House of the Dragon - S02E05 - Regent

[00:00:01] Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side. Green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life! So, we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to, like, pick sides and fight and stuff.

[00:00:24] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod. But we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore! It was made for The Lorehounds.

[00:00:35] And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the Dance of the Dragons.

[00:00:42] And with the season pass option in Supercast, listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene-by-scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in The Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our Dragonfire Hot, but probably positive, takes.

[00:01:00] The Lorehounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heartened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:33] Welcome to the House of the Hounds. We are the Lorehounds, your guides to the Dance of the Dragons. I'm John. And I'm David, and this is our coverage for the HBO original series House of the Dragon, season two, episode five, titled Regent.

[00:01:47] We're going to start off with our hot takes for the episode before we get into a scene-by-scene breakdown, which you can follow along with on the show guide.

[00:01:54] That's true. We'll talk about that in just a second. Also, for feedback, we are now doing a separate podcast just for that. I think we're going to record it Thursday night this week at around 7.30 Eastern, so you've got until then to get your feedback in.

[00:02:12] Hand of the Pod and Loremaster subscriber Nancy M is doing an amazing job at coordinating the feedback for us. She is awesome. Send in your feedback to hotd at the lorehounds dot com. Head over to our website.

[00:02:30] There you can use the voicemail feature and you can record us a little snippet. We can drop that right into the pod, or you can use the contact form and send us a message that way. John, I think they can also send messages on the Discord.

[00:02:43] They sure can. And Nancy will be keeping a lookout. But you know what? I'm going to say this. You have until five on Thursday. Let's give Nancy a break. All right. All right. Give her a break. No real-time feedback.

[00:02:53] No real-time feedback. You got plenty of time. You got three days after the episode. Now you can join our community even more closely. You can join the greens or the blacks or whatever royal house that you want to join by going to Supercast or Patreon.

[00:03:07] You can also join the conversation for free on Discord and you can take a listen to our affiliate podcasts, which you can find along with all of our other links in the show notes.

[00:03:18] So John, the show guide is something that you primarily with some help from Brian and Aaron. I get by with a little help from my friends. You do have put together an amazing online resource that folks can take a look at.

[00:03:34] We got a great email today. I think it was Michael S. wrote in and said, Hey, what is this thing you keep talking about? Can we preview it all? So I hopped on and I made a little video doing a little tour of the show guide.

[00:03:48] We've posted that as a post on our Patreon, which is a free public post. Anybody can see that. And you posted that on our YouTube channel, John? Is that right?

[00:03:58] It's on YouTube. It's on TikTok and it's on our website. So you can find it a lot of places. All the places. You got to cross post. That's what the kids tell me.

[00:04:06] You got it. That's the strategy. So what I do is I just kind of walk through, I show off a few of the entries, how the character guide works, the bestiary.

[00:04:14] And then I get into the episode guide a little bit so that that way you can see what we've been talking about. So definitely check those out. And then if you're interested and it works for you, you know, Supercast, we have a thing called on Supercast.

[00:04:29] We have a thing called the Season Pass. $10 flat. You get all of our Season 1 coverage, which is already up and out there. And then all of our ad-free early access coverage for Season 2, including our hot takes, which we record immediately after the episode.

[00:04:46] This episode breakdown, and then the feedback episode, and the show guide. So one time, $10 payment. Boom, that's it. You're done. And you have that in perpetuity. You'll have that forever.

[00:05:00] Now we'll have a different Season Pass in Season 3, right? But that'll be then. But for now, you've got it all there. So if that sounds of interest to you, then check it out.

[00:05:10] Also, David, you did a fantastic job with that video and I appreciate that you did it. Oh, pleasure. It was fun. I do that. I kind of do that in part of my day job. So I'm very used to doing that stuff.

[00:05:19] I am going to put it in the show notes. I think I'm going to leave it in the show notes for the duration of the season. That's a good idea. Because then it's an easy way for people to see what we're offering here.

[00:05:27] Because otherwise, it's kind of this nebulous thing and I want to put it right on the fridge where people can see it. That makes sense. That's a good idea. So what else is going on here?

[00:05:38] Next week, I am going to be away. I'm going to be traveling with my family. We're going to be in the UK visiting some friends. This is going to be our first post-pandemic. Are you going to have a Negroni while you're there?

[00:05:49] No, I'm going to have a bottle of water. My daughter and I love to joke around with that. She'll go, bottle of water. And I'll say, bottle of water. And we're going to be visiting our friends over there.

[00:06:02] And Alicia, our good friend and co-host of the Lorehounds is going to be filling in for me. So listen for her next week. I know she's been following along the show.

[00:06:11] I think she's pretty excited to jump into some of the action, especially since the Acolyte is now wrapping up. I don't think she's going to have any more time on her hands. She's always got a dozen projects going on.

[00:06:23] But anyway, thank you Alicia in advance for filling in for me. I may send in a voicemail from away, from abroad. So be on the tune for that. Nancy, our hand of the pod, has been officially christened.

[00:06:36] She has actually changed her avatar on Discord to the little graphic of the hand, you know, the little pin lapel pin thing. Yep, yep. Very cool. That is very cool. Well earned. Very, very well earned. And it's just such a pleasure to work with Nancy.

[00:06:54] And the community has really embraced her. And it's just been, I'm so glad. I'm so, I'm just so pleased and proud of our community. We have a lovely group of people. Now I will mention for hot takes next week for the Patreon Supercast subscribers.

[00:07:09] I'm not sure if Alicia is going to do that. She offered to do it, but she would have to wake up at about 2am. So I think I'm going to try to save her from that. What do you do solo?

[00:07:20] I could do a solo. I have been watching every week with Mrs. Lorehound. And she gives me most of my funny jokes so everyone can know what a fraud I am. Oh, I see. You're the puppet and she's the hand.

[00:07:30] She does give me some good jokes, I got to tell you. Okay. Everyone can know that I'm an imposter the whole time. It's really behind every slightly funny man is a much funnier woman.

[00:07:41] I think it'd be an interesting measure of a generation when you stop feeling the imposter syndrome. I think that's really when you start to settle into comfort and wisdom starts to come. So I think you millennials are finally getting past your imposter syndrome phase. I don't think so.

[00:08:01] Let's talk about Dunk and Egg. Dunk and Egg? You want to talk about that? Well, I've just been hearing a lot more news about it. It's going to be in, I believe, June of 2025. A Night of the Seven Tales Kingdoms. What's the official title?

[00:08:15] I think it is going to be called A Night of the Seven Kingdoms. That's what it is. I'm just thinking about dunking my eggs. I don't know why. Dunkin' Donuts? I don't know. Dunkin' is the name of the first one.

[00:08:26] And it is Dunk and Egg. That's the nickname of the little one. It's Dunkin', who is a hedge knight, who basically is knighted by a nobody knight, and then he is an unknown knight. So what do you do with that?

[00:08:40] It's almost like you have a degree from a defunct university. Right. And then he meets the heir to the throne, Aegon. Perfect. And they become a team. And that Aegon is like 12. So it's like an 18-year-old and a 12-year-old just hanging out, having adventures.

[00:08:56] And I believe they have said specifically, there may even be an actual date, but I believe it is June 2025. I don't believe anybody. That's what they're saying. That's what the whispers say. Yeah, they say a lot of things. Are we covering that day one? Absolutely we are. Okay.

[00:09:17] That's going to be fabulous. Just want to assure the people that we are there for them. It's going to be fabulous. We've got you guys covered. I think I would cover most things Westeros day one. And most things Tolkien. All things Tolkien. Let's be honest.

[00:09:30] Right. Right. Straight up. So have you read all the Dunk and Egg novels? I have actually. When I was on my honeymoon, I had the audio book. And it's narrated by the actor who played Viserys in Game of Thrones. You know, Daenerys' brother. Oh right. Yeah.

[00:09:48] He does a fantastic job. It's really an incredible experience. I want to go back and actually read them word to page. But the audio book was such a nice experience. It's almost like somebody telling you a tale of this funny situation by a fire.

[00:10:03] You know, it's that kind of vibe. It's much more lighthearted than Game of Thrones. Much more lighthearted. This is going to be a blast, I think. It's going to be interesting. 2021 is going to be busy. We've got Andor, we've got Severance, we've got Dunk and Egg.

[00:10:16] I'm sure there's other things. It's going to be another busy year. Oh yeah. So that said, all right, that's all the stuff. That's all the formatter. We can wrap that all up and move into our hot takes. John, what did you think of this episode?

[00:10:30] I thought it was great. Absolutely a setup episode. We are about to do more big things, but we can't do them without explaining these little things. That's okay. I think it's better almost for them to cram all the crazy stuff into a bunch of episodes.

[00:10:45] And even though I'm saying that, when I think about it, the season has had basically like three quarters of an episode will be pretty chill and then the last quarter of it will be insane. Yeah. This is the first time we really didn't do that.

[00:10:57] No, this is the first one where there's no crazy action sequence at the end. Yeah. Or like a stressful sequence at least. Like, like, um, like blood and cheese. Right. So yeah, I mean, overall very good. I think we see a lot of things coming to fruition.

[00:11:11] We talked about on the hot takes how you and many others have come to see the, uh, the mystery building to see what's going on. They basically just outright say it at the end of this episode. They do. They just spill.

[00:11:26] They're like, wow, we have dragons and we don't have riders. Whatever will we do? And so it's, it's a, we're, we're on step three of the Martin three-step reveal, which again,

[00:11:37] if you're tuning in for the first time is George Martin's way of saying the first time I mentioned something, it's for the eagle eyed reader to figure it out. The second time is for maybe like a half,

[00:11:48] half of the readers who are reading really closely to figure out that third time. I'm just going to come out and say it. Yeah. I think that was a pretty clear third step. Yeah. And, and it's honestly a really effective storytelling technique.

[00:12:01] And I think if I television, if I ever go back to trying to write a novel and not completely failing to keep my focus, I will probably try to implement it because it just, it just works.

[00:12:11] Like it's, it's interesting and it makes you feel, makes you feel rewarded. You'll figure it out early on, but it doesn't take away from your enjoyment. If you, if you're not watching that closely because later you will find out anyway.

[00:12:23] You know, in, in a tabletop role-playing games oftentimes they talk about failing forward, you know, so the players will get the clue, the players will, you know pick pot, you know, they'll, they'll pick the lock,

[00:12:35] but then how well do they do it or, or how, you know, what sort of complications arise from it? And so I kind of feel it's, it has a similar spirit to that. Like you're going to get it. Don't worry about it.

[00:12:47] You could be paying attention to other stuff. And for those, you know, you know, and everything in between on the spectrum is available for everyone in the show. So I think you're right. It's a, it's a really, it's a really nice way to tell stories. Yeah.

[00:13:00] So what about you? I thought that overall that this was a pretty good episode in my rewatch on my new TV. My new TV finally arrived. I'll talk about it on second breakfast on Wednesday when we record. But yes, it was a slower paced episode.

[00:13:18] I think both for our emotionality, I don't know if I can say it that way, but you know, the, just kind of what we went through last episode,

[00:13:29] we want to let that breathe a little bit and we want to let the losses settle in and find that's all good. Right. There's, there's like an emotional budget that we have for a show, but there's also a practical real budget, right?

[00:13:43] So they can't just, they don't have unlimited budgets, so they can't just do every crazy CGI battle sequence and all that kind of stuff. So like it all, that all worked for me.

[00:13:53] I would say to anyone thinking about this episode, don't let this episode, don't just go, oh, it was a slow table setting episode, but bypass it. No, no, no, no, no, no. There is some like really important stuff that happens in this. Definitely. Some really important character beats.

[00:14:11] There are some, obviously for the, those who have read the books of which I am not one, there's probably some great, you know, track laying there. They're setting some stuff up.

[00:14:21] I did Google the name of one town that was mentioned and I was like, oh, and quickly close the done for the wiki song of ice and fire page. But, um, you know,

[00:14:33] I will tell you pro tip if you've searched wiki of Westeros, that one is tied to the show. So you should not get spoiled on that one. That's good. That's a, that's a very good pro tip.

[00:14:42] So like open that up and then search rather than doing it on Google. I think that would help you. Right. Doing a raw search. So I think the thing is don't just because this was a little bit more of a quiet place setter.

[00:14:53] Don't don't sleep on this episode. There's a lot of great character work that's happening. That said, I'm really sad because we've basically lost two of our major heavy hitter actors. Ah, you're counting Agon out already? Well, Tom Glen carry. I mean, you know, he's not looking great.

[00:15:11] I'm not, I'm not saying that he's dead, but we're not going to get a lot of that same energetic witty repartee that he's been throwing around. We're not going to see him carousing around with what did you call his night's guard? The bros guard. Yeah.

[00:15:24] We're not going to be seeing them out late night in the bro. You know, the bros guard, you know, having a lot of fun for quite some time if he does survive. Well, he did say the hell out of that word though. This episode. He did. Mommy.

[00:15:38] And Eve best and we're going to miss them. And I think it says something that a show can take two of those actors of that caliber and that performance out of the mix. And still be like, no, we still got more story to tell you.

[00:15:53] So hang on to your britches. And I think that's yeah, the show writers and the show runner are just really confident in their storytelling. So I'm not, I don't think that this is, oh, the worst episode of the season or any of that.

[00:16:08] I'm not even kind of doing that kind of analysis because this I think has been consistent across the board of visually style of storytelling performances writing to me. This episode doesn't miss a beat.

[00:16:21] And then when we binge the show, you know, later on a rewatch, this is going to be a nice breathing moment, you know, going into the next episode. So absolutely.

[00:16:30] I think of when we, uh, when we recap season one and we did them in pairs, they really did very well with that. Yes, that's true. Yeah, that's true. All right. Well, I think that's about all the thoughts that I have.

[00:16:42] I'm ready to get into the scene by scene if you are. Let's do it. So we have a lot of little scenes I'm going to say in this episode where like not a lot happens, but it's, you know, you got to talk about the visuals and whatnot.

[00:16:52] So, uh, we begin with coreless grieving. Yeah. That's really the scene is just he and Raniera both looks at. Right, right. Yeah. There's not a lot to say right at the beginning here. Uh, the one thing that I'm thinking of though, is that House Valerian, right?

[00:17:13] We don't see House Valerian at all in Game of Thrones. You do. You do. Just, um, well, they are pledged to Stannis. What's that? They're pledged to Stannis. Okay. But they are certainly, they're certainly not anything of the powerhouse that we had in this one. Yeah, yeah.

[00:17:31] They're not like a major player anymore. So we're really seeing the demise of a house before our eyes. I would say so.

[00:17:38] That's, that's what I'm taking away from this scene is, is House Valerian is, you know, not passing into the West because they, you know, men don't go there. Right, right. And they go elsewhere. We don't know where men go in Tolkien's world.

[00:17:52] We don't know where they go in Martin's world either. I think they just die. They just die. Although, although they get called back sometimes. So who knows? So the other thing that I thought about this scene is that this now opens up space for Alan and Adam.

[00:18:06] It does. It does. And, oh, you know, poor Reyna is just being pushed off to the side. Yeah. Oh man. Poor Reyna. I mean, Bela has, has it all right. She's got, she's going to be the queen consort, supposedly.

[00:18:22] If all goes to plan, she's going to be king, queen consort. She's got a nice dragon. She's, you know, constantly included in the small council. And here's Reyna. Her fiance died. She has no dragon. She is not the heir to anything right.

[00:18:43] She's a second daughter, not even a second son. Right. And daughters in this world have even fewer rights than second sons. She's got, she's got basically nothing like all she has is her name and that's dwindling. Like you said. And she's being pushed off to be a babysitter.

[00:19:01] Right. And it's just awful that Corliss doesn't even consider naming her as the heir to Driftmark. Right. Anyway, we can talk about that more when we get there later. But I do want to point out that there was a beautiful wide shot of Dragonstone.

[00:19:15] They're really doing a great job capturing the scenery of these different locations. Listen to you wide shot talking all. Well, now I got to look closely at all my shots, you know? Yeah.

[00:19:27] Speaking of a wide shot, we have a nice shot of Kristen, crispy, crisper Cole and his best friend, Gwaine, who seems to be buddy, buddy with them this episode.

[00:19:39] Going and doing an empty parade through King's Landing with the body of Malice and of a serious box that definitely doesn't have a gun at it. The onlookers, including you, are troubled having thought dragons to be gods.

[00:19:54] Kristen asks his best friend, Gwaine, don't they realize we won the battle? Allison and Amen share a strange moment. The we've talked about this before.

[00:20:04] The point of view of the small folk in this episode, they've done a really good job this season showing us that, you know, life in the castle, life in the in the city, life with the small folk.

[00:20:18] And the thing that I thought about it today was it not only gives us a little bit of a world, like, you know, we can move around the world a little bit. And that's nice. I mean, Game of Thrones really jetpacked us around the world.

[00:20:32] Although a tighter early on, early on, Game of Thrones did a really good job of slow walking us through that through multiple characters. And I think this show does lack some of that necessarily because of the story. But go on. Indeed.

[00:20:45] And what I was saying, what I think the point of view of the small folk does is it gives us a little bit of room there. You know, we don't feel as constrained to the story. We get a little breathing room to see what's going on.

[00:20:55] But the other thing that I thought that all of this point of view gives us is it builds stakes. So as the war heats up and things get more complex, you know, won't someone think of the children? You know, oh, what of the small folk?

[00:21:12] Well, we actually have a point of view into them. And I think that that really serves the sense of what's at stake with this war. Yeah, it's great to see them treated less as NPCs. Mm hmm. Right. And have you seen the controversy surrounding the scene now?

[00:21:30] No. OK. So controversy, this whole thing where they're like, oh, they really are like down at a drag and, you know, may at least was beloved. They the showrunners came out afterwards and you and I have been talking all season. And I brought up your points to Alicia.

[00:21:44] She didn't like them about how showrunners should shut up a little bit after the show. Alicia, don't say that to her. She didn't like that one. Really? But she's like, no, I want them to explain everything. That's our job as podcasters, though, I thought.

[00:21:59] I know exactly what I said. Let us do the talking. So anyway, they came out and they said, well, at least was a beloved dragon by the people of King's Landing. Oh, no, that's a good point. OK, is it? Because here's the controversy.

[00:22:11] How about when she killed some small folk busting through the floor when the whole city was crammed into the against their will? Yeah, right. Right. Good point. I don't know. People are going back to the D&D memes of they kind of forgot about season one.

[00:22:29] I don't agree with these criticisms wholly. It does feel weird that that's their reasoning. That's not what I read there. Right. Like that's when I'm watching the scene. If they didn't go over, explain it.

[00:22:39] What I would read from the small folks motivation is what they say, what you or his friend says. I thought they were gods. Right. Is this shock and awe of oh, this is how power has been held for over for basically almost like 200 years here.

[00:22:56] This is how power has been held. And now we see that that power has limits. And that is a game changing moment for the people of King's Landing. I totally agree. My thought was running parallel along the lines of you.

[00:23:14] And this is crispy coal making mistakes again, as Otto said he would write. He auto saw Christian Cole for what he was, which was a small time battlefield thinker. Right. He's not thinking big picture. This is not Crispin Cole's area of expertise that you are now.

[00:23:33] Look, everybody dragons can be killed. Wait, don't you rule us by fear of dragon? Right. Right. Undermine your whole case. Right. Yeah. They don't have the auto PR skill set. No, he's running a private PR firm now out in Old Town. That's that's what he's doing over there.

[00:23:54] Maybe he's moved to Hightower. Maybe that's why by the time we Game of Thrones, the the Tyrells are really good at like winning over. That's a good point. Because Otto's got his PR firm over there. Right. Right. Anyway, Ryan Cuddle, stop over explaining your own show.

[00:24:10] You did a good job with this scene. Don't ruin it. My only thing would be so I didn't get the fact that Maylis was a favorite dragon. So you could have just thrown in somebody saying Maylis and then turn away and cry in horror.

[00:24:24] And then like, like, oh, OK, that makes sense. You know, people know who Maylis is and they feel bad about it. You know, I just got the, you know, the the incense and the flies. Great CGI flies, by the way. That was like a really good.

[00:24:38] It looked all really. Yeah. Yeah. There was little flies buzzing around everywhere. It was very cool. You know, in the pots of incense, you know, to try to mask the smell, all of that. And then, yeah, this, you know, oh, my God, this power question.

[00:24:52] So if you wanted me to know that Maylis was favored, you did not communicate that. You know, fair enough. You said it afterwards. Whatever. It's fine. But you stop doing it. I've done it. It's not fine. Stop doing it. All right. That's enough for me.

[00:25:08] I have a quick question about Hugh. Who is Hugh? Hugh? Hugh? Who? Who? Hugh? The man with the beautiful beard. Is he a dragon seed or is he just a POV small folk? Wafo. Okay. Wafo. Because they haven't said much about him.

[00:25:32] I mean, basically, we're just getting, oh, you know, he was a Smith and his daughter's sick. Yeah. You're just going to have to stick with the Wafo on that one. Okay. Got it. Yeah, because you stick a pin in that wheel.

[00:25:46] I'll say nothing in the show has suggested that at this point. Right. Okay, good. So I haven't missed. You have not missed that. Nobody has suggested that at this point. Okay, got it.

[00:25:55] Oh, and then I guess the last thing, because you included in this scene is the look that Allison gives Eamon with the dagger. Yeah, she's like, hey, what's going on over there? Now, somebody pointed this out too, I want to say.

[00:26:09] And this is from last episode more, but we didn't talk about it last time. This idea that the prophecy of a song of ice and fire is on the dagger. Right. Well, Eamon picks up the dagger right after. Right. Right. After it was burnt up with a gone.

[00:26:27] Did he read the prophecy? And we know he speaks high Valerian. So that would be pretty cool. They obviously didn't give us that in this episode, but like, maybe we'll see him in the library looking up for looking stuff up or something. That would be very cool.

[00:26:45] Yeah, I'd be down for it. So a gone returns home, a box carrying a gone very, very conspicuously. May we add this was again. Otto would not have done this. This would have this would not have happened is carried through the red key past Helena.

[00:27:00] The King is badly burned to the brink of death and Allison watches them peel the armor from his melted skin. The maesters shoe Allison away to let them work. Eamon arrives to say someone has got to take the job.

[00:27:16] There's a vacancy everyone cold ice cold from a dragon rider. Yeah, did you love Allison getting shoot away by the maesters? I what I actually liked was the fact that my first clue that Eamon wasn't dead

[00:27:33] was that the sisters stated the back of the room and it was the maesters who were up front doing all the busy work. And I was like, ah, there he is. He's alive. If not, it would have been the sisters, right? Doing the work. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:27:47] He gone in bad shape though. Dude that like we were joke. We're talking about the armor and would that you know, you know stop any, you know, dragon fire and what you know, how much would it take, you know, absorb

[00:28:01] the blow when he fell and all that kind of stuff. I had no clue that they were going to show us peeling off the armor from his fused skin. That was pretty pretty graphic and then that's straight from the budding. That's straight.

[00:28:16] The whole armor melting his skin basically is straight from the book. I knew that was coming. I had to waffle it when everybody was like, is he dead? I had to just waffle it. Right. But they did a good job presenting on screen. Honestly, they did.

[00:28:29] It was it was very effective. It was very effective. I loved seeing the the the King's bros in the background. The three of them were like standing there and they're like, oh, what do we do? Like our king, you know, they're they're just complete buffoons in the room.

[00:28:43] Like go away. You're not helping. Right, right. And the maesters are really just like, listen, lady, we got to do some work here because we are between this guy and death right now. Yeah. And that he is alive. Dear Lord. Insane. Insane.

[00:28:59] I think anyone else they would have said it's better off for him to die. The condition because this is not modern medicine, right? There's no skin grafts, right? There's no there's no quality of life after this. He's he's just going to be in pain.

[00:29:13] So I didn't catch this until later in the episode. But I think it was at the very end with the whole mummy line when when it really visually it caught me. But I'll bring it up now, which is this is the same bed that her husband died in.

[00:29:36] And this is the same bed where she was made pregnant with all of her children. Yeah, I mean, Viserra, sorry, Agon really does take after the looks of his father at this point. Exactly right. Exactly. Yeah, that's good stuff, David. I will handle that.

[00:29:53] It really the visual at the end with him in the bandages with his leg up and all that kind of stuff. I was like, I immediately flashback to Viserra's stretched out. And then and then I flashed to the scene of when the king the king would like you.

[00:30:10] It's the hour of the wolf. Please join your husband. You would have a visit with you. Was it the hour of the wolf then? No, it wasn't. I was going to say that would be funny for this episode. I thought you were bringing me back.

[00:30:22] No, but it was just a kind of a funny tie in. But anyway, the whole point is that there's a lot has happened for Allison in this bed. So do you think that Agon is going to start flipping a coin that used to have two heads

[00:30:38] but has been burnt the other side and deciding if people live or die based on that coin? Could be good. Could be good. Could be good. Could be good. Dark Knight reference as a that's a Harvey Dent reference for you folks out there.

[00:30:53] All right, shall we move on to Allison confronting Kristen in his tighty whities? Sure. That's basically what happens. Okay, that's it. That's it. I can read the whole thing description. But that's the scene description.

[00:31:06] I mean, he she does the interesting thing about the scene is that she goes, Hey, what did what did Amon do? Because I'm pretty sure he did this. And crispy says, I cannot say I don't recall. I think that's what you're supposed to say at a deposition.

[00:31:26] I do not recall. I just always think about Jeff Sessions saying that I feel like he's the iconic. I do not recall guy. Yeah, it was. It's been used a lot recently. But anyway, that's a separate story. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:31:38] Great screenshot that you have in the show guide here. Really beautiful setup shot to between the two of them. The low angle and everything. I really loved switching from the maesters working on Aegon to Cole dipping the lemon in salt.

[00:31:55] And I was like, that's a strange thing to put on burns. And then we see him, you know, cleaning his sword. And I was like, Oh, okay, fair enough. But it was a really great scene transition to go from, you know, all of these maesters

[00:32:08] trying to solve the wounds and do all this stuff to Kristen Cole trying to solve the wounds of his soul. Right. You know, trying to clean, you know, what are what what honor does he have left his sword, his cloak?

[00:32:20] You know, all of it's been sullied now and he's doing his best to clean it. What's great about this episode is that I think both times they interact, they really show how Allison has turned on him, but also how he sort of is prostrating himself about

[00:32:40] everything that happened. Right. He is. He went from being really mouthy from having a smirk on all the time to just broken. Dude is broken. He's like, what the hell did I do? I feel like he's finally reflecting on the last 10 years of his life.

[00:32:53] Like, was the spite worth it? And he's made cause with Amon's. He's gotten, yeah, men killed. I mean, he'll he'll recount some of this later. But yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. I think it's gone deep into his head. He's broke. Yeah, he sure is.

[00:33:14] Well, there's not much to say about the scene. Shall we move on to the black council in chaos? Sure. All right, sir. Alfred Broom has some concerns about Raniera's membership of the gentler sex. Raniera claps back and orders garrisons to the other loyal holds.

[00:33:34] The council continues to devolve into calls for responses to Rook's rest. So I thought it was interesting this episode, this whole rehabilitation of Broom, but we're going to talk about that later because I think it's a I think it's a real telling turning point.

[00:33:49] And I don't think we get that turn without this scene and the buildup that the scene has been coming to. Right. I mean, he's a Broom's a bit of a dickhead, but he's not wrong.

[00:34:04] And he's also loyal that we learn later that his loyalty is not on question here. Well. It's tough.

[00:34:14] I think that it is a really bad mistake for Raniera to be like, you know, this guy is challenging me and he's becoming a bit of a nuisance instead of dealing with the problem. I'm going to send it away. It's very viscerous of her.

[00:34:28] She learned that move from her father, right? I have a very different point of view on this, but I want to save it for when we talk because I think because Raniera has a really big turn. And this is what I'm saying. Don't sleep on this episode.

[00:34:40] There is a really big sea change for Raniera in this episode. And it start in this episode. It starts here. This is where it begins to the worm turns for her as they as the olds might say.

[00:34:53] Yeah, if I could choose one line from the whole episode, it would be there is more than one way to fight a war. Exactly. That's basically this whole episode for Raniera. And I will say this show is doing a good job.

[00:35:04] I think people were worried that unlike Game of Thrones, this show is going to be too hyper fixated on several characters. A long time. It was really hyper fixated on Allison and Raniera and Kristen and all their petty bullshit.

[00:35:19] But I do think the show is doing a good job of starting to diversify the cast and it's doing a job of letting the writer's hand be less felt and basically saying, okay, well, the plot is over here with these characters.

[00:35:33] We're not going to spend 15 minutes with Raniera this episode. We're going to spend five minutes because it just makes sense for the story of this episode. And that's okay. Yeah, that's good. And the same thing with Allison. Right. Agreed.

[00:35:47] So I want to talk a little bit about the strategy situation that they're facing here. And they keep in this episode, the name of Vhagar was mentioned at least eight to ten times. I don't know. I'm guessing it felt like it a dozen times.

[00:36:06] She is the gal of the hour. And I was just thinking, and I'm not saying that I am a tactical mastermind or anything like this.

[00:36:15] But what's kind of driving me crazy from a strategy standpoint is that yes, Vhagar is the biggest threat on the board, but they're not thinking of ways to try to pull Vhagar. They're like, oh, well, what if Vhagar shows up over here?

[00:36:30] Or what if Vhagar shows up over there? It's just Vhagar is this big thing in the middle of their ability to affect change on the mainland, right? On the mainland of Westeros. So I was like, well, I don't know. What are some other strategies?

[00:36:45] I was just sort of brainstorming myself. You could take Jace and Bela. They could go out and they could fly.

[00:36:52] They could fly out to the Reach or to the Riverlands and they could harass green allies, burn up some ply lands, burn up a few crop lands, take a couple of hits on a couple of castles, and do a lot of guerrilla tactic stuff to try to pull Vhagar away.

[00:37:12] Now, I don't know what you would do once you've got Vhagar drawn off. I think that's the question, right? They don't have any land forces, too. But if you want to keep Vhagar away from you, there are ways that you could strategize to get Vhagar.

[00:37:24] I mean, Vhagar's there. You could goad Vhagar into some action or you could taunt him or pull Vhagar further away. The further Vhagar gets away from food sources, right? What's the supply lines for Vhagar? I mean, Jesus. So anyway, it's just kind of from a risk, strategico, strategio.

[00:37:42] What was that game? Strateco? I can't remember now. I think it was like strategio. Yeah, strategio. Now, I'm more of a Civ VI guy. Oh, there you go. Sid Meier's Civilization. Yeah, yeah, I remember. Oh, yeah, I remember. Oh, he's still around. But you know what I'm saying?

[00:37:55] It's just like, come on, y'all. Think about, okay, all they do is complain about Vhagar. It's like, we'll do something about it. That's my point. I hear what you're saying.

[00:38:04] I think if I'm going to make the case against doing something about Vhagar right now, they do not have a dragon big enough to take down Vhagar. Unless you have Caraxes and the other dragons together.

[00:38:15] I think they need to have every dragon against Vhagar, and there's still a chance that they lose based on sheer might. Sure, and I'm saying, fine, you can't take Vhagar.

[00:38:24] You don't have the numbers right now to take Vhagar, the two or three dragons that you would need to, you know, because one's got to be the bait, and then the other two can work Vhagar over. But you've got to get her out of pocket.

[00:38:38] If you can get her out of pocket, then you've got some other moves that you could make. And that's what bothers me.

[00:38:46] That's all they do is they complain about, well, if the Eyrie is worried about Vhagar descending on him, well, send Jace and Bela way south into the Reach to Highgarden and attack those guys because then they're going to have to send Vhagar down there to fight the dragon.

[00:39:03] And then it's like, oh, here comes Vhagar. It's like, let's get out of here. Right, so do that gorilla hit and run style stuff to get Vhagar out of pocket. That's my point.

[00:39:12] Well, we did hear them start to strategize about what to do about Vhagar finally, which is we've got two dragons that are huge. And just so you know, Vermithor is only a little bit smaller than Vhagar. Really? Oh, God, I had no idea. Vermithor is really big.

[00:39:27] So they're like, we got to get somebody on this guy. Right. Vermithor was ridden by King Jaehaera, so it was an older dragon. The peaceful king. And then Silverwing was ridden by his wife, Queen Alysanne. We really need a thing that shows the relative sizes of the dragons.

[00:39:46] That's a good point. Let's get that into the tool, into the bestiary because there's a picture of Vermithor here, but I don't know that... Let's see, Vermithor size versus Vhagar. Somebody on the internet must have one of those charts.

[00:40:03] Okay, so according to the Reddit consensus, and I don't know if this is right, so maybe somebody with more knowledge can write in on this. Somebody who's a dragon expert. Vhagar is... So Vermithor should be about three quarters the size of Vhagar. So pretty close. Pretty good.

[00:40:21] You team up Vermithor and Silverwing, Vermithor and... Vermithor and anybody. Cyrax, rather. Vermithor and Caraxes, I think you are good to go to make an attempt on Vhagar. Right, right. But nobody can ride Vermithor right now. Right. That's a problem. Right.

[00:40:39] So anyway, it's a good plan by Jace. It is a good plan. The question is, the question is, you get all these people without Targaryen names on dragons, and Rhaenyra points out this risk. Do they still follow you once they have that power? That's a good point.

[00:40:56] When someone is riding Vermithor, if Vhagar is dead and they have the biggest dragon in the realm, are they still going to fight to put you on the throne? That's an interesting question. Is that a Wafo thing? It's a Wafo thing.

[00:41:09] Oh, look, I'm Wafo-ing and saying it's just a risk, and Rhaenyra points it out in this episode of what's going to happen when we give non-Targaryens dragons. I actually didn't pick that up. That's actually really interesting.

[00:41:20] Well, she goes, what, are you going to give a Tully a dragon? Right, and I didn't actually pick up the implication of that. I thought more just of like, can we find a Tully?

[00:41:28] But I think that's a really interesting pickup is that, yeah, now you're giving this other house power, this other individual power. I hadn't calculated that. The Targaryens have maintained power by having a monopoly on nuclear weapons, essentially. Yeah, right. What happens when they create a Russia?

[00:41:47] Yeah, or any of the other nuclear-enabled nations. Yeah, that are smaller and more voluntile. I'm just doing the big one for now. The real politic. Fair enough. Well, they figured it out on their own, so it's not like we gave them the… Oh, I know. I know.

[00:42:03] I'm just saying you're going to hand it to them. You're literally going to hand them what in this world is equivalent to a nuclear weapon. Right. And then what are you going to do?

[00:42:12] They kill Vhagar, and then you immediately turn around and burn the rider off the back of the dragon. Yeah, they're like, oh, can you go give that dragon back now? Which you can't even do with dragon riders, right? Once you're bonded, you're bonded.

[00:42:27] And then the other thing is just training these people to fight. I mean, imagine learning to… I mean, they had a hard enough time. I mean, they pulled it off in Independence Day, right? We're teaching everybody how to fly a supersonic fighter jet. Good pull.

[00:42:40] There's no Hogwarts in this show, though. No Hogwarts school of dragon riding. No, no. So, you know, they're just going to have to go… They're going to strap them in and say, go. I feel like somebody's going to slap the butt of Vermithor and say, go. Take off.

[00:42:56] Cool. Anything else on this scene? No. All right, let's take a quick break. When we get back, we'll resume the episode. We'll be right back with more House of the Dragon. And we're back with more House of the Dragon. So, David, we've got more episode to go through.

[00:43:22] Why don't we go to Bela and Jace? We finally get some scenes with the youngins that we didn't get earlier. Bela catches Jace trying to sneak out to get to Daemon and seek affirmation of his loyalty. After Bela calls him on his short-sightedness,

[00:43:40] he changes his plan to visiting the Frays and taking control of the twins. So, a question I have. They're betrothed, right? They are betrothed. So, there's just no intimacy on screen with them, no little peck or kiss or caress.

[00:43:56] I was just kind of missing a little bit more of their budding relationship. They're betrothed for two weeks, right? And in those two weeks, literally, they got betrothed the day Viserys died. So, everything since then has been chaos. They haven't had a chance to work that out.

[00:44:11] Okay, all right. I'll buy that. It's been two weeks. It's got to be longer than two weeks. It hasn't been that long. That's fair enough. That I'll take. It hasn't been long and they've been a little busy. Yeah, that's true. It's a little awkward.

[00:44:26] I just wanted to see... I was like, wait, aren't they supposed to be... Just a little touch or caress or be safe or I'll look for you when you come back or something like that. I don't know. Just missing a little romance.

[00:44:38] We got a lot of gritty stuff going on here and a little bit of romance would have been nice. Yeah, I mean, I do see them getting closer together each scene that they're in together. Yeah. And that's good to see.

[00:44:52] But I think they just have a lot to figure out and they're right in the middle of this war. I think they don't really know what to do about it. Sure. Do you think that if Jace did show up on Daemon's doorstep that it would go very well?

[00:45:07] I think Daemon would literally just laugh at him. I don't think he'd be violent towards him, but I think he would laugh at him and Jace would just kind of walk away. Jace would be like, well, you owe your loyalty to my mother.

[00:45:20] And he's like, I knew your mother. I changed your mother's diapers. Everyone would get real weird about it and then he'd go home. Right. Yeah, I didn't think it would work. So I think the switch to visiting the twins, the Freys, that was smart. I do think so.

[00:45:39] You know, the Freys have a lovely place called the Twins. It's a famous wedding venue and they have a great door. You pointed out the door table, which I did get a screenshot of. That's pretty cool. But I guess we can go get to there later.

[00:45:54] Do you like Bela being sort of a tempering force for Jace before we move on? I think so. I think it's important to, you know, we talked a lot about this in early part of the season,

[00:46:06] you know, being a little bit older and wiser, if I might say, versus being young and intemperate and wanting to rush off. And I was thinking about some times when I was young and like, put me in coach,

[00:46:22] like I'm ready to go, you know, I'm ready for some action. And I remember one particular situation in general where they were just like, nope, you need to stay back here and just cool your jets. And I was like, but why?

[00:46:35] And it's frustrating when you're in that position. And so taking on a risky mission, at least this wasn't a mission that puts Jace's life in danger, but actually strategically moves their planning forward. So that was good, but I could totally relate.

[00:46:56] At the same time, you know, it's legitimacy. It's not legitimacy. If you don't have an air, there's a lack of assuredness and things get chaotic. And so you really do need, no, but you need, you know,

[00:47:09] if it's Raniera and then Jace, you know, and then there's the little ones, right? If we lose Jace, then that really destabilized. You need a succession, right? You need a line and people need to see that line to be able to cove too.

[00:47:22] And if not, things get a little dicey and people start making claims. Right? Yeah. Well, they look, they do have three younger boys. Yes. No girls in the line. So you don't even have to deal with that issue. Right.

[00:47:36] You don't have to deal with, with Wilber Niera, keep the same claim going. It's just, there are more successors. And then if they're all gone, then. Right. But then we know, you know, Regency and all of that and, you know, rule and exile. That's very complicated. So, yep.

[00:47:53] Yep. So anyway, yeah, I think you're right. You, you want an air who can speaking complete sentences. To put it lightly. So Damon, he plays at war here. He and Benji cop Blackwood bloody Ben visit the Brackens with fire and blood after an ultimatum, they choose fire.

[00:48:15] Damon withholds his fire, but encourages Ben to do something. The Royals can't be seen doing cool armor that Damon has. I like his, his shoulder things. They're not grieves. What are those? I don't anyway, it doesn't matter. I thought it was funny.

[00:48:32] This whole scene, everybody's like juggling and just jostling around. They're on their horses. Damon's on his dragon. Everybody's sort of in this like, we're like moving around trying to hold position. So it was pretty funny.

[00:48:44] I gotta say as much as we've seen great dragon fighting, this is the most realistic I've seen a dragon look like this felt really like I could go up and like pet at scales. So great job CGI work. Damon feeling more impotent as the situation rolls on.

[00:49:06] He just is kind of, I love the cut scene. You know, we, we, we think, oh, we're going to get a flame thing and then they cut and it's silent and him sitting on the grass going, Oh gosh, I didn't think they'd do that.

[00:49:19] A great, great way to pivot the energy of the scene. And a really interesting realization. Like I need people that kind of resolve. Right? Yep. Yep. I, what do you think about Ben over here?

[00:49:34] He's a, well, I was going to ask the, the brackens in the black woods. Seem to have, do we know, does it even matter how long their amnesty goes back? How, how like was there, do you, do you have any of these? I don't personally know. Okay.

[00:49:48] I don't know if it matters. I think it's just one of those like, and we've always hated each other. This is a big thing actually in the star Wars high Republic stuff. It like goes through like the whole book series and to the point where it's kind

[00:50:00] of annoying after a while. But yeah, I think that for this, it can just be a plot device of we really hate each other. So every time Damon suggests something to an underling, it, it hasn't quite worked out. He's like, he makes a huge, tiny mistake.

[00:50:18] Huge, tiny mistake here. You know, we can't be seen doing this. Oh, you know what? If we can find a man, well shrug, you know, whatever you got to do. He's not very good at this part of the game. No, no, no.

[00:50:33] He's he, Damon, maybe instead of winking, you should like speak in complete sentences, right? We need an air who speaks in complete sentences and this is not the one. All we're asking for here. Oh man.

[00:50:45] And he seems pretty gleeful at the thought that a bunch of innocents are going to get aroused. That's, that's kind of gross. I mean, if you ask Damon, he's going to tell you, well, I wouldn't have hurt them if their Lord wouldn't have been a treasonous traitor.

[00:51:02] That's kind of redundant. But anyway, if their Lord hadn't been a traitor and of course I like how later the Lord say, well, you know, it's one thing if you want to punish a traitor, you know, that's one thing or punish the soldiers, but you can't

[00:51:17] go and massacre a whole people because of the actions of their Lord. Yeah. Right. And that's going to get you into trouble later because you kind of need them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think he was, he was starting to get on a good trajectory if he

[00:51:31] could get the river Lords all on his side. But now he has no chance with them. No chance at all. None. Anyway, Raina arrives at the Erie. We finally meet Lady Jane Aaron who's been talked about like kind of a lot. OK.

[00:51:48] Because I believe she was first dropped in episode 10 of season one when Raniera says, Hey, Jace, go to the Erie and go to Winterfell and go get the support of Jane Aaron and Cregan Stark. That's right. So now here we have her. You got it.

[00:52:07] It is two criteria, two criteria for getting on the show guide. You got to have a name and you got to have a face. There you go. Every now and then I'll do a historical character just because they're important enough. Jane Aaron finally got to that threshold.

[00:52:20] Finally made it. So she has an entry in the show guide. What do you think of her? A little off, a little strange. I don't know. I think people in the Erie, you know, if you've got the moon door, it does something to you. They're a little strange.

[00:52:36] They're a little off in the Erie. I was thinking that what they really need is some scorpions, though, if they're so worried about dragons, you know, they need four or five scorpions up there to defend themselves. I think that would be helpful.

[00:52:50] Problem is you get one shot, right? Right. But if you got four or five, right? Yeah, I guess then you get four or five shots. Yes, exactly. But I think that Raina and Jane have found a kind of an uneasy relationship,

[00:53:08] if at all be it uneasy, like they kind of understand like she was like, yeah, it kind of sucks to be powerless without having that any agency. And yeah, I can kind of relate to that. So this will be your room. I'll see you at dinner.

[00:53:21] Like it seems they got somewhere, although they've got some more things to work out. Right, right. Fair enough. Raina, I think has a little bit of an inferiority complex here, right? Like so. Yeah. Kind of like daring her like, oh, she gave you two dragons.

[00:53:39] I'm like, I do appreciate that Jane calls her out right away. She's like, look, two non-fighting dragons are zero dragons. Right. That's zero dragons for the effect of like, if I say I built you a deck and I

[00:53:51] built them all, I built it out of broken planks that I didn't build you a deck. Right, right. Yeah. The, the, the problem, the expectation. If I bring you a cup of water and then I smashed the glass on the table in front

[00:54:03] of you, I did not bring you a glass of water. The promise, the promise was not fulfilled. Right, right. And she sees right through that, right? Oh, she'll grow not fast enough. That's absolutely true. Like in however many weeks, not many that this war has been going on.

[00:54:19] We've seen dragon on dragon war and this is an aerial kingdom. This is an aerial fortress. And that's the reason that the errands bowed down to the Targaryens in the first place is because no one could ever get past the veil, get, you get

[00:54:35] past the veil of Aaron into the Erie until a dragon came along until a dragon came along. And that's why in game of thrones it was considered impregnable again. Right. Because there's no dragons anymore until the dinners. Right.

[00:54:51] And yeah, I wonder what's going to happen with this whole area. Put a pin in it. Put a pin in it. Indeed. Miss Sariah speaks her wisdom. Rainiera laments her lack of training because of her gender.

[00:55:05] Miss Sariah points out that Kristen Cole made a mistake by bringing the bad omen of a dead dragon into the city. Miss Sariah advises her that there is more than one way to fight a war. And then a servant named Linda Massey walks away in a murder cloak.

[00:55:19] So I've got a little bit to say here and all good. I think first off the in last episode, I think I called out why is Miss Sariah like at the steps? She didn't step in on a conversation, but she was just kind of watching the

[00:55:39] council. And I think what they're doing is they're setting her up to be this silent observer and this sort of a counselor in the shadows kind of person. And she's listening and then she's got, you know, Rainier's ear. So, okay, cool. Make that made sense there.

[00:55:57] What really to me jumped out at the scene was, was not only was the, you know, like you pointed out the line, there's, there's more than one way to fight a war. It's that Rainiera needs to discover her power, her leadership style, her ability to affect change.

[00:56:18] And she's been trying to do it in a bunch of different ways. And this scene and in a later scene is where she really discovers the truth of herself. And I think it's a kind of a truism that the,

[00:56:32] the truth that you discover for yourself is like way more powerful and potent as a tool for you than a truth that you learn. Like I can be told intellectually something, but when I discover gravity,

[00:56:44] like, Oh yeah, there's a thing called gravity. But when I fall on my face, I remember that shit, right? Like, I'm like, okay, now I can use this tool. I understand that it has a very big effect.

[00:56:56] So she's one doctor who fan laughs at me saying Mavity in the middle of your sentence. By the way, did you say I didn't hear Mavity? Don't worry about it. Go on. Got it. So she's talking to Masari. She was like, well, yeah,

[00:57:09] I didn't get a sword put in my hand. So I don't understand battle stratagems and you know, supply logistics and how to keep a field, a force in the field for multiple days and all this kind of stuff.

[00:57:20] But what I got was my father's cup and I learned all the Lords and the names and the geographies and the histories and all this kind of blah, blah, bullshit. And I, in my head I was screaming, yes, that's what you learned.

[00:57:33] You were given access to the highest level conversations in the realm. You learn, you had the opportunity to learn about the foibles of all of the different people that were your subjects. You got to learn about why this house and that house have beef and why this

[00:57:50] house and that has have an alliance. So you are in this position now where you get to start to discover your own power, which she later uses with broom, which is okay. Yeah. Other people need to actually do some general, you know,

[00:58:05] like you know, a battlefield commander stuff. But I can see the board and I can see the chess pieces and I can understand why this piece and that piece and this thing over here and that thing over there,

[00:58:19] how they interrelate and then how do I manipulate people or use people or order people or, you know, enroll people into an idea like, Hey, go do this for me. Like she really enrolls room and in his mission he's like, are you kicking me off?

[00:58:33] She's like, no, like this shit's really important. I need you to do it. And he's like, cool, I'll do it. Right. So she, I think in this is this, this beginning of this moment, maybe it's the beginning of a three-step reveal kind of thing that we get a

[00:58:47] second step later in the episode where, yeah, she starts to understand that power is not just within a sword, right? To be the ability to wield a sword and then Masaria backs it up, which is, yo, we can fight wars different ways.

[00:59:03] I love that. I love that. That's a great way to explain it. I went on a little bit of a rant there. I loved it. I loved it. I mean, 10 out of 10 do it again. So in a world that puts men above women,

[00:59:16] she has learned to measure power in terms of masculinity in terms of the capacity to do violence. Anyway, it's an interesting, it's an interesting thought that you've raised here, David. I like it a lot. Maybe I'll write a blog post based on your thoughts here.

[00:59:33] Please do so. Yeah. And you've got all of that, uh, well, you know, the study that stuff that you've studied about the patriarchy and whatnot. So yes, I've learned to smash it through my words. Right. You can, your words, right.

[00:59:45] How rumors to the discontented rumors are not just rumors. Right. So thoughts and ideas can have as much potency and power as a dragon's breath or a sword tip. And Ms. Saria knows how to activate that kind of stuff. Right. Well,

[01:00:03] what the feminists really needed was a white man like me to come in and tell them what it meant. That's what they really needed the whole time. That's right. That's right. So another point that I want to make is that I think that we're all

[01:00:17] right. So another point, so I got a bunch of a few more things here. First off, visually loved the contrast of, uh, Raniera standing in front of the big dragon skull and the sort of focus shifts back and forth. And she's like, well, you know what, what,

[01:00:34] what power do we have can whispers, you know, tear down walls and break shields. And then I was thinking, but the power of many, which is an Alka acolyte, uh, reference. I want to always say, I want to say how Alka light, uh,

[01:00:47] acolyte reference and you know, yes, using the small folk and the disaffected and the misinformation or the information networks that, uh, that comprises city, it may have a higher coefficient to unleash that power. But once that power is unleashed,

[01:01:07] it is going to be a brutal and devastating force. It's like floodwaters. Once the dam is broken, once people, and it's starting to build, like we see in this episode with the city gates being closed, that that tension and energy is starting to ramp up. And you know,

[01:01:24] when you drop in somebody like, uh, Talia who is dropping a whisper here and a word there that can energize that that is going to be something that's very dangerous. A lot of people are going to get killed,

[01:01:38] but it's also something that can completely destabilize the King's landing in the red keep. Right, right. And uh, I wonder where that's going to go. What do you think of a Linda and Linda Massey who, by the way, I did confirm through some reading that this was a,

[01:01:59] one of the servants present. Uh, she's a lady in waiting technically because she is noble. She is the daughter of one of the council members. Got it. Um, what do you think of her and her scheming?

[01:02:13] And I just called her Talia and apologies. It's a Linda. I was thinking, Talia's gone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Coming back. No, Talia. Talia was just there on the, in the show guide. And I actually called her out. Um, instead of, uh, instead of a Linda,

[01:02:26] I didn't even notice. So I'm glad you caught it. Yes. Um, I was afraid of being added. Uh, anyway, Linda, uh, that's, this is what I'm, I'm saying. This is really interesting stuff. And I think it's a very cool thing for the show to enter into. Yeah.

[01:02:42] We can have CGI dragons fighting. Yeah. We can have armies, you know, clashing, but send in a lone spy into a city that's on the brink. And that spy knows who to talk to and, and the right words to say to certain people and boom that, you know,

[01:02:56] she can light the fuse on that powder keg that can completely change the course of, uh, of events. So I'm excited to see what happens with it. Me too. Me too. I'm excited to see where, uh, all of the subterfuge.

[01:03:12] Yes. Goes. We're here for it. All right. Bela. She grieves with Raniera Bela and Raniera share their fondness for rainies and Raniera asked her to give Corliss a box. I wasn't sure what it was going to be at that point. Yeah, neither did I.

[01:03:30] I had no idea. I was like, huh? What is this? And I kind of just set it aside. Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea. So, uh, I do not wish to stand alone. I thought that was a really interesting line.

[01:03:42] And again, I think this is going to Raniera, uh, finding her power and understanding that she needs a team and that she needs people with her that she can trust. So I thought that was a really cool, especially, you know,

[01:03:56] with the fact that the Targaryens and the Valerians, there's a lot of bad blood, there's a lot of potential bad blood and that they can kind of see their way through to this. That I thought that was also very, really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I like that.

[01:04:11] Bela is kind of firmly planting with Raniera though. She's finally doing it. She's, she's picking a side here. Yeah. She's all in. And, and I do like this whole episode. It feels like she really like forging her own identity saying I am fire and

[01:04:26] blood. I'm not, you know, she, she's, she's like, I, I am my father's side, not my mother's side as far as this goes. Yeah. I liked that. I liked that a lot. Speaking of fathers, the next scene is called absolutely not in my show guide.

[01:04:43] Damon fucks his mom, Alyssa, by the way, I want to say I accidentally said Alice and last night that's Damon's grandma, not his mom. Okay. This is a new character. This is Alyssa Targaryen. She calls Damon her favorite son and laments him not being born before

[01:05:01] Viserys. Do we know much about her? I think she's referenced in the books though, right? She sure is. And there's actually a decent amount about her. Okay. She was the first dragon rider of Malice. Ah, so that ties in over there. Okay. Very cool. Yep.

[01:05:17] So Malice dies this episode and her rider comes back for a moment. That's where he died at. I think 26 was the age in her twenties. Okay. Right after the, uh, the birth of, she basically died in childbirth giving birth to the youngest brother of Damon

[01:05:33] and Viserys who then died in infancy. Mm-hmm. Very similar to, you know, uh, Viserys and what happened with his wife, Emma and her son, Balin. Right. Okay. Uh, except, uh, I believe in the books, the youngest child, which was another Aegon.

[01:05:51] He lived until about six months old. I know too many fucking Aegons, but the point is people, I think Damon was about three or four years old when she died. So he barely knew her and you look at comparing,

[01:06:03] I think what's interesting about this is you compare Damon who's imagining banging his real mom to Eamon who's looking for a mother figure at the brothel. Yeah. Interesting. Right. Both of them lacked a mother's love one out of choice. Mm-hmm. I, Alison withheld love out of choice. Right.

[01:06:25] Whereas Damon probably would have received the love of his mother well into his adulthood had she not died in childbirth. Right, right, right, right. I thought what was interesting too about this is that she's basically telling him everything that he tells himself. Oh yeah.

[01:06:45] Oh yeah. This is all right out of his brain, right? Right. Which is even worse. Uh, everybody take a deep breath. It's all okay. We're going to get through this scene together. The other thing that people were throwing around was the word Oedipus. Yeah. And, uh,

[01:07:02] I did a little scratch on Oedipus in a little, little wiki skim through and I was thinking, so there's two things, right? There's, there's Oedipus Rex, which is a play that one of the three Thebian plays by Sophocles, right? And then there's the Oedipus Complex,

[01:07:22] which is the Freudian psychoanalytic thing about children and their relationships to their, their parents. And it'd be really interesting actually if, if there are any maesters out there who have any points of view on the Oedipus Complex and, or separately, even just around some of the Sophocles stuff.

[01:07:47] I'd love to hear some feedback on that. Uh, I, I kind of was thinking it was interesting. It's like, okay, there's some stuff about the flawed nature of humanity and your, uh, your role as an individual through life and this idea of fate or free will or

[01:08:07] tragic flaws is like, you know, being something. So, I may be grafting too much onto Damon here, but I thought like looking at Damon through the Oedipus Rex, not the Oedipal Complex, but the character Oedipus, you know,

[01:08:21] I wonder what sort of interesting things there because Oedipus was also a tyrant and, and that refers to a ruler with no legitimate claim to rule, but not necessarily as a negative connotation used at that time. So I think that there's some interesting things there,

[01:08:38] but I didn't really have a long, uh, much time today to dig into it. So if there's any maesters out there who have points of view on those, I'd love to hear something on Thursday. Yeah. I, uh, I don't know a lot about the Oedipus,

[01:08:52] but the Oedipus story itself, then you know, the whole, you know, kills his dad, has sex with his mother or marries his mother rather unknowingly, right? Unknowingly. Yup. Yup. And then he, uh, goes blind, right? He calls his eyes out. Yes, exactly.

[01:09:08] And then there's two more plays Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone. And I don't remember the course of, of all of them, but it's a, it's a really tragic thing. But then there's this whole question of fate and, you know,

[01:09:20] or tragic flaws. Uh, and you know, do you have free will in, in some of this stuff? So, um, yeah, I think there's some interesting potential rich ground there. Now the unfortunate thing with Damon is there is no way he's calling his eyes

[01:09:33] out. He was perfectly fine with us. Yeah, perfectly fine. Now when he pulls away, he leaves a streak of blood on her throat and I swear that that blood reminded me of the blood that Alice Rivers had on her fingers when she was

[01:09:52] making that draft for him. And it, it had a kind of a berry like texture was almost like sort of crushed berries thing. Cause it wasn't just a streak of blood, but there was actually some, uh, I don't know, pulp material or something there. All right.

[01:10:07] I'm going to throw up. Let's move on to the next. You talked about the consistency of blood. I don't know how to describe it. There's stuff there. It's not just blood. So it made me think of Alice. Yeah. Blood pulp. I don't know. Okay. All right.

[01:10:23] So Simon Strong asks for rent. Now, if you'll look to the show guide now, the image I got is you have two, you have two younger members of the, uh, okay. So you have two younger members of house strong, I guess. Yeah. And they're just looking up,

[01:10:45] they have like a bite in their mouth. They basically stopped chewing and they just look up like we're not part of this conversation. You have Damon looking really judgingly and frustratingly at Simon. And then you have Simon doing the most uncomfortable smile you could possibly

[01:11:02] imagine. So what happens is if you recall that, uh, you know, Damon insists that they are going to need room for the Bracken forces soon because their, their submission is coming any day now. Right. And Simon's like, Hey,

[01:11:15] we are broke and we need some help because Laris emptied out the coffers. Then Simon suggests asking Raniera for money. But Damon's like, no, no, no, I'll, I'll foot the bill. Just put it on my tab.

[01:11:29] Just put it on my tab. And then he insists on being called King and not King consort. That word is not necessary. Love that little lot retort. That seems a little, that seems a little unnecessary. Yeah. Um, yeah, that transition out of the dream was wild.

[01:11:49] Yeah. With the, the, the blood dripping in the food and then like the closeup on Simon's face. And it was just like, it was, I was disoriented coming out of it. I was like, wait, what's going on? Where are we? Like, what is this? Yeah. Oh boy.

[01:12:04] Um, this scene was probably one of the better comedic moments of the whole episode though. And I'm glad that we went here right after the disturbing Alyssa, sorry, Alyssa scene. Because it really was a nice palate cleanser. Yeah.

[01:12:16] I mean Simon's peas are always a good palate cleanser. Right. Alice has got her eyes on Damon. She's like watching him like, Hmm, like what's, what kind of dream is he going through right now? Right, right. You think she's really there?

[01:12:31] Cause nobody else seems to pay any attention to her. I think Simon did kind of give her a weird look when he delivered the message later when Damon was chopping her up. Okay. But did you see that she disappeared behind Simon in the middle of the

[01:12:44] night later? Oh, I didn't put it in the show guide cause somebody pointed it out to me afterward. I saw it on the internet. She walks, she starts to walk away when Simon comes into the room to wake up.

[01:12:53] Uh, I think it's waking up Damon in the middle of the night. She starts to walk away. She goes behind Simon and you never see her walk out the door. She's just gone when Simon moves. Okay. Okay. Then she's like, she's gone when Simon moves.

[01:13:08] Okay. Okay. That's really interesting because no one, no one else talks to her. Right? We've never seen somebody have a conversation with her. So, and this is something I don't know because the books are a little bit vague on her. Mm-Hmm.

[01:13:22] My, my question is, is she actually at Heron hall? All right. Redditor or a lore hounds go to work. Like is this, start doing some scene analysis. Is this, is it, is she a ghost or not? I think it's the haunting of Heron hall. I love it.

[01:13:36] I think it's very cool. I would love it. It was such a cool effect. You should look, you should look this up. I'm going to try to get a gift of it later. Okay. That, yes, you could definitely do some gifts. Uh,

[01:13:44] that would be perfect for the show guide was some, some gifts. Yeah. She's just disappearing right behind her. Simon's strong. I love it. Awesome stuff. Awesome stuff. All right. So we turned to the family. Oh no,

[01:13:54] we're skipping a scene here. So we turn to the green council. Quick, quick, two quick things. Just, uh, okay. The backside of this is one, Damon really is believing his own bullshit. It's not like he's pulling a line on people, but he really believes this,

[01:14:09] you know what he's spewing here. And then the other thing was the, if you notice the, and you can see it in the show guide picture, the chair that Damon's in has like a, a design, like some sort of metal scroll work type stuff.

[01:14:26] If you notice it's broken and it's sort of like you would, you would have a halo, but he's got a broken halo in it. Okay. That's enough. I like it. I like it. All right. The green council talks next steps. Grand master Orwell says he's done all he

[01:14:42] can for aim at a gone Ironman. I can't get the name straight. It's been a long day for a gone, but cannot guarantee her survival. Allison puts forth herself as a potential region, but the council chooses a guns air.

[01:15:00] Amened Targaryen to avoid putting a woman at the helm. Even Lara strong and Kristen Cole turned their backs on Allison. Amen moves to the head of the table and immediately starts war plans in the Riverlands. Amen decides to seal the city and cut down the rat catchers.

[01:15:18] So there's the scene when he picks up the little ball and then puts it down in the thing, the way that the camera moves up his arm from the ball, up his arm, up to his sort of smirking face. It's so good. It's just punctuates the scene.

[01:15:35] And then the sound of that ball clicking into position. It was just a masterwork of, of camera and sound design. Just really, really punches the scene. Okay. But missed opportunity here. Yeah. Amen take out your eye and use it as your orb. Missed opportunity.

[01:15:57] That would have been amazing. That would have been crazy. I loved how Amen just sat there quietly through the whole meeting. Yep. I got this in the bag. I'm just gonna let, I just gotta let the situation play itself out. Right. The, uh, in a meeting like this,

[01:16:15] the hand of the King really should be taking the lead in steering the conversation and getting everybody's input and all of that and sort of balancing everything. Crispin Cole is dead silent. He can't even look anybody else in the eye.

[01:16:32] Oh yeah. I mean he has no integrity, right? Mm. Mm. Between that and the sort of PTSD that he's experienced, he's, you know, in his own sense of his own guilt and shame because he knows who Amen is. He knows what he's empowered.

[01:16:45] Right. And he's numb now too. I think he's just like, all right, I'm probably going to die in this war. Let's just, you know, be quiet. And then when Laris nails, uh, Alison to the floor, she's like, oh yeah.

[01:16:58] You know, he's like, I'm going to die in this war. I'm going to die in this war. And then he flicks it over to Cristin Cole. It's just, and he knows, he knows exactly what's up between those two.

[01:17:07] And when he shifts focus away from his quote unquote betrayal and pushes it over to Chris Cole, brilliant tactical, you know, sort of political move among the table. Yep. Yep. Good stuff. Um, so the decision to make the decision to make the decision to make the decision

[01:17:26] to make the decision to make the decision to make the decision to make the decision to make the decision to make the decision to make the decision to ен Why? Why are we stealing the city? Yeah. Fear spreads. So he is worried that the fear of and,

[01:17:42] and their weakness was that news was going to get out. But I think it's, it's the, the, the answer is it's, it's an obvious and simple answer. Auto wouldn't have done that. wouldn't have done that. I think Otto would have understood

[01:17:59] that information flows, that information spreads, and that if people are fleeing the city, that would be reflective of the fact that they no longer trust the king or the regent to keep them safe. Right. And so that's destabilizing.

[01:18:18] I see what you're saying. I think, I think the problem is Otto would have tried to catch it before they paraded the stupid dragon head through the city. 100%. Right? Like so 100%. So before the rat catchers, before the dragons being paraded around, for all these displays of violence,

[01:18:32] right? Before these displays of masculinity. Say more? Well, I just think that they're just glorifying violence all the time. They're like, look how much better at violence. Look how much better at war we are than the black. Right.

[01:18:46] You should love us. Yeah. And that's just not the way, that's just not the way to win the small folk. The, the, the small folk understand that no matter who is on the throne, if there is violence, they are in the crossfire.

[01:19:01] Exactly. It's a big problem. They would like to get out. Well, and especially since there's no food, right? There's and they showed us rotting food at the beginning, which was I think a really great scene to like, we really, ooh,

[01:19:13] rotting food. Ooh, like, oh God, it must suck to be in King's Landing right now. It's not, it's not the best vacation destination. Like you want a honeymoon there? Like, oh, let's go see the Capitol, darling. No, you're

[01:19:24] not doing that right now. Yeah. And then, and then I think Otto would have understand that understood that you can't seal off the city wholly and that word will always get out. Exactly. Exactly. People like what's her name? Melinda

[01:19:41] will always find a way in and out and then like word will spread. And then if you lock it, that's kind of like confirming the rumors, right? That's the whole point. It's the, it's the Barbra Streisand effect. If you acknowledge, sorry, if

[01:19:54] you deny the rumors, it draws more attention to it. And there's going to be some gold cloaks who are going to have some hefty purses after, you know, all during this, right? Because people are going to find their way out, right?

[01:20:05] People are going to take bribes. It's going to happen. Right? So you can't buy food with the gold. So may as well bribe the gold cloaks to get out. What did you think of Allison's response? Oh, the panic attack. I thought it was

[01:20:20] great. I mean, it was great storytelling, not great for her. But I really enjoyed seeing her sort of see everything crumble around her right and and I saw I actually saw a tick tock people. People are actually putting a lot of insight into

[01:20:32] their tick tocks talking about the show, which is nice to say. I want to record one too soon. But the the idea with Allison is that you know, we talk about this through the lens of patriarchy through the lens of you know, following

[01:20:46] the norms that a patriarchal society sets forth against you. Allison always was a good woman. She always behaved. She always followed the script of the men around her and she always made sure that they had everything they needed and everything they wanted and what did that get her?

[01:21:04] That she wasn't useful. She's tossed aside because patriarchy will try to teach those who it oppresses that they should go with the flow for their own protection. But in the end, they end up with nothing because they you know, they're they're treated as disposable. Allison was treated as

[01:21:25] disposable the minute she could be and she she could have made common cause with her sister friend right with Ranira, but she went and follow the patriarchy instead, right? She put a vile man on the throne. And now she has an even

[01:21:46] more vile brother and even more vile other son on the throne in the realization that she's you know, got to come to is that her children are weird and messed up and dabbed in one's have dead and because one of them tried to kill the

[01:22:05] other one like that's got to be a bad sort of feeling to have I'd say so I would not like to know that my children are trying to kill each other. No. Yeah. The system is rigged bro. It sure is broski. Am I part of

[01:22:20] the Rose Guard now? No, I was gonna I threw that line out there. I don't know if you've seen those guys. They're a bunch on in Instagram Instagram reels. There's a there's these guys they're very funny and they have this little

[01:22:33] thing. The system is rigged bro. It's very funny. Anyway, I believe you. Yes. Send it to me later. So the family Hugh we're here. Yeah, not great. Not great. Hugh's wife cat rallies the family to leave King's Landing after a gone fails to

[01:22:54] deliver the goods. So name drop for a town called Tumbleton. Mm-hmm. I googled that I shouldn't have I didn't read very far the moment. I saw a little bit too much. I was like, oh I clicked out of that but they she names that

[01:23:15] because that's where her brother is. Okay, so that's I to me. I think from what I saw it's you know, I don't know if they're going to do it in the show, but I think it's important. Well on the wiki of West Rose, which is yes,

[01:23:30] spoiler-free one. They do a good job just saying it's in the reach. Yeah, it's it's kind of by High Garden. Yep Northeast of High Garden and it's close to the headwaters of the Mander. So yeah, so close to the border with the

[01:23:45] Crowns land and not far to the south of King's Landing. So that's all you need to know if you look at the wiki of ice and fire. I think you'll see some other stuff there. So I'm sure I will. I'm sure I will. I just didn't want

[01:23:58] to spoil anyone here. No. Oh, yeah. What did you learn all this? No, no, no, no. No, I stopped like about this. I started I got into like the second paragraph and I was like, oh, stop stop. Yeah. Yeah. Don't don't don't look

[01:24:11] at this article. This has all the goodies all the goodies giant waffle giant waffle giant waffle stay away from Tumbleton. Yeah. No, I was just going to say she named dropped it and you know, and it was just a line in passing.

[01:24:26] Oh, we could just go to my brothers in Tumbleton and he's like, oh, whatever and then but turns out that that's a major clue. Yeah. And that kid's not looking too good. Is he? No, no, she or she is it a girl? I the mysterious

[01:24:41] child the mysterious the child they are not looking well at all. Yeah, not doing great when when they're trying to get out of the city. They're looking so pale. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like this child's going to die and this is

[01:24:56] not even something I remember from the book. Okay, so I just think based on what they're telling me in the show that this child is near death. All right, a new king in town. That's this next section. Kristen Cole supervises

[01:25:09] the rat catchers being cut down. Allison calls him out on his fleeting loyalty. He is traumatized by rooks rest and believes a dragon rider should lead them. Kristen insists he has spared Allison the duty to do terrible things. Hugh and his family try to leave the city but

[01:25:27] are stopped by the guards. Allison, I did not give you permission to say my take my name out your mouth. That was pretty good. That was really great. It was a really great line. Where is it here? I have it somewhere has

[01:25:46] your loyalty faded or does it flourish only at night and flee the sunrise like a moth. You should rehearse that one. I thought that that was very had a nice sexual innuendo to it as well. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You're only

[01:26:01] interested in me at night and then like you bail in the morning. Yep. You know, yeah. So he bails right after they finish, you know, he does not stick around. No, he can't sleep over. There's your there's a curb your

[01:26:13] enthusiasm bit in the last season where Larry says like oh, yeah, I don't have one night stands in beds. I have them on the floor so that I don't have to cuddle afterwards. I was like that's that's Kristen Cole right there.

[01:26:26] That's awesome. The dog we see the dog again. Yeah, just following his master. Yeah. I'm surprised that the ratcatchers lasted that long up there like I'm going to get too gross. But again, I don't think this is very

[01:26:39] long. I think we're talking a matter of like maybe they were looking pretty pretty mini way. Anyway, let's yeah, we don't have to get into the details of it. I did think it was interesting though. This thing of well,

[01:26:51] well, gee princess. I'm saving you from the horrors of war and she's like I didn't ask for you to be to save me. Right? Right. I've got a I've got to deal with this stuff. So right don't help me but I do like the kind

[01:27:04] of smug smirk on her face when she's like yelling at Kristen Cole. You can see that she's really gotten she's really taking the gloves off because she realizes that she's kind of desperately clinging power at this point, right? She has arranged the men around her to

[01:27:20] be in the perfect position to write her out of the story. Does she have any power left? I don't know. I mean, you know, a gone seems to like her. She's got a title. Mm-hmm. Me. Well, yeah, she has a title that

[01:27:35] is look her title was already not super meaningful right Queen Consort King Consort. They don't really have much to do. It's kind of like, you know, being the vice president right like the United States like you don't have real power except like in very special

[01:27:51] situations. Mm-hmm. You're mostly a figurehead. You're mostly there in case something goes wrong, but the Queen Consort could becomes the Queen Dowager and now there's a new king and queen. She has even less power than before essentially once she's the Queen

[01:28:05] Dowager. She's just waiting to die basically that that's her whole role now. Yeah. Yeah, there's nothing for her to do the only kind of power she can exercise Mentorship or Regency and she's being denied both of those things. Is she even going to be allowed at the

[01:28:22] council anymore? Would you even want to go? I mean it'd be kind of boring to sit there if you've got no ability to actually affect any of the situations. It's a good question. I I could see a man throwing her out. Mm-hmm very politely being like mother.

[01:28:36] Would you mind giving this moment giving the rest of the council a moment because what's her title? What is her title that entitles her to be on the council? I don't know. Nothing Dowager ever goes on the council by its own merit. Nope. The only reason

[01:28:49] she was let on the council was as she points out this episode. She basically ruled as Queen for you know alongside her father for like 10 years as or maybe not 10 years, but a few years at least. Well the Saris was very ill right and when he was still

[01:29:05] alive, so she was directly connected to the throne now. It's yeah, like you said it's further and further and further away from her. Yeah, but even that situation is really weird right like auto is technically hand. He should be the one making

[01:29:18] decision when the Queen's not when the King's not there, but then Allison's also making decisions which is not really how this whole monarchy thing works in this kingdom, but then power was what she made of it right and she was she asserted her will

[01:29:32] she used her position to the throne to leverage and she sort of muscled everyone into accepting that and now she doesn't have that leverage anymore right because hey if the Saris wakes up and you know, I tell him you've been naughty. You know,

[01:29:48] you're going to get it. You're going to be trouble. She can't do that anymore right? What's she going to do tell a gone a gone can't do anything. He was always feckless and now he's skinless right like a good chicken cutlet. Oh, come on. All right.

[01:30:05] All right by order of a mend. I thought that was an interesting thing at the when people are trying to get out the gates and they're like wait not a gone. It's a good question. What is what is the

[01:30:17] PR strategy here? I was I was not quite clear on that when we were leaving the Green Council. Yeah, and I think without autos PR firm here. They're really going to fumble the ball. They're really going to make a bad may have increasingly worse

[01:30:33] and worse decisions, right? One is going to compound the other as as they continue to go on and as the situation gets worse. Definitely aren't any other thoughts before we move on. Nope. Let's take a quick break before we head to the twins.

[01:30:50] We'll be right back with more House of the Dragon and we're back with more House of the Dragon. The next scene is our boy Jace everyone's do you see these thirst traps of Jace? No, you are loving him. Really? The ladies are going crazy for this

[01:31:14] guy. I don't know what it is. All right, he's you know, he's I think I think what's sexy about him. Is that he he has a surety of who he is. He kind of know he's still trying to find his way in the

[01:31:29] world, but he knows from the center from which he's starting from and I think that kind of confidence is very sexy. You're trying to become the next King consort over there. I am I'm I was trying to make some Royal joke about where I am

[01:31:47] in the pecking order of my house. I've got a cat and a daughter. I'm already way down below. So there's other people who make the rules in my house. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. So Jace visits the phrase of the twins and offers his

[01:32:02] protection and that of Damon for their support against the Lannisters. They ask for Harrenhal and Jace says for that there will need to be bent knees. Good scene, very interesting the phrase as practical as ever. They are very very straightforward people. I think if we can remember

[01:32:26] from Game of Thrones, it's like okay, what are you gonna do for me? You know now I don't I don't recall how detailed this Pauline was in the book if at all, but I do know that in Game of Thrones they are decidedly not at Harrenhal. Something's

[01:32:41] going to happen right? I just don't know what and everybody wants Harrenhal, right? So it's an interesting that's also an interesting conundrum and I like how did we get the names of these Frey lords? No, we did not. I double-checked and

[01:33:00] we just did not. Okay, so she says you know does your does your uncle consent to this? Yeah, exactly. Jace is like well, he's gonna do what the Queen says. He's like yeah, Damon always does what the Queen says. The door that they're meeting

[01:33:19] around I thought was very interesting like you said there was an overhead shot of it at the end. That was very beautiful and ornate medieval door and I wonder if they bring it's half of a big door and I don't wonder if they bring it out for

[01:33:33] these kinds of you know meetings and sort of things or like right what the signify this is one I'd like the showrunners to tell me. They can somebody on the official pod or something like that can explain this that would be great. Get

[01:33:47] the nice door we're having company. That's exact. I think that's exactly what it is. Boy, it's like it's like how you know, I don't know about your grandmother but my grandmother used to always keep all her couches plastic in

[01:33:59] case the Pope came over. That was always a thing. Yep, and he's a tall sweaty. Yeah. Yep. All right Damon spots Alice. He meets his favorite spooky lady Alice Rivers. She says she hears cries of anguish in the wind as she meant his wound. She

[01:34:18] scolds him for committing crimes against the innocent Damon makes clear. He thinks no one will be ruled by Raniera and he is staking his own claim Simon arrives to report that the Brackens have pledged loyalty. He's really treating her like a confidant which is interesting. He's

[01:34:40] taken her into his trust. He's giving her a lot of the his thoughts and schemes. We really see where his thinking is going. Like I'm going to take the red keep and then if Allison wants to join me, that's fine. Like I said before he's

[01:34:54] really believing is a Raniera shit here. Sorry. Sorry. Thank you. Let's not let's not bring Allison into sorry my I just had Allison and so I think it's just really interesting that he's it makes me I'm like I'm doing them. Hmm emoji

[01:35:10] thing where I'm holding my chin and looking up, you know squintingly is she really there or not? I'm like now to go back and rewatch the whole season to see what the hell is going on because he's really like if this was just some sort of

[01:35:25] person around the castle. Hey, here's my strategy. Here's all my inner workings, right? You know, yeah, it is very odd and it only adds to my suspicion that she's not actually there. Hmm. I love it. I love it disappearing on us great

[01:35:43] conversation here about sort of Authority and where Authority derives from and we've been kicking around the whole Monty Python thing on the discord and talking about the films and the Holy Grail and I went and I dug up the actual

[01:36:00] text from the you know, the transcript from the Holy Grail where King Arthur rolls up on some peasants and he's like, I am your king and then a peasant woman says well, I didn't vote for you and King Arthur says you don't vote for kings

[01:36:14] and the woman says how'd you become king then? And then he starts his regale. The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering Semite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur,

[01:36:28] was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king. And then another peasant says listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

[01:36:46] And Arthur yells at him to be quiet and then he says you can't expect to wield supreme power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you. I mean if I went around saying I was emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed

[01:36:56] a scimitar at me, they'd put me away. And then Arthur starts to rouse him and then he, then the peasant starts to say oh come see the violence inherent in the system. Help help, I'm being repressed. Anyway, I love that. That's a great

[01:37:09] scene from Holy Grail, but it really makes me think about like where is Damon, and we talk about it with that with Allison as well. Where do you derive power from? And he's saying well I've got a dragon and I'm sitting on Harrenhal

[01:37:21] and I promised some people some coin and I'm going to take the king, you know, I'm going to be the king because I have a dragon, right? Right. That's his only claim. Oh well. So we're going to cover that movie, right? Can we just

[01:37:34] be clear on that? We have to. You just recited that entire scene. It was beautiful. We have to because I could not do it justice, right? For how it's actually how all of that is delivered. I think the three of us should just

[01:37:47] play it out. We should. Maybe we should make a video. Maybe that could be our like Christmas gift to everybody. We'll record our scenes from like the other sides of the world. There's no way that we're doing Monty Python without Marilyn though. Oh that's true. That's true.

[01:38:03] Yeah. What role would she be though? Now I want to cast this. Oh, I don't know about, I wasn't thinking about casting. I was just thinking at least about talking about that. Okay. Okay. Yeah. All right. Fair enough. But this is interesting too though what she is

[01:38:21] saying about like, okay, well what I hear is I hear on the wind and then there's like low key audio of screaming which I thought was really interesting. If you turn on the closed captioning, you can, you know, it says screaming

[01:38:34] in the background or whatever. And then I was just thinking, you know, this isn't what, you know, Damon's like, oh well it's just war. It's like no dude, this is actually terrorism. You're actually terrorizing the people, right? You know, you're terrorizing the masses. And so later, and

[01:38:48] I think that's where this whole Holy Grail thing comes around which is you're terrorizing us. F you, we're never going to bend the knee, kill us, burn us, whatever. But we're not going to follow a tyrant who is clearly, you know, on his own

[01:39:04] agenda and not that of the queen. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. It's true, right? Like you just need you need to follow some kind of conventions of war if you want to have any legitimacy. And I think Damon finally realized he can't just be a

[01:39:23] wild card this entire time. He's finally seeing consequences for being a wild card. Yeah. Someone did point out, look at the difference between how Damon treated his brother and how Amon treated treats his brother because they are similar characters. But I think that they what

[01:39:47] separates them is how they treat some certain people around them, right? Because Damon, when his brother is falling apart, lifts up his crown puts it on him. Whereas Amon literally destroys his brother's health and almost kills him. So I just think that it's a really interesting

[01:40:10] thing to contrast them together. And Damon has done an interesting thing. And I think part of it is Matt Smith. I think Matt Damon has had to be someone who you could root for at some points and Matt Smith plays that brilliantly, you know,

[01:40:25] he's just done certain things that are charming whereas I don't think Amon has ever been charming. He's just spooky. He's just spooky. Yeah, he's not been charming, especially with his blue eye. That's super spooky. I was just gonna say that's a really interesting comparing contrast. I really

[01:40:40] like that analysis of putting the two brothers on both sides in comparison to each other. And then that makes us think about well, what was what was going on with Alicent and Viserys? Viserys like, oh, hey, look at this cute little

[01:40:52] baby here. Now take it back. And you know, I'm gonna go off and you know, go do something else. What kind of dad was he? Where we saw at least with who was Jason Luke's biological father. Harwin Strong. Harwin Strong. He was around,

[01:41:07] he was teaching him stuff, he was engaged, you know, Damon at least was around as well to some degree and it just seems like there wasn't a lot of whatever your family configuration, right? Everybody's got like slightly different configurations. But you know, your parents got to pay attention

[01:41:24] It's really important as kids to have like engagement with your parents. Right? Definitely. And you know what I keep thinking of this whole episode with Damon is Tywin Lannister saying The man who must say I am the king is no true king.

[01:41:40] Ooh, good pull. Good pull. I think Tywin would have just roasted Damon. I think you're absolutely right. I think he would have roasted most of the people in this royal family though. I think so. Could you imagine Otto and him having dinner

[01:41:56] together? That would be an interesting sight. I just think that Tywin was a little smarter than Otto. Otto overplays his hand more often than Tywin ever did. The only time Tywin ever overplayed his hand was with his own son and you can see

[01:42:12] where he would make a mistake with that. Right, right, right, right. That's interesting. Every other time he was on top of it and he was always one step ahead of people. Right? Like he... One step. True. He was several steps ahead. Right? I mean,

[01:42:26] he's the one who when his brother murders his king as a Kingsguard is like this was part of the plan where we won. We all won. We were actually on this army the whole time. That's yeah, that would be a really that's a really interesting dinner conversation between

[01:42:45] Otto and Tywin. Let's make it happen. Reesey Fonz. Yep, you booking? Charles Dance? Come on. Do it. We'll host it. We'll host it. We'll record it and edit it for you if you want. Oh, that would be amazing. I know they're faithful listeners. All right, Bela visits Grandpa

[01:43:05] Corliss with an offer from Rhaenyra to name him Hand of the Queen. When Corliss scoffs, Bela dares him to pledge to the Greens but defends Rhaenys his actions and emphasizes the importance of standing with Rhaenyra. Corliss offers to make her his heir, but she declares herself

[01:43:24] blood and fire while Driftmark belongs to Salt and Sea. She really gives her grandpa the what for hair. Oh, yeah. He was not prepared for this conversation. No, no, and she's like fine. You're grieving. We're all grieving. She belonged

[01:43:41] to all of us. Smack smack and get it together, man. You know, one of my favorite things about one of my favorite authors Kurt Vonnegut is his ability to just kind of summarize an entire person's demeanor in one sentence. I feel like

[01:43:56] he would have written about Corliss here. His jaw moved up and down. That would have been the line here. That would have been the line. Get it together. So we see the box, right? Oh, we do. Do we see? Does he open the box here or

[01:44:15] he opens the box later? He does later. Yeah, we just get a quick shot of him. I did put it in the show guy, but it's just a very quick shot of him with the hand of the king pen. That's right. Hand of the queen rather.

[01:44:24] I'm sorry. Now, can I ask you who's smelting these things because this is clearly a second copy, right? Like what do we just have like an on-call like Etsy shop? I don't understand what's going on. Basically, I think so. You

[01:44:35] head down to the forges, right? You know, and you say, hey, I need one of these things, you know, yeah, we have spares on Dragonstone like what maybe Otto visited one time. He left his pin at home and so they made him a

[01:44:46] second one and I don't know. Right? Yeah, you keep a whole second wardrobe. So when you show up there and you're good to go. Which fucking drawer did I leave this in last time? That's funny. I like that they mentioned ET and

[01:44:58] Ashi. Yes. And I can always hear what's his name? Oh, who is Daenerys' sword? Who is she? Jorah Mormont? Yeah, I can always hear the actor who played Mormont saying Ashi. Great actor. He was in Silo too. Yes, that's right. He was. He's around. He's around. When

[01:45:18] is that coming back? I hope that's going to come back soon. I think next year. Okay, it's gonna be busy next year. All right. All right. Anything else on this scene? Nope. Sir Alfred goes on a field trip. Rhaenyra orders Alfred

[01:45:31] Vroom to go to Harrenhal and insist Daemon Targaryen to listen to reason. She asks Ser Broom to determine whether Daemon is raising a host for her or himself. Her instincts are right on Daemon's point. I think she is fatally misstepped her relationship with Ser Broom

[01:45:54] here. I mean, look at the shot I got of him. To me, that looks like, oh, how fucking dare you? Like, I do not buy this. That's interesting. I have a completely opposite take. I think this is where she finally gets smart with Broom

[01:46:10] and she admits fault and she says, I'm really sorry about that and I need you to do something for me. And I think she gets him, even though he's still a little sore, but I think she finally does the thing where she sort of

[01:46:27] bats her eyes. Oh, I'm just a, you know, I don't want to go too far down this, but she was like, oh, well, you know, silly me. I made a mistake and, you know, wouldn't you mind, please? Could you help me out? And, you know,

[01:46:39] he may be a little begrudging of it, but I think she's finally figuring out how to utilize her counsel and her people on it. So not only it's a pretty important mission, right? She's totally right, right? He could just ignore a

[01:46:54] raven, so he can't ignore Broom. Broom's got a, you know, logic this guy through. Why can't he ignore Broom? No, no, I'm saying she could ignore, oh, why can't he ignore Broom? Yeah, why can't he ignore Broom? What's going to stop

[01:47:07] him from being like, nothing, but Broom's not going to give up. Broom's going to be there and he's got the, he's there on the authority of her. And yeah, David could cut his head off, but he can't otherwise, you know, kick her out

[01:47:21] without actually declaring for himself, right? He's got a... Are you saying that she's sending Broom to clean up? I totally missed that. That was right there the whole time, wasn't it? Sure it was. Oh boy, it's getting late. Yep. But yeah,

[01:47:42] I'm down for this. I'm down for Broom being rehabilitated here, their relationship being rehabilitated. We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I think he was mighty offended that he's being sent away. He calls it right away. This is my thing. He calls it

[01:47:56] right away. He's like, you're sending me away? Okay, you're sending me away. Are you taking me off your counsel? And what I heard from her is, yeah, I fucking hate you. Like she basically comes right out and says that, like, yeah, I

[01:48:08] do hate you. I'm not going to remove you from my counsel. I would be honored. You know, she does, she does lay on the sweet talk, but she's like, oh, I would be honored if you took on this

[01:48:16] task for me. But he sees it for what it really is, which is we disagree too often. I'm tired of the dissent. I'm tired of arguing with you. Get away from me for a little bit. Which is fair

[01:48:26] that that could also be it, but she also is like who else is going to be able to argue with Damon? This guy is a bulldog. When he's got a bone in his mouth, he's not going to let it go. Well,

[01:48:37] when he's arguing against someone he sees as inferior. And in this episode, he says, you know, that I would never doubt your quickness of mind and you would never doubt my family's loyalty to you. So I'm pretty, I'm not worried about his loyalty. I can't say anything else.

[01:48:56] Okay. I just can't. Yes. Are you arguing from a position of superior information? No. Well, it here's the thing. I could see them going very doing very interesting things with his plotline from the book. And I don't think that necessarily

[01:49:12] if you have read the book, you know exactly what's going to happen in the show. Okay. Yeah, that's true. And that's true with most of this. Yeah. But I think it's especially true with this one. I think there's a lot of jazz that can be

[01:49:22] played with this plotline. Okay, cool. So we are I'm curious to to what other people took away from this scene is broom rehabilitated. Are they get getting on the relationship or is or is this a little bit more of a fracture in the in the

[01:49:35] black cat council? It's a good question. It's a good question. All right, shall we move on? We shall Damon is awoken. The River Lords arrive at the hour of the wolf and demand to speak presently. The River Lords demand justice for the

[01:49:51] horrors brought upon the brackens. Damon hallucinates Lena again and receives a rebuke from the River Lords who refused to bow down to a tyrant. So I want to hear from some maesters on the hour of the wolf. Like what's the significance there? I

[01:50:08] know I could Google for it, but I'd be curious if anybody's got a take on that. They're all just I don't know if we know why their name the different ones. Maybe there is. I think there's a I think there's a reason for it. Okay. Yeah.

[01:50:17] Okay, because there it is just a thing that they all have like some weird name because George Gantz is fucking right at 12. Exactly. Now I'm getting cranky. This is late night lore hounds. I did love the fact that we did, you know, that

[01:50:31] they were setting this up as a dream. Oh, here comes another spooky ghost to haunt Damon, but nope, this time it was real. It was actually Simon knocking on the door. Gather round ye who write fantasy novels. Tolkien literally had the

[01:50:47] months of the real calendar and the dates of the real calendar in the Lord of the Rings and it's regarded widely as the greatest fantasy work of all time. You don't have to make a new thing for everything. Sure, make your stupid names that

[01:50:59] nobody can pronounce, but you can keep some things the same. So it's a little easier to track. It's all right. That's true. That's true. Oh, you mean like, oh, what was it? What was it a foundation where they were using some real

[01:51:12] names or was it their swear words or something like that? Anyway, hearkening back to oh, yeah. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I know we're talking about it. I remember everybody got mad because we didn't like the swear words of foundation. That's right. But look, we like

[01:51:24] him in House of the Dragon or you have the Kwisatz Haderach named Paul. Yeah. Anyway, and the hobbits, you know, with where Aluren also known as Gandalf the Gray or Mithrandir visits Michael Delving. All right. Anyway, so the sacred steps have been looted and children have

[01:51:52] been put to the sword and unspeakable acts done in the name of the Red Dragon on a black banner. Yeah. Yeah. So how screwed is Damon here? Like he has no army at this point, right? Mm-hmm. He has the Blackwoods. That seems to be it. Maybe

[01:52:14] the Brackens, but probably not because I think the Brackens are now going to have backup from the other Riverlords. Mm-hmm. What's his next move? He doesn't have a lot of good moves to make. He thinks he's got a dragon and so that's a

[01:52:31] system of governance, but he doesn't have a mandate of the masses, right? Right. He doesn't. So these Riverlords and these are various what minor nobles, I guess that would all. I believe so, but we did see young Oscar Tully come in the

[01:52:48] room with them. Okay, right? He's just hiding under the coats of all of the other of the older Riverlords. He's also not a Riverlord yet, right? They're waiting for his grandpa to die. Right, right, right. They're liege lord. So yeah, that's

[01:53:06] and then he's got another part of his psyche talking to him with Lena saying like, are you looking after our kids? Like this is some bad news. What are you up to? So yeah, with quote unquote Lena. And this area is watched closely

[01:53:22] by the gods. I like that too. Like there's just a lot of weird ley line action going on in the Riverlands here. Yeah, the Weirwoods are involved here, which is interesting because Riverrun, you know, the seat of power in the Riverlands is very

[01:53:35] much a light of the seven. Not light of the seven. I'm wow. We're really mixing it up. What is that from? I can't even think of it right now. The that's from the isn't that from the boys? No, light of the seven is actually a house of the

[01:53:51] dragon. Thank guys. This is late. This is late. We got to wrap this one up. Yeah, let's go. We gotta wrap this one. Let's keep moving. Keep moving the light of the seven. They're very much part of the new gods religion, right? Right.

[01:54:05] Whereas you know, they're apparently Harrenhal was built atop a Weirwood and with the supplies of a Weirwood right spooky spooky. All right. So let's move on to the cloaked servant Linda Massey a servant sent by Miss Aria talking her

[01:54:22] way into the city to see an old friend who turns up be Diana. Similarly Corliss considers his next Turning that hand of the Queen pin in his hand. Oh, that's who that was Diana. That is Diana. That is a gone rape victim. I was wondering who

[01:54:41] that was. Okay, cool. That's awesome. I like that. Yeah. So we have someone who definitely has a bone to pick with a gone right and who is maybe in touch with the Queen's people. That's true. That's true is is Allison keeping tabs on her

[01:54:57] right? It's a good question. Do you think Corliss is going to accept? Is he going to be hand of the Queen? I think so. I would hope so. Okay, I think so. I think he would be a good hand and the heat she needs one. She really

[01:55:12] needs somebody to handle a lot of details. And I think Corliss has the skill and the experience to do that. He's just got to get over his grief or you know, sometimes things like that. You can't you know that kind of grief you can't put

[01:55:26] down but you don't have to let it get in the way, right? You just gotta yeah, you got to carry it but don't let it get in the way of you doing the other things that you need to do. Right?

[01:55:37] All right, Helena joins a man while he admires the Iron Throne and he's like, why is it worth the price? Like she just comes in real spooky. She and Alice would be best friends. It was great. Beautiful scene beautiful visually with

[01:55:52] with a man there and sort of half light and the throne up there perfect for perfect time for Helena to show up and say something creepy. She's like, oh, it's my do you think she was like waiting in the hallway? He shows up and she's

[01:56:04] like, oh now it's my cue. You know, she probably no, I think she she I don't know. She moves in a whole different time stream than the rest of us. So yeah, that's true. Yeah, she could just walk from one time to another exactly.

[01:56:18] There's no she's an enduring mystery. All right, Allison touches a gone. She makes her first nonviolent contact with a gone since he was a baby and then she leaves while a gone asks for his mummy. Mummy. Yeah. So this is where I saw

[01:56:34] that. Yeah, the deathbed, you know, yeah, Sarah says deathbed. That's it was just really strong and it's just such a damn it like really do you have to do that? You know kind of thing mummy like you have to give us that. I mean

[01:56:47] I'm saying it in a good way, but it's just like geez man. It's pretty dark. I mean, she's just never been there for her kids and I'm not really blaming her here, right? She doesn't know he's conscious. Yeah, but it's really sad to see

[01:56:59] that like what he wants is just the love of a mother and he'll never get it. Yeah, I'll never get it. She's never been there for him and she doesn't have that capacity. So Jace has a new plan. This is the end of the episode. Raniere

[01:57:13] appraises Jace but also is kind of angry that he took action without her leave. She tries to instill caution in him by the way instilling praise in her son at the same time, right? Like it's like okay praising you for the good cautioning

[01:57:29] you against the bad. I think this is a much different depiction of motherhood here. Isn't it a great mirroring between the Allison walking out on her scarred and battered body of her child who calls out to her afterwards. Meanwhile, Raniere is here like being a real human being

[01:57:46] and being a real involved engaged parent, right? She challenges her son in a healthy way. So then Jace comes back. He mentions Vermithor and Silverwing but Raniere says they lack riders. Jace offers Raina but Raniere denies it. Jace suggests they find other branches of Targaryen

[01:58:05] heritage and Raniere begins her search on ancestry DNA. So Lusenia who rode Vhagar and was the first person to wield Dark Sister. That's this. Visenya? Visenya. Lusenya? Lusenya? Visenya. Visenya. Okay, so I wrote it down on my, I misheard it in my when I was writing up my

[01:58:28] notes. So she was the elder sister and elder wife and then Aegon was also married to Rhaenys his younger sister. So this is something to do with what how Raniere is thinking of constructing some sort of identity or finding some sort of legitimacy, you know, historical legitimacy to

[01:58:52] to stake her identity on. I don't know like what's going on here but I thought it was interesting because she's been looking in the books and then finally we see a bit more and she actually says something to Jace. Well, you'll recall that in season one, I don't

[01:59:07] remember the context but Viserys says this realm already has its Visenya and he's referring to Raniere. Okay. Visenya was known to be very cruel and she much like Alicent placed her son Maegor who becomes Maegor the cruel on the throne against the laws of succession, right?

[01:59:26] She skips an heir and forces, you know, forces Maegor into being king. Okay. And that's it. That's a whole thing. She starts like another sort of Targaryen civil war and she causes so many problems before her death that it's only

[01:59:45] when a good King Jaehaerys, when the old king takes power that he's able to restore it to some level of peace. Okay. Gosh, if only there was a book that explained all of this stuff. It's tough. It's well, you see that George like

[02:00:05] many other writers like cyclical stories, right? You have the Targaryens. Oh, let's have them. Let's have them be all worry and then they're in peace and then they're at war again and now they're at peace and then everybody's happy. Right. I like this line that Jace throws out

[02:00:23] Valerian history is written to gild us into history or it was something to like to that effect which is basically the you know, the history belongs to the victor at the same time. Not only is it promoting, you know, the victor here

[02:00:36] but it's also binding the descendants of that history into and it locks them into this mythology. Right. And sort of puts them in a track that that's sort of our, you know, it's history. It's recounting the past but it's also shaping

[02:00:53] the future at the same time. Right. Well, something that we see in Fire and Blood is that it's supposed to be based on these writings of the maesters at the time. And I gotta say the show has been a lot more brutal to the greens and

[02:01:08] kinder to the blacks than it is. Like overall, they the show has shifted the culpability of this war mostly to the greens. Interesting. And I think that's interesting when we consider what might come next. Okay. Well, maybe that's a good

[02:01:27] place to end it for tonight. I think so. Okay. I think so. Podcast schedule quick. Yes. Oh, actually let's do feedback here. Let's just talk about it. We are going to do another feedback episode as we said at the top of the show. Hot tea at

[02:01:43] the lorehounds.com or head to the lorehounds.com and leave us a voicemail or contact form entry. You can also tag Nancy M in the discord. She's two kids, two dogs. You'll see her hand of the pod pin on her icon and she will include your

[02:01:58] feedback in the feedback document. Anyway, you want to talk about what's coming David? We have no idea what's okay, then I'll tell you. You're the one that's been coordinating that schedule. I know the acolyte is wrapping up. It is wrapping

[02:02:14] up. Well, it's kind of wrapping up this week. It's more wrapping up next week because we are doing the season one episode eight finale coverage you know, full recap like we do here. The acolyte has also blown up much like house of the dragon.

[02:02:27] So we are doing a separate feedback episode that I have to wake up at 3 a.m. To record because you know what Alicia's woken up at that time long right? I think do her a favor back a little bit. Yeah, you just did a one shot with the

[02:02:42] completely made up adventures of dick turpin with Marilyn. Well, when I say just you recorded it a while ago, but it's coming out now. Yep. Very cool. I'm looking forward to that one. I want to watch that show still. It's very funny.

[02:02:54] It's a very Monty Python. It's a very modern Monty Python. I would like it that I think and we're doing second breakfast this week to yes for an international breakfast. Mm-Hmm. Yep. And don't forget you can get our bonus hot

[02:03:10] takes on Sunday nights for house of the dragon as a subscriber as well as the show guide and other benefits like early access and ad free podcasts. Rings and rituals will be back next week doing a feedback episode for rings of power

[02:03:25] season one and that will be a lot of fun. Then we're going to start a rerun. So if you haven't listened to rings and rituals yet, we're going to start a rerun soon leading up to rings of power. And I think people will really like it

[02:03:35] as we go into rings of power. I hope people more people will check it out as we go and get closer to the season. That's usually how it goes. People get excited about the show now they want coverage about it. The Star Wars canon timeline podcast

[02:03:47] is similarly doing the acolyte but also doing an episode on Sith in the old Republic which is based on visions episode season two episode five one and two. So Alicia is picking out some visions episodes to talk about the set of the old Republic

[02:04:04] pretty cool. Radioactive ramblings will be back soon with a season wrap up of the boys. I think that's all they're going to do for the rest of the season. Okay, properly Howard is starting to cook on their new season, but I won't say anything

[02:04:15] yet till they have some details and we'll shift dust will also be back soon. So that's that's about it for the week, but we got plenty plenty coming. I mean when I say that's about it for the week, that's seven podcasts on the main feed

[02:04:28] and more rather five on the main feed plus two on the on the premium feed and then a bunch more podcast on other feeds. So yeah pretty crazy time hot Lord summer that it is hot indeed. Yep. All right. Shall we do shout outs? We shall hold on.

[02:04:47] I don't have music. All right, you're getting a random one that I have not actually checked out before. So let's see how this goes. I'm reading these right? You're reading them as soon as this is done uploading. We're there. We're there ready.

[02:05:03] Yep. Hmm to our discord server boosters, gnarls Aaron K. Tiller the thriller, Darker than Ninjas do 71, Captain Ginsy 56 and Athena Agilea. Thank you all so very much for making our discord a better place for our community to our lore master subscribers. Our top tier subscribers either on

[02:05:28] supercast or patreon. Samartian, Michael G. Michelle E. David W. Brian P. S C. Peter O H. Bettina W. Adam S. Nancy M. Dove 71. Brian 8063. Frederick H. Sarah L. Garrett C. Eric F. Matthew M. Sarah M. DJ Miwa. Andra B. Kwong U. Dead Eye

[02:05:54] Jedi Bob. Nathan T. Alex V. Aaron T. Sub Zero. Aaron K. Dally V. Mothership. Gnarls? Kathy W. Stuart B. Jeffrey B. And Fur Elisa a long time an OG subscriber just converted herself to an annual lore master subscription. Thank you so much and

[02:06:18] always last but never least. Adrienne. Thank you all so very much for your subscriptions. You guys make our world go round and we couldn't do it without you. Thank you to all of our subscribers. Thank you to all of our listeners. We have a lot

[02:06:31] of fun doing what we're doing. We're crazy people on the microphones over here and John, I think you have been on a tear recently and it has been amazing to see you're a meteor in the sky. So thank you for everything that you do. Thank you

[02:06:46] to Alicia for everything and we'll see everyone on the next pod. And thank you to you David, you know, you made that lovely video today and you're such a delight to podcast with. Let's all say nice things about each other now. Exactly.

[02:06:59] All right, everyone. See you next week. The Lore Hounds podcast is produced and published by the Lore Hounds. You can send questions and feedback and voicemails at the Lorehounds.com slash contact get early and add free access to all Lorehounds podcast at patreon.com slash the

[02:07:15] Lorehounds any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities. Thanks for listening. Okay, David. This is where we're supposed to choose a side green or black John.

[02:07:35] My soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life. So we're not fighting. I thought this is where HBO wanted us to like pick sides and fight and stuff. Don't worry. I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod, but we

[02:07:53] seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show the politics the drama the lore it was made for the Lorehounds and since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black Queen in the Dance of the

[02:08:06] Dragons and with the season pass option in Supercast listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene by scene deep dive plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our dragon fire hot, but probably

[02:08:23] positive takes the Lorehounds house of the dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption side effects may include a deeper understanding of Dragon Lore a heart and conflict with itself and an inescapable urge to read the book fire and

[02:08:33] blood by George RR Martin dragon seeds may experience burning.