WiC Predicts: Exactly what happens in each episode of House of the Dragon season 2

House of the Dragon season 2, Episode 2: “A Son for a Son”

Okay, it’s time to start the dying…but we can save that for the end of the episode. First, we’ll pick up with Jace as he travels from the Vale to the North, where he’ll meet and try to win over the young lord of Winterfell, Cregan Stark. Cregan will prove important to the latter stages of the Dance of the Dragons, so the show will want to set him up early. In Fire & Blood, he and Jace become buddies.

Meanwhile, at Harrenhal, Daemon will meet and mostly ignore a mysterious young woman named Alys Rivers, played by Gayle Rankin. She’ll be important later in the story, but at the moment, Daemon is mostly concerned with winner over the Riverlords to Rhaenyra’s cause.

In Fire & Blood, Rhaenyra spends a while after the death of her son Lucerys in a depression while Daemon and Corlys Velaryon do most of the planning. I don’t know if the show will go with that angle, so she may take a more active role in plotting the war. Otto Hightower is certainly busy laying out schemes in King’s Landing, where he’s trying to court Daemon Targaryen’s old enemies the Triarchy, whom he defeated in the first season; remember that Crabfeeder guy? Otto wants to work with his bosses.

But the thing from this episode everyone will be talking about is Blood and Cheese. Mysaria, acting on Daemon’s orders, hires a pair of mercenaries known to history only as Blood and Cheese. Cheese is or was a rat-catcher in the Red Keep, so he knows the place very well, including all the back passages. His job is to get the two of them inside.

Once in, they find Alicent and Queen Helaena with the king’s children, Jaehaerys and Jaehaera (and maybe Maelor if the show includes him). They bind and gag Alicent and give Helaena a choice over which of her children will die. In the book, she’s horrified but eventually chooses Maelor. Blood chops off the head of Jaehaerys, King Aegon’s heir, instead. This is the revenge that Daemon and Mysaria designed: a son for a son.

Ending moment: Helaena Targaryen, driven out of her mind with shock and grief, wails over the headless body of her son. This could be…a moment.