We’ve got a coup. We’ve got an impending civil war. We’ve got dragons!
SPOILERS ABOUND!
GRRM and the show writers a) have a way of making things happen but not in the way you’d expect and b) good become bad and bad become good.
The king has died. Alicent shares her mistaken belief that on his deathbed, Viserys wished for Aegon to be named heir. Turns out, this never mattered, because Otto and his flunkies had long planned in secret to install Aegon as king anyway, so this news just strengthens what they were going to do no matter what. Perhaps though if Alicent had not misunderstood Viserys’ last words, she might not have gone through with the coup.
We see a mini civil war between Alicent and Otto and their respective flunkies in a race to find an undercover Aegon in King’s Landing and bring him back from a night of debauchery. Both hope to find him first and be the first one to talk him into agreeing or not agreeing to have Rhae killed. Unfortunately, Alicent doesn’t quite understand the depths of what she’s getting herself into. Otto might be wrong morally but correct in plan execution, in that if you’re going to pull a coup, you can’t try to warn Rhae or negotiate for peace or just put her in jail. You have to, sad as it is, kill her and all challengers before they and their supporters even have a chance to fight back, before they even know there is a reason to.
Aegon is an unscrupulous pervert who even admits himself is unfit for the crown, though once he gets a taste of a cheering crowd, it’s clear he wants it. Aemond is jealous for he has trained to rule his entire life but will not get to do so.
Cole goes to the darkest of dark sides when he kills Lord Beesbury, the elderly coin master and only member of the small council to stand up for Rhae and declare and his colleagues traitors.
The White Worm uses her power to stand up for the poor, abused and exploited children of Flea Bottom.
Oh, and we learn Larys and Alicent have a deal where she lets him spank the monkey while staring at her naked feet in exchange for him giving her information about her enemies…which frankly, tons of internet memes about the creepy relationship between this duo already called that Larys was a degenerate foot sniffer.
The coup de grace final scene is when Rhaenys crashes through the coronation on dragon back, having just broken her pet and bff dragon Melys out of dragon jail. She could have stopped a civil war before it started by burning up the entire Hightower side of the royal family, but declines to do so, the theories being that a) she had a heart b) didn’t think it was her place to do so and wasn’t going to fight Rhae’s for her and frankly neither side of the fam has done her right so she’s best not taking either side c) has a soft spot for mothers and women in power and Alicent standing in front of Aegon moved her but any rate she sends them the message that she could have cooked those fools if she wanted to. Alas, all the peasants crumpled under her dragon’s feet were not so lucky. Neither side really gives a crap about the peasants.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Another episode that got me to watch it at the moment it aired.
Let’s admit it, GOT fans. We all thought House of the Dragon was going to be a stinkburger.
So many of these sequels and prequels are absurd fan fiction. The Many Saints of Newark gave us the life story of Tony’s uncle, as if we were clamoring for it. Disney is going all out, telling us the tale of an obscure Rebel spy in Andor, a character in a prequel that itself was based entirely off a brief line in the first Star Wars film about a bunch of rebels who stole the Death Star plans. In short, Hollywood couldn’t finish these series properly so they hire new writers to take little details and spin them into, well, something.
But this House of the Dragon has been great thus far. I believe this is largely due to it being based on just one book by George RR Martin. Unfortunately, the original GOT started to suffer when the plot expanded past the last book in GRRM’s unfinished book series.
The time jumps are difficult and often leave plot holes. However, HBO is learning from past mistakes. They don’t have the time, money or patience to tell the story forever, so they need to make time leaps and at least give us some semblance of a complete story from beginning to end rather than focus on the beginning in great detail and then shrug off the end in true, “Meh, I guess Bran can be king” style.
HotD takes us 172 years before GOT, in super woke times for a medieval age. Irony is where the wokeness is often heavy handed in most shows, this one works it into the plot well. King Viserys (Paddy Constantine) lacks a male heir, so to quell bickering amongst the various scheming lords, names his daughter, Rhaenyra, his heir. Alas, things get complicated when he marries Rhae’s BFF, Alicent and has a son, Aegon. Double alas, the show is set in a time when men would rather burn the country down then bend the knee to a queen.
Civil war looms when, after a long time jump, we see that Rhae is popping out kids a plenty, none of which look like her half-black husband (I’d say half African American but Africa and America don’t exist in this fictional world). BTW, while this world is unwoke when it comes to women being in charge, it is hella woke when it comes to interracial marriage and people of color being in charge. It’s nice to think that maybe, when you look up at the sky and see the perhaps infinite number of other worlds that could exist, maybe one of them had people who, at the beginning of their world, shrugged and said, “Eh, what does color matter? Let’s all just be friends.”
Ultimately, former friends Alicent and Rhae become bitter enemies. While Rhae is boldly indiscrete about her out of marriage dalliances (a move that can cause civil war in a country where the monarchy’s secession depends on parentage), one wonders if Alicent’s challenge is motivated by her simply trying to protect her children or if she sees her former friend defying convention and rules and is angry she didn’t. (She was pretty much forced to become the king’s second wife and what young girl wants to be married off to an old geezer?)
Disgust abounds on this show. Lords and ladies openly talk of betrothing (making a marriage engagement) between adults and children, cousins with cousins, uncles with nieces, brothers with sisters and so on. Perhaps the most fictional part of a show (where people ride dragons) is that the children that are the product of these incestuous and gross relationships end up beautiful and healthy. See the paintings of outlandishly deformed European royals who were the products of inbreeding for the non fictional version.
Anyway, never has there been a fictional drawing of battle lines like this since the 2000s Team Jacob vs. Team Edward. Which side are you on, 3.5 readers?
I have noticed the internet seems largely pro-Rhae. I have been Team Alicent because I felt Rhae was very indiscrete, practically begging the world to challenge the legitimacy of her kids, but then again it seems as of late that Alicent is the only one making that challenge publicly. Everyone else seems to be going along with it, at least for now.
Ah, Game of Thrones. What a wonderful show it was, full of Tolkien-esque fantasy, as well as murder, betrayal, deception and titties. So many titties. Honestly, 90 percent of the reason I watched was the titties.
When GOT came on the scene in 2011, it was like nothing we viewers had seen before and we were instantly hooked. For most of the past decade, I know every spring Sunday night I’d be glued to my TV at 9:00 PM sharp, woe unto whoever disturbed me and those who did really needed a good excuse, like a fully severed limb. If it was hanging by a thread, then they’d have to wait till after the show for me to drive them to the hospital. I kid, I kid. Or do I? All I know is this was the nerd superbowl.
HBO pulled off this trick in the 2000s with The Sopranos, launching what TV aficionados might call a golden age of TV where cable companies suddenly realized they could get away with airing a lot of depraved violence, sex, murder, crime, people cutting tags off mattresses, you name it, as long as it was on cable and people actually had to choose to put channels with such debauchery on their TV. Good old staples like network TV could hardly compete.
Alas, while HBO gave us one era defining show per decade, they also gave us one shitty ending to said shows per decade. Once HBO sucked as much money out of Sopranos viewers as possible, they rushed it to an absurdly fast and unsatisfying conclusion. Same with Game of Thrones.
And we dopes took it. There we were, collectively the long-suffering wife, standing at the front door in our bathrobe and curlers, begging our cheating hubby to stay, for surely we had more good years left together. Nope, off that hubby went, driving away in his mid-life crisis sports car with a bimbo on his arm.
Long story short, HBO is back, not unlike the old hubby who realizes his days of carousing are over, and he’d like to remarry us so we can cook his dinner and rub his feet and take care of him in his old age.
Sigh. And we dopes are going to do it.
At least, we’ll try. The Many Saints of Newark, the prequel movie to the Sopranos was red-hot garbage, largely fan fiction nonsense.
However, my initial assessment of the new GOT prequel, based on watching the first episode:
#1 – It’s worth watching episode 2 and likely, more.
#2 – I didn’t really see anything so far that made me say, “OMG I must binge immediately!” Rather, it’ll be an I’ll get to it when I get to it thing.
#3 – Fans are familiar with the world, the customs, the culture, and are able to dive-in. I know there was some criticism of a cast of relative unknowns but don’t forget, many of GOT’s original cast were unknown until the show made them stars (though Sean Bean did lead the first season.)
All in all, it’s good so far. I don’t know anything could meet GOT’s initial WOW factor. Sometimes, you just have to be that new, original thing that people didn’t know they wanted until you gave it to them. HBO is trying to give us more albeit with a cheaper cast. The good news is they have time to possibly WOW us again while the players aren’t household names. The bad news is given HBO’s track record, they’ll likely pull the rug out from under house and rush yet another series to a silly, unsatisfying halt when it gets too expensive as per their usual modus operandi.
The plot? What this series does best. A bunch of spoiled royals who have a lot fighting over who gets to have more, namely, ye olde Iron Throne.
Nearly 200 years before GOT, the Targaryen family, everyone’s favorite bleach blonde ultra-perfectionist dragon riders from across the sea, rule over a peaceful and prosperous Westeros. War hasn’t occurred for 70 years because all opponents to the Targaryens have a strange habit of being burned up into extra crispy dragon chow.
King Viserys (Paddy Constantine) reigns but largely serves as a rubber stamp to his council of treacherous lackeys. When Queen Aemma (Sian Brooke) tragically dies giving birth to King’s long awaited male heir (who SPOILER ALERT) also dies in birth, it becomes clear that all-out war amongst these platinum blonde goofballs is on the way.
While the King appears to be in otherwise good in health, kings in this world rarely last long without getting ye olde hot sword injection, typically in the back, and yes I am talking about an actual sword, pervert. Hurt feelings abound when Viserys names his daughter Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) as his heir, forcing all lords to bend the knee and swear their allegiance to her in the event of his passing.
Alas, as foretold in the show, the Targaryens were so strong that theirs was a house that could only crumble from within. Potential heir A unhappy at his lack of being named heir is the king’s younger brother, Prince Daemon, Commander of the Kingsguard who loves whores but hates crime, thus providing the most lurid scenes of the episode when he patronizes ladies of the evening and beheads hapless reprobates with equal parts gusto.
Potential heir B is the King’s sister, Princess Rhaenys Velaryon (Eve Best.) We haven’t seen much of her yet other than an introduction where the king (and her) father, Old King Aerys, declines to name her heir to the throne due to her lack of a penis, opting to name Viserys instead, due to his lack of a vagina. She is given the nickname “The Queen Who Never Was” as a result, having come so close yet so far.
Both parties have their strengths. Daemon commands a loyal army of brutes who love him because he purchases them whores on the regular (talk about a great boss, wait, what’s that itch?). Rhaenys’ husband Corlys (Steve Toussaint) is a member of the council who has the king’s ear.
Meanwhile, Daemon is likely displeased with King’s hand Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans, he of Spiderman Lizard fame), who lives to talk trash about the prince into the king’s ear thus leading to the king’s rare move of appointing his non-penis having daughter rather than his penis having brother so some type of battle between those two is likely a-brewing.
Complications? Rhaenys is young, possibly a lesbian getting jiggy with Hightower’s daughter who I suspect Hightower wants to see married to the king for his own duplicitous power grabbing ends despite quite an age difference between the two and if this happens, Rhaenys would be getting lezzy with her stepmother. (This is a theory at this point but it looks like where the show is going to me.)
Daemon is a wildcard, a villainous reprobate who loves whores, possibly more than Tyrion ever did, who really loved whores. He’s an all-around D-bag, though formidable. Having lived in his older brother’s shadow as younger brothers tend to do, especially in royal families or families with big money, he has gone out of his weigh to prove himself in battle whereas Viserys just seems to go along with whatever the council wants. Ironically, there are signs that despite Daemon’s d-baggery, he likely would have been a lifelong loyal defender of his older brother had he not been declined as heir.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. You know, if you are one of my original fans from back when I started his blog a whole 8 years ago, you’ll know GOT was pretty much all I blogged about non-stop in the beginning so it will be nice to get back to blogging about it again, though likely not with as much gusto as the original.
#1 – If Sam becomes Archmaester, what happens to Gilly and his adopted son and the son on the way? Are Gilly and the kids always going to be Sam’s taboo secret family, hiding in the shadows? There should have either been a line like, “Oh good, it was just decided that maesters can get pussy now” or Sam should have left the maesterhood and just become another kind of wise adviser – Master of Laws or what have you.
#2 – If Bran can see the future, then didn’t he know Daeny was going to burn everyone in King’s Landing and let her do it anyway?
#3 – Did Ellaria Sand get crushed in her cell during the dragon attack?
#4 – Is Daeny really dead? Keep in mind people come back to life on this show all the time.
#5 – Wouldn’t it have been better for Arya to become an assassin for good, using her faceless man skills to strike down the wicked? Or maybe she has learned the ills of revenge and is now using her family fortune to explore.
That’s all I have for now but feel free to pose your own in the comments, 3.5 readers.
Alas, it’s over. This show that was a Super Bowl for nerds lo these many years has come to an end. Despite all the criticism it is taking, it’s over and I’m grateful HBO made it. I do think the last two seasons were a bit rushed and some plot points were forced but overall, it gave us a real ending. It didn’t cop out or give us a do it yourself ending. Choices were made and an actual resolution was given.
Jon Snow takes out his boo and Daeny croaks, effectively stopping her from become fantasy world she-Hitler. Drogon is so pissed and just as you think he’s going to burn up Jon, he burns up the Iron Throne instead, pissed that his mother died over a lousy chair.
He then grabs Daeny and swoops off and frankly, if you ask me, Jon Snow was too honest for his own damn good. Instead of admitting to the deed he should have just been all like, “Dudes. Check it out. I was all trying to get up in my girlfriend’s snootch with my iron bone when that damn dragon went crazy and burned up everything and flew off with Daeny so…oh well that sucks but I guess if y’all want me to be king now, I’ll do it.”
Meanwhile, it does seem out of left field that Bran would become king. It was sad that the lords and ladies laughed at Sam’s suggestion of pure democracy, but at least there will be a little bit of thought put into picking the leadership from now on.
While Bran does seem like the least douchiest character and the least likely to use the throne for ill, they spent the last couple of seasons pointing out to us that Bran had become a supernatural being, the mystical three-eyed raven who is above all titles of nobility. He refused to become the Lord of Winterfell for this very reason. There’s sort of a nod to the fact that apparently Bran saw all this coming and was ready to be named king all along and it looks like the realm will be in good hands but still, I don’t know. You can’t just say the kid is a god for several seasons and then suddenly say oh yeah and he can be king too.
I thought the romance between Brienne and Jaime was forced. Those two seemed like, at best, they had a respectful friendship.
It seemed unlikely that the Unsullied would have accepted anything less than Jon Snow’s head on a pike. They wouldn’t have been ok with him just going to the Wall.
What happened to the Dothraki? I don’t recall an answer. Those berserkers are just roaming the countryside, raping and looting I assume. Sorry. Maybe that’s dothraki profiling.
Snow has a better than expected ending. The Watch doesn’t interfere as he leaves and joins the Wildlings. His life won’t be fabulous but at least he’ll be free…free in the cold barren north but free.
Arya will become an explorer. Sansa is Queen of the North. The Stark children really clean up and make out like bandits in the end, all except Jon.
To my surprise, it was actually a happy ending when I expected that everyone would just be totally dead or someone terrible would end up ruling.
Jon and Daeny’s talk about power and Daeny talking about how people who disagree with her are evil is a bit scary and has some echoes to the world we live in today as we have all become so politically divided.
Anyway, I know the show is taking a lot of heat but hey, that means people love it enough to have strong feelings about it. I think it ended well, though again, it does strike me as odd that Bran could be a three eyed raven and king at the same time.
Just want to say that win, lose or draw after tonight’s episode, I will really miss Game of Thrones.
Not that you want to hear my life story, but the past decade was hard for me, due in large part to some not so bright moves I made at the end of the previous decade. I spent the last decade digging myself out of a hole (or climbing out of a hole?) and long story short, this show was always the one constant I could look forward to.
Come spring time, every Sunday night, I could turn on HBO and for a solid hour I could forget about all my problems and just get lost in the fantasy. Honestly, the time when Boardwalk Empire was on before it was great. And for awhile True Blood was on, I forget, before or after it so really, Sunday nights were great for a while.
What is HBO going to replace it with? Does anyone know? Come to think of it, from the Sopranos to True Blood to Boardwalk to Game of Thrones, HBO has been my required Sunday night viewing for a long time now and I wonder what is coming next.
I know a lot of people are down on what happened with Khaleesi last week and it will be impossible to make anyone happy with the ending this week. Part of the problem is that the show is, indeed, going to end and endings are always sad and leave you wanting more of what you can no longer have.
I do think the past couple seasons felt a little rushed but overall I have a feeling that the ending will be unexpected.
My prediction is that invaders from a yet to be explored land will come in and take it all. Arya mentioned there is more unexplored land a couple seasons ago so it is possible.
1 – Dany. The various power players will decide as hard as that may be to stomach, it wouldn’t be worth putting the kingdom through yet another war for the throne.
2 – Jon Snow. He pretends like he’s cool with it then kills his aunt with his penis….or somehow uses sex as a pretext to get close and kill her or something.
3 – Invasion from Afar – Arya said a couple seasons ago that there was land far away that no one from Westeros had explored. I felt like that was a big thing to just leave dangling there. So maybe an army from far away will land and take it all.
4 – Jon Snow and then a governing counsel after he croaks.
5 – No throne. It goes straight to a governing counsel.
6 – Sansa – I think she’s like the oldest member of any remaining house that isn’t a bastard or a three-eyed raven.
7- Varys. He would never let himself get burned up like that. He had a stunt double get burned.
8 – Littlefinger. He also would have never been bested. He had a stunt double killed in his stead.
9 – Arya will use her faceless man skills to pretend she is Jon Snow at her chamber on the pretense that he needs khaleesi sex. Once in, Arya will reveal herself and chop up Dany to pieces.
10 – Ser Davos because why not.
11 – Tyion because why not.
12 – Governing council – Tyrion, Snow, Davos, Greyworm.
13 – Greyworm.
14 – Nobody is left.
15 – It’ll be like the ending of Hamlet where an outside invader enters the castle only to find everyone is already dead.
Who do you think will sit on the iron throne, 3.5 readers?
I think I’m the only one who thought the last episode of Game of Thrones was good.
I get it. We all cheered Khaleesi on the past 8 seasons. She was the underdog. She started from the bottom and now she’s here. She suffered every bump in the road and set back and she managed to move across a fantasy continent, free countless slaves and turn enemies into allies and recruit top advisers.
But still…you had to see something like this coming.
First, the show has always had an air of real life or as close to real life a fantasy world can get.
In real life, you hope to be great but then you suffer all kinds of setbacks. Same thing in GRRM’s fantasy world. Yes, you want a person to be good but shit happens.
Khaleesi has been through some shit. Let’s review:
#1 – Exiled as a baby across the Narrow Sea.
#2 – Sold as a sex slave wife to a nomadic warlord by her asshole brother. The wealthy man who took her and her brother in as their guardian allowed this to happen.
#3 – Trusted Ser Jorah. He turned out to be a spy. Eventually, she trusted him again.
#4 – I forget the details but a lot of shit happened in her travelling years. Her husband croaked. The dothraki turned on her for awhile before getting behind her again. Evil dudes tried to steal her dragons. She conquered cities but if she went too soft, bad guys would start shit.
#5 – More recently, she delayed her assault on King’s Landing and brought her Army north to help defeat the Knight King. You might argue she had to do that anyway to save the land she wanted to conquer, but she could have also sent her full army at Kings Landing first, allowed the Night King to destroy the North and then made a stand at them from a strong position in Kings Landing.
Note that her reward for doing so was that the Starks start bitching about how Jon Snow should be king.
#6 – Tyrion and Varys are her chief advisers and yet they are always doing shit behind her back. They think it is for the greater good but they always get found out and exposed as a-holes.
First, I didn’t buy that Varys would go right up to Snow and tell him to be king. Varys is smarter than this. He is the spymaster. He would have orchestrated a coup from behind the scenes if he wanted Khaleesi gone.
But if you count that, plus Tyrion telling Varys about Snow’s claim to the throne which is a big betrayal and then also count Sansa up her ass and the Northmen and Wildlings giving the credit for the white walker victory to Jon and then losing her second dragon (two she lost in the name of protecting the North, a land of assholes who benefit from her protection yet openly talk shit about her) and losing Missandei?
I mean, what was Missandei’s last words? Dracarus. What’s that mean? It’s the word you tell your dragon when you want him to burn some shit. BFF was telling Khaleesi to burn that shit down.
I think HBO has moved these past two seasons way too fast and we deserved a little more development and build up, but if you take a look at all of this, it’s not that unlikely that Khaleesi might just say, “Fuck it. I tried to get these people to follow me out of respect, but they’re all doing their own shit behind my back so I’m just going to set this shit on fire.”
Holy crap, 3.5 readers. What an episode! SPOILERS!
Well, here are my thoughts:
#1 – It’s hard to complain because it was riveting, edge of your seat and really grabbed your attention.
#2 – But I’ll complain anyway. The complaint I keep seeing is wasted character development. Khaleesi has spent 7 seasons being good only to go berserk at the last second. True, I suppose the capacity to snap is in all of us. Her second dragon and best friend were just killed.
Still, the set off of her snap was Varys’ treachery? I don’t know. Seems weak. Then again, I suppose there have been inklings throughout that she might flip out. Her father did flip out and there was always a fear that she might flip too.
Also on character development, Varys was long portrayed as the realm’s top spymaster, like an old fashioned CIA chief. Ergo, it’s hard to believe that he would just walk right up to Jon Snow and tell him what’s what. If Varys wanted Khaleesi out, he wouldn’t have told her boyfriend. He would have orchestrated some kind of intricately detailed behind the scenes coup that left him 20 steps away from it all. He would have had a servant poison the Khaleesi’s soup or something then would have been all like, “What treachery is this? Oh, shit. Our beloved Khaleesi is dead. Oh well, Jon Snow, hate to say it but you’re up now, buddy.”
#3 – I think we have to be honest that the show always promises A then delivers not even B but Z. So we should have never really expected a happy ending where Khaleesi farts rainbows out of her butt.
#4 – There were some payoffs that longtime fans have been waiting for, from the Cleganes finally duking it out, to the wildfire deposits getting burned up to Arya looking to check Cersei off her list.
#5 – In true form for the show, they managed to make you feel bad for Cersei. She’s done some bad things over the years and yet, in her final moments you’re like, “Well, maybe her ass shouldn’t be ate the hell up by a damn dragon.”
CONCLUSIONS:
Snow, Tyrion and Davos all look sad at the side they chose. And there’s still a few episodes left so where this goes next will be interesting.
So, this episode was a long time coming. It’s the end of the road for many characters, their purposes and story lines coming to a final fulfillment.
We lost Dondarion – we always wondered why the Lord of Light favored him and now we know why.
We lost Jorah – fighting to the death to protect the girl who kept him in the friend zone.
We lost Theon, who was finally forgiven by the Stark he wronged.
I think we lost Brienne but I’m not sure.
We lost Lady Mormont, the little hero being squeezed by a giant.
We lost the Red Woman, her purpose finally fulfilled.
Overall, a great episode. And that the Knight King was dispatched so early and yet there are so many episodes left makes me think we’ll get the Khaleesi vs. Cersei battle we’ve long waited for.
Was the show too dark? Yes, as in it was literally too dark. They’re doing this thing now where they want realism. So when it is night, they make it so dark you can barely see anything. Occasionally, a fire will light up and you can see. Some people like this. I don’t. I think it’s possible to show a scene at night and still light it so it is watchable.
Sure, it’s not realistic. It’s like when some genius points out that a movie taking place in China yet how unrealistic it is that the characters are speaking English. Yes, it is, but on the other hand, I don’t have time to become fluent in Mandarin just to watch a movie.
But Hollywood seems bent on the dark night scenes now. I see this in movies and also other TV shows. Sometimes I’ll spend whole episodes of the Walking Dead just squinting at the screen.
Bookshelf Battle 