imprison him
and then leave, but not the weirdest thing.
Yeah, we see this shot before Laris leaves the Red Keep as the
one thing I want to say about the placement in the shot, like
Laris leaves after we see this, which is a point in the favor.
But why would lorries have Otto and not just kill?
That's what I don't understand. Yeah, I think you're right.
If lorries wanted to to take out Otto, he'd just kill him.
He wouldn't imprison him. Yeah, I don't, unless he has
some larger plan, but that's the point against lorries.
So other people have thought, we've heard a lot this season
about the bees, berries, for example, and there are other
people who might side with the blacks who might take a
prisoner. So there's a few theories.
We'll talk about it in our later episode, but I think for me the
top two choices are lorries or the bees, berries or my like
frontrunners, and I think they both have flaws.
Yeah, I agree. What do you think, Sean?
The fact that they showed it seems like someone coming to
Otto and then immediately we see lorries leaving with Aegon makes
me think that he's getting Otto out of there too, maybe coming
with them or going to the same place.
I, I, I don't know, I'm not dead set on that at all.
It's just a thought that I had. My other thought my, my first
instinct was the bees Berry. Is that something, it seemed to
be kind of pointing to my problem with that and many other
potential candidates is it, why would they keep it secret?
He's a valuable prisoner. You should be asking for a
ransom or demanding some exchange or if you attack the
city will kill him or etcetera, etcetera.
Whoever has him is trying to keep it secret.
That steers me back toward Laurie's.
So an important detail in this carriage, technically it's we
see Otto imprisoned, then we see more Allison leaving and then we
see Aegon and Lyre. So it's there's one thing in
between but not a big difference.
There's Ravens in this carriage. This is like one of those Raven
carriages where the Ravens are being sent back to the place
that to a castle that they can then fly to King's Landing.
Cause Ravens only go one way for the most part.
So they have to be shipped back like this.
So that's pretty interesting. So that might give a clue that
they're going to some castle. But it also is explains kind of
how they got out of the city. They, they got into one of these
licensed Raven carriers and, and with that, we're able to get out
of the city. By the way, this is kind of a
complete aside. I just thought of it randomly.
I know this question came up earlier.
Damon's army does have Blackwoods in it.
I saw a Blackwood soldier amongst the soldiers there.
So they didn't like turn on him because he executed Willem.
They're still, they're still going, they're still following
their Liege Lord's command Despite that.
So that's, I wish I brought that up at the appropriate time
instead of right here. But hey, wanted to get it in
before we were done. And we're getting pretty close
to that. So yeah, we'll have to consider
more about where Lars might be and we might come up some other,
I mean, sorry, Otto, where he might be.
And we'll have to consider some other theories potentially,
maybe some other ideas will pop up, other thoughts.
But yeah, that is the end of the montage.
And that is basically the end of the episode for us.
We, as I said, we'll be reuniting on Sunday at our usual
time of three to do a full season wrap up where we can pick
up on some of these topics that we maybe want to flesh out a
little more things that we have more thoughts on, looking at the
season as a whole, looking at certain character arcs, things
like that should be a lot of fun.
And then we'll continue on with more post season coverage for
working our way back to book coverage as the year winds down.
So we certainly encourage you all to send your thoughts,
certainly on the whole season or just this episode or any
thoughts you may have, any questions you may have, things
like that. We'd certainly like to hear from
y'all. Did not feel that I did a
service to Abu's scene as Alan to only mention it as my
favorite performance at the beginning.
I wanted to really talk a bit more about this, which is that
it is implied he talks about how he had to live with grief,
right? Which implies to me strongly
that their mother, mouse, Marilda of Hull, died in the
interim years. That because he's much, and in
the book, Alan is 15, he's a 15 year old boy.
OK, He does try to ride a dragon.
And it, this explains to me why he has changed so much that he's
gone through 15 years of raising his brother on his own, of
struggling, of seeing Corliss and Lenore and Lena and, and,
and being envious and having to come to terms with it.
And I just, I just wanted to bring up how I felt that they
changed something in the timeline, the plot, the ages,
and they let it play out in a way that I found to be very real
to, to what I would expect from a, a, a young man whose father
left him in the lurch for his whole life and comes in and
expects him to be just be grateful.
And, and Corliss is so clueless to what Alan has been through
and to the struggles of the small folk.
And in terms of like, we talk a lot about the season, but like
small folks plate and, you know, all eating all the little birds
and all that, like it all speaks to the same, the same plate,
which is that these people are struggling.
They are trying to make ends meet and I don't know, I just,
I, I loved this scene. I loved his performance.
I loved it in the context of, again, seeing the scene with
with Ulf and Adam and them at table.
When you have to compare how much struggle all of these
characters went through. And yeah, I don't know.
I love this actor. I look forward to seeing him in
season three more than ever. He has cemented himself as one
of my favorite characters in the show with this performance and
thinking about he clearly took good care of Adam because Adam
is is a little bit like, you know, he's.
More optimistic yeah, he's he's got a better worldview.
Yeah. He doesn't have the the same
dark like grief and pain. And yeah, he's probably because
Alan shielded him from from from a lot of that.
Yeah, yeah. Just to back up a little more of
what you're saying too, on top of that.
Yeah. The the book version, they're
not. They're not poor.
Yeah. So maybe we're supposed to
believe that they weren't poor and then Moralda died and that's
what then they became poor. Or maybe they just did more of a
change and. That's a good point.
Thank you. She.
Died much younger. That that's a very because they
were kind of the merchant class, because he's a ship.
They, they have a trade, you know, like they aren't the same
as just small folk. They are merchants.
Yeah, they have skills. Yeah, yeah.
So that that's a great, great point that that's another
difference that they they don't seem to have had their mother
for at least a large part of this.
And and yeah, I mean, talk something Sean's you talk about
how like something could be a whole story, a whole show on its
own. And this is one of those moments
where it's like, this is such a a rich, rich story.
Well, Sir. I want to think more even about
his line when he said, you know, when this is over, I'm going to
go back to where I was before alone.
It's it'd be interesting to think about all the different
characters, where they were before and what they're going to
go to when this is all over, because whom they live, you
know? Yeah, yeah, Maybe I should have
included him on the list of people that had a big turning
point because he, he he's the same person.
But now that he's had it out with his father, that kind of
it's a pretty big deal. Like he said these things out
loud that he's been holding on to his whole life.
And I don't know that's going to change who he is or make him
more about who he is. But Corley certainly has a
different view now. And that's that's another big
part of this is how he's going to react to it.
We haven't really seen it. He's just, he's mostly just like
sitting with it and like vibing with it and like, well, I was
like, yeah, maybe I was a bad father or maybe who knows what's
in his mind now, but he's thinking about it, I'm pretty
sure. And even Alan in this moment is
sort of venting this lifelong frustration.
I wonder if he really thinks he'll be alone.
Does he not consider his brother to be with him, you know, And
what what does he want? Does he want his dad to make
amends? Or is he just so bitter he just
never wants to see him again? Like.
I'm I'm trying to imagine. In a theoretical way that
Corliss might be able to reconnect with the sun somehow
if Alan, you know, if that did come to fruition somehow, would
Alan regret what he said here or was it because of what he said
here that it might spur some change?
Yeah, it's a very. Is that all you have for me
after all this time? A reminder to be grateful.
That's such a good line. Like, oof.
Yeah, man. I don't want to stop any more
conversation about this, but I have one other.
We're trying to end, so whatever you want to say, time to do it.
You know, when that montage came, you know, with the story,
we, we spent a lot of time in the beginning and then went back
to the, you know, the Thailand Lohar bit and then kind of
bounced around between a lot of other things and spent a lot of
time there. That, that that scene with
Allison and Raniero was, was kind of long.
And then bam bam, bam, bam with this, this quick montage of all
the things going going on, kind of tying it all together.
And I thought for sure, and at montage we would get a spicy
scene of Thailand with all those wives.
But instead we got the CGI both seen.
Oh well. Also from that interview with
Abigail Thorne, it was a great read.
She said in her mind, Of course, of course Scirocco is when she,
when she asks him to sleep with all of her wives, she's saying
with me there like I will be there while you do this, we are
going to, to screw my wives together.
Which is also where Abigail comes in to say she ships them
like they if, if this has happened, they have been
intimate and with one another in some way.
I don't know. I I am intrigued.
Yeah, it's already happened by that point then.
So yeah, they've already. Yeah, like they've already
conceivably hooked up. Maybe not one-on-one, but in a
large group of people they have, you know, anyways, I, I, I know
a lot of people are haters about this and I think, but I think
most of the people that didn't like it just didn't like it in
the context of the finale, you know, like, I, I don't think a
lot of people just hated this period.
I saw a lot of that complaint like, yeah, this, this wasn't a
thing wrong with this episode, but it wasn't it shouldn't have
been the finale, which blame HBO.
Make sure you put your anger in the right spot.
I blame HBO. I don't know why.
I don't know why you blame the showrunners when they they're
given a last minute directive to cut the cut the season short.
I'm just all the more excited for the next season.
I'm just on the edge of my seat. I guess it's frustrating to be
on the edge of your seat for two years, but actually even going
it Junk and egg is your. Blood will get kind of sore
being that way, yeah. Your ties will get strong.
Yeah, but you certainly won't have to hear it.
Wait two years to hear from us again.
Oh yeah, we didn't mention we ever mentioned Tasarian.
Yeah, we skipped over that one. We.
Didn't say that we see. It's in the.
It's in the montage list here, but we skipped past it.
So yeah, the Hightowers were on the March before the Starks were
on the March. And we see Deron's dragon.
We don't really see Deron because he's on there, but, you
know, they haven't cast him yet. But yeah, a little blue.
The Blue Queen is that Dragon's nickname, Sean.
Kind of like the Red Queen, but a lot younger.
This dragon isn't old like the Red Queen.
This is a dragon roughly the same age as its rider, which is
about 16. You know, I, I, I know we're
trying to sum this up, but if we're going back to the montage
again, I want to point out often when I'm watching a film or TV
show or whatever, maybe not often every now and then I'm
like, how do they make, how do they get that shot?
And, and this current generation of filmmaking?
Often the answer is a drone or CGI, but that shot from up high
on the bridge coming down into this dark soldiers like down to
their feet and turning around backwards.
I I was like, how did they do that?
I don't understand where the watch.
The behind the scenes they show you, it's really incredible.
Oh, that's what you're going to say?
I was. Glad in the behind the scenes
that they talked about that because when I saw that scenes
like how did they do that so. It was really incredible.
Yeah. It didn't occur to me.
I'm not as quiet as on top of things as you are when it comes
to like filming directions and angles and stuff like that.
But seeing the behind the scenes on that, yeah, that was
impressive. They built this whole pulley
system and something like 7000 wires to connect it all and it
was like, yeah, it's really impressive.
So again, another like just a creative impressive thing that
happened behind the scenes that you may not even be aware of.
And it's like, yeah, people will dismiss the whole episode
because of one thing they don't like.
I'm like, well, well, that's not my, that's not how I engage with
with media like this. So I guess we're just different.
But that's, you know, your mileage may vary.
Obviously my way isn't superior. Shawn's way isn't superior or
Shay's way is superior. No, I'm just.
Kidding, I am. The best we we.
She didn't give herself that title.
So you know, it's not it's she's not the Sea snake naming her own
ship after herself. She didn't we we dubbed her the
best. So that's how you earn a
nickname. You can't be like Aegon calling
yourself Aegon the realm's delight.
You got to get it. You got to earn it like a Shaya
has. So everybody, we've enjoyed the
season with you and we hope you continue to stick with us for
some fun additional coverage and then post season coverage and
book coverage and all the other fun stuff we do here at History
of Westeros. We've got plenty more to come.
We never stop. We take the occasional week off,
but that's about it. So thanks to you all for being a
part of our Season 2 experience. Thanks to all of you who came to
our live streams or who commented on our Facebook group
or engage with us on other social media, whether it's
Discord or Twitter, whatever that site's called these days,
and all the other places you can engage with us.
And we absolutely appreciate all the things you say to your
friends about us because we know that that's one of the most
important ways and best ways for word of our show to spread is
through people telling each other it's better than
advertisements, better than better than anything else.
Follow me on Twitter at Dancing Sean.
I haven't made that plug in a long time.
Yeah, at dancing, Sean, do that. Follow Sean.
Elizabeth Ashcraft sends a super chat.
No question, but thank you, Elizabeth.
Appreciate that. Thanks as well to Joey, Jesse
and Bran. Our music makes our show better.
We they're like our mini versions of Ramen Jawadi.
You know, they're making great music for us.
But also thanks to Michael Arfeld for his maps.
Thanks to Bran for the intro and Michael as well again for our
regular intro that we'll be seeing a little more often as we
get back to book coverage and, you know, all know what to do.
And before the next episode. Between every episode, it's the
same. You should always Valar reread
us.