13: "A Son for a Son" (S2E1)

[00:00:21] Hey everybody, I'm Wendy. I'm Rennie and I'm Veronica and this is Dragon Cast, a podcast dedicated to House of the Dragon. This week we're discussing the House of the Dragon season 2 episode 1, A Son for a Son. I will give a brief synopsis from HBO.

[00:00:46] Actually no, HBO didn't have a synopsis. I was looking for it everywhere but they didn't have anything so I actually got this off IMDB. It says, while Rennera struggles to come to terms with her son's murder in King's Landing,

[00:01:01] Allicent grows concerned that Aegon's small council may lead them to an all-out war. Larris suggests Aegon needs a new hand and Rennera arrives at a fateful decision. I feel like that does not sum up this episode at all. Not at all. No, not at all.

[00:01:19] And almost surprising that they pulled out Larris suggesting the new hand when that was such a small piece. It was like 30 seconds. Yeah, although I feel like it's probably gonna be important later. I feel like they just want to lay that groundwork. Yeah.

[00:01:39] Wendy, you said this came from IMDB because HBO didn't even put out a synopsis. They're being super mysterious. They're trying not to be spoilery, I think, HBO. I appreciate that even though we're dying for any little glimpse and I watched next week's preview multiple times.

[00:02:01] All right, you want to just get started with our highlights. Veronica, you want to go first? Yeah, I think I'll just start with where the episode began, which was the north.

[00:02:15] And one just that opening scene was so gorgeous. Like before I even fully knew we were in the north, it was just I wanted to go be walking in those woods like it was gorgeous.

[00:02:25] And then coming on to Winterfell, it hit all the nostalgia of Game of Thrones that felt welcoming and familiar. And Kragen was just everything I thought he would be. He was a stark through and through.

[00:02:41] I chuckled that we got Winter is coming in like the first five minutes or maybe even 30 seconds. I believe, Rennie, that you called out that we would definitely be hearing that and sure enough we did.

[00:02:54] And yeah, I mean it opens up to the voiceover with Kragen just reflecting on duty and the importance of the Night's Watch. And I really loved the tidbit about how they had made the Night's Watch more than just the criminals that were forced to go there,

[00:03:16] that they were sort of honoring that duty by choosing a man of their own family to send to the wall. And that's how important they felt it was and that it wasn't a punishment,

[00:03:27] it was an honor. And I just loved all that and then I really liked the sort of friendly chemistry between Kragen and Jace. I just thought that was really nice and

[00:03:44] you know, you could see the pain in Kragen's face as he's having to deliver the news from the Raven to Jace. And so yeah, I just thought that was so well done and everything I would have hoped

[00:03:56] for in getting the glimpse of the North and I hope we get to see some more of all that. Yeah, just the music. I knew exactly where we were and the music just tugged at my heart strings

[00:04:11] and oh so beautiful. Glimpse is the right word though Veronica. After all of the previews have really emphasized Kragen and the wall and we've seen it, we were there for two minutes and that's it for the whole episode. Like wait, wait. Whoa, we're done.

[00:04:35] I think that's a great summary of this whole episode of just how quickly we moved through a lot of content that I did not expect to happen quite on this timeline so I agree.

[00:04:50] I really liked Jace's shaggy new hairdo and just I think the actor himself and the character both seem to have matured and I just really, really liked the vibe that we got and I agree you could

[00:05:06] really see them bonding better receiving he received than or Luke received at the hands of the Baratheons. Yeah and did you recognize that Kragen has ice strapped across his back? I was just

[00:05:24] about to ask you, I literally had the last piece of my notes I didn't get to in this section was to ask you if you knew what sword that he was carrying because I couldn't remember

[00:05:35] the name of the sword so it's ice. That is ice. That is the sword that we first see Ned Stark wielding in the first episode of Game of Thrones and that you know later gets melted down but there it is in all its glory.

[00:05:55] I have some questions. I'm so glad but like we have Renny, we could just ask questions. We see them at the beginning of every winter he said that they draw stones to see which one out of

[00:06:11] 10 men will go to the wall. I would have assumed that the firstborn the heir would be exempt from that. Was he the Lord of Winterfell and in the Night's Watch? No, he was not in the Night's

[00:06:29] Watch. Okay so he's just the Lord of Winterfell visiting the wall? Correct. Okay, yeah. All right. Yeah so that's an interesting thing and I think that the show is shorthanding something from the books. That tradition didn't exist in the books but what I think they're trying to convey

[00:06:47] is that back in the times prior to the decadent times that Game of Thrones takes place in, the Night's Watch really was honorable and the people who the men who made it up came

[00:07:03] from good families and they were not sent there because they were serving sentences for crimes and so I think that that idea of drawing the lots in order to see who was going to go just

[00:07:18] shows that it was an important duty and honorable men went to the watch. The way he was dressed, I mean he had this dark emblem but it was all black and so I couldn't decide which way it was going.

[00:07:34] Yeah that's a really good thing to point out. He is not in the Night's Watch. He is at this point already a widower. He has a wife who has died and even though he's only like I don't know 22

[00:07:50] years old or something like that, he's like three or four years older than Jace and he is the Lord of Winterfell and the Warden of the North and I will tell you that he will remarry.

[00:08:06] That's all I'll say at this point. And then I have another question and this takes us back to Game of Thrones. Is that how Benjen came to the wall in a similar fashion? Oh wow. No, nobody knows at this point nobody knows how Benjen came to the wall.

[00:08:25] That is not explained in any of the source material. However there's a lot of speculation and fan theories about how Benjen came to the wall. It's possible that Benjen went to the wall because he felt guilty about Rhaegar and Liana running off together because he might have

[00:08:54] had something to do with that. But that's not a known thing. That's a fan theory. But nonetheless, you do have, you still have honorable people in the Night's Watch because

[00:09:09] Gior Mormont who gives Longclaw to Jon Snow who's the Lord Commander, he had been the Lord of Bear Isle and he of his own free will went to the watch to turn it over to his son Jorah and let him be

[00:09:31] the Lord. So yeah. Well, and I think you even see remnants of sort of this history of within the Starks that's still being somewhat honorable to be on the wall because Jon has sort of taken

[00:09:47] it back and surprised at how much rabble there is there like he thought it was going to be many more men like his uncle and you saw him sort of go through the emotions of that.

[00:10:02] That's right. And then don't forget, the last two books in this series still aren't out so we still don't know a lot of questions. It's not yet confirmed in the books that Jon Snow is the son

[00:10:17] of Rhaegar and Leanna, but I mean, duh, he is. Yeah. But that's not in print yet. But one of the big mysteries is why Ned lets Jon join the watch? Is it just because he thinks he'll be safe there

[00:10:32] and Ned's whole life has been devoted to keeping him safe? I think so. Kind of a mystery. I think as long as a Baratheon was on the throne, he was going to keep Jon as far away from that as

[00:10:48] possible. And what better place to disappear? Right? You can't get farther away than the wall. Right. Yeah. I have one more question before we leave this topic. Pragan tells Jace that in the

[00:11:03] past, other lords, other Targaryens had came to visit the wall and their dragons would not go over it. Correct. And as we know, Daenerys' dragons did go over it. And so I just wondered what you

[00:11:18] thought of that? Well, yeah. So I think it drove a lot of book readers crazy when Daenerys' dragons just went flying right over the wall. Right. Because there's a big point made out of it.

[00:11:34] And here's another thing that's a little strange is the story Pragan tells is not quite book accurate. And I'm not sure why they didn't make it accurate because there's no, nothing gained by what they said. So Pragan says that Jaehaerys and Alessane came to the wall.

[00:11:53] But actually, Jaehaerys never came to the wall. He never went further north than Winterfell, but Alessane came to the wall. And one of the castles along the wall is called Queen's Crown, Queen's Gate.

[00:12:07] I can't remember if it's Queen's Crown or Queen's Gate. But anyway, it's named after Alessane. But her dragon, Silverwing, refused to fly over the wall even though she tried to fly Silverwing over the wall three times. And they weren't standing on the wall watching. Alessane

[00:12:25] was on the dragon trying to fly her over the wall and she wouldn't go. And so that's like a sign of the magic that is imbued in the wall. So yeah, that is an important thing. Thank you. That satisfies all my stark lore.

[00:12:44] Jaehaerys could have gotten north by flying around the wall because the wall only crosses the continent, you know, the piece of land and the ocean on either side. And they were on that side too. Yeah.

[00:12:59] They knew John was above the wall. Maybe they would cross to save a Targaryen. Maybe. Yeah, that's a good theory. But the different strands of the books and the shows are a little bit crossed up about that point at this juncture.

[00:13:17] So. All right. Renny, you want to go next? Yes. So where is your self-righteousness now, Alessane Hightower? You know, she disapproved of Renera's sexual liberation. And in the scene last season where

[00:13:37] she cuts Renera, she says, where is duty? Where is sacrifice? Well, she's not so much into sacrifice anymore. You know, I will say for Alessane, she waited until she was a widow, evidently, because there's no indication that she was getting it on with Kristen before Viserys died. But

[00:13:57] Viserys is dead now and she's most evidently getting it on with Kristen. And, you know, after the first scene where they're together, Alessane says they can't do it again. But at the end, you know, there they are again. I don't think she means it.

[00:14:18] So in the About the Episode segment afterwards, the director, Alan Taylor, said that Kristen Cole is the most messed up of all the characters. And I actually found this relationship to be the most shocking thing in the episode, in part because it's not,

[00:14:40] it doesn't happen in the books. It's show only. But I think the intent is to give Alessane agency. And I noticed a very small thing, but I think it's important and that is after they

[00:14:58] get it on at the beginning of the show, when they're getting dressed again, there's a brief shot of Alessane slipping her foot back into her shoe. And that's kind of the opposite of what happened with Larry's last season where she... Oh, I didn't even think of that.

[00:15:19] Yeah. And so I think it's an indication that she's the one who's in control of this relationship with Kristen. And then Kristen hands her his cloak and says, would you, meaning would you

[00:15:34] help me put it back on? And she fastens it on for him, which is an echo of the bridegroom putting his cloak onto a bride at West Rosie weddings in order to put the bride under his

[00:15:51] protection. And it's as if Kristen is being put under Alessane's protection with her putting the cloak on him rather than the other way around. And so I just think that really is showing that she's in charge in the relationship with Kristen. He's her boy toy.

[00:16:11] And that's kind of nice that she gets to have that. But it does make her a stinking hypocrite for everything that she said to Reneara. Both of them. And she's also now showing that she does not

[00:16:27] trust Laris and she's rejecting him because when she's in the bath, she sends away those maids. And it's because he told her that he's fired all of the staff who confessed to be on the side

[00:16:40] of the blacks. And he has personally chosen her staff. So she's looking at them and she's looking at that one of them is doing something with bath salts or something. And she's thinking, oh,

[00:16:49] maybe Laris is going to poison me or kill me or something. I don't think he fired them, right? He said they were no longer breathing. Well, no. He killed the people who he thought were disloyal. And the new people who are with her

[00:17:05] at her bath are ones that he told her he personally chose for her. And she doesn't trust that. No, she should not. Yeah. I also noticed that both of the sex scenes with Kristen and Allison, and she was in the dominant position. That's correct. Very much so. Yeah.

[00:17:33] I liked that. I thought that was interesting. And I did not expect it. I definitely thought there was chemistry between them, but I just figured it would be unrequited forever. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's the first scene we see the two of them in this season.

[00:17:51] That's right. I was so outraged, like my jaw was just on the floor, so angry because, you know, this last week I was rewatching season one and that is the moment where Allison and Kristen

[00:18:05] Cole turned to just complete hatred of Reneira is when they find out that she slept with, and when Allison finds out that she slept with Kristen and when Reneira suggests this exact same setup that Kristen is now accepting with Allison and just the hypocrisy of all that

[00:18:25] made me furious. And then I was doubly furious because of what you said, like poor, like in another world, poor Allison, who's been forced to marry the king, have children at a very young age,

[00:18:37] be forced to go to him when he calls his body's rotting away. She suffers through it all. And finally, she gets to get something passionate and fulfilling. And I want to be happy for her,

[00:18:54] but I'm so angry at her because of the hypocrisy. I thought about that, like the contrast between the only other sex scene that we've seen Allison Den with Viserys where she barely seems like a

[00:19:10] willing participant. I mean, she can't even make eye contact with him. And in these scenes, she's enjoying herself. Yeah. Very interesting. And the only other thing I wrote about it is that I mean, Kristen just seems like he's dead inside in the whole episode. Yeah.

[00:19:43] Well, as the director said, Kristen is the most messed up of all the characters. I believe that I do. Like he just seems, I mean, what's his motivation for going on? I mean, maybe it's love for Allison. Maybe it's, you know, he feels like this is my whole

[00:20:01] purpose of living and I'm going to do whatever she tells me to do, even if it's something that I don't agree in because he doesn't. I think it's hatred of Reneira more than love of Allison.

[00:20:11] It still wants to hear what he said. Revenge. He said that to Aamond about Reneira having Allison in her claws from a young age or something. I mean, he called her a cunning spider.

[00:20:25] Yeah. Yep. But yet, she's doing exactly what Allison did and she was a young girl on Allison's grown woman. And I think she actually, like I think Reneira cared about him. Like that was

[00:20:42] she wanted that to be her love match even though they couldn't really be together in public and to have the reaction he did to then hunch a man's face in over it. Like, sorry, I just

[00:20:55] want rewatched season one like I said, so I'm so fresh on all that. But those two, I feel like they added this in just to make the greens a little more despicable to all of us because it definitely sent me over the edge with them.

[00:21:13] I don't know if it makes them more despicable. It makes them more human in a lot of ways. I don't know. I have a real soft spot for Allison. My daughter just spent like an hour

[00:21:26] yesterday telling me how I'm wrong. But I do have a soft spot for Allison. I think she's been given a tough road. Yeah, I think the show is very deliberately trying to

[00:21:44] make us see that Allison has been given a tough road. Yeah. And like I see her lighting candles for her mom and for she likes a candle for Luke and I believe she means that but I think it's all too

[00:21:59] late and too far gone for her. Like there's no doesn't I don't know we're just getting started but it seems like it would be difficult to have a redemption of Allison. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:13] Yeah. All right, what am I going to talk about? There's a lot of finger pointing in this episode. Everybody is blaming everybody else for everything that has happened in the last three episodes. Damon's blaming Reneease for not killing the Greens with dragonfire when she had the chance.

[00:22:34] He blames Ranara for taking off searching for Luke's body. Oh and I had a question, Rene. When Ranara was searching for Luke's body was that at Storm's End? Yes. Okay so that was the castle that we saw in the distance. Yes, that's Shipbreaker Bay and

[00:23:00] that is right near Storm's End so yeah it's an interesting thing that she was there and she didn't fly over and get Cyrax to do a heron haul on Storm's End. Yeah. They would have deserved it.

[00:23:14] Let's see. Aegon says they should have killed Ranara when they had the chance. Otto and Allison blame Amond for killing Luceris. Otto and Allison blame each other. Damon blamed Ser Eric for not

[00:23:32] killing Aegon. Aegon and Amond and Cole blame Otto and Allison for holding them back. It's a lot of finger pointing in this episode. A lot of assigning blame to others. Yeah that's a really

[00:23:45] good observation and it's really true. Why is this all such a mess because it's not just Greens versus Blacks. It's Greens versus Greens and Blacks versus Blacks. Yeah it's all a nasty, nasty web. Yeah lots of complicated character arcs and I'm just loving it.

[00:24:08] All right let's go back to you Veronica. You know I think I'll just jump on to what you just mentioned which was Ranara's ride to go look for Luc's remains. You know she really just needed that closure and I think it makes so much

[00:24:26] sense and I even like tell they sort of had Damon not understand it because how common is it that couples grieve in very different ways and obviously you know I know he cared about Luc but

[00:24:41] it wasn't even his you know actual child and so I even liked that they sort of represented that disconnect of it but then you know when they show her I felt like she once again this

[00:24:54] episode carried so much emotion and pain and strength with very little to say did she have like one line the whole that is correct I believe. Yes one line you know but she

[00:25:11] it was impossible for me not to think of sort of Danny at the end of Game of Thrones when she's lost so many people that she loves and cares about just as Ranara is on her dragon and

[00:25:25] her face is dirty and ashen and she is just so pained and yeah she finds the wing but then when she finds his cloak like oh my heart just broke for her and I thought it was really well done

[00:25:43] once again this show is just really doing grief around all these losses really really well and the actors and actresses are killing it and then yeah then she you know she gets that closure and then she is ready for vengeance

[00:26:03] and she strides through the hall and says she wants Aamond and that's all she says and goes on and then the only other bit we see from her is once again tons of emotion without any words

[00:26:17] when when Jace comes back and she goes to embrace him and so yeah there were a lot of very emotional moments for me in that piece of the story and just thought it was really really

[00:26:32] beautifully done. Yeah she's amazing and and the actor who plays Jace I think just really did an incredible job again I think he's really matured into the role and so much was

[00:26:49] conveyed without a lot of words in that scene you can really see the love that Ranara has for her children something that you don't see clearly with Allison. You can really see it with Ranara.

[00:27:02] Ranara I think just had that connection that again you look back at Allison once she was younger but every time she was holding every time they portrayed her holding her children as babies

[00:27:16] she seemed uncomfortable and unsure and had a maid very quickly intervening but I think we've seen Ranara have the ability to really bond with with her children and so

[00:27:29] you know I think a son for a son may not even be even if it had played out how they hoped I don't know that that would have been the same below to each of them that it was losing Luke.

[00:27:43] Yeah I feel like they would have thought more in what they've lost strategically. Mm-hmm yeah absolutely yeah well Ranara has better sons. Jason Luke are great. Hey gone and Aiman not so great.

[00:28:03] Yeah and I think Ranara has had to really be in protection mode for them her whole life she had to hide their real identity and protect them and it felt like they were always being threatened. Mm-hmm yep yes absolutely I loved those scenes.

[00:28:29] Alright Ran. Okay so my next point is dragons. Yes I think you know they've been indicating that we're gonna get more even more dragon action this season and I think we are seeing

[00:28:47] that in the first episode which is just great. The scene on the on the beach that you mentioned Veronica when Ranara finds Erac's wing and Luceris' cloak and Cyrax comes around and kind of stands over her

[00:29:04] and howls and it's Cyrax expressing Ranara's emotion that scene is just amazing. Yeah and it tells us more about this dragon bond and the psychic almost connection between the dragon and the rider Cyrax is feeling what Ranara feels in that moment.

[00:29:27] And they would have grown up together those dragons. Yes yeah yeah. And the other thing I really love is the dragon landing ramp beneath the castle on dragon stone where that's where we first see Rainies and Mailies. Oh right. Yeah and I when they first flew in I

[00:29:50] thought that was Ranara and Cyrax it's a little hard to determine which dragon is Cyrax and which one is Mailies sometimes because their coloring is somewhat similar. And was Mailies a dragon that

[00:30:07] Rainies got as a baby? I believe so. Okay because is Mailies a she? Mailies is a she. She's huge. She is huge yes she's an older dragon. Oh no. Rainies I'm just checking my dragon notes I have dragon notes. You need dragon notes for this show.

[00:30:32] Mailies first rider was Alyssa the daughter of Jaehaerys and Allysane and then Rainies was her second rider. So that's why she's so that's why Mailies is so big is because she's older. So that's a good asset for them to have. Yes Mailies is probably of the dragons that

[00:30:56] have riders. Mailies is probably the third most experienced dragon after Vhagar and then Caraxes. And so yeah major asset. Yeah and Rainies is an experienced dragon rider because she's been a

[00:31:21] dragon rider for most of her life and you know she's an older person so she's been bonded with Mailies for a long time. But you know I so at first I thought that was Rhaenyra and Syrax arriving

[00:31:36] but then it was Mailies and Rainies and the dragons like pull up to that ramp kind of like you know a ship docking and then the rider gets down and then I assume they mount there

[00:31:50] as well so I just thought that was really cool. And then we got a great scene where you saw the terror that dragons inspire when they were at King's Landing and

[00:32:08] Arach was trying to prep the people who have the the scorpion to shoot its dragon if it was an enemy dragon but as the dragon gets closer then you see he recognizes that it's Vhagar

[00:32:22] so it's your dragon on their side. But I want to know how Vhagar manages to fly with all those holes in her wings. I was wondering the same thing I actually almost googled it like physics the

[00:32:35] physics of that that's actually I think you just need enough. I don't think I want to go down you just need enough space to hold the air. I think it'll be okay I was wondering like

[00:32:47] they want to make sure they don't shoot their dragon by accident. Oops. We've killed the biggest dragon in the world. But as a reminder at this point in history there's only been one

[00:33:06] dragon ever killed by a scorpion and that was Meraxes who was the dragon of Aegon's Aegon the conqueror's sister wife Rhaenys after whom Arraenys is named. And they were in Dorne and a scorpion

[00:33:30] bolt hit Meraxes in the eye and killed her but there have been many other attempts to fire scorpion bolts at dragons but they've never been successful so chances are that they could have

[00:33:46] fired that at Vhagar and it could have hit Vhagar in the chest or somewhere and just bounced off. So it's a little bit wishful thinking. Yeah. You know and I know in Game of Thrones we do

[00:33:59] see a dragon killed that way but that's 100 years later. Well one with a scorpion and one just with a throne javelin which is right. But there was magic involved with the javelin all out that one

[00:34:15] but they made the scorpion look a little too easy. But that happens many years after this story so you know they hope that they can bring a dragon down with a scorpion

[00:34:26] but it's really only been accomplished one time. So anyway I was a little sorry that we didn't get to see Jace flying because he you know he flew to the wall and back and we didn't see that

[00:34:44] but I also thought it was interesting that we open tracking a raven flying and I was reminded of the saying dark wings, dark words and indeed that's exactly what it was.

[00:35:02] Well I guess I'm gonna dive into blood and cheese but I'm sure I will need the two of you to jump in because there were you know as a non-book reader I'm just going by the show leading up to this

[00:35:18] yeah scene. We're all team black the world is team black pretty much right and I feel like this was about leveling the field and bringing more sympathy over to the greens because up until this point they're not looking good and we're all team black and then this happens

[00:35:41] and not just this though like the whole scene was pretty sympathetic towards the greens like I feel like they were painting Aegon in a much better light than we've ever seen him before and Aegon the Magnanimous. Hilarious and so I feel like that's what this is all about

[00:36:07] this is all about you think you're team black but wait we're gonna test you up until this point Aamon kills you know Luke who's serving as a peaceful messenger

[00:36:19] I just it just felt like this was such a misstep on Damon's part like I agreed with Damon in many ways when he was like I'm just gonna go kill Vagar like if you're in a war that's probably

[00:36:34] the right thing to do because that's their biggest weapon. Aamon and Vagar are their biggest weapons right now so going to kill them yeah that probably makes sense but doing this it seemed like he just

[00:36:50] put these two bumbling idiots he didn't know them he had no reason to trust them it just seemed really out of step with everything that we've seen before and

[00:37:06] if we if we didn't think these guys were really bad guys then they go and kick a dog so now we know they're really bad guys let's let's make sure everybody knows um and so I just felt like

[00:37:19] the scene was was a little odd and kind of jarring in and I mean besides the end result which was obviously jarring um it just seemed a little odd to me and and I did like in many ways

[00:37:33] that they just kind of they gave they gave that scene a lot of time and and a lot of mundane pieces to it where they're arguing over things and so I did like those pieces of it but it did seem almost

[00:37:47] like it didn't belong in the episode I don't know how to explain it. Interesting. I knew what the episode title was we've known for like a week and I think we even talked about this in the last

[00:38:00] episode and I was like well son for son like I'm pretty sure Aamond and Aegon are not gonna die anytime soon because we need them and I even thought about Helena's children and then I was like no they wouldn't do that.

[00:38:17] So when we talked about our you know our hopes um one of the things that I said was that I hoped that some of the really terrible things that happen wouldn't scare people off and this is

[00:38:32] what I was thinking uh because this is so much worse in the books than it is than they did it in the show. This is the incident that's known as blood and cheese because the gold cloak is called blood and the ret catcher is called cheese

[00:38:51] and it's like the red wedding of fire. So this is what you were talking about but you didn't expect it in season in the first episode. No I thought it was gonna happen in episode two.

[00:39:01] Even until like as it was happening I was like they're not really gonna do it they'll get no critical point and it'll happen next episode. I thought that also Veronica yeah exactly um and here's the way in which it is so much worse in the book.

[00:39:19] Aegon and Helena have three children in the book they have twins who are six years old Jehara and Jeharys that's the kids that are in the show and then there's also a two two-year-old boy named Melor and um um they blood and cheese actually go to Allison's rooms

[00:39:45] and they kill Allison's bedmaid and they tie Allison up because they know that Helena brings the kids to Allison's room every evening before bed and so they wait for um Helena to come

[00:40:02] with the children and they kill Helena's guard and then they ask Helena to choose which of her sons they're gonna kill and if she refuses to choose they say they'll kill everyone and Allison's watching this whole thing she witnesses this whole thing this would have

[00:40:23] been another way to get more sympathy for Allison because she has to witness this in the book and so here's where it gets really really really disturbingly bad Alice or sorry uh Helena chooses Melor the two-year-old boy and cheese says to Melor

[00:40:47] you hear that boy your mama wants you dead and then blood cuts off Jeharys's head and the air was old enough to the air yeah yeah yeah and then they leave

[00:41:04] and uh that you know that's that's the events I think they were trying to tamp it down I think they were trying to tap it tamp it down because you know so it's that Sophie's choice you have

[00:41:20] to have one of your children killed or they'll all be killed which one you choose that is you know the impossible ethical dilemma but then George R R Martin because he is a sadistic bastard

[00:41:35] he twists that one notch further by having them kill not the son that Helena chose but the other one and they were doing a twist on that but I think like what we were supposed to believe is that

[00:41:52] Helena is a truth teller yes yeah the other thing that I thought they were going to play up more and they didn't and Veronica you may have thought this as well is that um as soon as Helena said

[00:42:08] earlier in the episode that she's afraid of the rats we know that she's had some sort of prophetic vision about this and there was a lot of speculation among book readers after last season

[00:42:21] with them making Helena such a dragon dreamer which many Targaryens are that she would foresee and know what was going to happen to her um but they just had that one throwaway line I'm

[00:42:36] afraid of rats and didn't didn't go any further with that so I was surprised by that last season right there were a few times that she said but I feel like everybody just ignores her because they don't

[00:42:50] like it's you know I'm afraid of rats it's not I'm afraid the rat killer is going to come kill us or well and so I think people dismiss her because it's a little loopy the way she phrases it

[00:43:02] and well yes and people don't um don't see after the fact either she said but where the beast below the boards and that was clearly Rainys right bursting up in the dragon pit and nobody put

[00:43:18] that together and said oh wow Helena foresaw that and probably no one has really taught the greens to be looking out for for these seers right because right Saras was already quite old and sick

[00:43:32] and sort of not very involved as a father and Allyson probably doesn't know the history of that so yes that is an excellent point yeah I know Helena was in incredible shock but I also felt like she wasn't surprised to see Allyson and Kristen together

[00:43:54] yeah well okay so here's here's one of my so I often get hung up on little details and they don't know me too here's the little detail if you are the dowager queen and you are getting it on

[00:44:09] with the commander of the Kingsguard and he will be killed if he's found having sex because he's violating his oath and you are going to be in being trungable as well wouldn't you bar the door

[00:44:23] yeah and even if you didn't wouldn't you hear the second someone barged in because you're a little more like terrified you're going to be caught and killed I I almost feel like maybe people now

[00:44:37] you know and and Helena for all that she seems you know diminished I don't think she is I don't think there's I think she's very smart and she sees what's going on around her yeah I don't think

[00:44:52] she would care though either no you know I don't think she's the type to well I think she's also very you know who does she have if she doesn't have her mother that's right yeah

[00:45:06] what else about blood and cheese can we talk about I was very very interested in your response to it as a non-book reader Wendy and how it went over with you I just didn't think I I always get

[00:45:20] shocked by these things I didn't think they would go there especially like I and I did some reading online and people were like they should have done it more like the book and I'm like isn't

[00:45:32] the sound of a child's head being chopped off enough for you yeah that was pretty gross like like that was enough for me yeah I and I actually think they could have even omitted that

[00:45:45] and I'm not criticizing them at all I'm all here for the darkness but I think they could have omitted that piece and just had her walk away and it would have had the same weight to it

[00:45:57] in my opinion yes I totally could have gotten gone without the sawing sound effect yes but here's here's what I have seen discussed and that is that George R R Martin has deep roots

[00:46:11] being a horror writer and that the whole blood and cheese incident in the books is very much coming out of his horror writing and they played it as a horror sequence in in the show as well

[00:46:30] which yeah some people who are into dragon fantasy are not into horror so that's not going to go down well with everybody and I kind of think they probably went right up to the line and and probably

[00:46:44] stuck there and that was good I think that's probably good I don't think they should have went any further um so a couple questions I had is and I think I know the answers to these is

[00:46:55] did Damon tell them to do that so because of course they leave that open to interpretation so yeah in the book he did and I actually don't like that they left to open to interpretation

[00:47:10] and I would have rather them gotten rid of the squelch noises and had this be Damon's intention from the get go and I wish there had been a little bit more of the this sounds terrible

[00:47:22] to say but I would have rather a little more of upping the psychological terror and impact of this as they did in the book and less of the like I didn't need the gory violence just hearing

[00:47:34] the child's head cut off yeah I just think that would have had more of an impact and I don't think we need a hero Damon can be despicable and that's okay and I was having

[00:47:47] a conversation with a friend and that was her theory my friend Kelly that maybe they changed some of this also because they didn't want not only did they not want to go too far with the show but

[00:48:01] everyone's team black do they want to completely ruin team black and have there be no yeah heroes I mean he's not a hero but do you know what I'm saying yeah I think that's what

[00:48:12] it is yeah yeah that just disappoints me though like no that's what's awesome about the show is that there's no heroes it's different yeah so I think the show does tell us that he did he did think so

[00:48:28] that he did say that because um I can't remember whether it's blood or cheese one of the two of them says he said it has to be a son and so that you know he said means Damon said it has to

[00:48:40] be a son because um when cheese has the knife to Helena's neck and blood comes in and says who's that and I like hello a gold cloak would probably recognize the queen but you know quibbles aside

[00:48:57] and she says the queen and blood says well we can't kill her it has to be he said it has to be a son so that indicates that Damon did say that we're all the guards there's three guards

[00:49:12] watching amon and his friends get drunk and there's no one guarding the second in line to the final do you remember the two doofuses from 101 Dalmatians yes that are helping close it like

[00:49:25] that is what this felt like it did or like a homo loan scene or like it just felt like you took these two characters out of this universe I agree so in the book it's very clear that

[00:49:43] agon's children are the target because they're the ones they can get to they can't get to agon um for a man just amon isn't even a possible target in the book

[00:49:58] it's it is said that that's the language in the book it is said that agon might have been the target but he lives with his family in in a place in the red keep called may gore's holdfast which was

[00:50:16] built by may gore the cruel and the only way into may gore's holdfast is across a causeway a drawbridge which has spikes all around it that becomes relevant later by the way

[00:50:29] and so there's no way for them to get into may gore's holdfast that's why they do the setup of going to allicent's rooms because she lives in the tower of the hand

[00:50:41] which is accessible through the the secret tunnels and so forth and wait for the kids to be brought by their mother from may gore's holdfast where they're inaccessible into allicent's room where

[00:50:56] they were able to get in so it's very clear in the book that those kids were the target they would have gotten agon if he hadn't constantly been accompanied by kingsguard and been living in may gore's holdfast which was inaccessible yeah it all seems much looser in the

[00:51:16] in the show much lots of um i mean i mean they just took a few corridors and all of a sudden they were in the queens and she says he doesn't know where he's going like no she knows

[00:51:27] exactly where he's going in the book so yeah we did actually when i on my second watch i noticed we see cheese um actually doing his rat keeping job right outside as allicent's going into the small

[00:51:41] council yes for the first time i thought that was funny to see him notably he didn't seem to have a dog right then so once again no need for that prop except like wendy said for them to kick it

[00:51:54] to show how bad they are yes yes well they you know the dog was just a stray dog i think that they caught and took in as a prop to make themselves look like proper rat catchers

[00:52:05] and then the other question i has is renara told daemon that she wanted aamon's Targaryen so is she responsible for putting this into play so that is a also a very interesting divergence from

[00:52:20] the book because she does not say that in the book in the show i think she is responsible also i don't think she would have approved of no method absolutely not absolutely not no

[00:52:37] no she is not going to be happy when she finds out about this now but ryan condol in the after the episode said that you know i want aamon Targaryen is the one line that renara has

[00:52:51] in this episode and he says that that line echoes throughout the rest of the season and i think one of the ways that it's probably going to echo is she's going to be pissed at daemon

[00:53:05] because she will not approve of killing a six-year-old boy and i will say i feel like she's less responsible because daemon already had that plan in play i mean as soon as reynese

[00:53:19] pulls up he's like we're going we're going to get vegar and daemon that's where we're going so i i do think you know she may have nudged him but i think he was heading in that direction

[00:53:34] anyway now the way he went about it was just stupid but um yeah that's my daemon yeah and then the other thing is they were talking to aamond you know later in the episode and i think it was

[00:53:51] otto who said i know you want your vengeance didn't he get his vengeance i mean luke took his eye and he killed luke isn't that enough or he just wants all of them dead yeah well you know when

[00:54:09] the that's the thing about vengeance that literature teaches us over and over again when you go after vengeance dig two graves right vengeance never ends and you know creates nothing but heartache oh by the way in case anybody hasn't been paying attention there's going to be nothing

[00:54:33] but heartache in this show yeah if you think this has a happy ending um spoilers by game of thrones all these characters are dead yes uh yes indeed because it's a hundred years or more than a hundred

[00:54:51] years later yeah that's the thing about history you know is you get very invested in things that happen to people but actually whether it's fiction or real life they're all dead

[00:55:04] because it was um generations ago right um i think that was all i had for blood and cheese nice so we're back to veronica all right i think i would like to just talk a little bit more about

[00:55:21] amond um you know after we talked last week before we were preparing for the episode like i said i went back and re watched a lot of season one and i was trying to do what we talked about like

[00:55:35] sort of question my current allegiances and really see really looking at what the characters had done are they good bad you know with quotation marks because nobody's really good or bad but

[00:55:49] i really softened a lot on amond like i know i talked last week that i liked him just because he's a cool character but he really he hasn't been that egregious in his behavior like don't get me wrong

[00:56:04] what he did led to luke's death but it was akin to like reckless driving right like you know it's not like he went out he was not actually intending i think in that moment to murder luke

[00:56:17] he wanted to scare him no but i don't think he wanted to kill him you don't think so you think he was planning to kill him there he sent a freight train after luke yeah i'm not saying it was okay

[00:56:31] i do think he's responsible i'm not absolving him of responsibility i don't think he wanted to kill luke but his actions certainly absolutely so i'm not i'm not absolving him of that i'm i'm not voting

[00:56:46] for manslaughter i'm voting for murder one but if you step back to before that and if you really look at him from a child i mean he was bullied really hard both by his brother agon as well as

[00:57:00] luke and jace and um you know bad timing on him for mounting the dragon right as they're literally mourning um lana's death it was not appropriate timing but let's reflect that he was a small child

[00:57:18] children don't understand the roles of like mourning and things and he was desperate for a dragon he'd been teased his whole life for not having one and so he gets it and then he comes

[00:57:29] back and he is attacked like he is a little shit and like punches his female cousins i guess again i'm not saying he's like this golden child but he was fighting back to four other kids coming

[00:57:45] to attack him not that they were in that in the wrong for being upset as a show watcher yeah i feel like the rules of targaryen dragons are whoever claims it first got has it so i that is

[00:58:00] i thought that was cool that he did that and i don't know maybe there is a mourning period or something but i kind of felt like if um it was at bella yeah if bella wanted it she should have

[00:58:15] no sorry it's it's reina who doesn't have a dragon bella has a dragon that's exactly what he says to her so and then he's not even that bitter at the eye loss because he's like well i got a dragon

[00:58:27] and he does sort of jab at his cousins going forward after that understandably they put his eye out but like he's also a very like even-headed son up up to the point of luke right like i'm not going

[00:58:44] to try to absolve him of luke but even in this episode you see him with col and he has all these ideas and plans of how he wants to take action and he is hotheaded and angry but he's not doing it

[00:59:00] without the approval like he's not just going off on his own and flying off and doing it like he is the more responsible more even-headed of those boys and i guess i don't know i guess if i'm

[00:59:16] going to be team daemon and absolve him of all the absolute shit he's done yeah especially now i guess i just don't i think of the greens that aamon to me has been probably the most

[00:59:30] redeemable i mean almost everyone has blood on their hands at this point so i don't feel like i can you know completely say he's worse than everyone else because of luke listening to him and col

[00:59:43] talk strategy to me what they were saying made sense yeah total sense he's smart you're in a war like it's not time for reserve it's time to go win the war and i always thought that like i always

[01:00:01] thought in game of thrones that denaris as soon as she stepped foot in west row should have went straight to the red keep and burn it all down you know now that would have not made for such a

[01:00:12] good season eight right if she may be done that but but um you know i think what they're saying makes sense and i think a lot of the reasons why they are tamped down is because auto and

[01:00:26] allison don't want to give up the power and they don't want to acknowledge them as equals they're still kids but aamon sees people like aamon does not a kid he's right don't like

[01:00:40] he's reading his mother he's reading auto like he's seeing a lot of what's going on yeah um it's a bit of a shame he wasn't the oldest son i guess at this point because if one of them had

[01:00:54] to be on the throne i don't know i mean i'm team black so if he was on the throne i think black would be in a lot more trouble right now because he would have acted much more swiftly

[01:01:05] but as far as a leader for team green i think he would have been the stronger leader i think he lights up every scene too he's fascinating and he he's charismatic

[01:01:20] and and you just go straight to him so i mean i love his character me too um and then i the only other piece i had just about aamon is i think he knew this but i loved that the episode

[01:01:33] had auto really call out directly to him like you are the most powerful person in the realm right now essentially because of your dragon like you need to understand how important you are and that means

[01:01:47] you like we're gonna need to use you but you have to be you have to be alive we lose you that's it i thought that was a cool moment and i think aamon knows that yeah i don't think he needed it

[01:01:59] called out but i think the show needed to make sure we all had a thought of that yeah and i mean while he expresses his loyalty and i believe that to be true he's also like but yeah i've got all

[01:02:15] the power here and i'm going to wield it yeah yeah all right ren okay so they make you swear and swear remember jayme lannister saying that right that and he's talking about being caught up in

[01:02:33] contradictions and eric okay so time out here for a minute eric and auric there's a there's a key to remembering which one is which eric err y k and auric ar r y k the twin brothers

[01:02:52] auric starts with a and allicent starts with a so auric is with the greens and eric is with the blacks so eric has that conversation with daemon and he says he did not kill agon when agon usurped

[01:03:12] the throne as a member you know when eric at that point was a member of the kingsguard that he didn't kill agon then because he swore an oath to defend the whole royal family

[01:03:26] he says so what were we to do when they turned against one another yeah that sounds so much what like what jayme says when he says you know i swore to defend the king but the king was going

[01:03:39] to blow up all of king's landing and the king ordered me to kill my own father right and you're supposed to be not be a kin slayer so you know they make you swear and swear and what are

[01:03:49] you supposed to do and eric was very much caught up in that same kind of dilemma and that's one of the things that i really appreciate about these stories is that they do lay out these kinds of

[01:04:03] dilemmas that ordinary people have to try to navigate their way through and we do get to see both eric and aric in this episode because aric was the one who was defending you know organizing the defense against dragons right that king's landing and then eric has this

[01:04:22] conversation with daemon and you know he backs daemon off he's got a lot of guts to stand up to daemon yeah and but he does and and and daemon kind of takes it in and thinks oh okay i got

[01:04:39] yeah and that's good because he wasn't real rational in this episode no he sure wasn't i i hope we see more from the twins i think they're interesting they are they are really

[01:04:52] interesting i like the the actual twin actors who play um the roles um i think that they are really good as a sort of silly aside i had a moment where my brain broke watching this where

[01:05:08] he's telling that story to daemon and he was like we were just eight and ten when we joined the kingsguard and i was like eight and ten i thought they were twins and that's like very young to be

[01:05:20] in the kingsguard and then i remembered that we are in west roast and eight and ten is eighteen oh i was gonna say eight's pretty young to decide you're gonna be celibate for the rest

[01:05:30] of your life yeah no they were so confused for them they were eighteen i like the way they say eight and ten i'm always trying to like slip in those kind of things in my normal language like

[01:05:42] it work i'll try to like and see if anybody notices but mine own my my own mother i like that i think that sounds really cool i'm gonna start my own lady mother yes people will start looking at me strange

[01:05:58] all right so to continue a little bit with what we were talking about with blood and cheese i think they really like they just turned up the empathy and the sympathy for teen green this episode

[01:06:11] agon like this is the best we've seen agon since his second birthday truly yeah like you can really see he's trying to be a good king he's embracing it this is the

[01:06:27] best we've seen from him he's he's um he's more patient he's kind and involved with helena and his children i mean he does talk about helena you know she's odd or something like that but this is the

[01:06:40] most kind we've seen him to me he tries to reassure her right when she says she's scared which that's not the agon we saw last season right he's trying to be a dad he seems to really enjoy

[01:06:55] his child and seems to really care about him and find him amusing and and you can see that the child is also responding to him so i think um they were really showing how much he was trying he was

[01:07:08] attempting to be kind to his subjects auto just gives him no grace whatsoever he's a new king he should let him make some decisions on his own and i think auto just can't stand not being

[01:07:21] in control of every decision true that and and you can see that agon was getting frustrated with him auto he's on my list he's eaten by dogs and i was wondering like could this be part of

[01:07:37] and again i don't know what happens but it seems like they're gearing up for maybe someone else to be the hand and i'm like could this be part of the reason why because auto

[01:07:47] was such an asshole to him um constantly interrupting him super condescending and um you know allison and auto have this conversation where they're like oh we're just going to play this out he's

[01:08:00] going to get tired of being the king and then we can just roll in his stead as they very much did with viscerus and i just think what what planet are they living on where they think

[01:08:12] this young man is going to get sick of being king like that's just not realistic well i would point out that agon does drink a lot that's what he's doing with his buddies when they're lounging around the iron throne they're drinking and we've seen him drink a

[01:08:32] lot in the past too yeah um i actually thought that scene was pretty funny with him and his buddies sitting around drinking yeah i did too i just thought it was pretty silly of them all

[01:08:47] thinking that they can continue to control these guys like that's what auto and allison they they don't can't seem to stand each other but they're together in this effort to control things yeah it reminded me of sassy and taiwan and sassy being frustrated once joff was on the

[01:09:09] throne and yeah that going from being the queen to being is it the dowager queen yeah now that she is and and suddenly realizing oh the power i thought i had is gone and my son is no longer a small child

[01:09:23] i can manipulate right this is yeah yeah i agree interesting that parallel all right do you have any more points for ronika those were all my big points um i did think it was

[01:09:43] a funny is the right word but they brought little uh it's jaharis right into the small council i felt like just to make us care i was like should they put a they should have put like a little red t-shirt

[01:09:55] yeah to signal to us crown yeah yeah um yeah and he was so cute too i'm sure it's also you know if we hadn't got what you just said about agon would we have felt any empathy for

[01:10:09] him next episode if we thought he was an uninvolved father who didn't care at all about any of his family we wouldn't feel any of their pain right and so i think they just did a really good job of like you said expanding that character enough that we

[01:10:27] yeah will have empathy and even though in the timeline this is supposed to be pretty you know just i don't know at most right exactly but even though that's true it really does feel

[01:10:42] like time has passed yeah yeah all right ren uh don't have any more points i just have one note which was um i said last week that i wished that they would have a different opening sequence and

[01:10:57] they do and i don't like it any better i definitely didn't want to bring that up because i knew you were going to what i thought was so brilliant about the opening sequence of game of thrones

[01:11:10] was it actually gave you a map so you actually could see the layout of west rose and have an idea of how love is related to each other um and they were trying to do that with the blood lines in

[01:11:25] the first season now this tapestry it's actually giving the entire history of west rose from agon's conquest but i can't even follow it what all the events are and i don't know how somebody

[01:11:39] who isn't a big book reader would even figure it out i thought it was pretty yeah i thought it was visually pleasing yeah but no less confusing but probably more visually pleasing than the previous

[01:11:55] one i agree but honestly i'd be happy if they just did another map i know and then i wonder will they have a different one for every season now or that's a good question they've set that precedent

[01:12:09] so they could they could have an improved one for season three maybe yeah or i really hate intras i'd love if it was just the house of the dragon and that's it like i love yeah just do the

[01:12:24] i don't think they're gonna do that i know i loved the old intro we loved it especially towards the end when they made it even more complex and i will say like there was two things

[01:12:35] that i thought they listened to the listeners about that was one of them although it may have been a miss in the end and the other was the white worm because i did not like the white worm

[01:12:49] i didn't i didn't find it compelling there was something about her speech patterns that and and her wooden stiffness that just never worked for me never got it never understood what her purpose was and when when they burned her brothel or whatever down i thought that was it

[01:13:13] we would never see her again so i was really like oh no not this again but then i i feel like her speech patterns were definitely improved she was easier to under it felt more natural and and like

[01:13:27] she was all dirtied up and she was less wooden and so i was disappointed to see her but i liked her better and i feel like that had to be from listener feedback i would think yeah probably

[01:13:44] i still just felt the way they worked her in felt a bit like a throw away like because daemon went into the city anyways and it was someone he knew i don't even felt like we

[01:13:58] feel like we needed her like i wish she'd either been more involved in it or they just left that whole piece out and spent more time on blood and cheese i felt that way about every

[01:14:10] scene she was in from the first season too like i just didn't understand what her purpose was and i'm sure they had it they just didn't yeah they just didn't it just didn't come through

[01:14:21] yeah notes i noticed uh we haven't touched on just that lord corliss went down to the shipyard yes and uh met a a ship worker who seemed to be somewhat in charge came out that his name was

[01:14:41] alan at the end um the man he did that's his name mm-hmm al yn such a normal name for it was al yn so okay yeah alan like bill yeah so he hands him is it a dagger that was made for luke which was very sad

[01:15:04] oh um but then warless says hey wasn't it you that pulled me from the sea and alan you know pauses and said it was only my duty but it's obvious from his face

[01:15:19] it was not only his duty that there's something more underneath all of this yeah um so i thought that was interesting and i'm curious to see what comes of that because as we know they don't show us

[01:15:33] people for no reason right it's always something he's gonna be important yeah and that actor was on the show wait raised by wolves which was a trippy trippy science fiction show although i would not

[01:15:51] recognize him uh he looked very different in raised by wolves but he was very very good in raised by wolves so i'm happy to see him cast here yeah i can't wait i saw that he's in the next episode

[01:16:06] in the previews so i can't wait to see what they do with that that actor's name is abu bakar salim and i think he's good yeah um i thought that the scene between reynice and daemon was incredibly

[01:16:23] entertaining yeah i just love reynice she just lights up every scene she's in daemon tries to order her around and she's not having it she treats him like a petulant child yes and i love it

[01:16:37] because no one really gets away with treating him that way except for her that's right and he just doesn't know what to do with it right he doesn't know how to handle her right with her 500 ton dragon

[01:16:49] right behind her yeah i loved that piece and i thought there was a lot of humor in the episode i thought agon brought a lot of humor into the episode um i thought there was a surprising

[01:17:05] amount of humor yeah i thought cutting a baby's head off at the end i feel like yeah i was trying to balance it yeah i suppose you need a little levity before you get there i thought when they called

[01:17:18] agon the magnamoness and then they were debating on what his call name would be or whatever i thought that was pretty funny that was hilarious yeah um and i thought isn't it sweet how all of this

[01:17:32] has brought aamond and agon together again because they seem to really be bonding as brothers well and agon even mentions when he's drinking to his friends about how loyal aamond is to him oh yeah

[01:17:47] oh look at that i know say silver linings yeah and the only other note i have is that i thought it was interesting that um without the um valarians the greens are planning on putting a gray joy in

[01:18:06] as the master of ships i thought that was interesting interesting i had one other note i can't remember if we touched on this but what the fuck our allison and sir christin thinking doing that when

[01:18:23] they have laris lurking around because he is going to own them over if you think he doesn't know he knew before you even thought about doing it i know and he certainly insinuated that he knew yeah in this place has just got to go

[01:18:43] he is just uh he's smart though i don't think he's gonna go anywhere yeah i think he knows what he is doing all right anything else before we talk about news all right rend do you want to

[01:19:00] read our one news article we have our news uh jason kabase shared an article to our zed heads patreon group from comic book dot com hbo has renewed its original series house of the dragon

[01:19:15] for season three yay just days before the second season is set to premiere anticipation is building for the return of house of the dragon to hbo and max with warner brothers discovery calling on fans

[01:19:29] to choose between team green and team black in the family war of the targaryens of course house of the dragon is a spin-off of game of thrones with both stories coming from the mind of author

[01:19:41] george rr martin luckily fans don't have to worry about what the immediate future holds for house of the dragon as hbo is keen on continuing its story through at least season three quote george ryan and

[01:19:57] the rest of our incredible executive producers cast and crew have reached new heights with the phenomenal second season of house of the dragon said french cheska orci executive vice president hbo programming head of hbo drama series and films quote we are in awe of the dragon-sized effort the

[01:20:19] entire team has put into the creation of a spectacular season two with a scope and scale that is only rivaled by its heart we could not be more thrilled to continue the story of house targaryen and

[01:20:31] watch this team burn bright again for season three end of quote burn bright and i think some things may literally burn yeah i i think unless they slow the pace down i could see it being three

[01:20:49] seasons um but i hope it's more yeah well ryan condol has said he plans for four okay well that's good um i just want to give a little plug for the patreon group um so podcastica has a patreon

[01:21:05] group if you join at a certain level i believe it's ten dollars a month you can get added to the facebook patreon group and we've had so much fun there and i've developed lifelong friendships and

[01:21:19] like we meet up in real life we usually have a big meetup once a year uh two years ago we went to san francisco last year we went to boston we're going to galveston texas this year so it's

[01:21:32] been a lot of fun and um it's a lot of people with similar likes in in that group and if anybody's interested in that it's been really special for me especially getting through covid was really

[01:21:47] helpful with all of that so yeah i love it i'll plug it too i mean i joined it around the time that i had no friends left that were watching the walking dead and so i didn't get those water

[01:22:02] cooler conversations anymore at work and then covid hit and there were no more water cooler conversations anymore right and so this is the place i come to nerd out about all the fun things

[01:22:13] that i'm watching with people who are passionate and excited about it yeah um and it's a really warm welcoming fun group so yeah it's been a lot of fun all right we can get started on our

[01:22:27] feedback i will go first this is something that alma actually posted before the episode aired but i thought that was kind of funny so i'll go ahead and read it she says out this is from alma contraris

[01:22:42] she says lol i'm sitting here listening to the dragging cast and you ladies are cracking me up because i have read up to where i think the series will end so i know a lot of what should

[01:22:51] come about in the show all's i got to say is they better not cut the blood and cheese stuff if you know you know so i can't wait to hear what she has to say about this episode gabby jade says yes finally

[01:23:11] rima joe hi rima we miss you hopefully we're filling her shoes but she sent in a message to say hashtag team black i don't think we are ready for this episode yeah and that was just

[01:23:24] prior to it airing so um lindsay schlicht says well wow i know those of us who knew this was coming thought it would be next episode i was surprised to see it here am i remembering the book wrong

[01:23:39] or was this a bit underwhelming compared to the books not that it wasn't terrible but i remember the book being much worse was so excited to see familiar places especially a stark in the wall

[01:23:51] this young stark actor is so good i thought it was richard madden doing the voiceover at first perfect imitation i wondered if there would be any effort to make alson or crispy more

[01:24:03] impelatable this season but i guess not carrying on like they are after years of judging ronara typical pious hypocrites so excited to be back thank you lindsay rima joe says the blood and cheese version in the book was much worse for many reasons

[01:24:22] i won't go into it here i don't want to spoil for those that haven't read it i think they fumbled it though and then seemed to be what a lot of people thought yeah um along those lines it looks like kelly

[01:24:36] burges replied to that and said yeah i feel like it was worse in the book and i was a little disappointed by how they did it in the show and alma agreed with that another comment from

[01:24:47] alma contrast who said yeah it felt a bit rushed to me alisha stout says so much to unfold in this app but i'll start here first off the opening credits just wow a tapestry with the stitching

[01:25:01] telling the story i loved it glad somebody loved it that's nice yeah how unique and so very different from season one i wonder if they will change it each season or add to the tapestry much

[01:25:14] like gamethrones did with the gear map then we begin the first scene with the stark theme song omg it was slow but it was there and i almost cried then we enter winter fell felt like home again

[01:25:31] yep more tears oh hell now we're at the wall the black supporting those who took the black seems fitting would that not just be so rad if we saw some walkers or the night king i know i'm

[01:25:44] stretching a bit here but one could hope so question the scorpion was this weapon not invented by kyburn in gamethrones so no alisha it wasn't there were scorpions all the way back to

[01:25:58] the time of agon they can't quite conquer and one of them killed maraxis as we talked about earlier yeah they just hadn't needed them in a while yeah they hadn't needed them that's right

[01:26:08] i'm confused as to why it's in hot d maybe i'm missing some history here and need to crack open my book yeah crack it open alisha regardless me thinks we're gonna lose some dragons and that

[01:26:18] really sucks but yeah war when the camera entered the small council with agon i heard the lannister theme music or at least the very beginning of it then we pan to tylin blannister

[01:26:30] i thought that was a real great segue also it sure was fun seeing a lannister being tormented and by a child no less that's true i was waiting i've with felt sure we were gonna see that pony

[01:26:44] ride the pony ride i know allison and christin g no one saw that coming barf blood and cheese yeah i read that a while back and i do remember it being a bit more gruesome maybe too much for

[01:26:57] the screen either way it was still shocking and a great ending to the episode i can already tell after one episode that this season is going to be so good and even more epic than season one

[01:27:08] hang on folks we're going for a wild dragon ride yes nevarda randall writes i'm shocked i mean it's the nature of the show to shock us but that ending made me feel devastated i enjoyed it

[01:27:24] overall and look forward to seeing the next episode oh that ending i need time to deal i agree i all the way up to the end i thought it's just going to be an attempt and that's why

[01:27:38] they're calling it that it'll be an attempt that'll get everybody riled up i never thought it would be real all right um amanda k press t jackamow the grief that renara shows on screen

[01:27:52] for this episode so intense and moving and no words needed or given i felt that hug that she gives her son non-book reader here so my eyes looked like saucers during the blood and cheese scenes

[01:28:05] did anyone else think cheese looked like bradley cooper maybe it's just me i want to hear a little bit i want to hear from people do you think that i you know i did not think that at the time

[01:28:20] but looking back i can see it yep yeah all right jacob decker says the squelching of flesh at the end were horrors unimagined but for them to veer the camera off only made it more real to get the

[01:28:36] mother's expression caught sends chills all through you but for sure it's about to go down let's go oh the squelch sound mhm mariah meuller writes i was a bit disappointed that blood and cheese was

[01:28:52] changed from the book it was more brutal in the book i was happy we got to see a glimpse of hu hammer i'm interested to see how the dragon riders will work out without nettles alison and sir christin

[01:29:05] and then a big shock face they're about to get caught by her father i suspect and they won't have time to get properly dressed there's a few mentions of some book characters that i think

[01:29:18] there's rumors about whether we will or won't get them and there was a very brief mention of uh a man named hu who i believe came to see agon is that correct yes that's correct yeah

[01:29:35] so that's who she's referencing yes i have very very strong feelings about the character called nettles and uh i probably she is not in the show and i am not happy about that

[01:29:49] uh oh yeah all right becky fenner anderson says impressive start excited to see what the rest of the season brings monica maguire says looking forward to finishing the watch tonight all right and we have one call from renae meri renae i am so glad you called in

[01:30:14] and here we go hi guys this is renae calling in about the house of dragons first of all i want to give a shout out to my girl amma amma you did so good last night on the after show girl i was

[01:30:27] watching you guys interacting with you guys and you did a wonderful job girl you're gonna have your own podcast in a minute but anyway the house of dragons it was blaze which is normal

[01:30:42] for most shows the very first episode so i'm okay with that i need to pick it up on the next episode needs to be picked up um allison and christian co is like what are you guys doing girl girl i know

[01:30:56] that you're not it's like sir did you not did you wash your face wipe it wipe them out something because that is so nasty like you're awful i really thought it was the guy that had

[01:31:06] the foot fetish last season that maybe was down there doing something with her foot but no it was christian go like you're awful y'all amass that's amass y'all amass but renae that was really

[01:31:18] sad to watch her mourning the depth of her child you know as a mother that really touched me and when jace walked in the room and he was telling her about what happened when he went

[01:31:28] to the north and his lips started trembling and i started watering up i was like oh my gosh i cannot take this i'm talking boohoo crying but i was so happy to see the wall there was like a nostalgic

[01:31:38] moment for me i was like wow there is the wall are we going to get to see the white walkers the liking or something and um i enjoy when kreegan stark was telling him you really think we built

[01:31:49] this wall this high to keep out some wildlings you guys don't even know what's coming and oh my god blood and cheese there was more like the three stooge's it was curly larry or mo chute two

[01:32:01] because it was only three two of them so you can choose to they were awful like they really messed that up i'm a book reader and i just thought it was going to be more epic than that more like the

[01:32:11] red wedding but i that was i was not happy and helena all she's so sweet she's so innocent it's like my heart goes out to her and a mon i just cannot believe that he is the monk from uchut abidenburg

[01:32:28] the last kingdom it's like should i roof him or should i not because he was so freaking lovable in the last king kingdom and now he's awesome but damon i'm team black i'm gonna all

[01:32:38] damon stands on business and i'm gonna always ride with him and so you know i love damon even though damon was not there for rennera in this episode i feel like he should have been more

[01:32:50] sympathetic as a husband as an uncle only on only on the house of dragon would you root for a uncle and a niece to be together awful all righty guys peace and love bye i thought about that

[01:33:05] should we have an only on the house of the dragon well that's a good one only on house of the dragon would you root for an uncle niece couple i think damon showed his concern and love in

[01:33:19] in his damon way in his damon way yeah like he said he's he said that he was worried that amen would just come upon her and and he seemed worried about that and when she came back into the throne

[01:33:33] room you know there was just a moment between them that was sweet yes where they put their foreheads together yeah and he was not at the ceremony that they had where they were burning

[01:33:46] some of jesus things but that's because he was on his way to king's landing to exact revenge so guess i can excuse him maybe but thank you rena and i love your feedback please keep it coming

[01:34:03] oh and i absolutely when the scene opened up with allicent i absolutely thought that would be larris i need to i thought he was doing foot stuff uh huh yep that's exactly what i thought i think i

[01:34:18] audibly gasped when yes all right after this part of our episode ends we are gonna have book talk with renny and veronica and we'll have two different sections it will be um book talk that

[01:34:36] covers up through this episode and then it will be spoil our book talk which will um spoil some of the rest of the book so after the episode's over you will hear book talk i also want to thank

[01:34:50] alma dafney and alex for joining the live yesterday it was really great we go live on youtube about 10 minutes after each episode ends with an instant reaction and we like to have different people

[01:35:04] on the episodes to get everybody's point of views they did a great job i really thank you very much alex is part of our podcast host family he has a podcast on the show from which is really

[01:35:18] incredible they've done so much hard work on that they've had all the characters on their podcast they've done so much you can find them on tiktok and instagram as well and dafney is in on a bunch of

[01:35:32] podcasts she's my partner for handmade tail and yellow jackets and she also has her own podcast called run for your lives with paake and they cover horror movies and scary movies and anything

[01:35:46] you would run from they cover it and it's great so you can find all of our podcastica family in different podcasts next week we will be covering season two episode two of house of the dragon

[01:36:01] which remains untitled so far i think it's going to be called the dog abusers get drawn and quartered that's why they kept it secret so it didn't give that major pop point away yeah yes you don't want to

[01:36:17] give that away they're so secretive i remember the last season of game of thrones they wouldn't in one moment they didn't drop the title till like the minute it aired yeah yeah yeah

[01:36:33] all right you can leave feedback at our podcastica facebook page we post weekly feedback threads or you can leave feedback by email at dragoncastica at gmail.com and you can find the dragoncasts

[01:36:50] and a bunch of other great podcasts at podcastica.com i mentioned this last week but i've still been listening to the walking dead rewatch and they just finished up season two yeah the finale into the

[01:37:06] era of the rick daters rick tatership yeah um but they've been doing just such great coverage so enjoying that i thought it was pretty funny that they had a guest host on for the finale who was

[01:37:18] very pro sheen yes i think there were a lot of us that were dying i thought it was really funny i really liked it but it was interesting it was really interesting to hear that point of view and

[01:37:32] yeah while i disagreed with a lot of points i didn't disagree with all of them it was an interesting perspective to hear yeah all right that is our show thanks for listening everyone until next time i'm renny i'm veronica and i'm wendy dracarys

[01:37:50] all right veronica book talk all right so we're gonna start with what i call the non-spoiler section and in this section we'll only talk about the parts of the book that have already been adapted

[01:38:13] but we'll be talking about the ways that the book differs but we're not gonna talk about future events in this section perfect so the first thing that i wanted to talk about is the way that

[01:38:30] the order of events is different in the show than in in the book and there's two ways that it's different one is in some cases it's the order of the telling that's different because there are

[01:38:47] things that happen at the same time but in some of the other cases it's actually the order of events of the story have been changed right as well so in the book so jace going out on his trip and

[01:39:06] luke going out on his trip those things happen at the same time right but the book tells the whole story of jace and where he goes before it tells the story of luke and what happens to him with

[01:39:24] amon and vagar the other thing that the show did is it cut almost all of jace's story at witterfell i know i mean when you're in the book i mean there's even that sort of rumored telling of

[01:39:42] him you know falling for a a servant girl in winterfell or something while he's there which whether or not that happened that indicates that he was there for a while and that yes you

[01:39:55] know it wasn't just a quick trip to the wall find out his brother's gone and leave yeah so let's get back up because there's even more so first jace goes to the veil to meet jane erin and get her

[01:40:08] support this is one of the ones where we get different versions and mushroom says that jane erin was a harlot with a voracious appetite for men and mushroom gives us a salacious tale of how she

[01:40:23] offered prince jasaris the allegiance of the veil only if he could bring her to climax with his tongue uh but septanus this is version it repeats the widespread rumor that she preferred the

[01:40:39] intimate companionship of other women and then of course septanus just goes on to say that wasn't true and you can pretty much count on anything that septanus just says wasn't true probably was true whichever version of that story actually happened jace did succeed as he does in the

[01:40:57] show and winning jane erin's alliance but she asked that he send a dragon a dragon because which means they are not as not sitting as pretty with dragons as that's right you know they were

[01:41:13] enough they have to send this off yeah and he also stops at sister tin and gets an alliance there and then he goes to where is it that um he makes a wedding pact for his youngest brother

[01:41:30] white harbour okay okay yeah so he goes to sister tin then he goes to white harbour where the manderleys are okay the manderleys we know the manderleys from game of thrones right and he wins the manderleys allegiance by arranging a marriage pact between lord manderleys

[01:41:49] youngest daughter and jasaris's own younger brother joffrey right because remember reneer had three sons before she married daemon um jasaris lucerius and joffrey and then after jace um secures that alliance he goes on to winterfell and it's deep autumn winter is coming when

[01:42:16] he gets to winterfell and the cold makes vermax ill-tempered so jace doesn't stay long at winterfell but many a curious tale came out of that short sojourn we hear including that jace had sex with

[01:42:38] and perhaps married kregan's bastard sister sarah snow and that vermax laid a clutch of eggs in the winterfell crypts and that's the part that i wanted yes that is the part that i wanted the show to

[01:42:56] confirm or deny that vermax laid eggs in the winterfell crypts yeah i think that would have been cool for them to at least show that piece yes and the whole time that um the jace is at winterfell

[01:43:11] they are at winterfell they never go to the wall right i don't you know i don't mind at all that they go to the wall i think that's actually a good addition but but they don't spend any time at

[01:43:21] winterfell and i would have loved to see winterfell again and i really wanted to see sarah snow so i was i didn't mind that sarah snow was left out just because i don't know i wanted him to be faithful

[01:43:36] to his betrothed just because yeah i like i like because we like baila yeah i know i know but you know it's an interesting thing later um in the book jace keeps postponing his marriage to baila

[01:43:51] and you know maybe that was why yeah oh so maybe it's a true yeah story yeah we don't know interesting yeah um that i i caught one other thing that was out of yeah well there is more that's out of order

[01:44:11] yeah yeah yeah i specifically daemon shouldn't still be at dragon stone no okay hey no yeah yeah i'm i'm gonna get there you're absolutely right um but the other thing the other thing that we lose by

[01:44:30] changing the order of the telling i mean it makes perfect sense that they did the ending of season one with luke luke's death that made sense but what we lose is the immediate aftermath of that from the greens side um and because when aamon returns to king's landing

[01:44:53] queen allison went pale when she heard what he had done crying mother have mercy on us all and auto says you only lost one eye how can you be so blind you know they're not happy

[01:45:08] which is so funny because in the show they have allison auto speaking in private not to aamon but they completely excuse his killing of luke as sort of like oh he was just being a crazy teenager

[01:45:26] no big deal and they took his eye so he was just so hurt by that i'm like i don't think an eye for a life is equivalent no and it's that's very very different from their attitude in the book

[01:45:41] because they know that aamon has precipitated a war that they're maybe not ready for yeah yeah i wish we had it's strange to me the choices they made because it did seem like they were trying to

[01:45:55] drive our empathy up for the greens yeah and i think if i'd seen i know they had her light the candle but i think i would have liked to see more of that shock from allison at the whole situation

[01:46:08] i just didn't feel it was there like you said yeah agreed um the one person who's happy with it is agon and they're trying to make agon a little bit more likable because he's a real jerk with his

[01:46:21] reaction in the book um he's happy he throws a feast for aamon to celebrate and he calls aamond the true blood of the dragon and announces that aamond had made a good beginning but we also learned that henceforth aamond is known as aamond the kin slayer

[01:46:44] just the most accursed of all the players and then as you mentioned you're right um daemon is already gone from dragon stone the first thing that he does is fly to heron hall

[01:47:05] and that hasn't happened yet in the show and because it hasn't happened yet i'm not going to say anything more about what happens in heron hall but at this point in the book

[01:47:15] he has already left dragon stone to go to heron hall he talks about heron hall in the show but he's no longer there at dragon stone which also means in the books that reyneara was

[01:47:28] absolutely not involved with his actions that he set in motion for blood and cheese correct and reyneara did not did not go out looking for luke's body no i actually am so glad that they

[01:47:43] changed that yeah i hated that idea of the book does this a lot there are a lot of deaths without full closure yes and it's like we already had leanor like i feel like they can't

[01:47:58] i feel like it will become laughable or too much question marks in the show if they leave so many deaths without any remains of people and so i was glad that we got this and i was

[01:48:12] glad what it afforded us to see in reyneara as well i agree i really agree i thought that that whole sequence of reyneara going and looking it was lovely and this is another one of those

[01:48:27] things in the book where you get different versions and everybody agrees that erak's head and neck did wash ashore quote to make a feast for crabs and seagulls then mushrooms version is

[01:48:43] that luke's corpse also washed up and that aamond cut out his eyes and presented them to his baratheon betrothed on a bed of seaweed um but some say that vegar swallowed luke whole off of erak's back

[01:49:04] and it has even been claimed that luke survived the fall swam to safety but lost his memory and lived out his life as a simple fisherman so yeah there's no no closure at all in the book

[01:49:21] so we talked quite a bit about how blood and cheese is is different in the book but you know the most important thing is that reyneara has no no involvement in it whatsoever

[01:49:35] um reyneara does you know she collapses when she hears the the news about luke but she does not hear it from daemon as she does at the end of season one because daemon's already gone off to heron hall

[01:49:51] and then something else happens there which is young joffrey the smallest of her three sons he swears a terrible oath of vengeance against prince aamond and lord boros um and it's only corelease and reynees intervening that keeps him from getting on his dragon at once

[01:50:11] and flying off to confront them and how old is he at this time ish do we know he's like 11 okay so quite young yes very young as i thought but still quite young yes yeah um so then the black

[01:50:28] council convenes to consider how to respond and at that point a raven arrives with a message from daemon and the message reads an eye for an eye a son for a son luceris shall be avenged

[01:50:45] um which feels so daemon so it's so daemon and you know daemon is not in king's landing himself he's arranging this from heron hall and um one of the fascinating things the book says and

[01:51:03] i don't know if we'll get any of this is that um not only does daemon have friends and cronies in low places at king's landing and among the gold cloaks he also has allies at court including

[01:51:17] someone on the green council i missed that yeah and wait but it doesn't tell us at this point who who that might be so i couldn't decide if i liked how they changed that or not with him going in person

[01:51:33] because i thought it was a neat way to show that he still had a lot of loyalty in the city and that yes as recognizable as he is he still could go through flea bottom yes i thought that was cool

[01:51:44] to show but it's because he was wearing his murder cloak still a bit still a bit unbelievable because he's so recognizable even with his murder cloak i mean he is such a striking character

[01:52:00] it was hard for me to believe that he would not have been seen by eyes that were interested in making some money off of that information yeah but interesting to show what the book could

[01:52:12] tell us about those allegiances the show was able to show us that he still had that faithfulness there the other difference though is that he commissions blood and cheese through my sariah who is still in

[01:52:26] king's landing she's not on dragonstone right and uh so um you know that also is different um and then we talked about how um allison was present and um there was another son and uh helene had to choose between the sons

[01:52:57] and then they killed the one that she doesn't choose yeah so um uh that those are those differences anything else in the no future information section that you wanted to bring up ronika i

[01:53:20] feel like everything else i have feels like it borders on spoiler territory so i will wait for it for the next section great all right everyone we are now going to give you a big dragon roar

[01:53:38] warning the spoiler section is coming next there's your dragon war dragon roar if you don't want to know anything about things that may be coming skip ahead actually there's you don't need to skip ahead

[01:54:04] because we already did the end of the show just stop right now just hit stop get out of here right okay you have been warned yeah so there are several there are several things one of them is that there's quite a bit of aftermath

[01:54:19] of blood and cheese and i don't know if we'll be seeing any of that because blood and cheese themselves they flee and blood gets caught with jaharis' head in his saddlebag

[01:54:31] of course because he's on his way well he is tortured and he confesses that he was taking the head to heron hall to collect his reward from daemon and he also describes mysaria which is how

[01:54:46] we know it was her that daemon arranged it through um he's tortured for 13 days and then he is allowed to die um allicent now allicent is a much less sympathetic character in the books

[01:55:03] for one thing she's not the same age as renera she's 10 years older than renera and she is she is not kind um so allicent ordered larry's who's the king's justice that means the

[01:55:20] torturer to learn blood's true name so that quote she might bathe in the blood of his wife and children yeah but archmaster gildane says the sources don't tell us whether that happened and the gold cloaks search for cheese and for mysaria but they were never found right

[01:55:47] but this is the wild one agon commands that all the rat catchers in the city be hanged and uh auto then brings a hundred cats into the red keep to take their place halena becomes completely non-functional at this point and agon gives malor to allicent

[01:56:11] to raise i mean halena is going to be traumatized sort of regardless of which version but yes that other version where her remaining son knows she said to kill him like yeah you don't you can't recover from that i

[01:56:31] don't think i mean it's questionable whether she's gonna be able to recover from what did happen in the show but yeah so one of the things that we are going to see this season i think is the dragon

[01:56:48] seeds yes and that is the blacks looking for people who can ride the unclaimed dragons and so we meet one of them hue hammer but what the heck bronica what is he doing in king's landing i'm

[01:57:05] trying to figure it out i mean i know i mean i was like was he traveling there no because he was talking about making the scorpions yes for the defense of king's landing yes and so we know that he is in the

[01:57:21] book of dragon stone yes a black smith bastard that's right um and you know he does become a dragon rider for the blacks he eventually crosses over and so are we going to get a different is he

[01:57:40] going to start with the greens well he can't really because they don't have any unclaimed dragons all of their dragons have riders the only unclaimed dragons are on dragon stone but you know

[01:57:55] maybe he starts as green and they send him and maybe he's always been a double crosser because in the book it appears that he just let the power go to his head when he was black and just sort of was like

[01:58:09] well i'm gonna do whatever i can to get more power and that's what turned him but maybe this will lay out as a planned turncoat from the beginning what else could it be i like that i

[01:58:23] think that works also you know there's a problem because people assume that bastards have bad character and hugh's a bastard and adam of hull is a bastard and and um oh who's the other dragon

[01:58:42] adam oh elin adam who's the other dragon rider hugh and oh my god i can't remember his name right now oh oh oh the white yes and hugh and all both defect and people think it's because they're

[01:58:58] bastards so maybe they're going away from that narrative by giving hugh a different motivation he was always a spy yeah yeah that he's clearly so dragon seed is people who have illegitimate targaryen heritage and hugh has a targaryen hair he has silver hair so i didn't

[01:59:21] even know i didn't fuck him on the watch through and when you mentioned that kind of what we talked about in booktuck it was like where was that and had to go looking up and rewatched that i need to go

[01:59:34] i want to do a third watch i didn't have time but yeah like there's still things i'm going to pick up in the episode absolutely well it was so strange because he said his name was hugh and i

[01:59:44] thought hugh and he's a smith and he's the king's landing but you know it's him no question yeah yeah and then we had alan alan and yes it looked like in the preview that we saw alan with another

[02:00:01] man who could possibly be his brother adam his brother adam yeah yeah so alan is much older than he is in the book so in the book alan and adam coreleys says that they're lanors bastards with a woman who's a shipbuilder named marilda

[02:00:29] and there's no way that coreleys can pass adam and alan off as lanors bastards because they're too old laner wouldn't have been old enough to father them and you know and everybody believes that they're really coreleys is bastards and he's claiming that they're lanors so he

[02:00:47] doesn't get in trouble with reynies right but he's not even gonna be able to as uh he's so much older because it was coreleys is like young you know uh maybe so your seed sort of behavior

[02:00:59] as a young man as opposed to adam and alan being quite young and it looking like he's recently stepped out on reynies yeah maybe that's the rewrite yeah that would totally make sense that adam

[02:01:15] and alan were perhaps conceived before coreleys married reynies or after but early on early on maybe it was before i i don't know yeah um but alan is a super important character way down

[02:01:32] way down the timeline he he stays important for a long time and adam is also going to be a very important character so um that that was great to see him introduced yeah so i mentioned before

[02:01:50] ryan condol said that i want aamon targaryen echoes throughout the season and i've been wondering how far they're gonna take the story this season and i wonder if they'll end it with aamond and

[02:02:04] daemon's deaths i don't think they will i think it would make sense for the storyline but i think those two characters are too important for hbo's fan base that's true um and so i almost think as a

[02:02:21] decision for the series as a whole i i would wonder if they won't stretch i think we're gonna see more reordering of events as well as there are a few children that i think are still

[02:02:33] missing and so i think we're right yeah i think we might see some roles even possibly reassigned in different ways do you think maybe i yes and one of the things that makes me really wonder

[02:02:48] what they're gonna do is that evidently um daemon is going to give dark sister to bella interesting which is not where dark sister is supposed to end up there's a very specific place

[02:03:05] where dark sister is supposed to end up and that is in aamon skull right yeah yeah they they're doing some different stuff they are for sure i am uncomfortable with some of the decisions i think

[02:03:26] they're making from the book so my that are softening some of our characters like even what i just said about coreleys it's okay if he did something quote-unquote bad and stepped out on

[02:03:38] reyna it's a real human thing i'm not going to be upset daemon and nettles if she is a nettles if she's gone like i feel like maybe that's because they want there to be this greater love

[02:03:54] story between reyna and daemon and they don't want him to step out on her but that is daemon's character well it is and he knows it it's also unclear whether nettles and daemon have a romantic

[02:04:07] relationship or remember it suggested that nettles might be his bastard daughter i forgot about that piece i was thinking about the yeah relationship that was rumored yeah well we don't know which

[02:04:21] it is if either right or but nettles is super important in the larger story because she goes and becomes the wood witch with a dragon that sets up the tradition of the burned men in the veil

[02:04:41] i haven't read that part i didn't realize i do you think there's a chance that they are going to use white worm to be part of that story oh good lord i don't know wow i've just been trying to understand

[02:04:59] her role this episode didn't seem important but there's a reason they still kept her in and i know because we there's going to be some other thing and i think she will go on to do you know

[02:05:10] because she does eventually end up in dragonstone at counseling ronira so i think that will happen yeah so they just got her listening obviously we know rinnie is the expert but i

[02:05:25] just had the abridged version and i'm listening to the audiobook while i wait on my hard copy to get here so i feel like once i have that hard copy my notes will be straightened out but trying

[02:05:35] to do the audiobook it's hard to yeah all these names straight so no things i'm forgetting it's totally hard to keep it straight no matter what but so it's very interesting because when you told me

[02:05:48] veronica that you had read the rise of the dragon which is the what george rar martin calls the encyclopedia version of the targaryen story i um i had gotten a copy of it because of the

[02:06:04] illustrations and i hadn't read the text because i'd already read fire and blood well i went and read this section and they really do flatten it down and take out so much of the detail that's in fire

[02:06:15] and blood it's very interesting you get the timelines you get the basic ideas but i didn't realize how many additional details i was missing yes that's right i'm sort of surprised that they haven't given us and i know there were guesses last season that people thought they

[02:06:33] saw them but why didn't they give us mushroom like not as a main character but just as i know easter egg here and there i know i think it would have been i would have liked it i think a lot

[02:06:45] of people would have i agree but you know the truth is is that we are the minority in the audience yeah the book readers right they are really aiming at a much much larger viewing audience

[02:07:01] and they wink at us book readers from time to time but we're not their main audience much as we might like to be the truth is we're just not how dare they i know it

[02:07:17] so i've been trying to think what's going to happen in next week's episode and you know what happens next in the book is that there's a lot of politicking and there's a minor battle

[02:07:32] which is the battle of burning mill where the brackens and the blackwoods are involved and we meet a character called black alley blackwood who becomes important because later way down the timeline she's going to marry kregan stark but if she's been cast there hasn't been any

[02:07:51] announcement about it so she might not even come into the story yet but the next big thing that happens is eric and arick and they set that up this episode they reminded us that they were

[02:08:05] there that they were twins that one was with black that one was in green they made us care about them because they showed that they were dutiful you know even in defection he didn't kill

[02:08:17] the sitting king like they they set some things up to remind us of them and to make us care a little bit about them just so they can stick us in the gut when yes their tragic end comes yes

[02:08:35] and those the actors are they're so good i like them so much i like the characters so it is going to be very painful yeah i i hope they i think they will do that really well

[02:08:51] it's hard this episode i felt so disappointed and i didn't want to feel that way um and it was interesting to hear wendy sort of not also love blood and cheese yeah and so then it's just made

[02:09:08] me worry that i'm i'm glad that a lot of people had that same reaction to blood and cheese because i was worried that being a book reader was going to diminish my experience with the show just

[02:09:21] because of expectation setting um and so i do actually hope that they continue to change some things so that we're surprised but i hope they pay off better yes on some of the important

[02:09:34] things like eric and arick i hope that they pay that out well yeah i i do too all right anything else just two quick notes it seems we have the stage set for the replacing

[02:09:52] of the hand yes so i think that's coming and yes it will be christin cold is going by the book right yeah and then my only other quick note i had was just my experience of the book so far is that

[02:10:11] from this point on ranira is somewhat diminished it feels um and i don't think they're gonna go that direction i think they will change that yeah it doesn't seem that they have and i

[02:10:24] really hope that they don't it was disappointing to me as a book reader to see someone who started out so strong get beaten down and it made sense i mean the tremendous loss that she's gone through um

[02:10:41] it makes sense but i want more from that character in the show and so that is one change that i hope they make and i think they will but those are my only last two little notes

[02:10:56] all right great well thank you for doing book talk with me veronica yeah this is fun i hereby name you an acolyte at the citadel oh my goodness thank you i feel very honored

[02:11:13] all right all right so we'll meet back here next week and do more book talk yes