Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) burns out.
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This is a recap of the most recent episode of HBO’s House of the Dragon. It contains spoilers. That’s what a recap is.
Credits! Only one new “Die, You!” Tapestry tableau this week: A Gold Cloak getting attacked by Ormund’s spies. (Not pictured: Said spies posing the aforementioned Gold Cloak’s corpse in a chair at a banquet table, making for a kind of kicky, festive, Weekend-at-Ser-Bernard’s diorama. Maybe next week.)
Criston Cole leads his few remaining Green soldiers into a Team Black camp full of slaughtered rivermen — except they’re not slaughtered, they’re just fake-slaughtered, and they rise up to attack.
When they do, you can hear someone actually shout, “It’s a trap!” Nice to know the Seven Kingdoms have a Ser Ackbar.
The Greens are surrounded, and Roddy the Ruin (of the Winter Wolves) and Oscar Tully (of the rivermen) arrive to taunt Cole. He, nobly, suggests that the three of them hash it out, to spare his men. He then, ignobly, goes down like a chump with a couple arrows to the chest and one to the zygomatic bone in a way Clavicular would envy. (It’s Alysanne Blackwood who takes him out, by the way. We’ve seen her before — she was there at the Battle by the Lakeshore a few episodes back, and even spit a few bars in “Fishfeed Rap (feat. Black Aly).”)
Farewell, Ser Criston. May choirs of trifling emo man-boys sing thee to thy rest. You were a dope and a mope. You sucked, and you sulked. In fact, there at the end, you sulked so hard, so long and with such dogged perspicacity, that you led your men straight to their doom.
You did look good in white, though.
Nothing gold can stay
At Rhaenyra’s Small Council, Daemon is mourning the 25 Gold Cloaks found murdered and arranged in last week’s (Very) Still Life with Entrails incident. (On him, mourning looks a lot like sneering, and whipping goblets across the table at folk.) He wants to burn Ormund and his men out of Tumbleton, which would also — and this is now like the sixth time the writers have had someone point this out, so I dearly hope it’s clear to y’all by now — reduce thousands of Rhaenyra’s innocent royal subjects to ash in the process. Alyn, and the rest of the council, urge the queen to let her army — the one led by Oscar Tully and Roddy the Ruin — march into Tumbleton and root out the Greens with more precision than can be afforded by her trusty flying napalm-lizards.
The problem: her army is still more than two weeks’ march from the town. She decides to send assassins. Daemon volunteers, but she wants him to stay in King’s Landing and find out who’s killing the Gold Cloaks.
What’s killing them (apart from allllll that stabbing) is a certain lack of esprit de corps. They haven’t been paid for their services, for one thing. For another, there’s the always-looming threat of being turned into so many posed, rotting, disemboweled mannequins (call it esprit de corpse). They resign en masse, either despite, or directly because of, a sneery little Daemon speech.
Sabitha Frey (Sarah Woodward) goes out not with bangs, but a wimple.
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Immediately after he dresses them down, he dresses himself up as one of them, and walks the streets of Flea Bottom hoping to draw Ormund’s spies out. Which he manages to do quite quickly, taking out one of their higher-ups — the ex-Red Keep guard whom Alicent instructed to allow Rhaenyra to take back the throne, a few weeks back. The guy does get to rouse a little rabble with a quick “Do you hear the people sing?” moment before Daemon gives him an earful. Of steel.
I’ll Tumbleton for ya
Rhaenyra meets with a distressingly small contingent from House Baratheon, who have finally decided to throw in their lot with her, though their lord is off fighting a battle on another front. This snub is not lost on the queen, and she dispatches them to Tumbleton to take out Ormund and “King” Daeron.
Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) casts the touring company of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins; the guy playing Squeaky is a star.
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On a ridge overlooking Tumbleton, Hugh the Hammer clocks in to the job of Keeping A Lonely Dragon-y Vigil, while Ulf clocks out. Ulf, being Ulf, complains about Rhaenyra forbidding him from carousing with his pub mates. I think we’re supposed to find Ulf endearingly common, plain-spoken, a Shakespearean rustic, but more and more, the show keeps rubbing his salt-of-the-earth in my every last open wound. And it’s not just me: He’s annoying Daemon, too, who runs into Ulf later, in Flea Bottom, and administers a royal thwacking.
But don’t worry. A guy like Ulf suffering that kind of sustained, high-handed abuse from rich folk — that stuff never comes back to haunt anyone at all, ever.
Hugh sneaks in to Tumbleton to try to convince his wife to (literally) fly away with him, but she’s been through too much, and he’s been through … not nearly enough. She’s not abandoning her family, and he’s not abandoning his high-falutin’ high-Valryian ways.
Not without my daughter, part … nine, at least
Remember last week, when Alicent and Helaena got trapped in the walls of the Red Keep with no way out? And then their torch blew out? Did you wonder how they’d get out of that scrape? Would Mysaria rescue them, for her own sinister, mysterious reasons? Would they follow one of the hundreds of newly arrived cats to freedom? Would Helaena get a spooky-ooky dream-vision of a CAD blueprint? Or would they just be found by some soldiers in a few minutes?
Because yeah, it was that last thing. The dull one.
Rhaenyra is not pleased (gonna need a macro for that phrase) but Alicent insists that Helaena is too fragile, and too pregnant, to stay cooped up. The queen asks Mysaria if she knew about Helaena’s condition, and Mysaria is a great big liar liar wizard-sleeves on fire. She then has a guard kill the maid who tried to help Alicent and Helaena escape. No loose ends for our Mysaria. Except for those wizard sleeves.
Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) does the (white) worm.
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Alyn goes to see Corlys, who’s been chasing down the last of the Triarchy pirates. He tries to convince his pop to send for more Velaryons to replace the dead Gold Cloaks and take over the City Watch. Corlys is still smarting over Rhaenyra’s refusal to recognize his sons as his sons, but then his son gently points out that it took decades for Corlys to do that very dang thing himself. Physician, check thyself.
Eventually, Corlys agrees to help out and return to King’s Landing with his men — but before that can happen, he’s set upon by some Hightower soldiers. Aiee, stab, argh, squelch, hack, etc. etc. Oh, sure, we hear a lot of sounds of carnage, but we don’t see a body.
They already tried this with Corlys. Don’t fall for it.
In the woods outside Rook’s Rest, the comedy team of Aegon, Larys and Tyland bury the body of the dude Aegon killed last week. They decide to head across the Narrow Sea to Essos. Aegon is still mulling Larys’ reading him to (quite literal, and very stinky) filth last week, but you can already feel him shrugging it off.
In the Vale, Rhaena sees her sister riding Moondancer and tries to contact her, but misses the chance. This earns her the snooty wrath of Lady Jeyne Arryn, who summons the squirrelly little thing to the Eyrie and reminds her that she promised to stay hidden. Have to say, Lady Jeyne is being awfully mean to someone whose only friend left in the world is a giant sentient plasma cannon.
Love, love will tear us apart … well, that and dragons
At Harrenhal, Alys and Aemond’s gothy romance is proceeding apace. He makes noises about wanting to leave to find Vhagar, but she (smartly) points out Vhagar might have left to draw the eyes of Rhaenyra away from him while he stays at Harrenhal and recuperates. “The frog in winter sleeps under the ice,” she says, hilariously, incongruously.
(Have you ever seen The Frog in Winter? Kermit as Henry II, Piggy as Eleanor of Aquitaine? Magnificent film. Stirring. Piggy never better — she shared best actress with Barbra Streisand, that year.)
They seal their budding (and blood-ing) Sweeney/Mrs. Lovett love story over the body of a poor stable boy who recognizes Aemond because of his eyepatch. Way to go incognito there, buddy. You could have lied and said you were a fast-food mascot, that you were doing a pop-up event for Long John Silver’s. Handed the kid a coupon for a 10-piece popcorn shrimp combo meal and sent him on his way. Something.
Alys shows Aemond five dragon eggs that Dreamfyre laid at Harrenhal, years back. She’s got big plans for herself and ol’ Long John, does Alys.
Love is clearly in the air: Alyn and Baela get a moment to bond, and kiss. But it’s Addam who’s hung up on her! I mean, if you’re gonna hook up with a half-uncle (resigned sigh), at least pick the one who’s clearly got a thing for you!
Because you can’t spell “Gwayne” without … yeah, you get it
Gwayne has finally made it to Tumbleton, where he proceeds to get royally condescended to by Ormund, whom we learn is, among his many other faults, a homophobe.
Boy, they do just keep piling it on, don’t they? We have yet to see Ormund kick a puppy, but I guess they gotta save something for the season finale.
Daeron (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) loves when Uncle Gwayne visits and take him into the city to see a show.
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When Daeron and Gwayne get a moment alone, we learn what we’ve long suspected — Daeron is only too aware that Ormund’s a monster, which is at least a little comforting. But he’s trapped with the guy, and he resents Gwayne for abandoning him. Gwayne, for his part, has convinced himself that Ormund has too much invested in Daeron to be a danger to the kid, which must seem like only the very coldest of comforts.
Both Gwayne and Daeron know that Ormund’s efforts are doomed to fail — are these two nutty jamokes the clearest-headed characters on the whole show?
Maybe not: We now cut to Alicent and Helaena. And Helaena, for all her airy, woo-woo, hippie-dippie pronouncements, knows what’s up. She knows that Alicent lied to her last week about (not) saving her daughter Jaehaera. And she knows that Alicent’s really just trying to save her own skin, at the end of the day.
In the Red Keep, Rhaenyra hears more petitions from common folk, and offers more entirely unsatisfying answers, which leads to more embittered, peas-and-carrots-peas-and-carrots grumbling from the throng. When she pricks a finger on one of the Iron Throne’s many, rusty, entirely non-OSHA-compliant blades, she swans out of the throne room.
Back in Tumbleton, Ormund is snootily lecturing Daeron (and Gwayne) about how to treat one’s inferiors (read: badly) when the Baratheon assassins dispatched by Rhaenyra show up, pretending to bend the knee to Daeron. Gwayne immediately realizes what’s going on, and takes them out, getting blood and guts and offal and ordure absolutely everywhere — something that sets off Ormund’s fragile sensibilities.
And speaking of sensibilities — turns out Gwayne knew that the head Baratheon wasn’t who he said he was because he knew that the real guy was way hotter. (Gayness as life-saving superpower! Keep your magic dragons — my guy Gwayne’s got a refined and judgy sense of aesthetics! Sure, he’ll ghost you on Westerosi Grindr, but he can swing a sword!)
Ormund (James Norton) destroyed a table a few weeks back — is the closet next?
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Alicent pleads with Rhaenyra one more time to send Helaena away — and offers her some intelligence in exchange, namely that she knows where Aemond is. Helaena’s had a vision of Aemond at Harrenhal, alone, away from Vhagar.
Rhaenyra hatches a plan to send an assassin to Harrenhal in the company of someone Aemond trusts — like, say, oh just spitballin’ here … his mother. Alicent worries that leaving Helaena alone is dangerous; Rhaenyra doesn’t care. Off Alicent goes to Harrenhal.
We get another quick glimpse of sleeping Joffrey, heir to the Iron Throne.
A rider delivers to Rhaenyra a bloody message scrawled on one of the Baratheon would-be assassins’ tunics, letting her know that her plan failed. And that you can’t get blood out of cotton once it’s set in.
Parting Thoughts:
- In the books, when a monarch cuts themselves on the Iron Throne, the smallfolk see it as the throne rejecting them as unworthy. Certainly Old Viserys got himself sliced and diced, during his reign. There were plenty of people in the throne room when Rhaenyra cut herself — but we didn’t see any reaction shots from the crowd, so maybe she got away with it?
- Lookit, I don’t know anything, but my gut says: Worry about Helaena.
- I don’t know anything, but my gut says: Worry about the people of Tumbleton.
- Maybe don’t worry so much about Gwayne, though? Guy’s got his head on right. He seems like a survivor. But I don’t know anything.
- Seems like Alys isn’t just selling Aemond down the river to score Harrenhal for herself — she sincerely wants to share it with him, and their clutch of dragonlets — Chris, Joey, Lance, JC and Justin. It would be cute if it weren’t so disturbing.
- They’re gonna make us watch a scene where Alicent and Rhaenyra react to Cole’s death, aren’t they?
