House of the Dragon: A Son for a Son Show Only

June 17, 2024 6:33 AM - Season 2, Episode 1

As Alicent grows concerned by Aegon's Small Council, Rhaenyra arrives at a fateful decision. SHOW ONLY thread!

We pick up a few days after Prince Lucerys Velaryon (Luke, Team Black), was killed by the dragon Vhagar, ridden by Prince Aemond Targaryen (Team Green). Soooo things are a bit tense.

Jacaerys of Team Black heads North to recruit Starks, while the head of the team
(and true queen), Rhaenyra mourns the loss of her son Luke. Rhaenys and Corlys Velaryon are running a blockade of Kings Landing by dragon and ships. Within King's Landing, King Aegon II (a usurper from Team Green) is busy ruling and enjoying the power, but actually trying to be good to the common folk, but his Hand, Otto Hightower is manipulating him out of doing that. Aegon's mom, Alicent, is busy trying to rule along with Otto from behind the throne, but that isn't working well. Unlike her relationship with Ser Criston Cole is going just finnnneeee.

Rhaenyra find's Luke's body and demands the death of Aemond. Daemon, her uncle, lover, and father of some of kids, gets to work and hires assassins. However, they don't find Aemond, but instead come across Queen Helaena (King Aegon's wife and sister. It's a Targaryan thing, try not to think about it too much) and her two kids, Jaehaerys (boy and heir to the throne) and Jaehaera (a girl). So the assassins kill the boy (The episode's title is A Son for A Son), Helaena flees with her daughter to Alicent's room, only to find her and Ser Criston (who should have been guarding Helaena and her kids) busy having sex, so you know things are about to get very bloody and the therapy bills will be very high.

posted by Brandon Blatcher (25 comments total)

Recaps:
Vulture: Rat Race
Slate: This Week’s Worst Person in Westeros Has to Be the Guy Who Did … Uh … That
Entertainment Weekly: Team Black seeks vengeance
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:33 AM on June 17 [1 favorite]

Are we sure which child was actually killed?

I honestly couldn't tell, and everyone but Helaena seemed to find it impossible to also, so I wasn't sure if she made a split second decision to let everyone think it was Jaehaerys the boy instead of Jaehaera.

She seemed to favor him, but also wasn't keen on him being groomed to be a future king, so I wondered if she just saw a desperate opportunity in the moment. If so, I'm also not sure if that moment would be before or after she pointed the assassins at the other, after they decided to believe she was telling the truth, or after she snatched the surviving one and fled with them and told Alicent and Criston it was the boy.
posted by Pryde at 8:18 AM on June 17

I don't know if it was just the edible I took shortly before watching, but it seemed that the writing for this episode, or at least the dialog, was exceptionally good. Anyway, I enjoyed this episode, and have reasonably high hopes for the rest of the season.
posted by JohnFromGR at 8:33 AM on June 17 [2 favorites]

I'm glad the dialogue was audible in this episode and hopefully that'll continue for the rest of the season. Last season I needed subtitles.

A lot of plotlines were sown here that we'll see come to fruition over the next few weeks. I suspect things aren't going to work out well for Otto Hightower, with Larys whispering in Aegon's ear. I also think that it was the girl twin who was murdered, not the boy.
posted by essexjan at 12:32 PM on June 17

Brandon Blatcher, thank you for the recap; as Queen Psychic Crazypants (it's been two years since season one, I'm amazed I remember anybody's names at all) was running through empty, cavernous corridor after empty, cavernous corridor, I was like, "How is she completely alone? Isn't anyone supposed to be guarding them?!" It wasn't until I read your summary of the ep that I realized that Alicent's special friend was, of course, supposed to be guarding them. Uh-oh.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:10 PM on June 17 [2 favorites]

Phia Saban portrays Helaena in the show and that was a lot of incredible acting by her. "They killed the boy" spoke terrifying volumes about her state of mind.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:47 PM on June 17 [4 favorites]

I'm glad the dialogue was audible in this episode and hopefully that'll continue for the rest of the season. Last season I needed subtitles.

For me the dialog was clear but making it all audible required me to turn my TV volume up 2.5X the max volume i have ever previously used.

But they didn't film anything as near pitch dark so I still consider it an improvement over season 1.
posted by srboisvert at 8:51 PM on June 17

This episode of this show tipped me from being the one who answers the questions (who's that? why did they kill him? what's going on?) to the one who asks them (who's that person with the blonde hair? No, the other one... that one. And what does she want? Why? Aren't they best friends?). I'm just marking the occasion with this comment.
posted by Molesome at 2:18 AM on June 18 [2 favorites]

People in the subreddit are big mad that the assassination scene wasn't as over-the-top cartoonishly villainous as it was in the book. I thought it was sufficiently horrible, and a lot more sensible and realistic (apart from the entire floor being almost deserted, which is utterly bizarre even if you take into account Aegon getting drunk in the throne room with his bros and Ser Cristen being otherwise engaged).

I cheered when Alyn of Hull appeared -- it's Abubakar Salim, who was my favourite part of Raised by Wolves.
posted by confluency at 4:09 AM on June 18 [2 favorites]

The GoT universe mashes up, remixes and parodies a lot of sword and sorcery tropes -- it is known -- and it occurred to me this morning that Blood and Cheese, the assassins, may be read as a grimdark parody of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:09 AM on June 18 [5 favorites]

This episode of this show tipped me from being the one who answers the questions (who's that? why did they kill him? what's going on?) to the one who asks them (who's that person with the blonde hair? No, the other one... that one. And what does she want? Why? Aren't they best friends?). I'm just marking the occasion with this comment.

I legitimately didn't recognize Jace when he was talking with Cregan Stark on the wall. When he finally went back to uh wherever Team Black is hiding out (d... dragonstone?) it was like "oh right, that's Jace, duh.". And oh ho, I think we finally saw little Joffrey at Luke's funeral. I'm not actually sure if we've seen the Daemon/Rhaenyra incest babies yet, though. Like, at all? To be honest I keep kind of having to look at the GoT wiki to remember half of this, because of the usual reasons.

I'm still along for the ride, don't get me wrong, but I'll admit I kind of keep unfairly comparing it to Shogun, where every episode had revelations and motivations and whatnot, while the Dragons feel kind of like they're all somehow going along with the flow? Like even the obvious scheming bastards don't feel like they're actually controlling anything. It's all right for what it is, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't have the same frisson of excitement.

I'm just sorta waiting for Blood and Cheese to return with a toddler's head, and Daemon looking at them like "what the fuck, guys."
posted by Kyol at 7:35 AM on June 18 [2 favorites]

I think we finally saw little Joffrey at Luke's funeral.
Unless there's another Joffrey in the prequel, it certainly ain't Joffrey Baratheon, who isn't born yet for another 100+ years.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:07 AM on June 18

No, no, legitimately Joffrey Velaryon, Rhaenyra and "Laenor's" youngest.

I woulda swore there was _another_ active Joffrey in HoD, but the wiki says only the 4 known ones - this little kiddo, Baratheon from GoT, Laenor's BFF and his son's namesake, and some historical Joffrey, first of his name, etc & so forth. Maybe it's Joffery or Jaffory or Jeffary or something that I heard, though. On the one hand I kind of roll my eyes at the repeated and echoed character names (viz Rhaenyra and Rhaenys, or Viserys and Viserys), on the other hand it's not like it isn't without real world precedent, so *shrug*.
posted by Kyol at 11:24 AM on June 18 [1 favorite]

I too really like the writing. It's streamlined and economical.

But the "which one's the boy?" plot point is the Chekoviest of Chekov's Guns ever. In fact, I'm calling out this Sophie's Choice nonsense as insultingly stupid.
posted by whuppy at 7:45 PM on June 18

I didn't like the writing on this one and I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for Sad Mad Aristocrats? But I liked the first season a lot. So, who knows.
posted by BungaDunga at 9:12 AM on June 19

No, no, legitimately Joffrey Velaryon, Rhaenyra and "Laenor's" youngest

I have almost no memory of any character's names, or which kids have which fathers, perhaps why I was a bit confused :)

My sense of (checks above)... Helaena is that she was telling the truth because that's the vision she saw: the "rats" coming to kill her son. The audience knows that she can see the future, but no one in universe pays attention to her, so I think she has it in her mind that these are just the things that are going to happen and she has no ability to change them. Hence, her truthfully pointing out which one was the boy without any attempt at subterfuge. I also just don't think she's capable of deception, given her clearly delicate mental state and childlike innocence.
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:54 PM on June 19 [2 favorites]

With the stakes so high, no one thought to lift a nightgown and check the validity of who they were murdering? I'm sorry but WTF.
posted by archimago at 4:25 AM on June 20 [3 favorites]

I assumed that they confirmed that they had the right kid at some point before / during the sawing. If Helaena had lied, they would have gone after her, and she wouldn't have got far. This is presumably why she lied (apart from perhaps seeing these events as inescapable because she had foreseen them) -- it was her best chance to save one child.

Why didn't they check beforehand? Because they couldn't do it without waking at least one child, and if they'd picked the wrong one they'd be two dudes trying to wrangle one woman and two children, screaming and possibly trying to escape in different directions (which I admit would be a more compelling threat if we'd seen anyone in the area except a single chambermaid).

Why didn't they just systematically kill all three of them one by one? Because they were assassins with a specific brief and specific fallback instructions, and when you're an assassin, more is not necessarily better (and you do not want to piss off your powerful patron by using too much of your own initiative while murdering his relatives).
posted by confluency at 5:33 AM on June 20 [1 favorite]

I mean, they received very specific kill parameters from Daemon, which they did not follow. I don't think either of these guys are very bright. That said, I have to question Daemon's judgment in sending a tweaker and a lunkhead after Aemond, who absolutely would have murdered them both in about five seconds flat.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:36 AM on June 20 [4 favorites]

I have to question Daemon's judgment in sending a tweaker and a lunkhead after Aemond

My problems with Season 1 could be boiled down to "everyone constantly makes the dumbest possible decision," and it doesn't seem like Season 2 is going to be much different.
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:09 PM on June 20

To be fair, this is not a meritocracy these people are living in. They are literally incestuous nepobabies. There's no reason why any of them would be smart.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:17 PM on June 20 [2 favorites]

I have to question Daemon's judgment in sending a tweaker and a lunkhead after Aemond, who absolutely would have murdered them both in about five seconds flat.

I mean, it's not like he has anything substantial to lose in the attempt. The best case scenario is that the Blood and Cheese catch Aemond in the bath or bed or somewhere else where he's not in a good position to defend himself and he dies. As his missing eye will attest, the dice don't always roll his way.

The worst case scenario is that Aemond manages to kill them both and maybe get them to confess before they die. It doesn't seem unlikely to me that Aemond already knows Daemon wants him dead so as revelations go it's not exactly devastating to Team Black. Maybe Aemond gets paranoid about the city guard being loyal to Daemon and purges them, but even that seems likely to be a win for Daemon's side.

But of course there's a worse worst-case scenario, which is what we got. Innocent and otherwise uninvolved parties get pulled into the conflict because criminals aren't particularly smart and no one anticipates how quickly a simple assassination can turn into a Coen brothers film.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 4:47 PM on June 20 [2 favorites]

I was not impressed with this episode. The direction was boring and stagy, there was a lot of filler and repetitive scenes, and precious time was eaten by up by scenes that had no bearing on the plot-- the whole bit at the Wall and the warnings about the White Walkers. THEY'RE NOT SHOWING UP! Why the to-do about them? Is it to remind fans of Game of Thrones? "Hey guys! Hey! Remember that thing you liked?" Ugh.

And the climactic showdown was rushed and tonally jarring. It wasn't funny. It wasn't scary. The whole assassination bit had the same energy as a Lenny and Squiggy scene from Laverne and Shirley. Yawn.

And speaking of yawns, my roommate fell asleep in the middle of the episode! So yeah. It's not exactly Shogun.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 6:56 PM on June 20

My problems with Season 1 could be boiled down to "everyone constantly makes the dumbest possible decision," and it doesn't seem like Season 2 is going to be much different.

See, I think the writers intended for it to be a case of, at least for Viserys but I think also some of the other "well meaning" types, that they made a decision that was well intended to sooth tensions that whoops actually made shit worse a couple of years later.

But I don't think the writing quite managed to close the loop between "dumbest possible decision" and "in perfect hindsight, I wouldn't have done that". Some of it stood out a bit better in a rewatch, but it was still kind of hard to be sympathetic with these knobs, mostly, either which way. And it's also hard to root against anyone in particular, either? I dunno, it feels oddly drama-free somehow, no obvious protagonists, no obvious antagonists. Maybe Dude Hand is a little too big for his boots, but otherwise it kinda feels like everybody has a reasonably decent claim, so ... eh? I'm sort of hoping the first season was mostly just putting the pieces into position so the second season can actually do better, maybe?
posted by Kyol at 6:59 AM on June 21

Fyi, I won’t be doing any more HotD posts, so if anyone wants to, have at it!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:15 PM on June 24