Theo Whiteman
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains major spoilers from Season 2, Episode 2 of HBO’s “.”Dragon House.”
The fallout from “Blood and Cheese” continues in “House of the Dragon.”
Episode 2 begins with heartbreak in King’s Landing when King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) discovers the grisly murder of his young son Jaehaerys. He blames Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) for not protecting the prince — and as we saw at the end of the premiere, Criston was too busy sleeping with Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) instead of guarding the park of the castle. Everyone in King’s Landing gathers for a somber funeral procession to pay their respects to Jaehaerys, whose head has been reattached for the occasion.
“I remember them saying to me, ‘Do you want to see the model?’ “Oh my God, that was really beautifully done,” said Phia Saban, who plays Queen Helaena Targaryen. Variety. “They were weaving gold thread and you could see how the head was sewn back onto the body. He had all the flowers and everything.
“It was an incredible prosthetic,” Cooke added. “It was really intense. Then you become a little numb to the fact and we just sing in the back of the wagon between takes.
Blood, Jaehaerys’s assassin, is apprehended and to take care of his accomplice Cheese, Aegon orders all the rat catchers in the city to be hanged. Criston replaces Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) as Aegon, they begin to strategize for war and accuse Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) of infanticide.
In Dragonstone, the news surprises Rhaenyra, since she only wanted Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) dead for killing her son Lucerys. She denies having anything to do with Jaehaerys’ death, then realizes that her husband Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) must have ordered it. The two have a tense argument and Daemon flees on his dragon.
Once again, it’s time for revenge. Criston prepares a double “Parent Trap” style switcheroo to kill Rhaenyra using the same knights Arryk and Erryk Cargyll (Luke and Elliot Tittensor). Arryk pledged to serve the greens of Alicent, while Erryk joined the blacks of Rhaenyra. Arryk disguises himself as his brother and sneaks into Dragonstone to assassinate Rhaenyra without anyone realizing his true identity. Of course, things go wrong when he meets the only person who might recognize him: Erryk. The two brothers remain loyal to their queens and engage in a tearful duel to the death. It’s hard to say who has the upper hand in the sibling fight, but Erryk inflicts a mortal wound on his brother, then apologizes to Rhaenyra and commits suicide out of grief for what he did.
With Varietyshowrunner Ryan Condal discusses the funeral scene, Cargyll’s fight, some characters not in the book, and their appearance in the future.
Was I supposed to be afraid that Jaehaerys’ head would fall off during the funeral float ride? Because I was!
No, it wasn’t something specific we were looking for. Just the danger of moving a body in a public square like that. It’s a very moving sequence. Sara Hess presented this in the play, making a funeral procession a public spectacle and parading Jaehaerys’ body – and showing the fact that they had cut off his head and then sewn it back onto his body – in the square public as a way to diminish Rhaenyra and her pretense of trying to create a monster out of her. A superb plot from Otto Hightower which obviously has an effect in winning points for the Greens.
In “Fire & Blood”, there are several accounts of Cargyll’s fight and the twins’ deaths. How did you specifically choose to stage it for the show?
We obviously spent a lot of time debating how this fight would go. The way all the disagreeing narrators present this particular historical event in the book is very different. So we’re just trying to find one that’s true to both characters. These are two guys who took an oath and ended their lives to protect the royal family. And as Erryk tells Daemon in the season premiere: “We don’t know what to do with this oath, because we swore to protect the royal family, and now they’ve turned on each other, and what were we going to do? do?” It’s this tragic story of two brothers finding themselves on different sides in a conflict, in a way, a great archetype that goes back to the American Civil War, westerns and Arthurian tales. To try to keep his oath , Arryk sails to Dragonstone to try to pass himself off as his brother, infiltrates the castle and gets closer to the queen, but luckily Erryk intervenes. We wanted this very emotional conflict between these two brothers who love each other deeply but. who found themselves mortal enemies due to the nature of the political system they engaged in. It was shot over several days, wonderfully choreographed, and Luke and Elliott Tittensor performed it and were in every shot of that sequence. They learned the fight and they executed it to the fullest.
Can you tell the difference between the violent fight between Daemon and Rhaenyra at the end of season 1 and this fight that causes her to leave?
I think the end of season 1 is a much more sudden and visceral burst of emotion, whereas that big scene in episode 2 is a full exploration of the fundamental nature of their relationship. It’s the fact that their relationship has been built on deception and mistrust throughout all of history and time. It’s just Daemon’s nature. Rhaenyra desperately wants to have that intimate connection where she is very close to him and can trust him. But then she discovers again and again that he doesn’t open up enough or make himself approachable enough to be trusted. She’s really struggling with this. It’s the same frustration Viserys always had about Daemon, that you can only let him in so much and that he lets people down because of the impulsiveness of his decision-making. The big lingering questions that emerge from this scene are: Where is Daemon going? Where do his allegiances lie and what will happen to this marriage? The rest of the season is largely a study of Daemon and Rhaenyra’s marriage.
Alicent and Viserys’ other son, Daeron, is first mentioned in this episode. What choices did you make in terms of casting for him and other key characters in “Fire & Blood” who haven’t yet appeared or been mentioned, like Nettles?
Daeron hasn’t been chosen yet. I said he was a character in the show, but at this point in the story he is in the old town where he was pushed away as a young child. So we don’t have a point of view character in this world yet and there’s no dramatic reason to go there. This happened all the time in medieval times, especially among the upper nobility. You would take your younger children and move them away to other places, so that they would grow up away from the yard and learn things and have their own place and place in the world. We know he’s not a dragon rider yet, but he had a dragon born to him. So he will come to the narrative and have a role to play, just like he does in the book – we’re just not there yet in the narrative.
And the nettles?
With this character, I’m not yet ready to comment on anything that hasn’t been established in the series yet.
Will the season feature the battles of Rook’s Rest and The Gullet?
Well, that remains to be seen. We’re not there yet. We follow the story of the book. I think there are some big, exciting action sequences coming that involve dragons, fire and blood.
Gn entert
News Source : variety.com
