House of the Dragon HOT D - HBO & Sky

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So my thoughts. This is long, don’t read if you don’t want to be put to sleep 😂

I loved the opening sequence in the North with Cregan Stark’s monologue. I got chills seeing the Wall again and hearing the Winterfell theme with the raven delivering the news of Luke’s death. I’m quite pleased with the casting of Tom Taylor as Lord Stark - he did a good job as young Uhtred in The Last Kingdom. I liked his interaction with Jaecerys, there’s a bit of a bromance hinted at in the book. I don’t suspect we will see much more of him this season though if at all - Cregan plays a bigger role much later in the Dance.

I found the Rhaenyra scenes so powerful - Emma did a fantastic job of conveying a mother’s grief through her acting and expression. She only said one line in the entire episode but you could feel her utter devastation and how broken she was. The scene where Jace is trying to be strong and report back to her as his Queen through tears and the way she hugs him and they break down together. 😭

Alicent and Ser Criston - those dirty hypocrites. I mean part of me was rooting for Alicent after years of having to put up with Vizzy T’s rotting corpse all over her (you get that Hot D girl 😏) but I can’t stand Criston as a character he makes me want to break something whenever he’s on the screen. Still bitter about Rhaenyra’s rejection even to this day too, get over it man.

Aemond the One Eye playing it cool like we knew he would despite Luke’s death being an accident. I’m looking forward to events to come, he is one of the more interesting characters in the Dance and has a bigger part to play. He was such a mummy’s boy before but now there’s defiance against Alicent who has completely lost control of everything and is clearly struggling with that.

Otto is another one who’s in danger of losing the control he had. I really like how they’re playing Aegon II in the show; it’s nice to see Tom Glynn-Carney get more screen time and bring nuance to the character. I like how they showed his relationship with his son and heir, obviously he’s trying to have a better relationship with little Jahaerys than he ever had with his own father, but also trying to prepare him for being King because no one did that for him as he was never going to be King. He seems like he’s trying to do a good job and isn’t so much like Joffrey and the other monsters from GoT, he’s much more complex than that. I think the aftermath of this episode will be a huge catalyst for Aegon who atm is still being controlled by Otto and to a lesser extent Alicent. Also not forgetting his conversation with Larys Strong who is also sowing the seeds for getting rid of Otto as Hand.

Daemon is back in all his chaotic glory again. Looking for someone to blame over Luke’s death because he can’t take his anger out on the one responsible. I’m glad they kept it ambiguous as to whether or not he ordered the murder of the little prince in the event that Blood and Cheese couldn’t get Aemond.

There’s a lot of uproar in the fandom about B&C not being as gruesome and intense as it comes across in the book, however I don’t mind the way they did it in the show. They were never going to show a literal child being decapitated on screen but what we got was grim enough (the sound of them sawing 😥 🤢).

The book is a collection of different versions of the same story and Maester Eustace in the book is the narrator most biased towards the Greens so B&C come off very cartoon villain-y in the text. In the book there is a third, younger child of Aegon and Helaena’s named Maelor who’s a toddler during the events. Alicent was meant to be present during B&C and Helaena is forced to choose which of her sons dies or they will rape her daughter. She pleads with them to kill her instead but eventually is forced to choose and picks the baby as he’s so young but they decapitate Jahaerys the heir instead and run off with his head. This leads to Helaena’s spiral into depression and guilt to the point she can’t even bear to look at the child she chose to die.

In the show Helaena is a “dragon dreamer” and has visions. She’s also portrayed as being neurodivergent so to me her reaction and how she pointed to her son and fled with her daughter was a sign of autistic shutdown due to shock; her vision came true, she knew something bad was about to happen (“I’m afraid, not of the dragons but the rats”) but didn’t know exactly what until it did. Some people couldn’t understand how cold or detached she was during that awful scene but it made a lot of sense looking at it from that perspective.

TL;DR I thought it was a decent first episode to get us back into the swing of things and I’m looking forward to the next. Some things could have been better as a book reader but not everything translates well from text to screen :p

PS - when 🧀 kicked the dog! 😤👊🏻
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Scotch Mist said:
Why didn’t they all have kings guards at their doors to protect them? It seemed too easy for the assassins.
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So there’s a theory floating around that Criston as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard had the guards allocated elsewhere to hide his trysts with Alicent. There’s a real sense of complacency with the Greens too - because they have Vhagar, the largest and most powerful dragon in the world, nobody would dare threaten them. They underestimated Daemon.
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Also did anybody else get these vibes? 👀 💀
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I've read the book in the two year absence so knew what to expect but my husband hated the ending! While not as detailed or gorey as the book I thought it was "tastefully" done.
However my husband who is the person who induced me to the whole GOT world thought the sawing sounds where horrible and too much.
I personally think it got to him because we have two young children under the age of three so he found it hard to watch. I did point out the him that George RR Martin always takes points of history for his books. Dance of the Dragons is the war of the roses, and this is basically his nod to the princes in the tower.
I thought the portrayal of Helaena very well done. As she completely shuts down and goes to the one person who she feels safe with her Mother but is shocked when she gets to her room too.
This is also the first proper loss to the Greens and as LittleMy said there behaviour is very complacent.
Good episode to start with but looking forward to see how it goes, and seeing the effect this has on Rhaenyra and Daemons relationship.
 
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I'm saying this as a suggestion and not a rule but I think it's fair game to talk about the new episodes as soon as they air. It's easy to avoid the thread if you're not caught up.

I love any "seer" or prophet character/trope in media so Haelena is fast becoming my favourite character. I think her actress is doing a great job with her visions/autism portrayal.
The ending was bone chilling. I also couldn't cope with the noise, especially as I watch everything with subtitles (thankfully available on my Sky glass this season) and it described them as "flesh ripping and grinding" or something along those lines. 🥴
 
emerald said:
I'm saying this as a suggestion and not a rule but I think it's fair game to talk about the new episodes as soon as they air. It's easy to avoid the thread if you're not caught up.

I love any "seer" or prophet character/trope in media so Haelena is fast becoming my favourite character. I think her actress is doing a great job with her visions/autism portrayal.
The ending was bone chilling. I also couldn't cope with the noise, especially as I watch everything with subtitles (thankfully available on my Sky glass this season) and it described them as "flesh ripping and grinding" or something along those lines. 🥴
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I agree, I think after the episode has aired is a good time to openly discuss.

I watch with subtitles too and yeah…that was not the one 😬🙉🙈

Yes to Helaena, I also feel sorry because she and the children are innocents. Also the way no one understands her prophecies until it’s too late and they just think she’s “mad.” Just like Cassandra in Greek mythology. There were many dreamers in the Targaryen line from Daenys the Dreamer who saw the doom of Valyria, Aegon the Conquerer who supposedly saw himself conquer the seven kingdoms and even Daenerys herself (predicting the hatching of Drogon in the book).
 
motherofdonkeys said:
There I was, thinking the opening episode was going quite slowly, then bam, a toddler gets beheaded 🤯 o_O

I know how the story goes so kind of know whats coming, just wondering how many seasons will we get?
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Well it's been renewed for a 3rd so at least that.

Like many have said, we're just at the beginning of the Dance. It goes on long enough that little kids fully grow up. I imagine that depending on how they stretch it, it could easily go for at least 5 seasons which is what streamers seem to like these days for their shows.
 
oogling said:
Where did you find the recap? I spent the episode constantly pausing to ask my wife what the duck was going on, neither of us could really remember a thing!! Yet we remember game of thrones like it was yesterday!
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It needs subtitles underneath going that's such and such 😆
 
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