The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon
or a house full of them. Even though this trailer is
dominated by Vergar and human Dragons, of course, I mean
Targaryens, and they're, you know, offshoots.
Do we know there's lots more than that?
This is the second teaser so far we have.
You have to have a full trailer yet.
And yes, I know the distinction between the two is not distinct
necessarily. We just go by what they're
calling it and they're calling it a teaser, so we will too.
There was a particularly major surprise in this teaser and
another one that's maybe less of a surprise, but still pretty
surprising. The kind that show only folks
wouldn't notice even if they did a frame by frame breakdown.
They wouldn't realize that this was a change from the books or
something that we thought was changed now maybe is unchanged.
Anyway, it's pretty cool. We'll talk about that.
We've also got Valyrian Steel, Winter's Wolves, Kristen Cole
remaining Shakespearean, and the reason we called this one an
angry teaser. Well, because lots of people are
yelling. All that and more on this
episode of History of Westeros Podcast.
Hello and welcome back everybody.
It's our second teaser review for House of the Dragon Season
3. As I said, the season that we
now know will begin on June 21st and we will be doing our usual,
which is live streams at 6:00 on Mondays and preview streams.
We'll have a preview stream the week before, so our first
episode will be June 15th, besides trailer coverage, which
we'll have whenever that comes out.
But our first official known scheduled episode is June 15th
for a preview episode. Then we'll have our episode 1
coverage on Monday, June 22nd, and we'll be having preview
streams of each episode on Fridays.
In the past, we've done this on Saturdays, but we're going to do
them on Fridays this year. So that'll be fun and let's get
to it. If you have questions for us or
things that you thought we missed in this trailer, teaser,
etcetera, whatever you want to call it, hit us up here in the
chat or at westeroshistory@gmail.com on
Patreon. Wherever you interact with us.
We would love to hear your takes.
Now the big surprise, we'll talk about it more in full later, but
it seems to be that Helena is having a baby this season, which
is probably means they didn't cut Maillor and the Maillor plot
line after all. They just kind of delayed the
start of it. But the twist here, not
something that really comes up in the book, maybe something
only vaguely inferred by fans reading between the lines, but
it probably isn't meant to be a book thing.
Definitely seems to be here. Who is the father of this baby?
And we have a poll there. You can choose whether you think
the father is Aegon or Amon. Obviously, if it was Aegon, it
happened before he fled, but that's certainly believable and
aim and after the fact, well, that's believable too.
So of course that also implies a time jump, but we'll be
discussing that during the episode as well.
Now, of course, there are spoilers in this one and I've
just given one there, but you know, you should know that by
now. History Westeros podcast, we
deal with the deep dives, so it's hard for us to stay away
from spoilers. We're not even going to try.
Let's get to it. We're going frame by frame
through this trailer teaser. I can't I can't even keep the
name straight myself. We start off with Dragonstone.
We have Cyrax Rainier aboard, flying away.
Dark music playing dark music throughout this whole trailer.
Sinister whispers, haunting horns.
Kind of. Yeah, just it's dark, y'all.
I believe this is probably her leaving to take King's Landing.
It could be something else, but that would fit really well.
The shot pans back to see like The Cave she emerges from, which
is pretty cool. Like her launching spot.
I can't think of anything from the book that would have her
leaving other than that. But of course, sticking to the
book explicitly is not the way to predict everything that's
going to happen in the show. This is happening with a voice
over from Damon who is saying you now have a power no man has
ever wielded. You will have an empire
unassailable Rainera and our children will rule it forever
and a day. So the wording there is
interesting. We got to play semantical
wizardry here and and figure out some things.
I think it's very likely that there's lines missing and it's
possible there's lines spliced together because they do that.
We've been doing this too long to not be aware of that
possibility with the way trailer lines are used.
So I think this is after the taking of King's Landing because
he says you now have the power no man has ever wielded, right?
Although on the other hand, he might just be referring to the
amount of dragon she has at her command, which maybe wasn't true
under Jeharis cause the a lot of their kids just didn't have
Dragons or didn't ever get to that stage, died young or what
have you. So all at once, yeah, I'm not
sure. Maybe that might be what he's
saying and maybe he's exaggerating a little bit.
Our point isn't whether he's telling the truth so much as
we're trying to figure out when the statement happens.
He says you will have an empire unassailable, so that fits too.
They've taken King's Landing, but the war isn't over yet.
They still have to clean up and win and etcetera.
And our children will rule it forever.
Today. I wouldn't read too much into
that. I wouldn't read because I know
if you're looking ahead, you would think, oh, our children.
Does that mean Jace and Joffrey are both dead already?
Because for our children to rule, it would have to be
already. Aegon would have to be in the
line of succession. But I think that's just a turn
of phrase. I think he's just saying our
children. It's it's he's helping raise
those kids for sure. Jace is going to die.
And in fact, Jace is very likely already dead by this moment.
In fact, that might be part of part of why this conversation is
happening. He's convincing her he's kind of
pumping her back up, getting her back on her feet, getting her to
pay back attention to the war rather than being grief.
But that's not clear either. I.
Kind of think that if it's after Jace's death and Joffrey's the
only one left, Damon, you know the the implication there to me
is that he's seeing that it's gonna be his progeny, his child,
but by blood on the throne. Not Joffrey.
I think in his head he he roots
for that. I think Damon has such pride
that he wants it to be his kid. I don't think that's what
Rainier's meant to hear from it or anything.
I think it's just kind of the implication to me.
The implication, yes, that is OK.
Yeah, I don't I don't think you're necessarily wrong there.
I hadn't thought about it that way.
You might be right. Just he just uses that language,
loose language, and but it kind of masks what he's really
expecting or hoping for. But there's no chance.
Even with the way they changed the show around, there's almost
no chance Joffrey is going to have been dead by this point.
Certainly, certainly very unlikely.
Either way, you can see what Haishay has on the screen right
now. This is when the conversation is
taking place. It is a voice over at parts, but
this is the moment where we're actually seeing it.
It looks, Does that look like King's Landing or Dragonstone to
you? It really is hard to tell.
I think that is Dragonstone. I kind of think so too, but.
I don't think it's interior. I mean, it's outside.
Yeah, definitely it's. Two things spliced together,
edited together. You know, to make you think of
Jayce. Right.
Oh, yes, that's for sure. Yeah.
I wasn't referring to the Jayce part yet.
You're absolutely right. Because he says our children
rule afterwards and then she looks at him and we know he's
going to die. So yeah, that was that's a
pretty ironic cutting thing to put in the trailer there.
But yeah, that's that's what thrown me off because that
previous scene, I thought it would.
It looks like Kink Dragonstone to me.
But he says you now have a power which that means.
They could be on the ramparts outside of the red key.
Yeah, it could be, yeah. We've seen a couple scenes there
and this doesn't look like that, though.
That's not a red wall. Right now, so that is telling,
but like they'll. That's a good point.
Yeah. You know, OK, so we'll I'll have
to find that out later. No much.
Let's let's move on. But yeah, we now have the the
next shot of Jace with his hand on his sword.
There's not a lot of shots they can show us of Jace.
I suppose it's kind of too bad, but you know how it is.
We know how it is. So I I'm, I'm guessing this
moment is when we're hearing news of of the battle, like Jace
is going to rush off and join the battle.
And then we see that we see them here.
Like this isn't him joining the battle, but this they're in the
battle at this point. This is them cheering.
There's already arrows of already shot.
There's already shot ships flaming in the distance.
So we know that this this is flashing forward a little bit
past that moment where Rainier is looking at Chase one of the
last times she'll look at it, most likely.
Yeah, and this is this is a Moon Dancer and Vermax together.
Yeah, Then we have where's that shot of the veil?
Did we pass that? Let's go back to the veil.
So this is cool to us. We.
I was mistaken at first. I think that she has got it
right. I first thought this was
Dragonstone. We're just starting off talking
about Dragonstone. This was spliced into the same
moment with Rainier flying away. So I thought it was just meant
to show us the same thing. But a Shia is like, no, I think
this is the veil. I'm looking at him like, you
know what, you're right, that's definitely the veil.
It certainly isn't Rainier that I wasn't fooled by the dragon.
That's definitely not Cyrax. But I did think it was Moon
Dancer. So I think I'm wrong about that
because that's probably sheep stealer.
Y'all pretty cool the way the little bits curl in the back
there and it it is a little bit greenish shoe from the distance
there, but that could be brownish green.
I mean yeah that that absolutely.
I think Ishaya is right. I think, I think when the
Dragons fly the membrane of the wing also, you know.
There's some sunlight going through it, yeah.
But yeah, yeah, it looks like the same spines at the end of
the wings that Sheep Stealer has.
Yeah. So going back to Corley's
talking to Damon, this is when we get our next line.
We're going all that he says, all that remains is for you to
decide what you want from this war.
And that almost certainly is after the taking of King's Land
2. Given where they're at the the
scene is taking place outside, it looks like they're just kind
of standing out there in front, like maybe at the docks or
something. I think Damon is in his armor.
He's got his battle braid. Yeah, he's got his battle braid
and I think it looks like the armor.
And so my apologies to Steve for the terrible screenshot of his
eyes I took there. He looks, yeah, he looks a
little drunk. But this, if this is actually
the Battle of Gul, which it has to be, I think, right?
Like there's almost no way because Battle of Gul, it's
going to happen like right away. So he's just seen some, some
stuff, stuff that even he hadn't seen before in his career.
He's seen some stuff before. Because we, we remember from the
book, he's, he has like a conversation behind closed doors
with, with his sons about what they saw, about how hard the
battle was. And it's, it's kind of like left
for us to imagine what the conversation was.
But it's, it's the, it was bloody.
I think that's the point is they had to talk each other down
after seeing all that. So, yeah, I think, yeah.
What what do you want from this war?
He's saying, you know, you guys have won.
He's he's they're kind of making a mistake of thinking they won.
You know, it kind of, that's kind of the gist of what I think
I'm seeing here and getting thinking that that it's nearly
over, which of course it is not. This next shot we have Rainier
and Damon descending. It looks like this is all part
of the same. They're this is we've seen these
stairs before. These are, I'm pretty sure the
same stairs or near the same stairs where the scene of
Joffrey being born was played out with and maybe some other
shots and the Red Keep. You still think this is Dragon
stone? OK, so they're heading to battle
because he's in his armor. Yeah, they're about to fly out.
That's a battle. I think that because.
You're right that those other stairs were straight down, not
they didn't turn. If you look at the walls there
they look like the dragonstone kind of fuse like like.
Fuse the fuse stone OK. To me to me, but it's dark.
I I you could argue either way, but I'm leaning.
Dragon, I think you're right, actually, because we have other
shots of her, like passing through that passageway, the
tunnel that looks like she's entering the throne room, maybe.
And this would not be that in that case.
OK. Yeah.
And why would she be going down necessarily in her armor?
Yeah, she would have. She'd be going.
She doesn't enter at the top floor when she takes the Red
Keep. She enters.
Yeah. I guess with a dragon you could.
She could, Yeah, she could. Yeah.
Well, can they land up there? They probably can, I guess.
And given they take off, I. Think they look very She at
least looks very put together, not like she's flown about and
she looks like she's about to head out and they're in.
She's in her protective wear. Cool.
OK. Either way, that is either right
before or right after the taking as let's move on to Allison.
Here we got something interesting here.
We got a hooded scene. We got maybe a street at night
or out in the out on the road at night, maybe outside of King's
Landing. Allison's got some people with
her. I think this is her escaping
King's Landing. Now there's a scene later that
changed my mind on when this is happening.
Now in the book, she's captured it when when Rainier and Damon
take King's Landing. So you'd think maybe this is her
escaping advance of that. But there's a scene later that
makes me think this is her leaving well before that, that
she's leaving because of her son.
She's leaving because of Amond. We'll get we'll come back to
that in a minute. But in this scene, we're getting
a voice over of her clearly speaking to Amond because we
actually see part of the dialogue as she's saying it.
It's not all voice over. The line is you will do things
that your heart would have recoiled from before you came to
the throne. Now this is being said over
bloody footprints. At first I thought this was
Harrenhal because it would be Amon, but then we looked closer.
Amon's skirt thing doesn't go down that far.
His feet are would be bigger and and have like armored boots
because he's in full armor when he's walking around Harrenhal.
So we're pretty sure this is Rainiera because Damon also
doesn't have a long a skirt that goes down that far.
Like they wear armored skirts, but this one isn't even armored.
So pretty sure this is Rainiera entering the throne room or
entering The Walking down the parapets after people have been
killed. You know, defenders have been
killed. So she's walking through the
dead, the bodies of the dead defenders or perhaps into the
throne room itself, where in the first teaser we got shots of
Damon killing the last few guards standing in front of the
throne, where we also have that in this trailer, this teaser.
So I think that's what we're we're either seeing something
along those lines. Yeah, it's great editing, too,
to have what is. Yeah, you're right, probably
Allison speaking to Eamon. But it's over shots of Rainier
dealing with all of those things in reality.
Like, you even see it and it looks like she's speaking and
saying that to Rainier here. But I do think it's a misdirect,
but it applies to Rainier. 1000% well done.
She will do things that her heart would have recoiled from
before she came to the throne. Yeah, you're totally right.
That is, that is very true. It's more true for Rainier than
Amy was. Like, I don't know if I would
have recoiled from that. You know, I might not have liked
it, but recoil, that's a strong word.
So moving forward, we have this interesting shot of Rainier by a
fire, which is a motif of sorts. We get a lot of shots of Rainier
in front of fires. However, I can't recall one with
a human skull in it before that she was looking into.
I don't know what that's all about.
She has an interesting look on her face like she's kind of flat
emotionally like like something heavy has happened and she's not
responsive, you know, Which could be of course Jace.
Now, whose skull it is though, that whether or not she's
feeling this way because of Jace, who is that?
You know, whose skull would that be?
I really don't have a good guess.
So if y'all have a guess in the in the chat let us know.
Some stodgy old man. I think it's either Iron Rod,
Otto Hightower, if he comes back, maybe what's going to be
Jason Lannister even I don't know, like.
Jason would be Thailand, but he doesn't die for a long time in
the book and Jason dies in in the field.
Yeah, I'm saying like if they change it so that Jason is
killed here, I'm just like, what other council members, people of
note are in King's Landing for Rainier?
Yeah, Iron Rod's the one for sure.
That is like the most likely did not have a different plot
because we know Otto's already not in King's land.
It's already a change from the book.
So he's probably not. It's probably not going to
change. He's probably not going to have
disappeared just to end end up at King's Landing anyway and
still get captured. But this may not have anything
to do with the capture King's Landing.
This could be some other scene, but given the shots were given
in this scene in this trailer are overwhelmingly King's
Landing and King of King's Landing related.
I suspect it might be, but you never know.
You never know. We can't be certain.
Like, for example, that shadow sheep stealer has nothing to do
with any of that. And there's a few others that
are, you know, related to other subplots.
So yeah, I'm very curious who that skull is.
Maybe we'll find we'll we'll maybe some guesses that we
haven't considered yet will cause us to jump on and be like,
Oh yeah, that's a good guess. Right now I do not have one.
That's how she's giving the Targaryen rights to.
To Jace, I would lie. I thought of her, but like his
body. Like, I don't think they're
going to have his body. You know it doesn't find his
body. Yeah.
So that doesn't, Yeah, it's like, I don't know about that
one either. Yeah.
So next we have a Hightower host.
This trailer has a lot of Lord Ormond in it, which is implying
that he's going to have a lot of screen time, which kind of
implies he's going to have more screen time on the show than in
Fire and Blood. I'm not mad about that.
That's cool. I mean this.
Sure loves the high towers. They're like, let's get, give it
all to Gwain, give it all the to Ormond.
Yeah, Anyways, yeah. Not mad about that.
Yeah, that seems all right. So I'm curious how this guy's
going to be like. It seems like they gave him.
There's another scene we're going to see later where he's
getting very emotional. He obviously he has this, this
very I'm a proper lordly Lord face on here and now behind him,
go back real quickly. Behind him over on the right
shoulder, there's this there's a helmetless man that is bold Jon
Roxton that is played by Joplin Subtain who is Brasso in the
Andor show, a Star Wars Andor show.
So much different character for him here quite instead of a
humble, you know, bricklayer who stands up for his community.
This is bold John Roxton who is kind of a real piece of work.
Anyway, there's a a voice over here where someone is whispering
or saying in a low voice the Targaryens are a savage race.
The trailer claims this is Lord Orman saying that.
I'm not so sure about that. It wouldn't be the first time
that the trailer voice over subtitles had the wrong name.
It's not like it happens a lot, but it's happened before.
And he could say that. I mean, he's a pious Hightower
guy. They aren't big on Dragons.
They're not big on Targaryens necessarily.
But his Squire is Prince Daron, his niece or his cousin rather,
is Allison, right? His his uncle is Otto, who's,
you know, all mixed up with the Targaryen.
So I don't know. I'm not sure about him being the
one to say that. I could see it, but I have my
doubts based on the sound of the voice.
Like, the idea of it just because of the implication to me
of what kind of culture Daron's been raised in.
You know, like if it is Ormond, it tells you a lot about, you
know, the kind of. Trying to win him over.
Maybe be like, look, be, you know, be more like us.
Be a. Hightower don't be a Targaryen
and that makes me think Daron would have this self hatred even
or this conflicted feeling about his heritage.
I don't know. It's intriguing to me if it is
Ormond I. I agree, we don't.
Feel like it's a quite yeah, it might be a coin flip.
Yeah, like I could definitely see him saying it, but like,
yeah, it's just really about what kind of man this guy is and
we don't know a lot about him. So like he could, yeah, he could
be like, yeah, I don't really like my in laws or they or he
could be all about it. So yeah.
I was really thinking about a Night of the Seven Kingdoms when
we were debating whether it was Ormond Hightower because I'm
like well Reach hating A Targaryen even when they're
married into them make me think of of Raymond and Stephen
Fossaway there and all these other Reachmans.
Like the idea of this anti Targaryen sentiment among houses
including the Reach rings for me.
He can't go quite as far as as you know, Yeah, as like Raymond
Fossaway did. He can't be like telling him to
his face is your family are incestuous aliens.
But hey, you're not one of the incestuous ones.
You're, you know, you marry your your mother's a Hightower.
You know, you have that good Hightower blood.
Yeah, I can see that. I mean, obviously Hightower
pride is, is going to be, Yeah, it's going to be up there.
All right, so Next up, we have what I'm calling the meeting of
Ice and Fire. Here we have a shot of Damon's
bloody host with Riverlanders, especially the Tully's very
prominent in the front. You can see Damon over on the
left. He's very easy to spot because
of his hair. And obviously even easier to
spot is cracksies. They there's a bunch of dead
people in between. It looks like.
Hey, what? Just what's up, y'all?
These guys just showed up and like, who are you?
And then you cut to Damon, you know, smiling and as he's
realizing, I assume who these people are and they show up to
be like, we came to die for the queen.
I bet we get that line. That's the line in the book.
We came to die for the queen. Please give us that line.
It is. It says it all.
Like, yeah, winter's coming. We'd rather die in battle than
freeze to death and go quote, quote, UN quote, go hunting.
So I like to the smile is like, oh, cool, because there I I bet
at first they're wondering who the hell these guys are we about
to have to fight, have another fight.
I like how you can also see a little Oscar's head poking up
over Damon's right shoulder. That's totally Oscar.
How is it so clearly Oscar Tully?
We can. Barely.
See him you're. So right.
And more clearly, it's as clear as Caraxi is over his left
shoulder. Not quite, but yeah, we see him
next. To him in the stills we got, but
we covered in the first trailer coverage, the first teaser,
sorry coverage. Later in this teaser, there's a
shot of Damon looking almost exact same, except his face is
of concern. And I wonder if he's related
where the first we have the concern.
And then it turns to this, like, slowly building smile as he
realizes, oh, these dudes are on our side.
Northman Shaggy, ready to die. Northman.
Hell yeah. He's.
That's that's going to make Damon smile.
And Damon doesn't smile very often.
You know, he smiles more like sarcastically or when he's
trying to, like, make someone mad.
Then he's like, genuine, sincere smile.
This is like, sincere. Like, yeah, anyway, we are, by
the way, doing an episode on the Winter Wolves Sunday, May 10th,
FYI. So make sure you're around for
that or catch it afterwards. Next up, we have a voice over
that is definitely Lord Orman, because we see him speaking, we
see the words coming out of his mouth.
It's a lot easier when that's the case, right?
And he says we act with holy purpose to restore a rightful
king. OK, yeah, to restore your savage
race, rightful king. Now, to restore implies that
throne has been lost by this point, which means that it's the
timeline might be a little different from the book.
Well, it's definitely different from the book, but how much is
the question. He's saying that to restore.
That means they've lost it. That means Rainier and Damon
have taken the throne, so they're going to go up there and
take it back. That's his idea.
Otherwise he's calling Amon the false king, which I doubt
because Amon would be next in line behind Aegon anyway given
the Hightower preference for male inheritors, which that's
kind of been their whole thing here.
So I don't think they're going to suddenly change and be like,
no, it should be Jahara. That would also not match the
books at all. So yeah, he's standing to a
crowd. Doesn't look like it's a big
crowd. It looks like it's nobility.
Like that is a noble girl hairstyle to the right there
that we can barely see. That is not some peasant.
I guess they might be in front of the Sept or in front of the
Hightower itself maybe. I'm guessing this is Old Town
still, but maybe. Oh you think so?
It might not be. I was thinking he was out in the
field. It may have gone farther, yes.
You know already. This might be when their guest
jetting started though, you know what I mean?
It could be, yeah. Like when they just get to a
nest cuz Well no I guess. At the end of last season we saw
Tasari and already flying and the high towers were already
marked. Yeah, you're right.
OK, So it's not. It's not.
So this must be somewhere on their route.
One of the other castles they've stopped off at.
Yeah, maybe even, well, not Jon Roxton's.
That's not in the that's not in in the way at all, man.
He would be the one speaking anyway.
Whatever. So yeah, this is probably not
high. Good, good thinking through live
here, y'all. So probably not in Old Town.
They're probably past it. I can't think of where else they
stop. I know they eventually get to
Brito Bridge, obviously, but there's places before that
anyway. Bold Rock, Jon Roxton again,
visible there to the left. This shot has some very clearly
visible 2 Valyrian steel swords. Look at that.
Two Valyrian steel blades that we hadn't seen much of or any
of, but definitely not John Roxton's.
But we'd only seen Vigilance maybe in the trailer before
anyway. Orphan Maker over his left
shoulder there and Laura Norman has Vigilance on his left hip.
It's pretty cool. Love seeing those Valyrian steel
blades. Is at least 4 Valyrian steel
blades in this trailer. We also get black fire and
actually maybe we don't actually see dark sister.
I just assume we see Dark Sister but.
Yeah, you might not actually ever see.
Do we see Damon's waist? Like like his hips?
I don't know. We do.
We only see him like his face, his bloody face, and from really
far away when he's, I don't know, maybe not.
So maybe only the three. But we do see the cat's paw, not
the cat's paw dagger, the the ice and fire dagger as well.
So that's a Valyrian steel blade, not a sword.
But anyway, so as Lord Orman says to restore a rightful king,
the teaser cuts over to Aegon and Larry.
So it it implies that's who we're talking about now.
Aegon is hooded and he looks concerned like something's about
to go down. This almost certainly relates to
what we saw in the first teaser where he's on top of somebody
stabbing him because he's dressed the exact same and it
looks like the same setting where they're out on the road.
So it seems like they're getting they get someone recognizes him,
or maybe Ayman has sent people after him, right?
And they've managed to get the jump on these guys who tried to
get the jump on them. Pardon.
And they're. I'm curious whether those are
some sort of hunters or people centre.
They just recognize them. Yeah.
Here. Here's what what I was talking
about as Shea's got pulled up from the last trailer and yeah,
they're out on the road anyway. But.
But they might be by the water either way.
That could still be by the water.
But. But that is a different scene.
Yeah. The one with the swords, guys
with all the swords. I think that's like an invasion
of Spice Town or something like that.
Anyway, he says, we see Aegon looking at Larry's very
seriously, saying I'm going to kill my brother or die in the
attempt. Well, unless the writing is very
different, you're not going to do either.
Damon's going to do that. It'll be both, in fact, he will
kill your brother and die in the attempt.
But still, I'm glad that we're getting to see this.
This is, there's some potential here, of course.
Who knows, they could. It might not be interesting at
all, but these aren't scenes we get in the book.
We just Aegon just disappears for a while with Lorries and I
always wondered what they were doing, like how they got from
place to place. So this has the potential to be
interesting, something new that fits in the story.
It's there. We know that Aegon and Lorries
did things. They stayed hidden.
It probably wasn't just simple. So I'm glad that's getting
filled in at least a little bit, because I don't really want to
lose sight of these characters either.
So I'm cool with that. And then as he's saying that
voice over, it transitions again to Amon sitting on the throne,
which we also got in the first teaser.
This is very much that same throwback to Damon sitting on
the throne in the very first episode of the entire show.
An interesting thing to note here is that Amon is holding
black fire and has his eye patch, but we're going to see
him later in armor without his eye patch, and that is just
cool. Different look.
And I thought that's neat. So we'll keep moving here.
Next we have Hightower Butcher's Ball, right?
That's cool. So what's going on here?
It's why I call it Hightower's Butcher's Ball because there's
two scenes spliced together that make it look like they're
connected. They're definitely not.
This is Lord Ormond Hightower drawing vigilance, probably
like, hey, let's go, we're going to fight, let's do something.
But what the heck is this weird ball thing at his?
It's not a weapon. It's too small to be a weapon.
Is it like a, is that one of those like holy censor things
where you get like holy smoke coming out of it and you're
like? It's a health potion.
This restores his mana.
Yeah. So it's it's like, hey, I'm
getting ready to draw my sword, and I'm giving the big battle
speech. And then it cuts to this next
scene where there's the next shot rather, where there's a
bunch of Hightower men cheering. So it's like, hey, Lord Armand,
just wait. That's not this is the
Riverland. That's Kristen Cole and Gwain
Hightower on the right. And they're looking at these men
like, why are you cheering? Or we're not cheering with you,
whatever is. And some of the men are looking
off to the other direction. Look at the far left.
They're like that guy's looking far to the right.
And this guy on the left is holding some sort of like chest.
The guy with a leather helmet on the far left, he's holding some
sort of, I don't know what's going on here.
I don't think Gwain and Kristen Cole are happy about it, though.
I don't think they're happy about what the men are happy
about because they're not cheering and they just kind of
are standing there looking. But I do wonder what got them
excited. Like maybe they got news that
something good happened back in King's Landing because, yeah, I
mean, something got them cheering all of a sudden.
And it's not the leaders of their army.
So that is that's what's odd to me.
Yeah. So I'm definitely wondering
what's going on there. So definitely a little a little
reversal there. It makes it.
It's one Hightower leader getting his men to cheer.
But then a different set of Hightower men are answering that
call. We have a shot of a man
sharpening his axe with a whetstone.
Very nice trailery way to show that battle is coming.
War is coming. Yeah.
You're sharpening your weapons, right?
That's pretty straightforward. I don't know that there's any
other significance here. I don't know which is seen this
as a part of. You can't really tell who this
is. I guess it's a northerner.
Yeah, the northerners are a little more likely to fight with
axes, aren't they? So that the.
Clothes look kind of just northern.
They don't, certainly. I would.
I'm with you there. If I had to bet, I would bet on
a Northerner. Yeah, I think you're right.
Now we have Battle Eamon. Here's what I was saying.
This is, this is Eamon looking kind of like a White Walker with
his silvery eye, blue sapphire eye.
I say silvery. It's a sapphire, but it's
silvery too, because it's got such shine on it in that little
corner, upper left corner where it's got that reflection.
Looks really cool his hair is particularly long and white even
longer he's supposed to look like Damon a bit but even more
severe cause of the scar and the eye and the hair is longer.
You can say you can see the the the dagger of ice and fire
poking out over his his hip there in the bottom left or
bottom center there. And he's wearing his own armor.
This is not Aegon's armor. I don't think which he might
have done that. He might have taken Aegon and
Conqueror's armor to just deck himself out with all the stuff
he's got the dagger and black fire.
Why not? But no, this is his own.
This is his own. Yeah, it's darker.
Armor design that we have seen, it's interesting.
It's kind of it's slimmer. I think the other armor was
probably pretty messed up. I mean, not destroyed because
it's valuing steel, but it was probably like all the fastenings
and everything. Yeah, it was.
It's probably pretty screwed. It needs a little work and he's
saying draw your sword, which but very sadly that's almost
certainly spoken to Sir Simon, who he's going to then butcher
and then he'll probably kill the rest of the strong shortly
after. And then interesting plot line
with Alice sure to follow. But we don't actually spy Alice
in this teaser or the first one. I do spy some Weywoods in the
upper left. There some hard trees in the
upper left corner. Cool detail there.
One of the reasons that not that we weren't sure this is Herron
Hall anyway, but that really adds to the certainty.
This next part I've called a clean coal killing.
Here we have Christian Cole killing somebody, finishing them
off perhaps, And the significance here is that he's
pretty cleaned up. He's wearing his Kings card
armor, and he has his Hand of the King chain of office around
his neck. All the other shots we get of
him in this teaser, he is bedraggled, not armored and not
wearing his chain of office. So I think we're going to see
the decline of Kristen Cole, his Shakespearean lines of how
everything is doomed, we're all dying, blah, blah, blah, and how
he's just waiting to die, basically.
Yeah. So this is maybe a little before
that, but I think he was already getting fatalistic at the end of
last season. And reminds me to point out that
this is very similar to the shot we get of Damon finishing off
some foe at the end of the Battle of the Riverlands of some
kind. Yeah, it's nice, Nice little
paralleling the dude, two different hosts within the
Riverlands. In fact, these two shots may
come near each other in the episode that they come in,
assuming they're in the same episode, which they may not be
anywhere near each other, but I would be very cool way to do it
if they did. A green fire is the next shot
here. It's not actually a literal
green. There's no wildfire.
It is a bonfire made-up of stuff that belonged to the Greens,
however, including a large very apparent Green Targaryen,
Hightower Green Targaryen banner there.
So this is after this is almost certainly like the taking of
King's Landing moment when it happens to burning all the stuff
that belonged to the Hightowers that they didn't want to keep,
like banners and some wooden carving.
Looks like some wooden carvings there, maybe some statue.
I don't know what those are, but some sort of stuff that's
Hightowery that they don't want anymore.
The only thing I'm sure about is the banners, like I really the
rest is like, what? What are those burning there?
What are they burning there, you know?
Yeah, and you're right to point out that Rainier, I really does
have this motif of interacting with fire.
This shot here actually also reminded me of the scene with
Viserys and Allison and the prophecy.
You know. Just like in terms of Rainier is
probably thinking on that right there.
Yeah, Prophecy. Maybe.
Maybe, yeah. So I hope you guys are excited
as we are for this season. I wanted to take a moment to say
that it's really fun to have two TV seasons not only in the same
year, but like four months apart at most, you know, not even
quite four months apart. And so that's pretty fun and
we're excited for that. We feel pretty privileged for
that, and we're going to make the most of it.
We're glad that you guys are with us today and will be with
us during the season. If you want to sign up to be a
bigger part of the history of Westeros experience through
House of the Dragon Season 3 and prior and and afterwards, then
join us on Patreon. We have a lot of extra episodes
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Lots of other ways to interact with us there.
Another way to support us is simply by shopping through the
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subscription through US or an Audible subscription through US.
I love audible. We just drove all the way up to
Michigan and back and listened to the new book by James SA
Corey, The Expanse authors in the the series Captives War.
So yeah, anything you go and buy through our links on our website
supports the show without costing you anything extra.
So check that out. And some of those things we just
put it up because we think they're cool.
Not everything we put up on the website is something that makes
us money. We have a mixture of affiliate
links and just things we think are cool that we want to make
sure are brought to your attention.
Yeah, there's no reason just to stop ourselves from sharing like
legitimately awesome merchandise.
I mean, I really like merch related to the fandoms.
I like, like I, I love getting like unique item, a cool item,
you know, stuff like that. So I'm always kind of paying
attention to the the newest up updates on the Warner Brothers
shop site and official stuff and new Etsy stuff.
I don't know. Yeah.
Anyways, I love it. And this fandom is really good
about that too. Just there's so many people that
are making things that have nothing to do with some company,
you know, and some of the stuff made by companies is awesome,
too, or so I Yeah, it's great. There's just so many options.
Let's move on. We've got some more scenes to
cover here. Here's one I'm calling.
It's the new. It's that new Westerosi
sensation, the hottest new band from the Riverlands, Dirt Face
Coal and the Emergers. Yeah, they are.
They are leaving a forest here. They're looking very bedraggled.
You got to look, there's a little sheep in the corner
there, a little lamb, little Stokeworth, Stokeworth lamb.
It pops up so often. That's weird.
So this is almost certainly Butcher's Ball territory.
Like they're close to it. In fact, it might be right
before the Butcher's Ball because there's a bit of a
valley here and we know that they kind of emerge from a
wooded plateau or wooded place and find themselves surrounded
by what's probably going to be the winners Wolves.
I'm not sure they're going to have all this mixture of
different armies. I think they're going to
simplify it. And the way they cut back and
forth between Cole's army and the winners Wolves throughout
this teaser is kind of telling me, or at least verifying that
in my head cannon, that that's going to be how they're going to
do it, which makes sense. That's.
Well, wouldn't we get one battle first?
Oh. Yeah, we'll get a battle first.
Yeah, Yeah, we'll get a battle 1st and then and then some other
stuff between. This is probably what I think
we're seeing is a prelude to the 2.
Battles because the battle which is completely unrelated to, I
mean 1 river. Relevant battle One relevant
battle. But just to be.
Clear we may just like not see the battle.
We may just see the like Damon stick someone in the in the back
with a sword and they're like, I we're just seeing the end of it,
you know, because that they got a big, they got a lot of
battles. You know, the budget is big, but
it's, it can't cover all of them.
So, you know, like how they were very clever.
I thought we we all agreed on the show that the, the way they
showed the battle of the Bracken Burning Mill battle was really
well done. They didn't show the battle.
They just showed the aftermath. And it was like, well, there's a
bunch of characters that aren't really main characters.
So why? Yeah, that was really good.
But they may have to do. More of that, yeah.
Only so much of that you can do in that particular style,
though. You got to get creative in a
number of ways or it'd be it isn't is effective if you just
do that again, Agree, agree, agree.
It's very effective and very well done.
Very meaningful and and dark. So what we're not seeing here is
the Butcher's Bally, parts of the lead up to it, like the
whole corpses being arranged in certain ways, which I sure will
be disappointed if they don't do that.
And I will be, well, I'll be surprised too because that's
just cool. It's so weird.
And like they would have fun with that, you know, like
setting that up. And it doesn't seem like that
would be very budget heavy. Just have some skeletons in
armor in trees, you know, tables.
I'm going to be. Devastated if they don't do
that. I think it's one of the like
most haunting, cool, scary like I had.
I have such a clear visual image when I read that in the book
that it I would just be. I would be so shocked if they
chose to not do it. And I can hear, you can just
hear the winter's wolves, like, laughing to themselves as they
do it, like these Southerners and their big feasts or whatever
it is, like, I eat this or whatever.
Yeah, like they're cackling to themselves as they it says it is
a very clever way to destroy the morale of your opponents.
You know, just do stuff like this.
And Wayne's morale looks destroyed here.
He does, yeah. Look at the rain like that's
just they're going to we're going to see a series of things
that make them bedraggled like that last shot we just saw where
Colvin is 10. He's clean.
This is this is earlier. He's already like downcast,
though. He says look to the sky, doom
and ruin surround us. But this is look, his his
garments are clean. His face isn't all dirty.
This is earlier in the he's a freaking book behind him, a
journal or something. Like he's not going to have that
by the time they emerge from that forest.
Like he's not carrying stuff anymore.
Like he just has like the clothes on his back.
He doesn't have his armor anymore.
So, yeah, So he's he's seen better days in this spot.
But by the time we get to this look, it's coming in comparison.
It's the same shirt, right? But what is covered in something
he's not doing great. Who's doing just fine, though,
is Veigar. Veigar is is is is thriving, at
least for the moment, because whoa, that is a cool shot of
Vergar coming down into Harrenhal.
You can see Aymond on her back there.
Look how tiny he is. It's very cool.
I love, I love seeing Vergar. You know, obviously I care way
more about story and plot and characters, but.
Vegar is awesome. I mean Vegar is just really cool
to see that Vegar costs a lot of money and they did that money
well, like they spent it well. Vegar looks awesome.
I believe that's a dragon, You know, it's like.
That's among the best Vegar for you.
That it yeah, Meema Vegar doing her thing remind showing us how
real she is. And, and this is where the the
cuts get quicker and the voice overs are related in interesting
and subtle ways and some straightforward ways.
Cole, again, we have a voice over him saying we will all
become beasts before our end. And that's as Vegar is like
descending. So the beast in this case that's
being used as the example is, is Vegar.
And you know, that's kind of cool given we have people who
are Dragons and Vegar is going to, not because of herself,
because of her rider, is going to become very beastial before
his end. In fact, Eamonn arguably becomes
the most beastial of anybody before his end, given the level
of just straight up devastation he unleashes on just random
folks who did nothing to him. So we have a quick flash here.
Several quick flashes. It cuts to the Winters Wolves
beating their war drums. This could be before their first
battle. They look pretty clean here, so
maybe this is our introduction to them before their first
fight. But it could also be the lead up
to the last battle of this Riverlands campaign of them
fighting against Christian Cole. Because of course they're not
going to be done after that either.
Then they're going to be at Tumbleton.
Presumably we have Gwain Hightower struggling through the
rain, so we just talked about that.
Then back to the Winter's Wolves with a close up of this cool
looking Stark shield, a metal shield, which usually you have a
lot of wooden Shields. So this is cool.
This is notable. You can definitely see that very
distinct Stark cloak on the right there.
Like that's the cloak I have. It looks like a Night's Watch
cloak. Just that bear or fox fur around
the neck with the blonde black behind it.
Yeah, that is a Northman cloak. The sigil, someone asked about
the green and the sigil. That's what Game of Thrones did
for the Starks. For some of the Stark sigils and
stuff, it has that green in it. So it's just.
Makes the silver pop more. Yeah, I think it's like a, you
know, like a field of green. I don't know.
Rather than the white it looks, the white maybe just looks weird
or. Something I don't know, Yeah, I
don't know why they did it, but they're just holding to what
Game of Thrones did. I have a bunch of merch Speaking
of that has that green element in the Stark sigil so.
In book cannon, it's Roddy the Ruin who sounds the charge of
the Winter's wolves and the rest against Cole's army.
So maybe that. So it does.
Like I said before, it seems fitting to cut back and forth
between those two because they're going to be very much
against each other for a chunk of the season.
Shot of called hallway Queen. We've Rainier walking through
passageway here. She's got Sir Adrian, Red Fort,
and someone else behind her. An older guy, maybe a counselor,
maybe a different King's card. I'm not sure.
It's hard to tell that other guy in the back there, I really
can't tell it's. Funny, I thought he looked like
a younger guy. When?
He gets closer, he can see a white beard.
I believe you see the beard there?
Is that a beard? Does that look like a beard?
I. Think it doesn't look like a
white beard to me but. Yeah, it looks kind of grayish
anyway. Anyways, but the other guy is
definitely Adrian Redford, member of her Kingsguard.
Because one, it's a Kingsguard 2.
We looked up which Kingsguard were cast and cross referenced
it to photos of the cast and yeah, that that's definitely
him. This still looks like dragon
stone to me. Those windows.
Those long, thin, tall windows. We're just opposites on this
you. Think this one's King's Landing?
This is King's Landing. I can see it like I'm not.
I do not have confidence in that.
This could be her walking to the throne room to claim it.
But why is but we already. Yeah, but where's Damon?
You know, like where's like this isn't the way you I don't know.
I don't remember this passageway at the Red Keep.
Those long tall windows really make me think Dragonstone.
I don't know where those windows would be in in the Red Keep, but
maybe they? Are I believe that's the same
hallway that she walks in the same passage in her first scenes
with Allison in season 1 episode 1?
Per Woke the Dragon on Twitter. Anyway.
But yeah, I'm I'm pretty positive.
We're getting a lot of clearly scenes just before and after the
taking of King's Landing. Some of them are Dragonstone
right before, some of them are King's Landing right after.
So, yeah, I may not be on top of of which is which, but I think
we've got the plot nailed as far as what's happening.
No. Does the Shay have more
evidence? Oh, that there?
Yeah, I could. There it is.
Yeah. That's kind of.
That could be the same spot. Yeah, that could be it.
Yeah. But you can't see those windows,
though. That's the problem.
Those little sunlit windows. Well, I know that's what I'm
saying. They might be there, but if not,
then that would be anyway. Anyway, let's move past this.
It's either way we know what this is related to.
Maybe not the precise moment, but certainly the general plot
line. Now we have this something I
think is very interesting. We have Allison and Helena
facing the throne. Two things very interesting
about this look. She's looking down as if she's
seeing like a body or something, and then her eyes slowly move up
towards what must be her son. There's no chance this is
Allison and Helena facing Rainier on the throne.
They would be captive, held separately.
They're not going to be in a crowd of people with their hoods
off, blatantly recognizable. This is doesn't make sense.
They would be the prize. Allison also says in this line,
in this moment, it is no longer safe here.
Well, that's not what you say after your city was just
conquered. That's a bit late to say.
It's no one like, you know, I think we know.
So I think she's concerned about Amond.
I think she's concerned about his decision making and that's
why we see her fleeing the city. That's what that scene in her in
darkness with the hood is that she takes off and that is fine.
Like it doesn't it's not that big of a change.
It's kind of ironic because the show did a lot to make Allison
and Rainier in the same room and so they could have
conversations, but they're not going to do it here.
They're going to have her flee. Now, in the book, Allison is
very much a part of the restoration of Aegon the Second.
So that's absolutely fits. This is not a this won't have a
giant butterfly effect as far as I can tell, because it does come
back around. She does end up back at the Red
Keep with her son. So rather than her just being at
court and being left behind, she gets to escape and just come
back at an opportune time. In fact, maybe she'll find Otto.
Maybe Otto will find her. Well, Otto won't be finding
anybody while he's in jail, but still.
Why are you positive she's escaping?
OK, is there a reason? Well, I just gave a whole bunch
of reasons. There's a it's a stack of
reasons. It's connected to the fact that
she's outside and that other scene in a hood seemingly
sneaking away. She's talking right here.
She says it's no longer safe here.
Why would she say that after the city's been conquered?
That doesn't, that's like the most obvious thing to say.
And so I think she's saying, I think she fled.
I was kind of assuming she wouldn't succeed in her fleeing.
I guess that she wouldn't actually leave, that she would
be trying to but not succeed. Well, that's possible.
I, I have no thoughts on whether she actually succeeds.
I I assume she does. I don't know what the point
would be of, of her trying to get away and then not.
That seems like a waste of time, but maybe not.
Yeah. Anyway, right after this we have
Eamonn prowling around Herrenhall with a bloody black
fire. Unfortunately, that is probably
the blood of Simon Strong and you can see in his left hand
he's clutching because he's wearing a a steel gauntlet.
He's got the the cat's paw. I keep calling it the cat's paw
dagger. The ice and fire dagger in his
left hand is also bloody. So he is dual wielding Valyrian
steel and that's pretty badass. But yeah, not so badass that he
has blooded his sword with strongs.
That's there's nothing badass about that at all.
They are not hard to kill. So the trailer starts to wind
down after this point. It goes a lot of quick shots, a
lot of which we've already kind of seen or referenced in other
basically, I think these are reinforcing scenes.
We got a shot of Hightower Bowman, which is almost
certainly defending King's Landing.
That is there's a see some like regular folk on the wall there.
You can maybe that's the Red Keep in the right there.
Either way, the the high tower Bowman are only going to be on
the attack and anywhere else. The armies are only going to be
on the attack elsewhere except for Kristen Cole's man who are
running away and they aren't geared up like that.
So I'm pretty sure this is more yet more taking of King's
Landing scene here. Then we go back to Vergar
burning Heron Hall, which is pretty sweet, but nothing
mysterious about it. Then we have bloody Damon,
bloody faced Damon. I think this is what I said
before. He is concerned because he's
like, oh, more people. And then he realizes, oh, it's
the winners wolves, we're good. But this could be, it could be
entirely unrelated. This could be entirely separate
battle. But the blood on his face looks
very similar and he's still and he's outdoors, so it would be
fitting. The thing with this sword on the
ground that gets picked, It's. I don't know what they're doing
with that. That's like, there's really
nothing I can make of of that. Yeah.
It's like a sword on the ground and someone's picking it up or
kicking with their foot. I yeah, I'm.
It's not a sort of note. It's not Black Fire or Yeah.
It's not Dark Sister, it's not Black Fire.
I, I think I remember checking. I don't, I, I didn't.
It wasn't Vigilance, but no, I, I don't remember if it was.
Probably not orphan maker either.
It seems unlikely they don't. Doesn't look right.
It looks like a regular. Sword just picking up his sword.
Wayne Picking. It's just a shot of battle.
Yeah. It's just action.
Yeah. I think it's probably what it is
then, because. And then immediately after, we
have Damon fighting and killing some green loyalists, just like
we saw in the first Trent teaser.
And then it immediately cuts to Rainier in extreme grief, which
I really don't know what that could be other than the death of
Jay. So that seems extremely likely.
And then we have Alan in action on a ship during the Battle of
the Gullet. Most likely he's slashing at
someone and he looks like he cuts their throat.
There's a bunch of blood there. And then there's another shot of
Kristen Cole in battle, looking bedraggled, fighting someone.
Maybe this is the actual Butcher's Ball.
The, the geography is right for it, the landscape, they are like
in a little bit of a lowered plane, which is the description
of the how it starts. Of course, in the novel,
Christian Cole is dead before the battle even starts, but I
doubt they're going to do that. I, I, I imagine Christian Cole
gets killed during the battle rather than get shot full of
arrows. But why?
I mean, they could just do that, you know, it's not a, it's not a
big difference, not a huge difference either way.
Now we get to something very interesting that we referred to
at the beginning, which is the now this is born to die, I'm
calling it because Malor is if this is Malor being born, and I
really don't know what else it could be like this is definitely
Helena. And what could this be other
than two things? Give me some ideas. 1A A
flashback somehow to her, a previous birth. 2 Some sort of
dragon dream vision type trippy thing.
Some type of trippy experience that Helena is having.
OK. Yeah, those are two.
Other possibilities I think otherwise she's having a baby
right. And I, this is a good time as
any for me to address the poll. We'll at the very end we'll say
what it actually lands out. I won't end it yet.
Currently the answer of the poll 55% say Aegon, 45% say Amen.
And there was moments. There was just 5050.
It was just Even. So, you know, I go back and
forth. Yeah.
I think it it makes more sense for it to be Aegon to me.
I don't think Elena would have slept with Amon personally, but
a boy do I want it to be Amon like I want it to be true.
But I don't think Elena, as we've seen her more deeply
recently, I don't think she would have just slept with Amon.
I don't think she would have done wanted to, but you know,
Eamon wants to, you know, start his own branch of the family.
If he wants to rule, he needs an heir.
So here's my theory on that. It's it's means Maylord has been
uncut from the show. We already knew Rickard Thorne
had been cast and Rickard Thorne's the one that sneaks off
on the mission to save Maylord A sneaky mad at Kings Lanigan and
gets a cut to pieces. So the way this would fit really
well is if Eamon knows that's his kid, and he would assuming
he knows he has a kid because maybe he leaves King's Landing
not knowing Helena's pregnant. That could be a thing.
I think it's more satisfying, or at least it fits connects a lot
of dots better. If he knows and then knows Mae
Lore has been killed, that could help explain why he goes just so
batshit insane in the Riverlands and just burns everything along
with Alice's influence. You don't need this.
Like, I don't think his insanity in the book is unearned, but it
would provide a more like baseline human reason, something
that's happening to everyone, every all the major players here
are losing children. So it would put him in in that
wheelhouse, too. Gagon's lost a kid.
Helene has already lost. And this would be too Rainier,
obviously. Damon.
I mean, yeah, they're it's going to be bad.
Yeah. Well, actually, Damon hasn't
lost a kid, but. But.
He's lost a wife. He's lost a wife.
Yeah, he lost. Lost who was young enough?
Yeah. He killed his wife, Yeah.
And Oh yeah, I was. Thinking of I was thinking of
Lena. Not right Royce.
That's funny. Yeah.
He's lost 2 lives. He has lost bad.
No, he did lost a kid. He did lose a kid because she
was pregnant when she died too, so you could.
Oh, you're right, You're right. You're Yeah, yeah, that that
absolutely counts. Yeah, so and then we've talked
as far as the mailor being a baby instead of two years old.
We have talked at length how that is a very common thing for
TV shows to do. They just blur the line between
2 year old and baby because there's logistics around having
children on TV. And I don't think any of us are
going to sit here arguing for children to spend more time on
television and movie sets. So I'm cool with them fudging
that line. And especially because it
wouldn't seem to affect the plot much at all.
Like mail order doesn't like it does anything.
It takes a little bit of the evil away from blood and Cheese.
Like because they couldn't do the choice thing, but they still
sort of did a choice thing with the boy girl thing.
I don't know that it what definitely was cooler the way
George wrote it more evil. But this, that's the only thing
you lose If you bring Mailor back.
Now you get all that other stuff, which is important.
So that really would mitigate the butterfly effect of Mailor
not being in there at all. It would give Helena another
reason to commit suicide if that's what happens later,
because right now she's not all super, doesn't seem to be broken
out. Maybe she's just handling it
really well, but she didn't seem crushed by the death of her son
in a way that I mean, she's her personality is not that she
might express herself that way, but still, she's not like
looking. She's not suicidal from what we
can tell, but this maybe that pushes her towards that.
So then immediately we get back to another super close up of
Vega right back to that we have Vergar yelling.
I'm sorry, I'm not my bad. I skipped one.
The very important one. This fades into Lord Ormond
indoors yelling like this. This is a guy that like look at
that. He is yelling and something is
extreme here. He's not fighting.
This isn't battle and the angle of the shot is very telling.
I think this is related. I think this is he just got the
news of the death of Mae lore. That's his what nephew?
What would that his cousin? I don't know.
It's his. It's certainly his kin.
And that would be horrifying to him, you know, And he's going to
unleash his anger on Bitter Bridge where it happens along
with Prince Daron. They're going to hang Lady
Caswell and kill all these people.
So, and it's supposed to be revenge for Malor.
So at least that's how it's spelled out in the book.
So I can really see that being this moment here.
And we have this very composed Lord Hightower, proud, pious,
and we get the seat of him just like in extreme rage, slash
grief, like helpless. Like that's the thing that I see
here. You see a very powerful man who
is yelling in helpless rage. That's that's how I perceive it.
It's part of that's head cannon. Part of that's me inserting what
I think he's reacting to in there.
But it's also kind of hard to imagine what else it is, you
know, like is he mad that Otto gets killed?
Is he, you know, that could be it.
Maybe Otto gets killed. That's his uncle.
But I'm not so sure that would have the reaction of a of a dead
baby on his family. You know, that seems worse,
especially the circumstances like that Mailor dies when he's
not that far from getting to the high tower army like he was all
he was maybe a few days or maybe a week away from from making it,
you know, But Nope, didn't happen.
So back to a super close up of Vergar burn and aiding.
So it's kind of like these three shots in a row, right?
We have Helena yelling in pain, then we have Lord Orman yelling
maybe in rage and grief, and then we have Vergar yelling and
fire, and then it ends with, I believe, Rainier.
And it starts with Kristen yelling and fighting.
Oh, yeah, you're right. You're right.
He's the Yeah, you're right. There's a a different one.
Yeah. We have Kristen call the first
one. Yeah.
It's Rainier in grief than Alan fighting and and then Kristen
Cole fighting and yelling. They're both kind of yelling as
they fight. Yes.
It's like at least five in a row, someone yelling as they're.
Women's fight is childbirth is. The battle.
That is what they're showing right here is she's in her own
battle. She was battling, Yeah, that
looks like. Yeah, that is like that.
Is that acting is is good there. I mean, she's all got the sweat
like you always see in a birthing scene, which I I guess
is realistic. Technically Aymond will have
visions too, not just Helena's visions.
I said dragon dreams for her, but technically he could see
just. Oh yeah?
What does Alice put in her in his head?
You. Know like that's we got to know
that there's. There's.
Room for that type. There's room for dreams, you're
totally right. We can't forget.
But we and there will be dreams. There 1000% will be dreams, we
just don't know if this is one of them.
Why that would be something? I'm going to say I don't think
we've seen a dream in this teaser, but I'll be curious if
one of them is. I don't think any of them are.
So Rainier then looked at her crown.
And we've seen this shot. It was another teaser.
And there's a line from her voice over.
There will be no doubt who the gods have chosen to rule.
And I don't know what that's in reference to, but it's almost
certainly related to the taking of King's Landing.
Sounds a bit dark. Sounds a bit heavy.
Jace is definitely dead by that point, I think so she.
And that's going to change her losing another of her sons is
transformative in not a good way.
Makes her end up like what Kristen Cole says, more like a
beast, you know, And that's true for a lot of these characters.
Yeah. The more this war goes on, the
more loss and suffering and lack of end insight, the more people
are going to have that sort of darkness creep into their soul
and the level of evil and lack of compassion and sympathy will
will all likewise fall off. Yep.
It's going to be dark, it's going to be deadly.
It's going to be pretty fun though.
The music, the acting, it's going to be cool.
Last season the teasers and trailers were very front loaded,
meaning mostly we saw things from the 1st 4 episodes.
That might be true here as well. I would certainly lean that way.
I mean, one of the reasons that happened last year was they were
still editing, and that is going to be potentially true here as
well. They're still going to be
tweaking some of the Dragons, you know, rendering some of the
movements and things like that. There's a lot to do.
They can always make it a little bit better.
The Helena thing was the biggest surprise.
But, oh, here's another little shot we have that Ashea wants me
to remind her of. Oh, so here's a shot of Elena
and Allison. Allison's got a Lantern and
they're cloaks. When they're trying to escape.
Trying to escape, yeah. So that that's.
They at least get outside. We don't know if they get any
farther than that, but yeah, unless those things are
unconnected. In the other shot of them there
is a gold cloak with them, as if they were taken, you know,
collecting. Oh, maybe that's being leading
them back. Yeah, yeah.
So maybe they don't succeed in their attempt.
Or yeah, I don't. Know well the one with the wait,
where's the the gold cloak? What do you mean?
When they're in the outside in the dark, does the gold cloak
with them? Oh, you mean in the throne room?
But that's this is what I'm saying.
They decide to leave. This is my my point was there.
This is when she realizes they have to flee.
Yeah, after Raniera has taken the throne.
No, no, after Aymond has done something here, this is when she
says we're no, it's no longer safe here.
She wouldn't say that about Raniera arriving because that's
just blatantly obvious. I'm saying she would say that
about something Aymond did. Like I think she's looking at a
corpse right now. I think she's looking at a
corpse, but it's one from Raniera taking the.
Well, why would she say it's no longer safe here?
That's and why would she be in like?
Because she is about to take the capital and then they she tries
to escape and they capture her and bring her back after Rainier
has taken the throne, right. Like she says it because they're
about to come take the capital. It's not safe there.
Let's get out. But they don't make it.
So they they say it's no longer safe here because they know that
the the. They're about to take King's
Landing. OK, but why would the Gold Coast
go retrieve them? Because Damon has the goal
cloaks. I don't know.
I don't know that goal Goal Cloak's the one who found her.
It's a very incompetent escape attempt if they only leave that
soon. I don't know, I, I, I agree
that's possible, but I'm going to lean the other way.
I'm going to stick with my theory anyway.
So the two big surprises. Maybe the second surprise isn't
a surprise because I'm guessing that Allison is not captured by
Rainier. But if Ache is right, then that
is not a surprise that she's just captured a little
differently. The biggest surprise, of course,
is the Maylore thing. That is.
Wow, that and a good surprise. Very happy to see that.
So yeah, also my, my theory around Allison involves the fact
that having her escape doesn't really change much in terms of
how she would proceed from there.
Not that being captured would change anything because that's
how it goes in the book. Now, what then of Aegon's rule?
So I'm wondering about this. If she is there when she helps
Aegon reclaim the throne, if we're thinking far ahead, which
she is in the book, where is Otto going to be at that point?
And is she going to be part of or against or an unwilling
participant in removing Aegon from the throne later?
And that could be Aamon's misrule could set up her
willingness to accept that outcome.
But I'm not sure because she's, I mean, she's already shown the
only reason I'm even entertaining this thought is
she's already shown her willingness to, you know, open
the gates for Rainier, as she said at the end of last season,
which that's not going to work, it looks like.
But the that's not the issue. The issue is whether she's
willing to turn on her family or not.
And it seems like the answer is yes.
How far though? How far will she go?
That I don't know. I don't think she's going to.
I don't think she wants any of them to be killed.
So anyway, we have a lot of new information.
I'm very curious what you all think.
Ashia had some nice friendly debates here as to our
expectations. It's cool that we don't agree on
some of these things because that means they're doing a good
job of presenting it in ways that keep it uncertain.
Keeps us guessing. And I like that.
Keeps us discussing things. I want to know what you all
think. Let us know your theories, your
takes. If we miss anything.
How about that poll? Ashia came out?
Looks like Aegon 1. Not by a ton, but yeah. 57 to 43
and I, I, it's about where I lean.
Like I said, I, I think 1's more likely.
I want the other. I don't want it as much with
your, your idea that it's through through rape.
But I, I don't see a way that Helena willingly slept with
Amon. Things would have to have really
like a lot of time would have had to pass.
And, you know, I, I just can't see it Like I was hoping for it
until that, that last scene between them and Season 2, you
know, and that just clinched it that she did not think of him
that way. Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Yeah, she's not. Yeah, she does not.
You're right, she's not. Think of him that way.
Anyway, we have book coverage of the Dance of the Dragons that
you all could check out. In the meantime, if you haven't
or would like to check it out again, we did a full series on
The Dance of the Dragons with our good friends over at Radio
Westeros. And we also have some Patreon
bonus episodes on the Red Kraken, who probably isn't part
of the show at all, but is a pretty big part of the story in
the book candidate. In fact, there's two episodes,
one that focuses on him and the one that focuses on his
aftermath, because there's a whole lot to do with that side
of Westeros that is kind of a second story.
It's kind of like detached from the main war.
So it's a great side narrative that has some connective tissue
to everything else, but is really kind of a stand alone in
a lot of ways. So check that out and we will be
keeping you updated with our episodes coming out before the
season. We can't wait for the deep dives
that are incoming. Thanks everybody.
Thanks to Joey and Jesse and Bran the Builder, especially
Bran for our cool fire and blood inspired House of the Dragon
intro. I'm really excited to see what
he comes up with for season 3. He if if you haven't noticed I
don't remember, he did one for season 1, iterated on it and
made a new version for season 2 and he's going to make a new
one, a different one for season 3 here.
So, and of course, he made an awesome one for Knight of the
Seven Kingdoms as well. And so, yeah, so he's just, he's
just killing it. So yeah, we we're we're excited
for good reason, because he always delivers on behalf of
Ishaya. We'll see you all next time.
You know what to do. Until then, Valar Rewritis.