Home of the Dragon has at all times been about how the smallest selections can have unexpected penalties, however hardly ever has that theme been as clear because it was within the season 2 premiere. Within the present’s first episode again from break, Daemon Targaryen decides to take issues into his personal arms with a plot that most likely may have used a little bit extra planning (basic Daemon). However whereas the e book’s model of those occasions is fittingly brutal, the present’s strategy is quieter, extra human, and arguably a little bit extra horrifying.
[Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for House of the Dragon season 2 episode 1.]
Within the e book model of the story, the assassins on the heart of this episode’s motion are named Blood and Cheese. And whereas they don’t get these foolish names within the present, they do get a degree of horror and humanity that the e book doesn’t have time to afford them. The e book variations are boogeymen, terrifying lowlifes who kill a handmaiden and a handful of guards, and appear gleefully merciless in the best way they slay Prince Jaehaerys — tricking Queen Helaena into first naming her youthful son for demise earlier than killing her firstborn as an alternative.
Picture: HBO
And whereas these variations of the characters are considerably extra stomach-churning, the present’s strategy feels way more acceptable thematically. Slightly than the murderous wraiths of the e book, who slip into the queen mom’s chambers, leaving a pile of our bodies behind them, Home of the Dragon’s assassins merely transfer via the fortress unnoticed, a pair of employed arms of low standing and low intelligence, functionally invisible to the royalty who personal the halls. After they attain troublesome junctures within the fortress’s tunnels, or troublesome selections, they panic and bicker and bumble. The Blood and Cheese of the present aren’t gifted killers, they’re simply amoral males despatched to do one thing too disgusting for anybody to have imagined potential.
Including to all of that is the sense of desperation that the pair’s assembly with Daemon appears to have instilled in them. In keeping with showrunner Ryan Condal, the crew wished the set-piece to play out like a “heist gone flawed,” and because the scene stretches on, we are able to really feel their fear set in, making them extra reckless, merciless, and hurried within the course of. Whereas the present cleverly leaves Daemon’s last phrases a thriller, the pair’s worry over what Daemon will do to them in the event that they fail is palpable.
“We all know who Daemon is; I don’t assume he essentially straight ordered the demise of a kid,” Condal mentioned in a roundtable. “However he clearly mentioned, If it’s not Aemond, don’t go away the fortress empty-handed.”
So after they can’t discover their preliminary goal, it is sensible that these two determine to accept the primary royal son they’ll discover. It’s the sort of hurried resolution that solely these two brutes may make. And, in a scene that’s each grotesque and humorous, the 2 assassins notice that they’ll’t even inform the 2 kids asleep of their beds aside, and must riddle their manner via Helaena’s reply. The entire thing is a ridiculous farce from two folks barely competent sufficient to tug any of this off.
Picture: HBO
All of this builds into the present’s improbable slippery slope of assumptions. Whereas the viewers might know that Aemond’s slaying of Lucerys Velaryon within the skies over Storm’s Finish was an unintended consequence of not understanding his personal dragon’s energy, for Daemon, it looks like an act of clear and predetermined aggression. He most likely didn’t anticipate the assassins to return away with the pinnacle of a toddler prince, however he thinks letting two assassins unfastened within the Purple Maintain with less-than-clear orders is nothing greater than a slight escalation.
These are the sort of spiraling, misinformed selections that Home of the Dragon builds its stunning, flawed, and deeply human historical past out of. Certain, the present is elevated to the heights of fantasy, nevertheless it’s nonetheless essentially a narrative of damaged, livid, and defective characters making rash selections after which coping with the results — these penalties simply typically occur to contain dragons and battle.
All of that is true to Martin’s imaginative and prescient, in fact. It’s the identical sort of storytelling he employs always in A Track of Ice and Fireplace, however whereas the unique Recreation of Thrones collection continuously needed to lower down on the humanness of its story just by advantage of its huge scale, it’s always thrilling to see how successfully Home of the Dragon goes the other way, increasing on Martin’s written historical past in Fireplace & Blood and turning these quasi-mythical historic figures into flesh-and-blood folks and unbelievable characters, as much as and together with the lowlife assassins who don’t even want their foolish little names.
