Small Council: What did you think of House of the Dragon Episode 9?

Every week, we talk back and forth about the latest episode of House of the Dragon. The small council is in session!

DAN: I’m just gonna be up front: I thought this episode was bad. Like, I honestly didn’t think House of the Dragon was capable of being this bad, not based on the first eight episodes. I mean, sure, I had problems with it sometimes, but this was another level.

The greens gathering in the wake of the king’s death so they can plot to undermine his wishes about succession is a situation pregnant with dramatic potential, so why did so much of “The Green Council” feel like it was making up empty conflict out of nowhere? Otto Hightower wants to send knights to Dragonstone to kill Rhaenyra? Even if it were possible to penetrate the castle’s defenses, which it isn’t, killing her would just inflame her supporters. This is a braindead pitch Otto is only making because the writers want him to be in conflict with Alicent, who just wants to negotiate. It’s disrespectful of characters we’re supposed to think are smart, which means it’s disrespectful of us.

Why do the kingsguard knights fight each other? Over the right to take Aegon to either his mother or his grandfather first? He’s gonna be the king, he’ll talk to both of them sooner or later. And as for Rhaenys bursting through the floor of the Dragonpit during Aegon’s coronation, just…what the f**k? Why would you blow what’s supposed to be a slow buildup to bloodshed with a big empty action scene that somehow ends with Rhaenys flying away without burning any of the people who are waging war against her side? Only she did kill a bunch of peasants. Why even put the character in that situation? Hot buttery nonsense is what it is.

I didn’t think “The Green Council” was remotely up to the standard that House of the Dragon has set for itself, and I’m only hoping the finale can salvage something. But I’m open to alternative takes. What did you all think?

SABRINA: Hold on, Dan. Let me just put my shades on because the fire you lit on top of the episode is bright! I was fine with “The Green Council” for the most part. I liked the mechanization of it. This was a very crafted episode. You could see the gears turning, it was unvarnished. It was like watching a child struggling fruitlessly to put a square through a star-shaped hole. And that was purposeful.

A repeated knock against this series has been how blatant it is that the greens are villainous. There’s almost a Disney After Dark quality to the way the writers have treated the characters who are on the Hightowers’ side. We aren’t supposed to like them. There are no shades of grey here, so watching them usurp the throne, while full of tension for me, was an exercise in viewing the least worthy people manipulate a situation to their favor at the cost of the realm.

Alicent’s skill at lying to herself about how she fits into this has never been endearing. It’s easier for her to cast herself as a victim of duty than to take ownership of her choices. She has wanted Aegon on the throne for years. Claiming that making Aegon king was her husband’s dying wish is only meant to appease her desire to enact her deepest wish, which is to ensure the safety of her family by securing the crown by any means necessary.

She’s right, reluctance to murder isn’t a weakness, but an inability to take accountability for your own actions is. Otto is more bald about his intentions, sure. But she is grasping at straws trying to hold onto some semblance of the belief that she isn’t betraying Rhaenyra, as if locking Rhaenys in her room, imprisoning the servants, dragging Aegon back to the castle to assume his duty and putting on a farce of a coronation to get the people on the “king’s” side isn’t treasonous and an act of war.

Once again, she made a choice, but this time she’s fully grown and has no excuse. As Rhaenys said, Alicent toils in the service of men and all she wants is to put a window in the wall of her prison. It’s honestly about as sad as her displaying her feet for Larys in trade for information. How she thinks she’s going to guide her depraved son to do anything when his rearing itself was lacking, I don’t know.

Anyway, Rhaenys’ last moment in the episode was as cool and flashy as these writers wanted, but I agree, Dan, it was needless. First, it killed a lot of people. If her dragon didn’t crush them, the rubble did. And then, after all of that she didn’t even set fire to a single thing, so what ends up happening is that the people are hurt, maimed, and killed for the Greens’ actions but the actual villains go unharmed. So yes, it was hot, buttery nonsense, indeed.

Aemond was cool though, and I do love Helaena. I missed Rhaenyra something fierce this episode, and I wish the last scene was of her finding out her father is dead and the Greens’ stole her throne.

DANIEL: I can understand a lot of the criticisms of this episode, but for whatever reason, I just enjoyed the hell out of it. I enjoyed getting to know the characters on the green side of the conflict more, especially Aemond, Helaena, and Aegon, but also the Cargyll brothers. I think that was much needed, even if I didn’t feel much more sympathy for any of them in particular by the end. It let me understand their inner workings a little more, and I love that the show was bold enough to give us a green-focused episode so late in the season.

As much as I was hoping that Lyman Beesbury would get tossed out a window like in Fire & Blood, his death made me gasp, and the fact that Otto demands they continue negotiating with his lifeless corpse lying on the table is brutal. The carriage ride conversation between Aegon and Alicent was surprisingly endearing, and it was very cool to see a Targaryen coronation with Aegon the Conqueror’s crown and crowds of smallfolk gathered at the Dragonpit. Like the premiere episode’s tourney or Episode 3’s royal hunt, the coronation felt like an important part of George R.R. Martin’s world come to life, a part we hadn’t gotten to see before.

Hell, I even enjoyed the dragon bursting through the floor, hot buttery nonsense and all. Despite any flaws or moments where the writing didn’t quite sing as much as it did in previous episodes, there were others where I was just plain having fun watching.

All that said, I think in terms of Rhaenys’ characterization and her willingness to murder a bunch of smallfolk for no real reason, the more I sit on it the less sense it sense. I loved seeing Meleys the Red Queen in all her glory, but we’ve just been told in this very episode that Rhaenys is a character who had the right temperament and wisdom to be a ruler. “A true queen counts the cost to her people,” Alicent Hightower tells her, right before emphasizing that Rhaenys has the exact qualities that would have made her suited to the role.

If that’s all true, then it’s hard to swallow that she wouldn’t have the foresight to realize how leaving the greens alive would only make things exponentially worse in the long run, or that she would so casually toss aside the lives of dozens of people. There are a lot of reasons that Rhaenys could have acted the way she did — she didn’t want to murder her own family members, or was worried about the Hightowers’ allies, for example — but I don’t think the show sold those as motivations. Instead it feels like it’s contradicting itself, and not intentionally.

And…where was Otto Hightower hoping to take Aegon? In the scene where Erryk and Arryk finally get the prince, they tell him that horses are waiting outside the city’s gates at his grandfather’s behest. I don’t think the show ever told us where Otto was hoping to secret Aegon away, or why, and I can’t stop wondering. It’s a weird little loose end.

At the end of the day, I think this will go down as one of the more controversial episodes of the season. As the Green Council itself split the realm with their coup, so has this episode divided the fans.

SAVANNAH: After reading all three of your reviews and watching the episode THREE times, I’ve concluded that I like it but understand where Dan is coming from. The way Sabrina explained the whole thing made me understand why I enjoyed it more. The nuggets Daniel dropped about the coronation and Grandpa George made me like it more, too.

That first time I watched, I felt rushed, discombobulated and confused. I’m not fond of the greens at all, outside of Helaena and Aemond. Those two are excellent in their own way. Alicent is manipulative and knows what she’s doing, just like Sabrina explained. Sabrina explained this episode, in my opinion, flawlessly.

Dan, I’m with you on the buttery nonsense, but I loved seeing Meleys the Red Queen up close to admire her beauty. Daniel, I love how you explained that her temperament is why she didn’t kill anyone. This episode is still my least favorite because I feel like they could have done SO MUCH MORE by taking away some of the nonsense Dan didn’t like. The way we discussed the whole Aegon/Aemond tussle in the live reaction show would have been better.

However, that third time through made me appreciate what the showrunners were doing. It was bold for them to make this the episode about the greens because I think it sets up a GRAND FINALE episode. I missed Rhaenyra and Daemon; I just did. They deserved a part in this episode because the king was their blood. That would have made for a better cliffhanger than the dragon riding off into the sunset.

Something was missing with this one, but I liked it. I still think it is my least favorite episode of the season, but it definitely served its purpose.

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