The kids are not all right in HotD Ep. 7.
Is there really a choice between Team Green and Team Black?
The Short Take:
This is getting ugly. High on shock value, Episode 7 draws a line in the sand. While I think I know which team the show wants us to be on, I’m not sure I want to be on either side.
Dragon Count: 8
(It’s unclear who the new dragons actually are, though.)
Image Credit: NYT
[SPOILER ALERT: Do not creep anywhere near this dragon if you have not seen this episode.]
The Long Take:
I have an alternative title for this week’s episode: How to Steal Your Dragon, the Aemond Targaryen Story.
Yes, yes. I know that technically (technically) what he did was legal. Laena was dead, and Vhagar was available for anyone to try to bond with her. After all, Laena herself — though we unfortunately didn’t see it on screen — sought out Vhagar so that she might claim her, not unlike Aemond. The main difference, though, is that Vhagar’s previous rider at the time — Viserys’ father, Baelon — had already been long dead; Laena’s body, meanwhile, had only dropped into the seas of her final resting place, Driftmark, that day.
I have to admit, it was thrilling to see someone bonding with a dragon; at first it looks like Vhagar is going to roast Aemond alive, then he seems to get through to her and earns not necessarily her respect but attention. I guess he’s been paying attention during Jace’s lessons. But before he seals the deal, she tosses him around like a rag doll in flight to test his metal. So, yes, Aemond’s claiming of Vhagar in this episode was bold, gutsy, and technically legal.
But it was also in poor taste.
Image Credit: The Ringer
Considering that Aemond loses an eye at knifepoint in a fight with a bunch of other kids, his acquisition of a dragon has been downplayed both in the show and within fan discourse. That’s understandable, but I still feel indignant on behalf of Baela, Rhaena, and even Laena’s ghost. More people — on and off screen — should be talking about how Aemond, slinking around like a thief in the night, and ON the night of Laena’s funeral, took Vhagar right out from under Rhaena’s nose. Characters gathered around to put Jace and Luke on trial, but only at the very end of this ordeal is there even a mention of “a dragon.” And it’s not part of the discussion of who was in the right and who was in the wrong at all; rather, it’s only used as a way for Aemond to deescalate the situation, placating Alicent by saying that he thought losing an eye was worth gaining a dragon.
Image Credit: IndieWire
This opportunistic, tasteless move by Aemond is an ambiguous callback to something the late Laena says to Rhaena in Episode 6 — that “if you wish to be a rider, you must claim that right.” Aeomond’s specific interpretation of this edict seems to be “you snooze, you lose,” as part of his strategy is to approach Vhagar a.) as soon as possible and b.) when everyone else is either asleep or supposed to be sleeping (I found the number of times various characters told one another to go to bed hilarious). Perhaps Condal and Sapochnik planted this comment to foreshadow Aemond claiming that right instead, or perhaps they did so to set the false expectation that Rhaena could claim Vhagar this week. Or both.
Regardless, I hope Rhaena will go on to claim her own dragon in a future episode. In general, I feel as though the young Velaryon sisters have gotten short shrift in the story. I loved seeing Baela punch Aemond in the face (apparently she and her sister are not even in the fight in Fire and Blood; their inclusion here is an improvement). But beyond that we mainly see them sitting in corners as passive observers. Will they have a bigger role once they team up with their grandmother, Rhaenys, who clearly wants to establish them as heirs? She seems to care about them the most during the funeral. Or will they have work to do on Team Rhaenyra (sorry, Team Black) now that their father, Daemon, has married his niece? We need to keep saying that because it’s easy to forget. This is peak Targaryen-norm incest here, folks. But I digress.
More broadly, this whole situation — of Aemond claiming Vhagar and the ensuing fight that ends with his losing an eye — is representative of what, to me, this episode conveys about the next generation of Targaryens more broadly. That they cannot function like a normal family because the politics of succession and their families’ respective hunger for power inevitably interfere. Under more “normal” circumstances — namely, without the escalating tension over what will happen once Viserys dies — these characters could try to be friends, playing together and sitting at a proverbial kid’s table at a big family event like this. As a family, they should be able to console one another and grieve together. The game of thrones does not allow for that, of course; instead, they must worry about the balance of power amongst the royal houses.
Image Credit: NYT
Last week I commented that the show’s time jump felt like a whole new series due to the introduction of so many next gen Targaryens, and while this week’s episode clearly climaxes with the intense knife-wrestling between Alicent and Rhaenyra (and that moment was intensely amazing; it’s just that everyone’s already talking about it, so I won’t do so here), for me it does more to set up what feels like important dynamics between all of their kids. One of the less obvious ones, for example, is between Baela and Jace. Upon Rhaenyra’s suggestion, Jace walks over to Baela and Rhaena to offer condolences, and Baela grabs Jace’s hand. Later on we see them banding together against Aemond. I don’t want to speculate about future incestuous betrothals, but these are Targaryens, after all.
Image Credit: IndieWire
Granted, last week’s episode established Aemond as “obsessed with those beasts,” as Alicent says, but he, arguably, doesn’t go for this dragon on this day in such a brazenly cruel manner if he’s hasn’t been raised all his life under Alicent’s propaganda, passed down from Otto, about how their family has to fight for the throne if they want to survive. What we see in this episode is that Alicent’s fear-mongering has fallen on deaf ears with Aegon, as all he cares about is drinking and checking out “creatures with long legs.” Yet it has molded Aemond into an ambitious and vitriolic lad. There was potentially still hope for him because we see him awkwardly trying to connect with the other kids at Laena’s wake. But his claiming of Vhagar and the ensuing confrontation with Rhaena, Baela, Jace, and Luke bring him past the point of no return.
Everyone on this show seems to have set on varying paths to varying degrees villainy, though. And that’s what makes House of the Dragon most unlike Game of Thrones. The newer series more fully commits to moral grayness. Some characters are certainly more likable than others, but no character is wholly good, noble, or in the right in the way that several Thrones characters were. The Stark family didn’t always make the best of choices (in fact, they sometimes made the worst ones), but we were always rooting for them without much qualifying. Arya was often ruthless, and Sansa often frosty towards other characters we liked, but they all followed Ned Stark’s lead in winning my support. Same with Tyrion. He said questionable things from time to time, but the worst I could accuse him of is drinking too much. I could still count on him to try to do the right thing at the end of the day.
Image Credit: TVLine
My favorite House of the Dragon characters, on the other hand, make me squeamish. I have adored Matt Smith as an actor since his run on Doctor Who, and he makes this show 10x more fun every time he appears in a scene. I’m even charmed by Daemon occasionally, until I remember that he murdered his wife a few episodes ago. And that he tried to entrap his teenaged niece in a brothel. And stole the dragon egg of his dead infant nephew. He can’t be a good guy after all of that. And yet this episode positions him potentially as such. I don’t think Rhaenyra is naïve about who Daemon is. She admits that she thinks he’s capable of depravity, of murder. And yet the show depicts her long-awaited union with Daemon as romantic and self-actualizing in a way that seems to contradict that understanding. To me, that’s fascinating and creepy at the same time in a way that has me on the hook still, but I can completely understand if some viewers aren’t into the idea at all.
What about Rhaenyra, you ask? Wasn’t I on Team Rhaenyra at some point? I’ve declared allegiance to Team Rhaenyra throughout the young Rhaenyra arc in Episodes 1-5. She was arrogant, stubborn, and sometimes selfish, but I was fairly confident that I’d want her to rule Westeros over all the other characters. This episode, however, casts a light yet discernible shadow over that. I do think that her platonic care for Laenor is real, and that her proposal to Daemon about how to get Laenor “out of the way” is in fact to fake his death and have them all in on the plan. When Daemon says they can’t get married unless Laenor is dead, he’s actually thinking about murdering him (probably), but what the show fakes us out with is Rhaenyra’s comment “I know.” In the moment it sounds like she’s saying yea let’s kill him. But really what she’s about to say is let’s make everyone think he’s dead and give him the freedom he’s always wanted.
Even still, I sense a ruthlessness in adult Rhaenyra that makes me really nervous. Her desire to marry Daemon in of itself reveals such a ruthlessness, as her pursuit of him is as political as it is romantic. She wants him because he’s dangerous rather than in spite of that because it will instill fear in challengers. Plus, as several podcasters have pointed out, they still kill someone; he’s just the Thrones version of a Star Trek red shirt — completely expendable and forgettable.
Image Credit: NYT
The ultimate tragedy of this, though, lies in the next generation, the kids. Jace, Luke, Baela, and Rhaena all seem like good kids, but even they have been pushed to extreme violence. LUKE SLICES AEMOND’S FACE. Even if it was in self-defense, that’s still brutal.
Clearly, no one is clearly good. There are no “good guys.” At the same time, the series makes it difficult to choose any side but Team Black. (Though if you are a Team Green supporter I want to hear from you and understand you.) And yet, House of the Dragon asks us to choose teams. We hear Rhaenyra refer to Alicent and family as “The Greens” for the first time in this episode, and if the couple of podcasts I’ve listened to so far are any indication, the parlance of The Greens and The Blacks will be quite common in and out of the show going forward.
I know I just said that I find it hard to give myself over to Team Black, but, at the same time, I definitely want nothing to do with Team Green. I’ve despised Otto Hightower and his scheming from the beginning, and while I have empathized with Alicent for a while now, her pettiness, desire for total control, and passing down of generational trauma in the past two episodes, while not entirely of her own making (as we have seen in the first five episodes), is still enough for me to not want to side with her at all. Criston Cole, who now appears to be a misogynist — based on the way he talks about Rhaenyra — and a homophobe — based on how violent he got with Joffrey Monmouth at The Green Wedding and how he scoffs at comments people make about Laenor — is reason enough to not touch Team Green. That guy is the worst. No one on Team Black is clearly good, but everyone (with maybe the exception of Helaena, who just wants to hang out with bugs) on Team Green is bad.
So there’s only one choice but no choice is the right choice?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m loving this show. And I will keep on loving it. I’m just a little confused about how the show thinks we will feel about all of these characters and how much it’s building its story around that confusion.
Dragon Watch:
We can finally check “dragon moot” off my wish list, with I think five dragons all flying around in one scene. But aside from the Vhagar plot line, I think this was a case of quantity over quality. I could barely tell who any of them were. I didn’t have a chance to do an instant replay, but the assumption on the street is that they must be all the dragons of funeral guests with full grown dragons: Daemon/Caraxes, Rhaenyra/Syrax, Laenor/Seasmoke, Aegon/Sunfyre, and Helaena/Dreamfyre. Rhaenys’ dragon Meleys would presumably be “parked” somewhere because she lives in Driftmark, and, sadly, Vhagar would have been riderless in this scene. (And I’d say in mourning, but she rebounds with Aemond SO quickly. I need to know what was going through her head there. Or maybe there was nothing going through her head there?)
I can’t complain about the quantity over quality because we got so much meaningful Vhagar time, though. Even if I don’t approve of Aemond claiming Vhagar, it still counts as cool dragon watching.
Image Credit: Insider
I’m also a fan of the way in which we’re in a full blown dragons arms race. Otto comments on how gaining Vhagar is a huge boon for House Hightower in the civil war to come because it increases their power. One can assume that we’ll see some of the smaller dragons like Jace’s Vermax level up a little before the season’s end, but until then I don’t want to weigh in on which Team can out-dragon the other. The Ringer’s Zack Cram implies that Vhagar going Team Green significantly evens the playing field. In an ideal world, I would prefer the dragons to act more as animal companions and friends rather than armaments. If I had my way, Vhagar would have been sentient and autonomous enough to tell Aemond to get lost, you little punk. But I’ll take what I can get.