House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 2 Review – IGN

Meanwhile on Dragonstone, Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) is appalled that anyone might believe her responsible for Jaehaerys’ murder. But as Daemon (Matt Smith) watches her discussion, she sees the truth in his slightly amused face. Cue their biggest argument ever – which is not unreasonable, given that he killed a literal child. He says he sent “the Queen’s vengeance” but “cannot be responsible” for his killers hitting the wrong target: my dude, legally you absolutely can be. What’s more, he absolutely has damaged Rhaenyra’s cause, perhaps irreparably. She asks, “Do you accept me as your Qqueen and ruler, or do you cling even now to what you think you lost?” We all know that the answer to that is “no” and “yes” respectively, and he stalks off with his dragon, Caraxes.

Rhaenyra honours Daemon’s promise to give Mysaria her freedom – which is a big swing given the proven flexibility of her loyalties. At least the current crisis has forced Rhaenyra to take the reins again, which is good; she also seems to have a firm alliance now with Rhaenys (Eve Best), who gets a little bit more to do on the Black council. Rhaenys and Corlys (Steve Toussaint) also get a fun scene in bed together, using politics as pillow talk. It’s nice to see them given more to do so far this season. That said, while House of the Dragon displays a marked preference for the Blacks in a way that George R.R. Martin’s source material did not, there’s still not a huge amount of character here relative to Game of Thrones. Rhaenyra is so reserved, and her children largely still just sketches. Her council are a mass of barely delineated figures shouting at her, and there’s little sense of the wider stakes for Westeros, beyond King’s Landing and Dragonstone – despite the trip to the Wall last week.

On her way to the boat, Mysaria spots what appears to be Ser Erryk coming up from the shore – which is strange, since she just left him in the castle. She pauses, and it’s not entirely clear if she’s going to go back and warn the castle that a doppelgänger is among them. This felt like slightly loose storytelling: maybe a scene was edited out? Anyway, Ser Arryk infiltrates Dragonstone, though Erryk finds him just in time, and the pair have a brutal duel as one tries to protect and one to attack Rhaenyra. Erryk finally deals his brother a fatal blow, and cradles him as he dies, before falling on his own sword. It should be a devastating finale – and it is, a little, but we haven’t spent enough time with either character for it to really hurt as much as it did when, say, Brienne fought the Hound.

Outside those main story strands, this was a good episode for people not born with a dragon egg in their cradle and an overly complicated family tree. We get another look at Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim) and meet his brother Addam (Clinton Liberty), who’s a little easier going than his older sibling. Addam also gets an odd scene where he is interrupted while digging for cockles or mussels or something on the shore by a pale dragon (Laenor’s Seasmoke?) circling overhead. We also get another glimpse of the smith, Hugh (Kieran Bew), who petitioned the King last episode. Here we see his family are struggling to put food on the table and his daughter is sick: – the stakes for him are higher than for any of the Targaryens, not that they’re likely to appreciate that. There’s also one final newcomer, as yet unnamed but played by Love & Friendship’s Tom Bennett, who arrives in King’s Landing and pauses to stare at the bodies of the murdered ratcatchers. It’s a fair guess that there must be more for him to do than that.

This episode is directed by Claire Kilner, who did three episodes on season one. She manages the chaos of those opening moments well, with a handheld camera following running figures through the Red Keep. But it’s a heavy-hearted episode, weighed down by the grief of almost all the main cast: even Jac (Harry Collett) and Baela (Bethany Antonia) talk about loss. Still, it’s effective in showing the different ways that loss can spur people into ill-advised action or keep them paralysed, and there’s drama in that.