Ryan Shoots First: House of the Dragon (S2 Ep4) “The Red Dragon and the Gold”
It’s Sunday Night Dragon Fight Night in Westeros as the dragons come off the bench and things really kick into gear. Rooks Rest is here and once the dragon fire is out of the tube there is no putting it back in. In my review last week I mentioned how that episode felt like a breather setup episode. Wrapping up some things and setting up some others, well if that is true than this episode is all action and payoff.
The dragons are presented as nuclear bomb-level threats in this war and each side having them is a deterrent. Something Rhaenyra is acutely aware of and why she takes such great risk to plead with Alicent for any other way. As we know that failed and now she’s driven by a renewed purpose after hearing of her father’s dying words to Alicent. So now the dragons are on the table as we head to Rooks Rest. In the books, the thing about Rooks Rest is it is a relatively unimportant location, a small castle that really no one would pay to much mind to and would not be drawing the attention of the rival crown wearers. In that is the irony that such a significant event in the story takes place there.
Beyond that, we get some stark contrast here of just how terrible Alicent is. For a marketing campaign that focuses on which side you pick it is very clear in the show Rhaenyra is good and Alicent is terrible. Season 1 leaned that way but gave Alicent some outs for the Team Greens but they are struggling this season to rep for her. At every chance she is proven to be a terrible mother to her children and just a pretty awful person and after last week a stupid one doubling down after Rhaenyra cleared up the Song of Ice and Fire.
So again there will be massive effects from this week and next week will have significant fallout… for lack of a better term.
Observations
- Dreams do be like that sometimes
- Not Milly!
- They’re still struggling with that “your grace” thing
- Yea he’s def a bastard
- Ughh I hate when my kids drop and break my DnD minis.
- Oh no. Alicent.
- Bam! That’s some great sass
- This council sucks
- Man that ginger has some DEMONS in him.
- Rooks Rest is a pretty big point in this story.
- Aemond really is Daemon 2.0
- Haha nice piece of work there with the subtitles
- Alicent you gotta throw that thing out, sister.
- This lady playing mind games
- Harrenhall doing a number on Daemon
- Again this show hates the gold cloaks
- Aegon just can’t win man.
- That chick hates her son.
- Geeze Jace. Chill.
- Rhaeys is the definition of ride or die
- Aegon about to get a DUI
- Sunfire!
- I hope she doesn’t finish the story and makes Jace wait for 10 years
- Ohhhh no
- Was all that necessary when he was just gonna see it anyway?
- What’s Aemond up to?
- Dragon on dragon. It’s on now.
- Woah that was cool.
- Sunfire is getting effed up
- Here comes the big girl
- Like I said. Ride or die
- She’s so calm about it.
- Man that was brutal
- Vhagar is a menace
- This is what dragons do.
- That horse is just waiting for his master to wake up.
- Sunfire did not pull a toothless
