Warning: Full spoilers follow for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 2.
In the second episode of House of the Dragon Season 2, Team Black and Team Green aren’t just dealing with the emotional fallout of the devastating murder of Prince Jaehaerys. No, of course the child’s death leads to even more moves and counter-moves by the two groups as they vie for control of the Iron Throne.
I spoke to the stars of the show about the latest developments in this week’s episode, including some big moves by Ser Criston Cole, Daemon’s dramatic departure from Dragonstone, and the intense and emotional duel between the twin brothers Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk.
Every Dragon in Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon
Battle of the Twins: Ser Erryk vs. Ser Arryk
By the events of Episode 2, Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk, played by real-life twins Elliott and Luke Tittensor, have found themselves as divided as Team Black and Team Green. But after Jaehaerys’ murder, Ser Criston concocts a revenge scheme that ends tragically for both brothers.
Fabien Frankel, who plays Criston, says that his character is “genuinely very upset” about the death of the child.
“I think he really thinks it’s his fault,” he says. “He wasn’t there. He should have been there. He was with the queen when that happened. And I think he feels a great burden of responsibility. And so it’s like a kid, when you tell a kid they’ve done something wrong and they just want to fix it, whatever it is, and they can’t really understand the nuances of how to fix it in a way that’s rational. So they fix it by just doing something that feels immediate.”
Everyone’s going to hate Cole so much after that. -Fabien Frankel
And so he sends Arryk to kill Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy), but Erryk intercepts his brother. In the end, Erryk kills Arryk, and Arryk immediately commits suicide in his grief.
“It’s obviously very sad,” continues Frankel. “I don’t want them to die at all. They’re my two favorites. … Everyone’s going to hate Cole so much after that. Jesus Christ.”
D’Arcy was on set during the duel between the two knights, as Rhaenyra barely escapes Arryk’s blade before his brother intercedes.
“I just watched the work,” they recall. “The stunt coordination is astonishing. It happened over days and days. Luke and Elliott worked extraordinarily hard, as hard as I’ve ever seen people work on camera, I think. I don’t want to speak for them and I hope they will speak about this at some point, but I think that the whole sequence had a deep personal resonance.”
The Changing of the Hand
Meanwhile, King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) has replaced Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) with Ser Criston as his new Hand. We saw in the season premiere that Larys (Matthew Needham) was scheming, as always, as he met with the king, and it seems that now we know what seed he was planting. I asked Needham if his character’s plan was to become the Hand himself eventually.
“I think it’s just changing the board,” he says. “The board’s constantly changing, and getting rid of Otto, that’s a big player out. I don’t know whether he instantly thinks he’s going to fill that space, but somebody will. And then that could possibly change again. So I don’t think it’s remove and take over.”
Frankel adds that Criston will be more of “a man of action” as Hand than Otto was.
“He’s going to do what he wants to do and he’s going to do it at the cost of whatever it takes to achieve what he thinks is right,” says the actor. “But I think, to be honest, he just wants to get out of the castle. I think he’s been trapped there for so long. He’s been there since the beginning. He never gets out and he’s suddenly put in a position where he can get out and he can hatch a plan to get him out and get Aemond out and resolve what we feel is a war that’s taking too long to end. There’s too much talking and it’s just got to a point where it’s like, how many more of these games are we going to play? Let’s just go and fix it.”
When Rhaenyra realizes that Daemon (Matt Smith) was behind the murder of the young prince, the two have a falling out which results in Daemon taking off on his dragon for parts unknown.
“He’s like, ‘Bye! Fuck you! That’s enough,’” laughs Smith. “I find it so petulant.”
Several other characters react to the Blood and Cheese killing in memorable ways, including Aegon, who is not only thirsty for revenge, but also seen just crying by himself at one point.
House of the Dragon Season 2 Images
“It also shows [the king is] capable of love,” says Glynn-Carney of his typically cold character. “I hear a lot of people make those comparisons with Aegon and Joffrey [from Game of Thrones]. I disagree with that because Joffrey is a psychopath and I don’t think Aegon is. He’s way more complex than that.”
Ewan Mitchell, who plays Aemond – the original target of Blood and Cheese – says that his characters sees the civil war between Team Black and Team Green as inevitable at this point.
“It’s either them or it’s us. And Aemond chooses them, I think, by hook or by crook. You even see it in Episode 1, the Shadow Council, this idea that Cole and Aemond, they’re kind of manipulating the Council to what they want to, to their kind of vision of how things are going to go. They want to take the reigns.”
But what do you think of what went down in Episode 2? Let’s discuss in the comments…
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