House of the Dragon - S02E01 - A Son for a Son

[00:00:00] This summer, we enter a new era of Star Wars. You mean the dawn of the Star Wars Canon Timeline podcast? Yeah, yeah sure, that too. But I was obviously talking about the Acolyte. We've got to cover that on The Lorehounds.

[00:00:18] Oh, but the Star Wars Canon Timeline podcast is exactly at that point in the timeline, the end of the High Republic 100 years before the prequel trilogy. We've got to cover it there. Why not both? Okay, deal. It's the first live-action Star Wars outside the Skywalker saga.

[00:00:37] Nobody can miss this. Listeners, kick off your Hot Lore summer weekends with scene-by-scene breakdowns of the Acolyte, found in both the Star Wars Canon Timeline podcast and The Lorehounds' Mother Feed. And The Lorehounds' Star Wars feed.

[00:00:52] Wherever you like to listen, a couple of days after each new episode is released. Hot Lore summer! Welcome to the House of the Hounds. We are the Lorehounds, your guides to the Dance of the Dragons. I'm Jon. And I'm David.

[00:01:34] I think I need to gorge and rest, but we're going to carry on, and this is our coverage of season two, episode one, A Son for a Son of the HBO Max original series, House of the Dragon.

[00:01:46] We're going to start off with our hot takes for the episode before we get into a scene-by-scene breakdown. After that, we'll answer listener feedback. For feedback, we've got some help this season. Dragon Master Nancy M is going to be collecting and organizing all of the feedback for us.

[00:02:01] You can send emails to hotd at the lorehounds dot com. And don't be surprised if you get a thank you reply from Nancy. You can also send us a voicemail. We can include those right in the podcast. Voicemail tool is super easy to use.

[00:02:18] Just head over to the lorehounds dot com and go to the contact page, and it's right there for you. Support the community on Supercast or Patreon. Join the conversation on Discord and take a listen to our affiliate podcast.

[00:02:30] You can find all those links in the link tree in the show notes. Now I also want to talk about what I've been working on, which is the show guide for our patrons, our Supercast subscribers and our season pass holders, which is a one-time fee.

[00:02:45] You basically get Patreon Supercast treatment, premium access to everything only for House of the Dragon for this season. Ten bucks and then you'll be on your merry way. But you never get billed again. So that's the trade-off. It's a fun time.

[00:02:59] But David, I feel like you're hotter on my show guide than I am. Well, I wanted to say something about the show guide too. You know, the whole issue of subscriptions and being nickel and dimed and what we see

[00:03:11] a lot of times people come around for a big show. They want to support us and then they cancel and all of that kind of stuff. And so we just said, let's make it easier.

[00:03:19] Pay a flat $10, you get all the value and then you're done and you get the show and you get to help support the podcast. So I think it's a really good deal. The show guide is one of those benefits.

[00:03:29] And dude, I was looking at your episode one recap, all the gifts that you made. Some people call them gifs. The screenshots you got, the synopsis. I was really honestly blown away by the amount of work. It's all indexed at the top.

[00:03:50] So I needed to look up something about blood and cheese and I could click and just jump right to the point in the synopsis. Well, I'm grateful that Notion lets you just say, give me a table of contents.

[00:04:03] And as long as you have headings, it'll just do it for you. Oh, see, you really have become the master now. Oh yeah, you can just say, do a table of contents out of my headings. That's cool. I didn't know that. Okay.

[00:04:16] Yeah, you've eclipsed me with your Notion skills. Pretty awesome. Well, you know, it's a game of succession here. Let's say the Game of Thrones. Right. The other thing we should mention for subscribers and season pass holders is we did a little thing last night, Hot D Hot Takes.

[00:04:39] So you and I jumped on the mic right away after the episode was over. We recorded about 15 minutes of just our sort of top three favorite stuff that we saw in the episode. And then we put that out immediately.

[00:04:52] I think it was posted by like 1030 last night, Eastern time. And I don't know if we're going to keep doing those, but if we do, that's another great benefit for subscribers. If you like them, write in. You know, we're always listening to what people want. That's right.

[00:05:06] Our Dragon Master Nancy M will be glad to receive your email. Absolutely. So, you know, David, I wanted to say this is our first time doing a podcast for a lot of people, I think, because this is a new season of a big show.

[00:05:21] And that's usually when we get some newcomers. So hello, we're the lore hounds. We cover a lot of nerdy things. And we started off with Tolkien. We've gotten way further. We're up to almost 300 episodes. So you will be safe on your journey with us through Westeros.

[00:05:38] Buckle in, we're going to have fun. As far as background, do you want to talk about your background briefly in the Westeros universe? Sure. Just briefly. I remember I'd been traveling abroad and living abroad for quite a long time.

[00:05:53] And I came home, I think it must have been the winter of 2011. And I was house sitting for some friends of mine. And I hadn't been caught up on what was going on in TV. And so I was pecking around.

[00:06:05] I was like, oh, HBO, there's always good value there. And I stumbled across Game of Thrones. And they must have had, I think it must have been just season one at that point. I don't think season two is out.

[00:06:18] And I binge watched it in less than 12 hours, I think. I just watched the whole thing back to back and was completely blown away. And then ended up reading the books and just burning through them. Just like, oh my god, this content is so good.

[00:06:34] And then just being a fan ever since then. We know that the last couple of seasons of Game of Thrones had its problems. It didn't bankrupt me. I don't think I was broken by the way that Game of Thrones ended. So it was fine.

[00:06:53] I could see the flaws in it. And then when House of the Dragon comes along, you and I just finished our season one rewatch. And I have to say that was a really excellent season of television.

[00:07:07] I'm just really impressed at the craft, at the storytelling, the way that they were able to seed all the different plot points. I'm seeing a lot of that in this episode as well.

[00:07:18] The little things that they were dropping just to set up this episode, but also to set up the season. I have only read the core novels as they've been published. So obviously we don't have the last one.

[00:07:33] I've never read any of the auxiliary information, so I haven't read anything. So I'm really coming this as an average fan. Loved Game of Thrones, loving House of the Dragon, TV viewer, read the books but haven't

[00:07:47] gone deep like you and some of the other folks in our community. Cool. Yeah. The way we try to do these podcasts on these lore heavy shows is usually we try to have one person be the book guy and one person be the non-book person.

[00:08:04] For this one, I'm kind of the book person, right? I'm not an expert by any means on the Westeros universe, but I have a very good amount of knowledge. I've read all the books.

[00:08:16] I've read Fire and Blood a couple times and I've read Dunk and Egg, that stuff. I am well versed in Westerosi culture and because I'm doing the show guide, it's also making me more solidified at who people are and whatnot. Bolstering your skills, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:32] I came into Game of Thrones pretty late. I came to it around season five, but I was immediately into it. I remember somebody sold me on it with the Oberyn v. The Mountain. Oh, right. Yeah.

[00:08:45] That was the first thing somebody showed me and I did not understand what a trial by combat was at that time, but that's all right because it sold me on the show. I started watching it.

[00:08:52] I binged the whole thing ahead of season six and I really loved it. I unfortunately did become fan bankrupt towards the end of the last season. Fan bankruptcy, by the way, comes from our former podcast network we used to be involved

[00:09:08] with where they used to talk about fan bankruptcy being when you just can't take it seriously anymore. You declare fan bankruptcy and just have fun with it. Yeah. So I yeah, you're just out on it.

[00:09:20] So I was I was really down on the last season towards the end and it was a big shame and I didn't think about Game of Thrones for a while. It drove me into the arms of Tolkien. It's famously part of our origin story.

[00:09:30] But House of the Dragon came back right when I was getting into podcasting with you and I immediately from the first episode said, oh, this is quality. This is this is Game of Thrones at its best. And it's shocking because I honestly didn't expect to like it.

[00:09:46] I thought that they were just it was just gonna be a money grab or something like that. But I think the involvement of George, the the fact that the story's already written all the way and they have a different show runners. Right.

[00:09:59] Yeah, I they have a blueprint for the story and then they fill in. Yeah, right. So that that those three things together, I think worked really well to make a great story, especially because we know we're only getting three seasons.

[00:10:13] This is going to be a really tight, well knitted story. Well, well, embroidered story. If we're going to go into the intro, you will. One of our favorite motifs. Right, right. So are we ready to give a big spoiler warning before our hot takes? Oh, this is it.

[00:10:31] We're going to. This is your spoiler warnings for episode one of season two. Very good. So if you have not watched the episode in full, do not complain to us if you stick around. We'll be here.

[00:10:45] We're going to talk about all the crazy stuff that happened in this episode. Be gone. If you're still here, David, what'd you think about the episode? This was a really strong start to the season. The level of it almost doesn't

[00:11:05] feel like they had any kind of break between the end of season one and the beginning of this. The confidence level, the confident storytelling, the character development, the production values, the music was on point, the visuals were on point.

[00:11:24] Like I mentioned before, the little story mechanics and plottings. We've got hints of things yet to come in the season. But then we had a lot of hints and little clues about what was going to happen in this episode.

[00:11:39] And all of that just tells me that's a thing that communicates to me quality. That this is a writer's room and showrunners and production team and cast. Everybody is pulling in the same direction and there's a real sense of, I don't know, pride of ownership or something.

[00:11:55] I don't know how to explain that. But you just feel like people are given their best here. And I love that. I was expecting a little bit more fire and blood, a little bit more combat, a little bit more dragon dogfighting, things like that.

[00:12:10] But as we were going on the episode and that wasn't happening, I didn't even notice. I was so taken with the story as it was and the buildup of the tension and what's going to happen. I didn't even notice

[00:12:28] the way that the whole son for a son thing was going to be set up because I was just that's the name of the show. That's your little sound clip that you're that was my dad earlier. That's that's what I had to delay the recording of the show.

[00:12:44] Five minutes for is I just needed, hey, that's the name of the show from Arrested Development. Good job. Well done. Yeah, I was just so I was so in the moment that I wasn't even thinking galaxy brain about the story overall. I was just like, OK, what's happening?

[00:13:00] What's happening? What's happening? And loving every minute of it. I thought the the ramp up to the tension to the end was was great. There was one there's only one moment where it I was taken out, and that was with the white worm with Melissa.

[00:13:18] I want to say Melisandre. That's not Miss Aria. Miss Aria. Thank you. With Miss Aria. I thought, well, she got caught pretty easily by the right person in the right place, you know, but whatever. It was fine. Other than that, it was a real master craft

[00:13:34] in episode production and. To bring a season. You know, we're there's a lot at stake for this season, for HBO, for the fandom, the podcast community. This is an insane. This is like the Super Bowl for podcasts like, you know what we do.

[00:13:56] Everybody's you know, people are doing live watches. That's what it is. That's what it is. And if it faltered or if it had stumbled and we'd be like, everybody would be lighting their hair on fire and running around. But I just feel like, wow, here we are.

[00:14:12] You know, television fandom, we're all pulling in the same direction for the show, and they delivered. They really gave us what we were. They met our expectations and I think exceeded them. That's great. I would like them to exceed our expectations rather than subvert them.

[00:14:26] Yes, that's really what I'm looking for here. Boy, this was a heck of an episode to open up with, especially on Father's Day with a son for a son. Somebody at HBO Marketing was like, oh, this is going to be good.

[00:14:41] Yeah, we got to line this up. This is it. Great job. Whoever that is. Great job. Ten out of ten. Something that really struck me that somebody pointed out on Reddit was Emma Darcy spoke four words in this entire episode.

[00:14:56] What may have given the performance of the. Oh, yeah. That's true, isn't it? Four words. I want a gun. Eamon Targaryen. That's it. That's so great. That's such a great observation. I didn't know her word. Amazing the way she emotes as she's holding her son's remains.

[00:15:16] The way that. She is enraged at the council meeting, the way she wordlessly comforts her son, Jace, as he can't hold it together. My God. Amazing performance. And as much as I miss Millie Alcock, I don't know if she could emote this way.

[00:15:35] I don't know if she could play this side of Raniere this well. Yeah, I agree. Boy, Emma Darcy is doing a crazy good job. Yeah, exceptional performance and other great performances, too. I mean, Blood and Cheese were just a delightful pair.

[00:15:50] They had that Home Alone two vibe going. And yeah, somebody somebody else said online, like, how can we make somebody stand out as a bad guy in the Game of Thrones universe where everybody's a bad guy? Why don't we have him kick a dog?

[00:16:05] I don't that'll really sell it. When he did that, I was like I was kind of like a Leo pointing me. I was like, no, the dog that's going to piss people off. It's funny because we literally have a baby being killed in this episode.

[00:16:18] People get mad at kicking a dog. But yeah, the dog was the standout thing that people got mad about. Yeah. But you know, if I could just add into the OK, you know, kicking the dog, killing a baby, not funny things.

[00:16:32] But there were so many other moments of levity. And I think they really took a lesson from last year and understood that we need to need to mix in a little bit of sugar along with spice. Yeah. I think that's right.

[00:16:46] And there were certainly parts that may be guffaw, one might say. But then, of course, with the close with the close of the episode, my wife looks at me because we have a one year old and a three year old and she goes,

[00:16:58] I need to hold my baby right now. And we couldn't because we weren't going to wake them up because. But man, I was just like, yeah, that's rough. It's really rough to watch that as a parent because you're like, I couldn't imagine somebody doing that to me. Yeah.

[00:17:12] And this is less brutal than it was in the book, too. And I'll get to that. I will talk about it. I saw an interview with Ryan Condal. They did definitely change things from the book. OK, I thought they did so I can talk about it freely.

[00:17:24] It's not going to happen in the show. Then one of the nice things, too, because a lot of times with the genre material that we cover, there is a lot of book adaptation and inspiration, you know, stuff being drawn from books.

[00:17:35] We have a whole framework to just break that down to the. Yeah. The shippy test in the Sanderson slider. Anyway, the the fact that this is. A faux history. And that it's it works as a blueprint again, really serves this writer's room, it's a giant show Bible.

[00:17:57] It's you know, it's just a giant, you know, outline of resource for writers to do what writers need to do. I think that really serves this in a way that for a lot of other shows that do take adaptation or inspiration, they don't have the luxury.

[00:18:15] They have to they have to do a lot of work to bend and maneuver stuff. So, yeah, I don't know. It just seems to work really well. Yeah. Yeah. I'm this is a great world to play in. Yeah. If you're if you're doing a D&D campaign,

[00:18:29] this would be a fun one to make it. Right. Sure. So, yeah, I think we should get right into this before we before we lose the fire of the fire and blood. I'm engorged. Well, maybe that's a weird way to say that. So never mind.

[00:18:41] I don't don't let's leave that one out. All right. All right. All right. So we're back and there's a new title sequence with the same music. Of course, I still would like its own theme to be put into the show. But yeah, that's all right.

[00:18:57] I still like the Game of Thrones theme. So instead of the blood flowing in season one's title sequence, we get a tapestry woven of Targaryen history. Of course, there's a lot of blood still seeping into the into the tapestry itself. But the final shot shows Aegon and Rhaenyra

[00:19:15] on opposite sides of the thrones divided by a dragon. What do you what do you think of this new this new episode? Of course, the weaving of tapestries is your is your whole thing. That's your running joke here. One of my running jokes, one of many.

[00:19:30] My heart was not in conflict with itself on on this particular one. I thought it was I thought it was kind of a bold choice. To you know, this opening is in league with all of the other things like Westworld, The Crown. What was it?

[00:19:50] Shogun recently had a very, you know, kind of a similar thing. So these yeah, sort of animated computer animated even rings of power had that. Yes, right. Rings of power for sure. So it it was very much in line with that prestige class of intros. I thought weaving.

[00:20:09] I thought, wow, that's a really interesting, creative choice. I don't I definitely like it more than I don't think I dislike it. And I want to understand it more as the images were passing by. I was realizing that this is sort of a history of stuff.

[00:20:31] And I didn't know, is this past? Is this portent? Is this telling us what's not? It looks like past. There's very clear. I wasn't sure right at first, but there's very clear great council images that we saw in season one

[00:20:45] in the flashback at the beginning, the cold open of season one. Yeah, there's Jahaerys. There's, you know, Viserys sitting on his throne. So they it's the past, it seems like. So I wonder if we're going to update it every episode now. Yeah, that'll be interesting.

[00:20:58] Well, we'll have to stick around and watch it every time. And I'm sure the YouTube's are already filled with breakdown videos. And so, you know, a matter of going to see what what are all of these different

[00:21:08] images, and we'll definitely include some of that analysis as we go forward. But yeah, I I I it was a little bit of a head scratcher, but not in a bad way. Like, oh, OK, it's kind of cool. Let me see if I can get with it.

[00:21:22] You know, it was better than the the the blood, you know, sort of the blood puzzle that was that we had last year. Didn't like that one. This one I actually I'm I'm a lot more hot on it than you are. I really loved it.

[00:21:37] And the reason I loved it was because. What does Helena do all day? She embroidered tapestries with her prophecies. Very good point. So is this supposed to be, you know, like the quilts of Targaryen history by Helena? Well, and we had we had all those tapestries on

[00:21:58] those very suggestive tapestries on the wall last. Right. Right. Well, I don't think Helena needed those. I'm not was she alive? I think she was, but she was a baby. Right. But it was just is still part of the the humor of of that whole thing.

[00:22:14] And right. Yeah, I think I think the Lena observation is way out. Way more on point. Thank you. I do this for a living a little bit. So we've done the tapestry. We start off the episode at Winterfell. I guess we see a raven flying us through

[00:22:31] the forest into Winterfell while Cregan Stark speaks a monologue about the Starks. Cregan takes Jace to the wall, explaining that one in ten men from each household, including the Starks, joins the Night's Watch to defend against wildlings or weather, not against wildlings or weather, but against death.

[00:22:51] Cregan holds true to his oath to Rhaenyra, but is concerned about sending troops with the oncoming winter. He promises 2000 Greybeards to the cause just before they receive a raven about Luke's death. Dutay. Do you have a sense of duty, John, in your oath? Are you Jamie Tartt?

[00:23:11] I don't know. What are you doing there? I was trying to do the northerner accent. It is a very northern European English accent in a way. I wonder. It's Sean Bean. Let's just be honest with ourselves. It's Sean Bean. Yeah, I mean, I love the vibe of Cregan.

[00:23:31] Do you know, though, that the showrunners have come out and said that this was a tease for the future? We're not going to see him again in season one. Oh, really? Rather? No, no, I haven't. I haven't been following up on any of the auxiliary information.

[00:23:41] I'm trying to keep my soul pure. Oh, well, I'm I'm going to ruin it for you. Yeah, yeah, no, go for it. Yeah. Get it. Get all in up in there. And I you know, you can't talk to me like that when we're talking about Game

[00:23:52] of Thrones, this is a very saucy show. But yeah, I mean, what a joy it is to see Winterfell again and hear the Stark theme. We got a lot there. People in the discord were very excited by the Winterfell for sure.

[00:24:09] Yeah, this was this was actually a change with how. With how little Jace was in the north right now. OK, this was a divergence from the book. And and I think they could have done with more Winterfell. That was one of my few complaints about this episode.

[00:24:26] Interesting. OK. I just think that people want it. People want the Starks. They're they're the fan favorite. So was that the sword that Cregan was carrying? Oh, yeah. Is the family sword, right? That's ice. That is the giant Valyrian great sword. Yeah, the thing was huge.

[00:24:46] I was thinking we should have on our show guide a place for like weapons and objects, things like the crowns and the daggers and stuff like that. And when I have time to do that, I think I think we can do that.

[00:24:58] But for now, I'm just like you get the episode guides for now and then the character guides and the dragon guides and the geography. And that's what you get. That sword was so prominent, though, like couldn't help but see it multiple times.

[00:25:12] Yep. And and I get the sense that Cregan knows how to use it. Mm hmm. Even though he seems very young, both him and Jay seem pretty close in age. And I thought I saw some chatter on our discord, too, about the fact

[00:25:24] that they were like maybe in the books that they had spent some time together as. Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying is Jay spent a lot more time in the north at this point. OK. In the book, because I think and they kind of alluded to that

[00:25:38] at the end of last season, because Raniere says to Jace, hey, Cregan Stark is similar in age to you. Go to him and try to bond with him. OK. But then we don't see that.

[00:25:47] But but they do seem to have bonded by the time we see them. Yes. But it's weird because it's only a few days after Luke's death. It's only a few days after the end of season one.

[00:25:58] And yeah, and he just flew up there and this was sort of his for. And yeah, and he'd never seen the wall or anything like that. So, yeah, and I think that goes to Jace's character and what they're telling us about his character, that he is

[00:26:09] a likable person, that he has a particular kind of self-confidence where he can comport himself well, he can operate as a good negotiator. And when yeah, when he meets somebody like Cregan, he can bond with him.

[00:26:25] And as I understand in the books, they have a lot more time together. But here, if they don't, that just reinforces for me, though, the fact that Jace is, um, you know, a particular kind of bro kind of kind of dude.

[00:26:39] He bonds with the heir. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Regardless of his parentage. I think he's a worthy heir. Right. Right. He's got a good sense, good sense of values and a good character, a good, good, good sense of himself. And that helps you when you're working with other people.

[00:26:56] And my God, the hair growth genes on this guy. I didn't recognize him at first. I was like, who's that? It's been days and he looks like he's in the fourth Harry Potter movie. I tell you what. Yeah.

[00:27:08] I knew that was you just have to go blow by that. It's just one of those things. Clearly costuming was like, look, whoever I don't know. Is it a new wig person? That's the question, because a lot of the wigs are changed. And I think for the better.

[00:27:22] But I'm like, did they get a new wig person who said, look, the wigs in season one, they needed some work. I don't care what you did. I'm doing my own thing. Well, who knows? Maybe writing on a dragon back all the way from Dragonstone to Winterfell.

[00:27:36] Pulls the hairs out of the fibers. All that heat. You're next to all that heat, you know, from the dragon. This is absurd. I'm moving on. Rene's return. We wait one thing, though, that I OK, was relevant and very important

[00:27:51] that I did like as a tie into our world. And obviously what we know about Game of Thrones was the fact that Cregan says, yeah, there were a couple of dragons up here and they refused to cross the line of the wall.

[00:28:07] Like, so you tell me, you know, what's more important? You know, the most powerful, you know, force in the in our world, these dragons were afraid to cross to, you know, go over there. So what's over there?

[00:28:22] Yeah, that's an important thing that we need to keep our eye on, regardless of what y'all want to do, you know, mucking about down in the Southlands. So I felt that was a really nice solid anchor into the

[00:28:33] Game of Thrones world as a whole, not just Game of Thrones season, but, you know, the Hedge Knight stuff that's coming up and just everything. It worked well. The dragons won't cross the wall unless Jon Snow asks nicely. That's the rule. We need a nice dragon.

[00:28:51] Them's the breaks. I don't want it. All right. Rhaenys returns to Dragonstone, where Daemon propositions her to kill Aemond and Vhagar with him. A son for a son. That's the name of the show. The queen has been gone for several days to look for Luke's remains.

[00:29:08] Daemon blames Rhaenys for not acting well. She could end the green line. Rhaenyra looks on. If but you were the king, that was such a burn. Great line. Great chemistry. Yes, yes. I had to mention, too, I remember some of the back chatter from season one.

[00:29:34] Whenever somebody would dismount from a dragon, they would cut away and then we just see them then, you know, walking forward or something like that. And so people online were like, Oh, how do they get down from the dragon? Blah, blah, blah. Well, now they've shown us.

[00:29:48] They've showed us exactly how it's done, either, you know, in a, you know, you pull into your garage and you're into your valet parking garage or when you're on the beach or whatever and how you get down. And I thought that was pretty cool.

[00:30:04] Like, I like the fact that they're the showrunners and the writers are picking up some of the stuff that got, you know, some of the chatter that happened in the previous seasons. Also, the episode was visible. We can see the entire episode. Yeah, I appreciate that.

[00:30:21] Also, listen, Ryan Condal, if you're going to save 10% of your CGI budget, like $10 million by not having Rainese go off dragon on camera. I'm OK with that. Yeah, I don't need to see that. We've got it done now. It's done. It's in the cannon. We're good to go.

[00:30:37] So, OK, moving on. Yeah. So, Damon, what do you think about him trying to pull rank with Rainese? That I mean, he was trying, right? He's the kind of guy he's like, if I can't, OK, I'm going to try it this way.

[00:30:55] It's not working. I'll try it that way. If it's not working, I'll try it that way. You know, he's going to try to figure out the combination to unlock the lock. And he knew he was being cheeky with her.

[00:31:06] And even the way he said, you know, I command you, it was kind of soft and a little bit friendly and open. And he immediately followed it up like, let's go kick some ass. Come on, you and me, we can do this. Dream team.

[00:31:20] He's trying to upsell it. And she's just not having it. So right. And note that he doesn't ask Raniera to do it because he knows she'll say no. Right. Exactly. And then he's been doing this the whole time, right?

[00:31:35] When she during her labors, you know, earlier on, he was like, OK, we're going to war. And didn't Jace have to step in and actually pull him to heel? You had to put a stop to that. That was this is just classic Damon, right?

[00:31:48] It's you know, and who knows? Maybe it would have worked. Who knows? But maybe it wouldn't have. So I'm going to go with it probably wouldn't have worked between the Scorpions and Vagar. That was that we unintended. The law of unintended consequences would have come into play.

[00:32:04] Yeah, sure. As as it did last season in this season. This very episode, one might say this very episode. So let's go over to Rani's husband, Corliss. Looks over the shipyards as his ship is restored.

[00:32:20] Alan of Hull says he will do his best to get Corliss's ship back up and gives him a bladesmith for loot. Corliss thanks Alan for pulling him out of the sea. So for those of you who are subscribers and and season pass holders and people on our discord,

[00:32:39] I got really excited because I thought the actor was somebody else. But he's not. He was the actor who played father in a show called Raised by Wolves. And I got confused when I saw him because I really liked him. And I was like, I know that guy.

[00:32:54] Like, where was he in? So anyway, my bad on that. But Alan, I was like, A-L-L-E-N. No, no, no, no. It has to have a Y in it. No, it's George. You can't, you know, you can't expect George R. Martin to spell a fucking name right. Love it.

[00:33:11] So is this who is this dude like what they give him a lot of screen time? They did for what dot, dot, dot. Yeah. And they did. I you know, I I labeled him Alan of Hull in the outline

[00:33:24] and in the show guide because that is what the subtitles called him. OK, that is going to be what he's known as. He will be around. I will not say more than that. Say no more. Say no more.

[00:33:34] But obviously we know that he he is owed a life debt from Corliss. It's a big deal for a commoner. Sure. And Corliss was very up and up about that. He was like, right. Yeah. And I was going to say. Anyway. Yeah, no, that's fine.

[00:33:53] I think we're oh, I know what it was. It's that the show again is all mixed in and you never quite know what's a small clue and what's a big clue. Right later, there's the line about, oh, I'm afraid of the rats. And that was a small thing.

[00:34:10] But then we got like this or the scorpion, you know, check off scorpion later coming up. So they're they're doing a really good job of dropping these little clues. Who is the guy? Season one, when Raniro was walking up the stairs

[00:34:26] right after she given labor and the Lord dead. Right. No, no. But remember, remember, it's a little scene. Yeah, Caswell, a little scene sets up a whole bunch of stuff. And so you never quite know where these little setups are going to go. And I love it.

[00:34:41] I'm here for it because it keeps it a really rich tapestry. Right. Right. Well, I'm sure. See, the interesting thing is that this show sets up those kinds of things for book readers and non-book readers like there are like this is something

[00:34:55] where if you didn't have me with you, you might you might think maybe he'll be important because of the whole coreless conversation. But right. I'm going to tell you, pay attention to him. But but there are definitely things happening right now

[00:35:06] that I'm just not going to pick up on. Right. Okay, fine. Like, that's great. And what was the deal with this? Now, this blade that he that was something that they had Smith for for Luke. Well, yeah, because Corliss had Luke named his heir.

[00:35:22] Right. And so this is like a blade that he'd a gift for him. Right. Yeah. And it was ready right after he died. So sad. Sad tears. Poor Luke. He did nothing. He did nothing. But I do enjoy seeing, you know, the Valerians prepare for war.

[00:35:41] That's really fun. I've seen these shipyards on Driftmark. Yeah, they were getting they were being very busy there. They're being very busy. I was going to say to Steve Toussaint, he looks different physically. He it looks like he lost weight, which I was like, oh, the actors aged,

[00:36:02] you know, during the season, shoes or whatever. But then, no, wait, that makes sense because he was on his deathbed. Right. You know, and yeah, I did notice him recovering too different. OK, but yeah, he looked a little bit more gaunt.

[00:36:14] His hair was is not as full and regal as he had been in the past. So it sort of tracks right. And we only saw him for a couple of minutes at the end of season one. That's true. That's a good point. So Eric, Eric, the with any.

[00:36:31] So Eric with an A is a green twin and Eric with an E is the black twin. They're on opposite teams, right? Eric leads Hightower troops as they prepare the defense of King's Landing. They see Amund return home on Vagar. Well, as I said, it Chekhov's Scorpion here.

[00:36:55] Yeah, and isn't it so it's such good exposition to not be like, hey, we're all on edge, but instead have them be like, ready the Scorpion because we see a dragon in the distance. Yeah, yeah.

[00:37:07] And look sharp and yeah, you know, getting everybody, you know, yeah, it's boring up here. I mean, they'd all be on their mobile phones if they if it was a different time, you know, because that's kind of it's boring duty sitting up there. Right.

[00:37:20] I think I think that's the other thing too was not only is it Chekhov's Scorpion, but I think the show is training us. And somebody even mentioned this on the Discord that, oh, you know, you need, you know,

[00:37:35] you need some sort of signaling or whatever, you know, maybe the dragons should keep a little, you know, flag, you know, off their tail or something like that, like ships would do, you know, it's like during the Napoleonic era and stuff, right?

[00:37:47] You fly, you know, your different flags to identify friend from foe. And so the show not only teased us with the Scorpion, but they're training us to to look for in the future. This is going to be a situation whose dragon is that?

[00:38:04] How do I identify that dragon? And if it is an enemy dragon, you know, WTF, what are we going to do? Because that's bad news. And like who is in command? Because Eric was able to recognize Vagar, but is everybody going to be able to recognize Vagar?

[00:38:19] Very good point. Although Vagar is one of the easiest ones to recognize because first of all, she's huge. Second, she's got holy wings. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that's that's another really good point. Like we got the silhouette,

[00:38:31] right? Just like air raid training for like during World War Two, thinking about, you know, being able to identify is that allied or axis plane, you know, based on the silhouette shape.

[00:38:44] So well, I look forward to it when you ever record your Masters of the Air second podcast. Oh, man. Yeah, that was I was a disappointing show. I really wanted to like that one a lot.

[00:38:58] I know. Well, I'm sorry, but not as sorry as Helena will be. She embroiders her prophecy etchings while Aegon sinks, seeks his son, Jaharis. Helena says she's afraid of the rats. The queen is an enduring mystery, is she not?

[00:39:19] The things she says need to be studied like they're biblical texts. Seriously. You know, there was a John Mulaney bit where he said, crazy people have an unlimited amount of crazy to throw at you. And Helena's got that. But she also is speaking truth at the same time.

[00:39:42] Right. And how do you how do you deal with that? What do you do about that? Well, you just laugh it off like Aegon did. And he's just like, oh, she's an enduring mystery.

[00:39:53] Is his eyes sort of roll around and right with my son and get the hell out of there? Right. Yeah. What do you think about their dynamic here? You know, I was surprised in some ways because I was a little worried if he was going to go

[00:40:13] hard in the Joffrey direction and just be sort of cruel and brutal and, you know, unafraid of using physical violence to get what he wants with people that are closest around him. And in fact, he was just kind of like, hey, where's my son? And like,

[00:40:34] you know, he's got to be king one day. So I want to bring him along. I mean, I'm not excusing a lot of other things. But I was really surprised at the fact that

[00:40:43] there was, I don't know, kind of a I don't know. It just it wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting it was mundane. Yeah, it was much more. That's a good way to put it. Hey,

[00:40:53] listen, it's bring your son to work day and I need to find him. Yes. And she's like, don't disturb him, which I didn't understand that either. Like, don't disturb his rituals or whatever. Studies. He was going to study with the maester.

[00:41:05] I feel like he she knows that the king's a bad influence on her. Mm. On his brother. Right, right. Stay away from him a little bit. Right. Well, we'll see more on them later for now. Let's go to Sir. Kristen servicing his queen

[00:41:20] who tells him they just cannot do this again. She helps him don his white cloak is soiled and sullied white cloak. This guy, man, this guy. What a hypocrite. I mean, it's obvious. Yeah, both of them. Both of them. I mean, this is literally the thing that

[00:41:40] they that incited their hatred of Raniera. They're just saying for her potentially incited a war because what Allison have have been so gung ho to put her son on the throne in replacement of

[00:41:56] Raniera if if she hadn't thought that Raniera had disappointed her from her estimation of what lords and ladies should be all about. Right. Right. I mean, how many people do we know who are

[00:42:10] saying, you know, good for me, not for the right. That's exactly what Allison is. That's exactly want what Kristen is. You know, Kristen's Kristen's actually more at fault than Raniera because Raniera was a free woman. Right. She wasn't married. She didn't take an oath of chastity,

[00:42:28] whereas Kristen is the one who broke his oath of chastity and shirked his duties at work to have sex with with the person he was supposed to be his protectee. Yeah. And here he is again.

[00:42:43] And we'll see what happens when he shirks his duties again. Yeah, that was a big point of mind later on was like, oops. But isn't it interesting that both Raniera and Allison

[00:42:55] have snagged with this guy? It is interesting. And this is not in the book at all. Okay. This is a show edition. And I think people are saying that the showrunners are just straight up team black. I think that's undoubted.

[00:43:11] The both of worse in Allison with this and they soften Damon later with the way he approaches blood and cheese. The you made a really good point, though, in our hot D hot takes last night,

[00:43:24] which is that Allison for once is pursuing. Okay, granted, big context here, you know, around the larger issues of what's going on. But at least in this micro and of course, this is what George does

[00:43:38] right? He puts us into these positions of, oh, wow, what that person just did was really interesting. But then the other stuff that they're doing is terror is really terrible. So like I gotta

[00:43:47] take the person as a whole. And in that Allison in this moment, in this part of her life is pursuing her own agency and her own pleasure and her own sense of being her physical being when all

[00:44:02] she was in. This is the point you made last night was that, you know, she was a dutiful wife and being receptive to her husband was never a pleasure for her. It was a chore. It was due to

[00:44:17] basically having sex with the corpse for 10 years. Oh, thanks for that wonderful image. Thank you, John. Can you imagine the Phantom of the Opera from last season? I mean, come on, come on.

[00:44:31] So you can't, you know, I mean, okay. We, Kristen Cole is an oath breaker and, and, and vile in a whole bunch of ways, but he's kind of a hunky guy. I mean, he's not my type, but I can see why

[00:44:45] he's angels for some reason. He is, it's true. He has a lush head of hair, you know, he's got a nice, you know, physique, you know, sure. I get it. And, and yet, so one of the things that I, I

[00:44:59] particularly appreciate is the fact that both Allison and Raniere have been with this guy, right? So it sort of parallels their relationship and their friendship and, you know, their, the ins and outs between these two women. But then like, what does this say about Kristen Cole

[00:45:16] that he's just ready to throw his cloak down on, you know, a snap of a finger and, you know, he's there. Like, dude, like seriously. All you got to do with Kristen Cole is ask.

[00:45:27] See, right? That's it. Take your cloak off my good man. Stay a while. Oh man, not great. But yeah, I think this is a really interesting, a really interesting development for Allison. This is, this is the first time she's ever sought pleasure for herself instead of

[00:45:44] imparting pleasure on someone else. Right? And that's, that's big character development. And I, I said this last night when I was, it was late at night and I was making stupid jokes

[00:45:54] and I said, listen, if you, if you had this happen just a little earlier, if he, if he had had a taste of the, if he had had a taste of that high tower a little earlier, I think that this whole

[00:46:13] war would not have happened because it would have been so relaxed. She would have been fine. The girl just needed to get off for 20 years. Seriously? Seriously? Oh my God. You're gonna make me joke. But also something that somebody said that I saw, I don't remember where, but

[00:46:33] was if it were anyone other than Kristen Cole, I would be thrilled for her. Right? Yes. That's a really good point. That is literally the one person it should not be. Oh man. It's just so,

[00:46:49] yeah. And then she's like, oh, we can't do this again. Uh huh. Right. Right. Yeah. He'll come back to old town later. Ring that bell. There's a quite an intimacy between him too. The way she

[00:47:00] puts on his cloak and everything. And, and, um, you know, a line that she mentioned, which seems like a mundane chatter is a little bit telling though, because she's like, oh, there's a, you

[00:47:11] know, it's, there's a bite to the air. It's a, you know, summer is over. So we get a little bit of the, you know, winter is coming motif, uh, woven back into our storyline there.

[00:47:22] And I love the joke earlier on with Jace when he goes, winter is coming and Jace goes, the hell is this? What are these things that are, yes. Fall from the sky. What the hell is this?

[00:47:33] That was basically never snows in King's landing. So we got two references to winter is coming. Um, you know, in terms of other characters noting that summer is over. Right. Well, David, we've had our fun making jokes about Alison. Let's take a quick break. When we get back,

[00:47:51] we will go to the green council. We'll be right back with more house of the dragon. And we're back with more house of the dragon. The green council convenes and Aegon brings to Harris to observe Otto doubts the loyalty of

[00:48:16] the North, but the council has a storm lands, the West and old town. Alison suggests Aegon send condolences to Runeera, but Aegon spends the council time belittling Sir. Tyland Alison backs Aegon up. Amen joins them and suggest they take Harrenhal and rule the riverlands.

[00:48:35] Otto suggests patients and restraint earning a scoff from Aegon. Did you like the scoff David? This guy? Well, what I liked more was, uh, the discomfort that Thailand was experiencing.

[00:48:48] Did you see the screenshot I got? No, I didn't. In the, uh, you gotta go to the show guide because I'm in the show guide. It was, it was a hilarious shot that I accidentally got.

[00:48:58] It looks like it could be the start of a spinoff comedy. All right. Episode one, season two, episode one recap, the green council table of condo. They look like they just got caught like fighting over a toy.

[00:49:13] It's so good that they did. I guess they did. Yeah. But the actor for Thailand really did a great job of selling me out. Like he's one of the kids too.

[00:49:24] Yeah. It's so good. And, and the whole thing of like, Whoa, you know, wouldn't it be fun to, you know, ride, ride the master of coin around? Oh, is he disturbing you? Uh, my good man.

[00:49:36] Right. You know, and you're like, uh, this kid's psycho. I cannot say no. Right. So right. It was all that, like we were saying before the levity just sort of, you know,

[00:49:46] gently mixed into the, into the thing. It just, just enough to, uh, loosen up your palate a little bit and just go, okay, you know, this is not so heavy and dour like it was last season.

[00:49:58] Yeah. Also I love auto's cork board. You know, they have this cool, awesome table at Dragonstone where they pour hot liquid into it. So it lights up and, uh, instead I was like, yeah, I got a cork board. He's like Charlie day in it's always sunny in Philadelphia,

[00:50:17] you know, using string across the seven kingdoms. What do you think about the balance of power? He's laying out. I think I need to, um, think about the strategic situation a little bit closer. I think that the,

[00:50:34] there was a whole bunch of points made and I wasn't able to sort of grasp all of the strategy in, in one go. I think you used to do that with, didn't you have a, like a, a risk board or something for C for game of Thrones?

[00:50:47] I still do. I still have it. I don't bring it out anymore because my children try to eat the pieces, but yeah, I used to do that with game of Thrones, but I could still visualize it for myself. And

[00:50:59] so right now we've got Otto saying, Hey, look, we've got, you know, obviously King's landing. We have the storm lands, which we learned of course, when, when, uh, Luke died, please don't take us to Dorn. Like, can we just leave Dorn out of this?

[00:51:13] Well, Dorn is a really cool place. They did it dirty and they did. I hope that if they do it, they will do a good job of it. So Dorn is not on the table right now. Uh, they have the greens,

[00:51:25] have the West still because of Casterly rock and Casterly rock is always had a firm grip on those lands. Right. Uh, and they're saying they also have old town, which is in the reach.

[00:51:36] Now old town is an interesting situation because it's not the high towers are not the Lord paramount. They, that they are subservient to the Tyrells of a high garden. However, they basically let the Tyrells basically let them do whatever they want because they have

[00:51:55] old town and the Citadel and a big army. So right now they're so powerful that basically they can do whatever they want. And so house Tyrell has not declared right now. And we don't

[00:52:05] know what's going to happen with the rest of the reach, but we do know that we at least have the armies of old town, which is considerable. Right. And, but still it's pretty far South,

[00:52:17] right? If I remember right. If we, if we look, yeah, it's, it's closer to Dorn. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, but they can cut, they'll come right up the, the middle and into the high garden

[00:52:31] territories. Right. Right. Right. So they should be able to, so I'm pulling up the map now. So I don't say something wrong and get added, get crushed by the ads. It's so easy to get added

[00:52:43] with this fandom. Yeah. So old town is off the coast on the it's on the Southwest coast. Yeah. Oh, star Wars. You get something wrong and you get a letter, but it's in the mail. Right? Right.

[00:52:57] Right. So there's a direct road from, from old town through honey hole into high garden on the way to, so yeah, they have to go through it to get to King's landing basically.

[00:53:09] Right. So that's pretty, that's pretty important lands up the, up the middle there though. And then we have the river lands, which has always being the a key point there with the river crossing.

[00:53:24] Right. So, so that's the other thing that they're saying is we need to take Karen hall so we could basically take the middle of Westeros. Right. We also hear later Damon says, let's take

[00:53:34] Karen hall. Yes. And he was going to get there first. Yeah. There's a good line. Like I'm ready to fly there right now. Let's go. Now, do we think here's, here's something that I'll make

[00:53:45] you consider. Do we think that if Damon had not been ordered to get a manned right away, because that's what Rene orders, right? I want a man Targaryen four words. If Damon hadn't done that, would he have already flown to her and Hall and taken it?

[00:54:03] Burned it again yet again. Nobody's there right now. Right. Cause Larris is the Lord. He doesn't have a family and he's in his, yeah, he killed his whole family. Right. And he's in King's landing.

[00:54:16] Yeah. That's a pretty big gap to be leaving open like that. Yep. I'm surprised. Yeah. You'd, you'd think you'd want to get, you'd want to occupy that pretty quick. Yep. Yep. See where I'm trying to look on the map where it's down there. Yeah.

[00:54:37] Um, where is Castro rock? Castro Lee rock is all the way to the West. Yeah. Oh, there it is. Okay. Yeah. You got to cross those mountains first. So it's pretty far from, from, uh, Heron hall as well.

[00:54:50] Right. But so if they can, if the greens can get the river lands, then they can keep the, the people of the veil from getting to the crown lands. Pretty much. They can keep the north and

[00:55:02] the veil from getting lower. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Now I'm starting to reorient myself to, um, to all of this. Especially Heron hall is directly in the path of the veil,

[00:55:14] getting to King's landing. Exactly. And they want a dragon for a, well, we'll get to that later. Right. So yeah, there's, there's a tough balance of power right now. It's pretty, it seems pretty even to me, honestly. With the balance of power with the dragons, but everybody's

[00:55:31] being very cautious about ploying their dragons. Right. So, well, speaking of the Strong's go ahead with the, Oh, I was just going to say with, um, with the gullet all blocked up and, um, the, uh,

[00:55:45] the shipping, uh, yeah, the bucket that is a, that's pretty significant as well. So yeah, things are pretty balanced because they've in, yeah. Okay. Carry on. They've got the Navy I'm working, working the math in my head. We'll do it over the course of the episode.

[00:56:00] Speaking of the Strong's with Heron hall, Lara strong reports to Alison that he has had all of the spies killed and has chosen Alison's new staff personally. Alison requests privacy in the bath and sends her handmaidens away. Not before, uh, Laris mentions you were a little bit occupied.

[00:56:19] My, my queen. He knows. Yeah. Is this the yuckiest sexual triangle that we've ever had? He was, she was filling her coals. I'm done. Um, anyway, we're in Game of Thrones. I can say what I want.

[00:56:40] Uh, but yeah, I, I'm, I'm interested in what will arise between Laris and Christian call. Like is Laris jealous? Is he, is he, is a possessive type or is he just going to use that for information?

[00:56:55] Like, does he actually have feelings for the queen in a way? Great question. Great question. Okay. No idea. Okay. I don't think he's tipped his hand. No, but I do think he's trying to impart

[00:57:08] on her, like, don't go too far away from me because I have so much dirt on you. Oh my gosh. Right. The fact that, oh, I've, I've picked your staff personally. Hmm. Like that's scary. That

[00:57:21] is really scary. Now you'll recall later, later we have this scene where Helena is running down the hallway to Alison's room and there's not a single guard around. Dude. Oh my God, dude. Oh,

[00:57:35] what the hell? I was so, I even shouted that in the, in our live watch chat, like no guards. But here's the thing. Laris just said, I got rid of everybody and I've chosen a new staff. We don't

[00:57:47] know if they're set up yet. We don't know if they're trained. We don't know if they're in. I sense a gap that plus Mr. Kristen, uh, guarding. Yeah. And where's the Kings guard?

[00:57:57] That's what the, you know, at, at, at, at a basic hallway, at a bare minimum, you know, the Kings guard is there protecting the Royal family, let alone the regular overall security for the red keep spies and, um, armed personnel, you know, together. Right.

[00:58:18] And so yeah, big gap, big gap. And somebody pointed out online too, this is the second time we've seen him assigned night duty. And the first time was when Amon lost

[00:58:29] an eye. Right. Right. He's very bad at protecting the high powers. He's very bad at his job. Not good. Yeah. Good. There was a little thing when, um, Alison was taking a bath. She looked over at

[00:58:42] one of the handmaids who was like, and I didn't get a chance to catch the scene a second time, but it was like they were putting some herbs into something and it just seemed a little

[00:58:51] bit suspicious. So I don't know if that's going to come into play or if she just didn't like the creepiness of, uh, having all these new people who are doing things in ways that she's

[00:59:01] maybe not necessary necessarily used to. Well, all these new people who were hired by Laris. Yes. As we know, I think she feels really gross from that. And I think she

[00:59:12] lives her whole life based on shame and guilt and the whole act of, I mean, we see as soon as she gets off with Kristen Cole, she goes, we can't do this anymore out of shame and guilt. So I just

[00:59:23] think she was disgusted with herself and the way she was scrubbing her arm, right. You know, and, uh, trust trying to wash herself of all of this. Olivia cook is doing such a good job with this

[00:59:34] character. She was, this, this, she is perfect for this role. Right. It's even really outspoken lately too. I don't know if you've seen, but no, I have constantly doing interviews and she actually critiqued the show in one point. She said, I don't understand why Kristen Cole cannot

[00:59:48] age for 20 years, but they have to replace the actor for Allison so she can age. She says, why do they make the women get replaced to be older? Not the men. Huh? It's like, that's a,

[01:00:01] that's a pretty good point. Hmm. Okay. Ranira sees a group of fishermen find Eric's wing and Luke's cloak, Ranira and Cyrax mourn their children. Now I say their children, we don't have confirmation that Cyrax mothered, uh, Eric's, but it is suggested that she was the,

[01:00:23] was the one who laid the egg. Oh, I had, I didn't realize that. That's some piece of Laura I was missing. That's interesting. The way that she howls, she roars when she sees it. I got

[01:00:34] that picture in the, in the show guide because I thought it was such a beautiful shot when she's crying out as Ranira is. Yeah. This whole, whole setup, right? So we get into this, um,

[01:00:50] this middle section, this episode was so well constructed because they had to bring us all up to speed with what happened, what's happening in the world in the last couple of days.

[01:00:59] And then the fallout and then the mourning for Luke and then the blood and cheese, you know, stuff is just so well put together. This Eric's is back there going, do I mean nothing to you?

[01:01:13] Like I've been dead 48 hours and all this stuff happens. Right? Exactly. That's a really good point. Like if we just forgotten that this guy just died. Yeah. Look at that. Look at that.

[01:01:25] Look at Eric's. I mean, um, Sarah, sorry. Yeah. Syrax, uh, Syrax. Okay. Okay. I see. I see you're coming up on the show guy. I see your little icon. Yeah. The way that, that Syrax is, is, um,

[01:01:40] upset, clearly upset. Very good pick. Good, good call. Agon holds court. A shepherd named Gerard comes to request his sheep tax refund. Agon immediately decides to give them back, but Otto convinces him against it. After another commenter complains about salt, a Smith named Hugh asks for

[01:02:05] payment in advance. So all this, all the Smiths could be, uh, could continue building weapons. I was, were you surprised by Agon's attitudes towards the small folk? I was, I was taken

[01:02:19] aback by all of this. I, to me, it seemed like somebody who was very naive and just being like, yeah, give them what they ask for. But I was expecting him after, you know, some of the

[01:02:32] buildup from season one again, you know, I'm, I'm just thinking, uh, uh, uh, what was his name? Um, season one King I'm blanking. Viserys. No, no, no, no. Season game of Thrones. Oh, game of Thrones King Joffrey. Joffrey. Sorry. Yeah. I was thinking a total Joffrey energy.

[01:02:51] So I thought he was going to have this real brutality towards the small folk, but yet he's yeah, he's naive. Absolutely. I'm not, not denying that, but there's got kind of a

[01:03:02] kindness in a, in a wanting to, yeah. Okay. We took your stuff. So yeah, maybe we should make you whole. Like that is not at all what I was expecting from him. And it really made me double

[01:03:14] take it. I like it. I like the way that they're, what they're doing with it all. It just surprised me. Yeah. It's a, um, it's a complex character, right? Because we know he's personally extremely

[01:03:26] selfish and extremely self-indulgent. I don't want it. But he, as a King is just like, oh, sure. If you have a problem, that's fine. It's not my money. It's the government money. I don't care.

[01:03:41] He doesn't care. Right. He's just a teenager. Not sure what he wants to do. The magnanimous. Yeah. And, and yeah, I just think there's a big difference in his demeanor because of that. And

[01:03:53] somebody pointed out too, that he is very like, yeah, let's help the small folk. And there's a line where we're near a, in season one is out with Damon watching the, uh, watching the puppet show

[01:04:05] about her. And she says, well, it doesn't matter what the small folk thing, a little dismissive of them. Right. Oh, interesting. That's a good point where he's like, yeah, he's, he's a little

[01:04:15] bit more tied to the small folk. I mean, yeah, he had child fighting pits. I mean, okay, gross, but he was hanging out with small folk, right. And having a good time and just, you know, you know,

[01:04:28] trying to live a non, I don't know. It's weird because he's royalty. He can't escape it. He's got money and privilege. And so he's using his money and privilege to, you know, do gross stuff.

[01:04:38] But he also was just kind of hanging out and he didn't really want to be King. So right. It's a tough one. What'd you think about Hugh? You think he's coming back? Hugh the Smith.

[01:04:51] They did give him a lot of screen time as well. Um, and brought it. Yeah. And he was more present than the other two were. Yeah. So, um, yeah, Jared got dismissed. The middle guy got like nothing.

[01:05:08] Yeah. So it didn't really feel like the third guy, they were setting up something a little bit more. And of course they tie in with the Scorpions. So that's something like how many bolts do they

[01:05:17] have? How many Scorpions can they actually build? So take note of Hugh, take note of Hugh. That's all. Interesting. He's in the show guide. Okay. He already has his own entry. Oh, all right. All

[01:05:31] right. Okay. Okay. My favorite part about this scene though, Hugh and Ellen got to keep an eye on these guys. Yep. Yep. My favorite part of this scene though is when Otto twice gives Agon advice

[01:05:45] to not grant the request. And after Hugh requests and Otto says, and, and Agon says, oh yeah, we should do that. Otto starts walking over to him and Agon goes, it's really important that we

[01:06:01] pay our Smiths so that we can continue our war efforts. And Otto's like, all right, fine. I'll shut up. He does. He starts climbing the steps to go have a word and he stops. He's like, oh God.

[01:06:13] And he turns around and goes down. It's so good. Yeah. He really did rub Agon the wrong way. Which, you know, sets it up then for, for Laris to get his shot in. So which we're coming up on.

[01:06:26] Right. Which is honestly, Laris is right. Here's the interesting thing is that Laris is right that he's a bad hand for him, but he doesn't provide him with a good alternative and it's

[01:06:39] not coming from a place of goodness. Right? No. And well, are we going to talk about it now? Yeah, let's I'll read it. Laris approaches Agon and suggests that Otto may be controlling him

[01:06:52] and should be replaced to avoid the mistakes of Osiris. Big power play here, right? Yeah. Well, here's the interesting thing though. We talk about a compliment sandwich, right? And he starts off like, hey, Agon, great first court. You know, you're really in tune

[01:07:09] with the small folk just like your dad was. Positive comparison to his dad. He's like, and like your dad, Otto is really trying to strong arm you here. So maybe I'm for a change.

[01:07:26] Yeah. Yeah, no. I didn't even think of the compliment sandwich aspect of it, but you're so right. He's like, yeah, you're smart enough. You should maybe make a change. Yeah, that'd be

[01:07:35] good. Yep. Yep. But is he setting himself up to be hand? Is that the play? I don't know. I mean, it depends. It depends on his play. I don't think he wants to be hand, to be honest.

[01:07:48] It's curious because it's such a strong, like if he's not going to put himself in the position of being the hand, then who would so that he could control that person and maintain his positioning?

[01:08:02] Because I really don't think he would want to be hand. He's much better at the evil, sinister, in the shadows, cloak and daggery stuff. Right. Because hand, you got to be there, right? You

[01:08:14] got to be with attorneys. You have to speak for the king when the king is doing other stuff. It's a real public-facing job, as much as it is a backroom job. It doesn't seem to me like

[01:08:29] that would be a good shot for him. But then who is he going to put in that he can puppet? I think that's the point though, is he needs somebody who he can manipulate, or at least

[01:08:40] he won't get in his way of manipulating Alicent and Aegon. Right. Or they're so oblivious to whatever. But a hand has to be not oblivious. You've got to be on top of every detail.

[01:08:54] But yeah, no, I thought it was a great setup with the way that he cut down Otto. Absolutely. Speaking of Otto, he visits Alicent hours after his presence is requested. Alicent asks for Otto's support and worries about Aegon and Aemond. She wants Otto to stop

[01:09:10] undermining her in front of her sons. She suggests that Aegon will tire of rule. The dialogue in this was so sharp. It was so good. They're a little back and forth.

[01:09:24] It's like, are we on the same side here? I don't know. What do you think are your goals? How would you define that? That was so good. It was so good. Right. And I just really enjoyed how

[01:09:38] Alicent sort of convinces her father, I think by the end of this section, like they understand they understand each other. Right. They both understand that they're going to be the ones ruling the kingdom once Aegon's novelty war is off. Right. Right. That is until

[01:09:56] the rat catchers come along. But anyway, yeah, that's yeah, I think you're right. I think she absolutely does get him reoriented to working on the side, but she does have some unrealistic expectations. And I think he wins a concession from her on that because she agrees that,

[01:10:15] yeah, we're, you know, blood is going to have to be shed here. There's going to be violence, no matter what we do. Right. Once Luke was dead, there was no avoiding a war. Absolutely not. That was just the reality of the situation. And that's unfortunate.

[01:10:29] Something that I agree with the general sentiment on is I think we were robbed of a scene where the Greens learn about Luke. I think that would have been a really tasty scene where they don't know

[01:10:39] what to do about it right away. Yeah. Small council and everybody's like, yeah. And Aemon denying responsibility and things like that. I think that that would have been really great. Yeah. No, that would have been an interesting scene to see for sure.

[01:10:54] Well, that's not right. But Otto, boy, man, he is in trouble. His position is quickly eroding, I think. I think so. Sir Eric, back in the Blackland, Sir Eric finds Messaria stowing away and brings her to Daemon. Daemon blames her for collaborating with the Hightowers.

[01:11:17] Eric defends her and himself against the accusations of Daemon. This is the one place where I did sort of bounce out of being in the moment. And I mentioned this at the top where I was just suddenly like, oh, this doesn't seem good. She's just sitting there

[01:11:36] around the corner and it just happens to be Eric and it just happens to be the ship and all that. Well, fine. To me, this was the ship that Eric came over on. Oh, okay. It's been two days.

[01:11:50] Okay. And so he would be on the ship looking around. Let me go get my things from the storage. Whoa. And I think that Messaria, after her whole brothel was burned down and her headquarters

[01:12:03] was burned down, she figured, I'm not saving King's Landing anymore. The hand no longer No, that I get. That I get. She just stowed away on the one ship she knew was leaving.

[01:12:12] And just sitting there easily found. I don't know. It just seemed a little all too convenient for me. Which again, She ran out of food, right? I think there's a million reasons it could happen. I don't need a whole lot of information.

[01:12:23] Anyway, not a big deal. But yeah, so Damon has a big card to play here with her. Yeah, he does. And do you blame her for collaborating with the Hightowers? No. I mean, can you blame Renise for not ending the Greens in one go? I mean, she's

[01:12:48] playing the position she had. She was profiting. I like the fact that she was straight up honest about it. She's like, look, I profited from this. This is transactional. I don't care what you guys

[01:13:01] do. I'm trying to do something for the small foe. And yeah, no, that all tracked for me. I liked her positioning and how she was advocating for herself. It was very clean, very straight up. Very clean, very straight up.

[01:13:16] And the way Eric then comes out and intends her, Damon goes, well, you know what? You fought with the Greens for a bit too. He's like, yeah, I started this when I was eight years old.

[01:13:28] I don't want to take, I don't want to betray my oaths. And I tried not to. But once I saw what was happening, I came here. Yeah. Yeah. And I swore an oath to protect the royal family, right? Right.

[01:13:44] That is the whole shebang. So, you know, what, yeah. And the moment that it did, it went, yeah, you're right. The moment that. I am right. Thank you. You're welcome. Ranira returns to Dragonstone and tells Damon she found the remains of Luke.

[01:14:02] Damon offers to go to Harrenhal and Rhaenys gives an update on the blockade. Ranira says her four-word line, I want Aemon Targaryen, and walks away. Damon offers Mysaria her freedom in exchange for information.

[01:14:18] Good thing Damon had Mysaria right there, I guess, in a way. Is it good thing, bad thing? I don't know. It was an unexpected advantage for him to be able to capitalize on that.

[01:14:30] Well, I think he knew who to go to in King's Landing. The information he needed is, do you have a 24-7 dry cleaner that I can do a rush job on my murder cloak? True. Good point. I mean, once he got down to that cloak, trouble afoot.

[01:14:44] The trouble is afoot. So, yeah, this is really interesting too, because they're like, okay, you know, here's our strategic position and this is what we've got going on. And she's like, no, fuck all that. I want one thing and one thing only. Right. Vengeance.

[01:15:00] Vengeance. Vengeance for my son. Amazing performance from Emma Darcy. And I love the back and forth with everybody, you know, everybody giving their updates and this little council meeting. It felt like, you know, I'm on a team's call at work or something

[01:15:13] like that. Everyone's doing their updates, but then one person is just a little unhinged today and might be going nuclear on everybody. Something I didn't, I forgot to mention earlier when Rhaenyra was out searching for the remains,

[01:15:30] there was one scene, one clip of one of those scenes where she really looked a lot like Dany from Game of Thrones. Yeah. Her hair was weathered. I think it was that part where she was off wild riding the dragon out when she was lost for a while.

[01:15:49] I think she was looking at the fisherman find Luke. I think that's the time. Okay. That was the scene. Because I remember having that scene. Yeah. And the way her jacket was fitting on her body and the way her hair and the, you know,

[01:16:00] her face. And yeah, it was like, it was a really powerful for me in that moment. I was like, whoa, that looks like Daenerys. Right? Yeah, definitely. Jace returns to Dragonstone and reports they obtained the support of the Vale in exchange

[01:16:17] for a dragon to guard it and that Corrigan started a war and he was going to try to kill the dragon. the support of the veil in exchange for a dragon to guard it, and that Cregan Stark

[01:16:26] has promised 2,000 men, but really he just wanted to hug his mom. Man, this scene made me cry. It was, it was rough. Yeah. He's just, I mean, excellent acting from Jace too. So good. So good on both of those parts.

[01:16:42] His voice is breaking, he's trying to be dutiful. Yeah, yeah, professional. And just mother knows best, right? Yeah. I even made a GIF of this hug because I thought it was moving. It was so good. Yeah. And again, wordless, wordless from Rhaenyra.

[01:17:02] So in interwoven scenes, Alicent lights candles for the fallen, including Lucerys, and Rhaenyra holds a funeral pyre for Luke. Beautiful mirroring. We got a bunch of this similar type of setup in season one, where different characters

[01:17:24] would be doing things simultaneously and they would contrast it with each other. And the fact that Alicent lit a candle for Luke, I don't know, really gave the whole setup that extra little something, right? Okay, it's one thing, oh, they're whatever.

[01:17:43] But then when she pauses and thinks about it, says Luke's name, it really made it special. Yeah, I do like how complicated they're making Alicent. She doesn't want a war. And she understands a mother's grief for her child, too. Yeah, yeah.

[01:18:00] She understands how much that must have hurt Rhaenyra. And she's still pissed that, you know, there was never any reparations for what's his name's eye. I mean, there have been now, though, right? Like, that's the thing. And we'll talk about it in a second.

[01:18:21] But Aemond is promised vengeance by Otto. What other vengeance does he need after that? That was the vengeance. If you wanted vengeance, you got it. Right. And yeah, and that's it. Yeah. Everyone's messed up. Everyone needs therapy. And you can, too, with better. I'm just kidding.

[01:18:45] It's not our it's not our sponsor. I promise. Not sponsored by them. Daemon dons his murder cloak and arrives in King's Landing. He brings an offering to a member of the Gold Cloaks named Blood in history,

[01:19:01] who brings Daemon to Aegon's ratcatcher, Cheese, who knows the tunnels of the Red Keep. He asks the two of them to kill Aemond Targaryen. The ratcatcher asks what if they can't find him and Daemon smirks. You pointed this out to me last night in our

[01:19:18] Hot D Hot Takes, and I had missed that altogether. That because when they then didn't find him, I was like, wait, what are you guys doing? Like, this is ridiculous. I missed by a mile the fact that he gave them that little.

[01:19:34] It's that little shmirk like, well, right. Do what you got to do. Figure it out. Do what you got to do. Improvise. And they did. And now, boy, oh, man, this is going to have consequences. It sure will.

[01:19:46] I mean, no, I don't think Rhaenyra is going to be happy about this, right? This is obviously going to come back to bite Daemon from every side. He's a baby. Yeah, it's just it's just terrible.

[01:19:58] But anyway, yeah, the the fact that I don't know, this whole setup was great. I love these two characters. I love the way that, you know, Daemon shows up. Daddy's home. You know, remember me? Right. It was all all really good.

[01:20:12] And the fact that he could just waltz in there. There are no war footing and he just walks in and has no problem. He has a murder cloak on. He's basically invisible. Right. There you go. It's is that a D&D object that you can get?

[01:20:25] I guess so. You're the D&D guy. Murder cloak. Yeah, and I think this is going to be a really important thing going forward to remember that Daemon still has a lot of love from the gold cloaks. Yes. The City Watch have a lot of love for Daemon.

[01:20:40] Yeah, yeah, because he he treated him right and gave him power and gave him identity. Yeah, I'm pretty sure and somebody could write and correct me, but I'm pretty sure he's the one who gave them the gold cloaks. I think he was. I think you're right.

[01:20:52] She's the one who made it from like a rag tag thing to a uniform body that actually felt pride. Yeah, that had that and he trained him and he trained for quite a long time because that was

[01:21:03] part of the discussions at one of the councils that, you know, he was away for a long time and they trained him and everything like that. So sure. Yeah, well, the smirking is going to have consequences. I got a bunch of background noise.

[01:21:18] I'm moving around my sorry, more markers for you. Okay. Well, the smirking is going to have its consequences. By the way, I wanted to mention we're calling them blood and cheese because that's what the subtitles called them. But the show deliberately did not give them names.

[01:21:35] And the reason I think is that in the book they say, well, they were known in history as blood and cheese like their names were lost to history because they were small folk and they want the greens wanted them to be forgotten, right?

[01:21:47] Because these were the people who killed a prince. Yeah, and so it makes sense. I'm glad that the show is not naming them and just letting us call them blood and cheese. Somebody, I think it was a Davie Mac or somebody in our

[01:21:59] discord posted an emoji of cheese and drops of blood. I was like, what is this? And like, what does it make any sense? And it's like, and then I'm like, oh, now I got it. Right.

[01:22:11] Well, let's go back to a less brutal scene before we go into the main event of the episode. I'd say. Eamon and Kristen planned the war campaign. Eamon laments that he's being blamed for starting the war after Alicent and the council plotted to usurp the throne.

[01:22:29] Otto enters and sends Kristen away. He scolds Eamon for planning the war without the king and urges Eamon to keep a grip on his impulses when Aegon cannot. The conversation between Eamon and Kristen was really interesting.

[01:22:50] And because I don't think Eamon has a clue of what's going on between Kristen and Alicent, his mom. And their opinions, their individual point of views on the same person was so interesting because Kristen's like, well, you couldn't say a lot, right?

[01:23:12] Like I'm stooping your mom and I don't necessarily agree with you. And I'm the king's guard. I'm the head of the Kings Guard and we're illicitly planning the war here. Like it was a it was a very cool conversation from a plot drama standpoint. Yeah.

[01:23:31] And I love this line that was all over the trailers and they just were milking this one for all it had. But it's a great line. She holds love for our enemy. That makes her a fool.

[01:23:40] That is a good line that really shows Eamon's thinking about this war. Yeah. And he's he's really empowered by this conflict. And he I think he really senses that, you know, the ladder of chaos here that can, you know, he gets to be a hero.

[01:23:59] He thinks he's going to be a hero. He finally gets to do a bunch of fighty stuff. Like I think he's really relishing the coming war. And, you know, Kristen says speaking as someone who knows your mother intimately. I, you know, Raniera weaves these webs.

[01:24:21] It's like what webs did she weave? She just asked you to have sex and then tried to keep your same arrangement going and denied you. He really is an incel, right? Yeah. And I guarantee you if Allison ever sexually rejects him, that's the end of all their relationship.

[01:24:39] Yeah, he wanted to be all pouty and let's go off to the far lands and stuff. Yeah, no, dude. Very, very unrealistic. Yeah, hopefully he learned his lesson and he's actually going to be like, Allison, let's flee to Dorne. Ah, silly man.

[01:24:55] Anyway, it was really interesting to hear their tactical conversation though too about like, oh, we can do this, we can do that. And then when Otto comes in and he's like sniffing around, he's like, uh-huh. I know what you boys are up to.

[01:25:09] And yeah, Lord Commander, don't you have other places you need to be? I know. Well, he's not in the right place though. I know he's just never in the right place, is he? So let's move on to the main event. Are you braced? Are you ready for it?

[01:25:26] Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, very good. Blood and Cheese head into the tunnels to the Red Keep and find the king drunk with his bros. Blood and Cheese get into a scuffle when Cheese doesn't know his way to and around the royal quarters.

[01:25:44] Blood gets caught by a servant and heads back to Cheese who has Helena at knife point. They ask her which child is the boy and she offers them her necklace. When they ask again, she points to one in bed and holds her other child.

[01:26:00] They kill the child she pointed to and Helena leaves with the other into Alice's chambers where she and Kristen are getting it on. She tells them they killed the boy. Dun dun dun. Fade to black. Cut to black, actually. Yeah, you know, it didn't blow me away.

[01:26:22] I know you asked me last night, you know, did this hit like the Red Wedding hit? Mm-hmm. And it didn't for me in that way. It was more incremental in a way. We just moved everything. We moved the tension and everything up more.

[01:26:39] And it's gonna be more of the fallout. I guess I wasn't horrified or shocked by this necessarily. Well, well, let me tell you, I've been looking at this interview with Ryan Condal where he

[01:26:54] talked about the changes from the book because I thought that the book did the horror of it better. And the reason is that there was a choice in the book. And this is that.

[01:27:04] So there in the book, there are three children of Helena and Aegon, and they have a younger son named Maylor because and Ryan Condal confirmed this because they compressed it from a 30 year time frame to a 20 year time frame. They couldn't fit in a third kid.

[01:27:18] And they said, OK, there's just one son and one daughter. That makes sense. And so they couldn't do the choice. But in the book, they have Maylor and Jaharis. And they say in front of, by the way, a tied up Helena and a tied up Allison.

[01:27:34] Oh, yeah, she's there too. And they say, Helena, pick which one you want us to kill. She picks her young son, Maylor, and then they kill Jaharis anyway. She gets to keep the one. And he's old enough, by the way, to understand.

[01:27:48] I think he's like five or six. And so she has to look this kid in the eye for the rest of his life while he knows that she gave him up to die. That's really messed up.

[01:28:03] I think the psychological horror of that trumps the gore of this version. Yeah, for sure. But I understand that they box themselves in with this time frame. OK, right. And it's just going to cascade more problems. We already talked about it a little bit.

[01:28:20] And I get that in terms of the security of the royal quarters, I get that there are secret passages and servants ways and this kind of stuff. But no checkpoints, nobody going, wait, you're not the usual rat checkers or rat catchers. Well, one is.

[01:28:40] No, but he says he doesn't go to that. He says there's other rat catchers that work that part of it. But nobody's standing guard at any of these doors or passageways or confirming any of this stuff. There's no guards in the hallways when the servant girl runs out.

[01:28:56] You know, there's no immediate response. And it's not until Helena ends up in the queen, you know, in the queen mother's bedroom. Do we find anybody who is a, you know, of a protecting nature? And he's completely indisposed.

[01:29:13] Well, you've got one of the seven most elite warriors in Westeros who's set to defend the royal family, the royal family. And of course, he's just completely failing at his job. This guy deserves the most dishonorable of discharges. Seriously. And he will not get it.

[01:29:28] Allison will defend him till the end. This is yeah, this is just a really, really bad situation. And yeah, and then as we pointed before, Laris is, you know, what's what's Laris's culpability here? What's Christian Cole's? And how are they going to like, where were you, Chris Cole?

[01:29:44] Like, well, I was, you know, I was over there. Yeah. And Helena seen him now there, you know, although I don't think she's a tattletale. I think she's just gonna she's gonna be like, the trees are green, right? You know, she's gonna say something out of pocket. Right.

[01:29:59] Just throw some more crazy into the air. But but yeah, and Kristen, he's such a bad dude. Yeah, he's just such a bad dude. And I'm so upset at him. We got to rewind a little bit, though, with Aegon and his bros hanging out on. Oh, excellent scene.

[01:30:18] It was so funny. Excellent. Aegon the dragon cock, the insatiable. The just the idea that they're just hanging out on the in and around the throne in that way. I mean, that throne is deadly, you know, right? Do not want to get nicked by it.

[01:30:34] I mean, isn't that part of the lore? Like, yeah, it regularly like cut in and harm people just by sitting in it. That's literally how his dad got his infection. Exactly. So just great world building great three dimensional character, you know,

[01:30:53] just showing us who this guy is and who his bros are. It was all really they've got milk with the poppy gummies and they're they're having a great time. Having a great time. Yeah, that was a really fun scene for them to walk through.

[01:31:08] I think he's just like, yeah, you know, don't act natural, don't look at him, keep your head down. And because we're invisible to them, right? We're right. We're small folk, we're functionaries, we're doing a job and they're going to ignore us.

[01:31:22] They they're they're too busy with their their own situation to bother us. Do you think that Helena's performance was appropriate? This is a debate online right now. Meaning what? With the actor's performance of her being basically despondent instead of horrified, instead of loudly horrified. I don't know.

[01:31:47] It didn't seem off. It didn't read off base to me. I didn't find it. I didn't find it compelling, but I didn't also find it. It didn't fall so far off the mark that that I noticed it. So no, I guess that's my answer.

[01:32:02] Yeah, it felt very in character for me. Yeah, she you have her become frozen instead of, you know, violent in trauma. And that's a valid trauma response. That's something many people go through.

[01:32:16] You can't I think this whole idea of, well, why didn't you do this or why didn't you do that? I think that is you. Sure, you can have the thought because you're like, how would I respond in a similar situation?

[01:32:30] But actually, none of us can know how we're actually going to respond until we're in those kinds of situations, right? It's once your your flight flight responses kick in and it overrides your your thinking mind. We don't know how we're going to respond.

[01:32:47] So I think it's unfair to judge her that way. She was faced with an impossible situation. Now, are we talking about the actor's performance and portrayal or are we talking about characters? I think the actor's performance here.

[01:33:02] Okay, I think Helena, I don't know the way that she was portraying her seemed didn't seem off base to me in any way. So yeah, this is Fia Saban if I'm pronouncing her her name right? The actor's right. Yeah, name.

[01:33:13] No, I don't I didn't I didn't detect a sad note or I mean, not sad, not a sour note. But yeah, okay, whatever. Yeah. Just tragic all around. And yeah, man, what a way to close the episode for Father's Day.

[01:33:31] I was when the episode end that it caught me. I hadn't looked at my clock, you know, that my watch I hadn't, you know, seen where we were on the timeline. I think you had messaged me to say that you had been done.

[01:33:44] I knew we were getting close, but it completely caught me off guard. Yeah, I skipped the recap and I think that's how I ended up ahead of you. Yeah, I think that that makes sense. Well, anyway, that's the episode. Good stuff. Really good first episode.

[01:34:00] And I knew Blood and Cheese was coming at least in episodes of one or two. I'm glad that we got it out of the way in episode one because now I think we can have a lighter note for a little while. Fair enough.

[01:34:15] If you want to call it that. Sure. A son for a son. All right. I like this whole thing of, well, you did this whole tit for tat thing. You did this, so I need that. Well, you did that, now I'm going to need this, right?

[01:34:32] This is this incremental hurts where nobody can back off or forgive or allow grace or to recognize the validity of another person's point of view. And so as we keep escalating and escalating, it just increases the tension and the conflict until it spirals out of control.

[01:34:52] And then once at that point, you have to let it, you have to let all of that energy unwind out of the system, which means a lot of death and destruction or things settle back down again. Yeah. Well, David, let's get some other voices in here.

[01:35:07] Let's take a quick break. When we get back, we'll get into listener feedback. We're back with more House of the Dragon. We've got a lovely feedback, a jam packed slew of feedback, a dragon's load of feedback. I'm going to stop saying different things.

[01:35:37] That's a lot of that's a lot of feedback. It is a lot of feedback. And you too can add to our feedback by writing into HOTD at the lorehounds.com by going to the website, the lorehounds.com and going to the contact page.

[01:35:52] You can leave us a voicemail even. It's a lot of fun. Or you can tag us on Discord and say, hey, lorehounds, I want you guys to read this on air. A couple of notes.

[01:36:02] We got a couple of feedback emails for people who were sending to our main email address, which is lorehounds at. No problem. We got those. But then also just remember we do have one special.

[01:36:13] And the reason I'm pointing that is because one of our lore masters, our dragon master, if you will, Nancy M. Volunteers. She was like, hey, I want to really help and be involved in some way. And we're like, cool.

[01:36:26] Like feedback is one of those tasks when we're prepping for our shows that is a really time consuming thing and getting it all copied and pasted and outlined in a way that we can process it.

[01:36:37] So Nancy M, thank you so much for volunteering and saying you wanted to get involved. And we really appreciate it. And thank you for putting together this thing. And all of y'all, when you send in your emails to the HOTD at the lorehounds.com,

[01:36:52] Nancy is going to get a copy of it. John and I get copies as well, but Nancy will as well. And then she's going to be able to take that and format it.

[01:36:58] So if we get them to those right addresses, it just makes the whole workflow a lot better. She's also skimming the Discord and plucking out some good comments. So if you want, tag us or tag her. She's two kids, two dogs on the Discord.

[01:37:17] So yeah, and we've got, she's organized it for us. She's put it into a little thematic orders and groupings and everything. So yeah, really, really huge help. Yeah. Thank you very much, Nancy. It really is a big help. I love reading feedback. I hate compiling it. Yeah.

[01:37:36] It really is. Yes. Because you got to go back to get it all. And now I got to format it so we can read it. That's not enough. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but thank. All right.

[01:37:44] So so David, my throat is more sore than Kristen Cole's after a hard day. Oh, come on. All right, I'll do a less dirty one. My throat is more sore than Raniera after crying all day. I was going to say, you know, you're leaving that in, I hope.

[01:38:03] But I'm leaving it in. I thought you were going to do some sort of dragon, Jakara's joke or something. So all right. Yeah, give me the feedback. Happy to run you through.

[01:38:13] So a first comment that we had, Claire sent in an email and she had a question about the season's pass and Hot D show guide. Hello, I bought the Hot D season pass. Wonderful. I really appreciate it. However, I think I found an error.

[01:38:30] I don't think Tylan Lannister is house Westerling. Shouldn't he be from House Lannister instead? Thanks for your excellent work. John, is that a... I fixed it already. Oh, perfect. So thank you so much. Yeah, if anyone sees something and they're like, oh, that doesn't seem accurate.

[01:38:44] It's just it's just a typographical error. Go go point it out to us. Feel free. Except today I took a screenshot and I made all these underlines and I was like, isn't Jaharis and his sister like I thought you had you had said both Jaharis and what's his

[01:39:00] sister's name? Jahara. And it was just my brain because I couldn't arse George R. Martin's naming schemes. I mean, having two children named Jaharis and Jahara, that should be illegal. It's just it's egregious. That's egregious. Well, thanks, Claire, for the correction.

[01:39:17] Yeah, and like John said, if you guys see anything or you want anything added in there, give us a shout. Drop us an email or ping us on the Discord. So back in the world of House of the Dragon, Nicole B posted a message on our Patreon board

[01:39:31] in response to our bonus content that we did, the Hot D Hot Takes. As far as lore hounding goes, having read Fire and Blood, there is something extra special and satisfying about watching the show's version of events versus the way A Song of

[01:39:46] Ice and Fire history is written. When I realized the mission was about Aemond, it added an extra layer to an already rich tapestry, pun intended, of storytelling. I was hot. Lawyer Summer is on. There it is. Yeah, but by the way, I didn't mention that.

[01:40:04] That is a thing, and I appreciate you pointing that out, Nicole, is that in the book, it's not said that Damon sent them to get Aemond. They just said that he sent them to get a son. So this definitely lowers the culpability level of Damon. Okay, Damon.

[01:40:18] I thought it was. Now I can't stop putting the D's on the back of the names. Sorry, I missed that. I said Damon instead of combining Aemond and Damon. All right, go ahead.

[01:40:34] We didn't really talk about it, but when Blood and Cheese get into Aemond's room and he's, you know, Blood is collecting up the coins off the map, I was tense. I was like, is Aemond going to walk in and we're going to have an awesome fight scene?

[01:40:50] Like what's going on? Oh, they would be dead immediately. But it would have been awesome to see that. I really want to see Aemond get into a fight. I want to see what he's got. I just don't think it would have been a fight.

[01:41:05] I think it would have just been a slaughter. Yeah, no, I was ready. I was prepared for it. I was absolutely prepared for it. Yep. All right, next up is Severin on the Discord.

[01:41:15] He wanted to say, I do like the added character humor so far in this season. Yeah, agreed. We mentioned that before. Yeah, it really does help the storyline when we've got a little bit of extra, because it's so dark at times.

[01:41:33] Aaron K on the Discord also said, I'm excited for the tapestry. It's a cool choice. Wonder if they'll stick with it for the rest of the series or if they will switch it up every season. Now you said there's going to be, this is a three-season story?

[01:41:47] Yeah, that's what they've said to us. Okay. Hopefully they'll stick with it, because I think this is a good pace for the series. I like the fact that we will have a beginning, middle, and end, literally. I think that's really good.

[01:42:00] Tell a story, know where you want to tell the story, and wrap it up. Yeah, definitely. That's really important. Switching locales to Winterfell and the Starks, Athena A on the Discord said,

[01:42:13] gah, nothing like music and accents to get me really in the mood for being in Winterfell again. Did you feel enlivened by seeing the wall in Winterfell? The Stark theme, nothing gets me in the feels like that.

[01:42:30] If you listen to our preseason rewatch of season one, I literally at one point when Game of Thrones was on wrote a song about Jon Snow reuniting with Sansa and that music's falling in the moment. I'm someone who likes the Starks, I'll say that.

[01:42:44] I forgot how much I missed this area. They really set us up nicely while tracking the raven, like where are we going? Where is this? What is this raven doing? I know I had to make a gif of it. Yes, it was really good.

[01:42:58] And then as it crests the hill, we're like, ah, it was perfect. Yeah, it was nice. Vanessa also on the Discord said, that was such a great way to start the season. Cregan and Jace were actually close to the same age, but here he seemed a bit younger

[01:43:14] and naive. Cregan is a smart man and has been through more at this point. It was an excellent idea to bring Jace up to the wall and tell him about the dragons who wouldn't go past it, to prove a point.

[01:43:24] Plus, Otto seriously thinks a Stark would break an oath? Yeah, I think Otto's a little foolish there. But yeah, I think that was great to be like, hey, I can give the people for winter. And yeah, and make Jace believe it, right? Show him with his own eyes.

[01:43:45] Right. Yeah, 2000 greybeards. Also for the record, it's not a short journey to the wall. Like that was no, that wasn't a day trip. That wasn't a field trip. That was like an overnight camp. Yeah, well, and I think what were you saying in the book?

[01:44:00] He's there much longer and. Not at the wall necessarily, but in Winterfell in the north. In Winterfell, yeah, in general. And he would have, and he took his time. He had to make a couple of stops on the way. So yeah, this was.

[01:44:11] Yeah, well, we know he went to the Vale. How did he do all this in like three days? Yeah, that was a little jetpacking. He was he was efficient. I know he has a dragon, but still it just it just felt like he had more banter with

[01:44:24] Kriegan than he did. Right. Focusing on blood and cheese for a moment, we got an email from a red zippy 330. Hey, Lisa. Alas, we meet blood and cheese at the end of this episode.

[01:44:39] I do think Damon will told them to kill any royal son if they could not find Prince Amond. While Amond did not intend to kill Luke, Damon will have no problem killing. Well, anyone and everyone looking forward to spending this season with this wonderful community.

[01:44:57] Thanks for all the hard work you all put into the show. And I know that enriches my enjoyment of the show. Well, Red Zippy, thank you so much for writing in. And we hope to hear from you a bit more. John, any thoughts about her email?

[01:45:12] I don't think Damon gave them any further instruction. I think the smirk was the further instruction was figured out. Right, right. A son for a son, if anything, it was a son for a son. Because he knew that Amond is a tough, tough order to fill.

[01:45:25] I was surprised he didn't go himself in a way like, you know, I think he didn't want to risk himself. I really do think that Damon understands how dangerous Damon is. Okay.

[01:45:36] That and I think I think the other reason is there's no way he could have snuck into the Red Keep unrecognized. True. If he just even one person got it. Yeah, his hair. He needed nobody's to go in and ended.

[01:45:49] Nobody that would be recognized as often in that keep. Yeah, that's true. It looks like Red Zippy also added a comment on Discord that Nancy picked up. So did Elena decide to serve up the heir in order to spare the boy from how his father

[01:46:08] will treat him and he won't have to be king? Interesting. I don't know if I want to answer that question just in general. Why did she choose her choice? What informed her choice? My philosophy is twofold. One, she had the vision. She knew it was going to happen.

[01:46:31] Right. There was no stopping it. Right. Second would be the only reason they were making her make the distinction was so that they didn't have to, you know, rustle around and the kids cribs figure out which generals they had and then wake them up and cause a scene.

[01:46:45] Right, right. They were trying to be quick about it. Right. But once they kill the girl, if they figure out that that's the girl, she they might kill both. So she's like, well, I'm going to lose one. At least that's really good.

[01:46:57] I'll just make sure it's the one that they want. To save both to save myself and my daughter. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, that's terrible. I mean, it's a terrible, terrible situation, but I the fact that she could work that out. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. All right.

[01:47:16] Nate, our good friend, Nate, who helped us out a lot on our show been coverage on the discord says, Raniera ordered a hit on the specific green who killed her son. Blood and Cheese killed another green son, but a child, not the full adult who was the

[01:47:37] intended target. What makes it into the history books is that Raniera ordered a hit and a small child was brutally killed. Mm-hmm. And we're back to medieval men writing history with a bias that blames women for the worst possible outcomes. John, what do you think?

[01:47:56] Well, that and I think that the maester here is on team green, right? The grand maester. Okay. I think a lot of the writings of the books pulling from because you got to remember the

[01:48:06] whole book Fire and Blood is supposed to be the writings of a later maester. Right. So I think that just things are being recorded from the perspective of Alison and the perspective of Helena.

[01:48:18] And the fact that there's a, the built-in bias is against having a woman as the head of state. Right, right. That's baked into the whole society. And you're not going to change that in a generation or two. That's a multi-generational change. I agree. Abby on the discord.

[01:48:44] Hi, Abby. How you doing? Hope you're well. I know you were excited. I saw you were, Abby was tweeting and posting. She was super excited for this world, for this show. Oh yeah. She speaks Valerian. I only speak Pig Valerian, but she speaks Valerian. Hi, Valerian.

[01:48:59] That is awesome. Abby on the discord says they also blamed Messeria for plotting revenge, the history writing maesters, as it were. It was clear in the show that she had no taste for any kind of plotting and just gave Damon info in exchange for her freedom.

[01:49:17] It's on him what he does and what he orders. I'm sorry, but this comment reminds me of a thing in Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry David's talking to somebody and he's like, have you plotted? She goes, yeah, I've plotted. I did some plotting.

[01:49:32] I did some plotting from time to time. Some light plotting. But yeah, I totally agree. I think that all of this is just let's blame the women involved. Let's blame the team black. Let's, let's. Yeah, I mean, look, it's not a good look.

[01:49:48] You did hire someone and, you know, if you commit a crime, if you go and rob a bank and someone gets killed but you didn't kill them, you're often still charged with the murder. Like there's collateral damage that should be foreseen as the consequence of the crime

[01:50:02] that you're doing. Exactly. I think if you hire a murderer and they kill an unintended target, then that would be still your fault. Still on you. Yeah. All right. A few notes about some characters. We'll start with team green here. Kyle M sent us an email.

[01:50:22] I'm torn on Allison. Sometimes it seems like she wants to do the right thing to avoid war and destruction and letting them in around her scheme their way into both. But she also has to get the some blame here, probably on account of raising two of the

[01:50:37] most awful children you'll ever see on television. It's tricky and it might be why we saw her spend a not insignificant amount of this episode shacking up with dream boats in washing the same spot on her shoulder in the bathtub with

[01:50:54] an intensity that implies that she's trying to scrub away a lifetime's worth of torment. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I'm on completely the same page on this. And what's tragic to me is that now Allison has finally in the past couple days opened

[01:51:13] her up to sex for pleasure and she is immediately going to be in. Well, if I didn't do that, my grandchild would still be. Oh God, it's going to be so much more laced with shame. Oh God, it's going to be bad. Thanks, John. You're welcome.

[01:51:31] Thanks for pointing out the horribleness of this situation. Oh yeah, did I need to tell you? I thought this was a horrible situation. No, no, that's why if you're listening to an hour and a half plus long podcast about it, you know you're here for it. Right.

[01:51:43] Oh, it looks like Red Zippy is back again with another email. Laris has spies all over the Red Keep and he's told Allison this. So he has to know Allison and Kristen are fooling around since Laris is making a play

[01:51:58] to usurp Otto and be the Hand of the King. We're not sure what his play is. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. We know that he definitely wants to upend Otto, but what can we say who's going to be in that position?

[01:52:11] He can tell King Aegon, your son would not have been killed if the commander of the Kingsguard was doing his job and securing the castle and not screwing your mother. That will plant a big wedge which I will enjoy a thousand percent.

[01:52:25] Allison will blame herself as she should. So that's also a point there. But Laris is, this is going to splash back on Laris as well, right? Yeah, well I don't know. I don't know because it's supposed to be covert that Laris is subbing out people, right?

[01:52:42] But what's his position in court if people don't, you know, what's his actual position? Oh, he's Master of Whispers, I think. I think that's his official title. Is it official? I mean, can you be a... There's an oxymoron.

[01:52:57] Well, if only we had a show guide that had his official title in it. Let's check it. Okay, all right, character guide. We're on team green. We're on Laris Strong. He is the Lord Confessor. That is his current title. Very good. Lord Confessor.

[01:53:13] That's a very disgusting and terrifying name. Yep. All right, Athena A is back again too. So Aegon has buddies surrounding him on the throne, which I think is nice, especially young rulers in English history at least usually had a clique of friends and young nobles jockeying for favor.

[01:53:32] Yeah, so I think that really hits at the realism of the world that they're building here, that he's going to have his buddies that are going to be wanting to be close to the center of power and all enjoying the privileges that affords.

[01:53:48] This scene just made me want the Dunkin' Egg series more. Really? Because I don't know if you know the main premise, but the gist is a young heir to the throne stumbles upon a hedge knight, like somebody who's very – he's not sworn to a lord.

[01:54:05] He has no nobility. He was just knighted by a knight on his deathbed, and he runs into him, and they go on adventures together. Yeah, it seems – it's like – oh, what was that show with Ti— oh, last year. I can't remember what it was now.

[01:54:22] But yeah, it just seems like an adventure of the week one. Yeah, it's a buddy comedy. Yeah, it looks like fun. What was the show? It was the – oh, never mind. Was it the Natasha Lyonne one? Was that the one you were talking about?

[01:54:34] Yes, that's the one it was. That's the one it was. Yeah. Very nice. Maybe if it's anything like that, we'll have some fun with it. All right, changing our focus over to Team Black really quick. Red Zippy again, email.

[01:54:48] Maybe this was one long email because Nancy's doing this, so she's chopping it up. Yep, yep. This is great. I love these thematic twists. Me too. This is really good. It gives it a little bit more vibe. Red Zippy says, great episode.

[01:55:02] Damon's going to be screwing things up so bad this season. His dynamic veneer is chef's kiss. I love being back on the wall and starting the show with that scene between Jace and Cregan. Didn't realize Jace and his sisters.

[01:55:15] And his later scene when he returns home to his mother with updates, trying not to show his despair over losing his brother. That was so moving. These two are the best parent-child relationships on the show. Probably the healthiest relationship of kind overall. Agreed.

[01:55:32] Really – yeah, and you pointed this out. When he's standing there trying to hold it together, he just can't. Oh man, that was so – that was really, really – Just look at the difference between how Raniera interacts with her kids compared to Allison. Didn't she beat a guy?

[01:55:52] Yeah, and she called him an imbecile when he tried to open up to her. Oh my god. Do you love me? You complete imbecile. What? She's just not a good mom. She never has been. Yeah.

[01:56:04] Well, and they communicated that to us in season one where she's holding the baby, and the baby's crying, and a nursemaid comes over, and she's like, get this thing away from me. Right, right. When the child's crying – I mean, look, sometimes you pass it to the other parent

[01:56:16] because you're like, I need a minute, and that's fine. But then you take the baby back. Eventually you have to make up the baby a little bit. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. Uh, over to Alicent and Kristen Cole.

[01:56:31] Cyrus on the Discord, friend of the pod. To me, it was coded as something they may have jumped into after the king's death. Before Vizzie, Alicent always seemed to be devoted to him, so I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, I'm with that.

[01:56:50] I think pious Alicent plays by the literal rules, although still technically an unsanctioned, out-of-wedlock sexual affair. So I think still she would judge anybody else for it, but it's okay if she does it. Yeah, and again, anybody but Kristen Cole would have been fine.

[01:57:12] Anybody who's wearing a white cloak, no, off limits. Could have been a rock. How can you – We would have been okay with it. Good for you. Right. Nancy M., our feedback master on the Discord.

[01:57:26] Emily Carr was on the official Hot D podcast that dropped after last night's episode. She believes her character was interested in Cole for the first time she saw him at the tourney in the opening episode of season one. That's interesting.

[01:57:42] It would be – because I remember both the girls were like, oh, you know, who's this guy or whatever. But I didn't actually – He's cute. Yeah, it was like that. It was like, oh, you know, it wasn't – so it'd be interesting to go back and catch that.

[01:57:56] But that's a good point. He's a handsome man. It's kind of the only thing he has going for him. Yeah. Jean, our good friend. No, I'm not done. There is no one I hate in this show more than Kristen Cole. Now I'm done. He's deserving.

[01:58:13] Jean, and Alicia says Jean and her are going to get back out. They've got some MCU content in planning. So look forward to that. Getting the band back together. That's right. Jean says Allison and Kristen are two of the most unlikable people

[01:58:28] that I've ever had the joy of meeting on TV. They flat out deserve each other. I think that's the common sentiment. And Athena A on Discord says Kristen Cole just really – Kristen Cole's just really drawn to Allison's pure image, despite the fact that he is once more oath-breaking

[01:58:49] and putting himself in the exact same situation that caused him to hate Raniere in the first place. Allison was like, guess my husband is dead for five minutes and I can do whatever I want now. Right. Dude's not even cold. No. No. That was quick.

[01:59:06] Was that the first time – the first time that we're seeing it, is that the first time that they were together? That's not the first time they were together. I don't think so. No. I think there was definitely like a, we shouldn't, Kristen. Yeah, that would be interesting.

[01:59:18] Who made the first move? Kristen, I think. I think they probably had a conversation that got very intimate and they both just leaned into it. That's my headcanon. Right. They got close, like two magnets, and then click, and it just happened. Yeah. Right, right. I can see that.

[01:59:36] I hate my son. I hate your son. And then they just start making out, you know? Let's boot. Let's not boot. Dragons, Fur Lisa on the Discord, friend of the pod. Loved all the dragons in this episode. John, what did you make of the dragons this episode?

[01:59:53] Looked great. I mean, Vhagar, I think that was the clearest shot we had of Vhagar and looked awesome. And then just the way that Cyrax is grooving. Even if it's not Cyrax's kid, this is one of the junior dragon patrol that she's always with.

[02:00:06] I think beautiful, beautiful scene. Just mirroring their grief together was beautiful. Well, I hope they will strategically use their CGI budget to give us good dragons, and we don't ever have not-good-dragon CGI. Yep. Marilyn R. Pukula, our favorite Tolkien scholar on Discord, writes in, wrote to say,

[02:00:27] turns out there may be a connection between J.R.R. Tolkien and Hot D. I would say many, but... She says, give a listen to the Rest is History podcast from June 16th, 2024, entitled simply Dragons. You'll find a number of wonderful historical meanderings

[02:00:46] concerning the historical and literary origins of dragons, how they shaped and unfolded, and how they came to occupy so much of today's zeitgeists. I can't offer you a link because they don't have their links on any website.

[02:01:00] So okay, you just have to Google or just a podcast search. Oh yeah, she says this. So pick your favorite podcatcher and look for them. The Rest is History, and enjoy their most recent episode. And then Cyrus follows up and says,

[02:01:16] Gurm has mentioned numerous times that his dragons are inspired by Tolkien's dragons. Hence, his dragons have four limbs, two wings and two feet like Tolkien's dragons. In other sources, such creatures would have been referred to as worms,

[02:01:32] as dragons would have had six limbs total, two wings and four feet. All right, that's interesting. Yeah. I did not know any of that. That's very cool. Yeah, there's a whole... There's wyverns, there's... We use the word dragon very broadly. Pretty generically. Yeah. Like tree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[02:01:54] Birches, there's larches, there's... Yeah. Gooses, geeses. All right. Now, it's too late now I'm going into Willy Wonka mode. But yeah, thank you, Marilyn. Are we getting punchy? I appreciate that. I've literally talked about coningulus like several times this episode. Two hours in. All right, last two comments.

[02:02:13] Rocky Z has the last word. They need some type of sign when flying dragons to show that they're friendly so that it gets shot at accidentally, which we were talking about before, like, yeah, flying something. And then loved how Cyrax can empathize with Rhaenyra.

[02:02:33] Yeah, and then there's that added layer of it might be her child, her dragon child. But yeah, I think even if not... I mean, we saw Vhagar empathize with Lena in season one. I think this is very possible.

[02:02:45] This opens up the whole aspect, which is an undealt with, which I like that there's a little bit of not clarity around this. What is the relationship between a dragon rider and the dragon and the egg and all of this stuff? It's very vague.

[02:03:04] They don't even really know themselves. And I like all of that, that it's a little bit of a mystery because otherwise it's into other genres. This is how you tame your dragon. This is how you ride your dragon. Right. Right.

[02:03:17] All right, Dylan, that wraps it up for feedback. So again, hotd outthelorehounds.com. Send us a voicemail, go to the website and say hi to Nancy M when you write in. Thank you, Nancy, for all of your work. This was really great. This made it so much easier.

[02:03:33] So awesome. Thank you, Nancy. Well, David, I've got plenty of announcements to make on what's coming this week on The Lorehounds. Is it a hot lore summer? It's hot lore summer. You're here on House of the Dragon. You know we're doing that. Come back next week.

[02:03:51] If you want the hot takes on Sunday night, which I think we'll probably do that again. Okay, it was kind of fun. Yeah, it was. If you want the hot takes on Sunday night, if you want the show guide, if you want early

[02:04:01] and ad-free access, you'll have to sign up for Patreon. Doctor Who. Or Supercast or a season pass. Right. Doctor Who is ending the season this week with season one, episode nine, Empire of Death. You guys are having fun. I know. We did full coverage on this show.

[02:04:17] That's great. On a whim. You're like, yeah, you know, why not? That's true lorehound. That is true blue lorehound. I think it's just such a passion project of mine. I love Doctor Who. It's so silly and fun.

[02:04:32] And I'm so glad that Lisa is as into it as you are so that you guys can just nerd out hard. That's just great. Alicia and I are having a great time. I mean, we have to... We have to...

[02:04:42] Oh, actually, we're not covering the season finale this week. I have to change that in the show notes. We're covering episode eight. We're covering episode eight, but the season finale is coming out this week. That's why I wrote that. Season one, episode eight.

[02:04:55] It brings back a classic Who villain from the Tom Baker era, actually. So it's very exciting. Yeah, I know. That's why I was thinking of you. The Acolyte is going to be back this week.

[02:05:06] Alicia and I are covering that over on the Star Wars kind of timeline podcast. Also, the lorehounds feed and the lorehounds Star Wars feed. I might jump in from time to time. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a great season. It's going really well. Silmarillion Stories.

[02:05:22] Eight episodes for that, and we're three in, right? Yep. Okay. Silmarillion Stories is back this month for episode 15, The Return of the Noldor Part Two with Maester Anthony. Cool. Maester Anthony, and he brought a guest, so stay tuned for that. Fun. I heard you on Aaron's podcast.

[02:05:42] Oh, yeah. I did that. That was really good. That was a really good conversation. I like it when you guys... When we get to talk to him. He's a good guy. I'm actually going to be recording with him tomorrow night because we're recording August's episode of Silmarillion Stories.

[02:05:56] I'm recording them out of order right now because of the way scheduling worked. I'm recording two Silmarillion Stories this week. But getting them in the can is really important. Yep. So this is going to be a monthly thing. I'm not letting it slip. All right.

[02:06:10] And on Patreon, of course, you get the hot tea hot take. Rings and Rituals. Oh, and you know what? Actually, I forgot to mention Alicia just told us she's going to be doing the MC Universe ep with John this week. Right.

[02:06:22] Rings and Rituals is going to be back next week with the finale of Season 1, Alloyed. Remember that? Remember that, David? That was... Vaguely. We need to do a Season 1 rewatch, don't we? Yeah, that was the whole thing with the rings and the powers and all that.

[02:06:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go. Lovely conversations with Marilyn and Sarah. Please, please go listen to this. It's such a good podcast. And Radioactive Ramblings is covering the boys. I jumped in on their first episode for the first half hour of it, by the way.

[02:06:53] I'm on a pretty substantial chunk of it to get my hot takes on the first three episodes. And then I'm sure they had a long conversation after that with it was Aaron, Chase and Richard. So a trio of podcasters there.

[02:07:06] OK, how was the what's your I saw Episode 1. I didn't see two and three yet. Are you thumbs up on the season so far? Yeah, yeah. I think it's great. I think it's great. It's a little more on the nose on the political climate, but it's still good.

[02:07:19] It's still really good. OK, right on. And he and thanks for Radioactive Ramblings for covering the boys, because there's just no way we could have covered all of this. Absolutely. Especially after I was like, we're covering Doctor Who.

[02:07:33] So Radioactive Ramblings also has two other podcasts coming out this week. Fallout Lore Episode 4, The Master and All Knowings Lore Corner Timeline of the Lands Between. I have no idea what that means, but I'm excited.

[02:07:45] I recognize those words, but I don't know what they mean when they're put together. That's very cool stuff, though. Probably Howard is covering Hero at Large this week on their Felonies and Fugazis series where they're watching all these crime movies. Yeah, yeah, they're almost done. Yep.

[02:08:03] And Good Season. Woolshift Dust has a book club episode going out. That's Alicia's personal. Oh, no, I'm sorry. It's not book club. It's public, so everybody can enjoy it. An interview with Glenn Mazzara, who I guess is a co-showrunner of Beacon 23.

[02:08:21] All right, David, we got plenty on the Lore Hounds feeds, but for now, can you give us the Patreon thank yous and a pitch for the Patreon and Supercast? Well, the pitch for the Patreon and Supercast is that our little collective is putting out a lot of podcasts.

[02:08:36] And so if you enjoy what we do, then we would invite you to support. We have a lot of fun doing what we do, and it means a lot for us to have your support,

[02:08:50] make sure that everybody gets some benefits from what we're doing, and obviously to pay for all of the costs that we have involved in actually trying to put out good quality, decent coverage that we do. To our supporters, well, a couple of things too.

[02:09:07] If you go to the show notes on this, go to the link tree link in the bottom, and then that will take you to Supercast. Supercast is better than Patreon for us. It's a better platform overall for podcasters. It's basically the same thing.

[02:09:20] But Patreon is a well-known established brand, so either one is fine for us. If you want the show guide because you want to support us, but you don't want to have to deal with recurring subscriptions and canceling and all that kind of stuff,

[02:09:32] go to the show guide again in the show notes. There's a link. Ten bucks flat and you get all of our season one coverage and season two coverage in perpetuity. You will have that forever. And the show guide as well, and our HotD hot takes.

[02:09:50] To our Discord server boosters who donate to the community to have us have a better server. Gnarls, Aaron K., Tiller the Thriller, Dork of the Ninjas, Dove71, CaptainJinG56, and Athena Agilea. Thank you all so very much. To our Loremasters, they are our top tier supporters.

[02:10:13] We like to thank them every time we do this. Samartian, Michael G., Michelle E., David W., Brian P., Nick W., SC, Peter OH, Bettina W., Adam S., Nancy M., our fabulous email dragon master, Dove71, Brian8063, Frederick

[02:10:36] H., Sarah L., Garrett C., Eric F., Matthew M., Sarah M., DJ Miwa, Andra B., Kuang Yu, JediJediBob, who we hear a lot with Alicia on the Star Wars Canon Timeline podcast. Thanks, Bob. Nathan T., Alex V., Aaron T., SubZero, Aaron K., Dally V., Mothership61, Gnarls, Kathy

[02:11:00] W., our newest Loremaster. Welcome, Kathy W., thanks for joining up, and forever last, Adrian. Thank you all so very much. Your ongoing support means the world to us. Yeah, John, it's been a pleasure. I am ready for episode two.

[02:11:20] I don't know about you, but I think you are. Are you even there? Me too. I'm so ready for the rest of the season. If I can unmute my microphone. That'd be good. Well, see you all next week. Hot Lore Summer.

[02:11:36] The Lorehounds podcast is produced and published by the Lorehounds. You can send questions and feedback and voicemails at thelorehounds.com contact. Get early and ad free access to all Lorehounds podcasts at patreon.com slash the Lorehounds.

[02:11:51] Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities. Thanks for listening. This summer, we enter a new era of Star Wars. You mean the dawn of the Star Wars Canon Timeline podcast? Yeah, yeah, sure. That too.

[02:12:14] But I was obviously talking about the accolade. We've got to cover that on the Lorehounds. Oh, but the Star Wars Canon Timeline podcast is exactly at that point in the timeline, the end of the High Republic 100 years before the prequel trilogy. We've got to cover it there.

[02:12:29] Why not both? Okay, deal. It's the first live action Star War outside the Skywalker saga. Nobody can miss this. Listeners kick off your Hot Lore Summer weekends with scene by scene breakdowns of the acolyte found in both the Star Wars Canon Timeline podcast and the Lorehounds' mother feed.

[02:12:50] And the Lorehounds' Star Wars feed. Wherever you like to listen a couple of days after each new episode is released.