HBO
The eighth episode of House of the Dragon is called ‘The Lord of the Tides’ after the ailing Corlys Velaryon and all of the drama that follows from his potential succession. We are told it’s been six years since the last episode, the last time jump of the season for the purposes of actors changing. Apparently Corlys went off sailing after he thought his son was killed, perhaps to search for his killer or just because he was mourning — either way he’s suffering from some sort of infection and might not make it.
The show gets a little cute with this whole tease of his possible death, which hasn’t happened yet, but gets a little confusing in its wording to the point that some watchers have been confused about whether or not Corlys is already gone — he isn’t, of course, he’s just doing very poorly, thus the whole immediacy of the succession question. But I’m sure we’ll see confirmation of his status soon enough and either set people’s minds at ease or confuse them further.
The episode does a very stark job showing the differences between Alicent’s and Rhaenyra’s children — heir Jacerys is studying High Valyrian and wants to be a good leader, and even manages to keep his temper when other oldest son Aegon needles him. Lucerys is a bit more paranoid and temperamental, easier to get him to show emotion — he worries about optics, smirks at the pig served in front of Aemond, and gets furious about the ‘Strong’ insults.
But Aegon is actually a rapist, although the word itself is never specifically used — the show carefully manages to avoid actual triggering words and shows only the aftermath, a very effective scene with Dyana the serving girl who was assaulted by the Prince. As seen in so many occasions, Alicent says she believes her but what might other people think?
She carefully hides her emotions here, but then later spits at her son. ‘You’re no son of mine.’ It perhaps makes it easier for her to accept accord with Rhaenyra later as a potential Queen instead of the politicking led by her father. As for Aemond, he’s turned into a wannabe Daemon clone, tall and with an eye patch — clearly a talented warrior, but also clearly interested in hurting his nephews.
There are a bunch of fun little moments of Aemond being impressed by Daemon, especially after Daemon cuts off Vaemond’s head. And of course, dear Helaena, who unknowingly insults her husband-brother and delights in dancing with Jace — and gives us the mysterious prophetic words of ‘Beware the beast beneath the boards’. I’m not entirely sure what that even means just yet.
Although the succession drama is what was driving everything, the true heart was the connection between Viserys and Rhaenyra, and Viserys and his brother — a fitting conclusion to their arc. Rhaenyra asks her very ill father for guidance as storms rage outside, a fitting metaphor, and Emma D’Arcy truly kills it in the scene with all of the layers of complex emotions.
In one of the three big emotional moments, Viserys actually makes it to the throne room, hobbling toward the Iron Throne — there is a shared look of something that Rhaenyra and Alicent both have there, a realization that will sadly be destroyed. The second one is Daemon helping his brother onto the throne and tenderly placing the fallen crown on his head — an astonishingly well handled arc from the start of the show, where Viserys was literally kicking his brother out of King’s Landing.
Although I do feel that we’ve missed out on some storylines because of the time jumps, it’s hard to argue with how impressive this arc has been. It’s a tear-inducing moment to see Viserys trying so hard right until the end to keep his family together, and a true tragedy that he cannot do it.
The big dinner scene, which is truly great, has a final bittersweet moment from Viserys as he sees happiness in his family before leaving, even if things get out of hand shortly afterwards. Both Rhaenyra and Alicent offer olive branches and seem to be willing to patch things up — but the generational trauma continues and their children already are at odds.
We don’t really get so much from the young daughters of Daemon and Laena, but there are some hints of things to come — it would’ve been nice to get a little more, but it’s hard to argue what should’ve been cut out. The very final moments, with Alicent hearing the wrong words from Viserys is something that’s a little cheap — is it letting her off the hook for future actions? I’m not sure yet, but I’ll have to wait to see how they deal with it.
What is inarguable is how great Paddy Considine has been as Viserys from the start until the end, showing such a complex, interesting character that even George R. R. Martin has admitted is a vast improvement from the one in the books. Although he was not really such a great king, he had peace in his time and truly loved his family — a figure we rarely see in these sorts of worlds. A terrific episode that tugged at the heartstrings and perfectly set up the terrible conflicts to come.
The Green Council
HBO
The ninth episode of House of the Dragon is called ‘The Green Council’, which is a book reference to the small council of the ‘Greens’ faction (meaning the Hightowers and their allies). It starts off with a great scene of the council that has some odd adaptation choices with further thought, which ultimately feels like a good summation of the episode: Great, but with some odd adaptation choices.
The episode’s first moments of a series of dark, empty rooms to symbolize King Viserys’ death is a great touch, and an example of how well the show has been handling interesting visualizations of its themes. The episode does a very interesting choice to have Alicent truly seem to believe that Viserys wanted their son Aegon the Awful to be the new king, as bizarre a choice that seems — perhaps Alicent is rationalizing it too, as she seems conflicted about the upcoming deaths that must happen.
The crucial moment for this is when she confronts her father after she’s able to successfully outmaneuver him and bring her son back to him instead of Otto — yet she also says that there is nothing admirable about needless murder. Otto throws back that maybe she’s simply thinking about how they were childhood friends and thus biased, but ultimately only throws a classic little ‘you look like your mother’ passive-aggressive quip that she ignores and storms out.
His little ‘As you wish’ after that was a great coda on that scene, another example of how great Rhys Ifans has been in this role — but this was Olivia Cooke’s episode to steal. Her many horrified, pained, and complicated expressions are critical to understanding anything about anything.
From her horrid realization that the men have been plotting to put Aegon on the throne without telling her, to the little moment of ‘maybe … no, no, of course not!’ when Rhaenys tempts her about wanting the Iron Throne, to the uncomfortable ‘I guess I’m doing this’ moment of quid pro quo with Larys’ potentially problematic foot fetish (mainly because the one with a clubfoot is the one with a foot fetish).
But the really critical facial expression of Alicent is at the very end of the episode — when Rhaenys bursts through the ‘boards’ (stones) of the Dragonpit, killing dozens of random smallfolk (which naturally she doesn’t think about) and seems about to kill the new terrible King. Suddenly Alicent throws herself in front of her horrible son, a look of despair on her face — of course she can’t save him in that moment, the dragon could easily kill them all.
But this and Alicent’s conversation with the Queen Who Never Was is enough that maybe Rhaenys decides it’s not a great idea to kin-slay, even potentially awful despots — she has lost two children herself (or at least she thinks) and maybe there’s something she empathizes about Alicent’s making a window for herself in a prison (which is a great turn of phrase for the show). The showrunners have said they think it’s because they’re both mothers, but art can always be further interpreted by the audience.
The confusion about that moment though is one of those odd adaptation choices — it’s a cool moment, even if it feels like it’s not entirely thought out fully and it’s a wild divergence from the text, which is already meant to be untrustworthy. This is similar to the choice about Alicent misunderstanding Viserys’ final words that I think is mainly meant to make her side more sympathetic so that the Green vs Black war isn’t completely weighted toward Rhaenyra — but I think it may be too late for that, as people truly despise Alicent already.
The episode did a great job of building tension throughout, as the Greens were trying to secretly consolidate power before the coronation while two sets of duos searched the worst parts of King’s Landing for Aegon. Aegon has certainly become a fascinating character, which is an interesting similar take to the text — he’s reluctant and knows he’d be a terrible king, but at the sounds of the cheers of the crowd, a switch flips in his head and he seems to realize he loves the applause. A chilling moment, really.
I have been curious of Ser Harrold Westerling’s (the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard with the great beard) role the entire season, as he’s played by the great character actor Graham McTavish and the character is supposedly long dead at this point in this text. So instead they have him quit here in a ‘cool’ moment that is a bit questionable, because why did Otto not try to get his allied soldiers to stop him from warning Rhaenyra? It doesn’t completely make sense, but I hope it means we get more from the actor.
Similarly I’m confused about Mysaria, because the episode implies Larys had her killed, but the character has quite a lot more to do in the future — it’s also frustrating because I’ve heard people say that Sonoya Mizuno is a ‘bad actor’ which isn’t something I’d agree with after seeing her in Devs or Maniac, but I do agree that her fake accent still does not work.
But those moments aside, the show has done a very good job of setting things up for the finale and the truly destructive moments yet to come. A very strong episode of secrets, lies, and severely messed up choices.
New episodes of House of the Dragon premiere Sundays on HBO, streaming on HBO Max.
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