WiC Predicts: Exactly what happens in each episode of House of the Dragon season 2
By Dan Selcke
House of the Dragon season 2, Episode 5: “Hand of the Queen”
Yeesh, that is an intense few episodes. We need to catch our breath a bit.
Criston Cole and the victorious green army will march the head of Meleys the dragon through the streets of King’s Landing; we’ve seen evidence of this scene on set. Aegon is in enormous pain and cannot sit the Iron Throne, so his brother Aemond sits the throne while he recovers. (And won’t that go to Aemond’s head?) As for Helaena, she’s been in a deep depression ever since the murder of her son.
Meanwhile, Jace arrives back on Dragonstone just as things are melting down. Corlys Velaryon is despondent over the death of his wife Rhaenys. He blames Rhaenyra, and nearly abandons her cause. In Fire & Blood, Jace kind of takes over for his mom at this point, offering to name Corlys as Hand of the Queen, which he accepts. It’s also Jace’s idea to put out a call for people to try and mount some of the riderless dragons that live on Dragonstone, the idea being that Rhaenyra will want as many dragonriders as possible under her command if she’s going to take back King’s Landing. This is the Sowing of the Dragonseeds. I can imagine the show might make Rhaenyra a bigger part of the decision-making.
The Sowing of the Seeds will be particularly personal for Corlys, who has two bastard children living on Dragonstone: Alyn and Addam of Hull. In the book, he asks Rhaenyra to legitimize his son Addam as the heir to Driftmark, which she does.
It’s a little unclear how the show will interpret these events. In the book, all of Corlys’ natural-born kids are dead. But on the show, his son Laenor Velaryon is still alive. What’s more, we’ve seen evidence that Laenor may return in House of the Dragon season 2, which could put the whole Corlys-names-Addam-as-his-heir plot into question.
In any case, we know that Abubakar Salim is playing Alyn of Hull and we suspect that Clinton Liberty is playing Addam. It’s around this time in the story that we should get to know them, as well as the other dragonseeds, as they come to be known.
Meanwhile, although he’s no longer serving as Hand of the King, Otto Hightower is still trying to win the war for his grandson Aegon. He meets with representatives from the Triarchy, the alliance of Free Cities that Daemon and Corlys smashed in season 1, and tries to get them to come into the war on the side of the greens.
Ending moment: Silver Denys, a local Dragonstone man and hopeful Dragonseed, tries to mount the dragon Sheepstealer. He is killed horribly, and we know that the other Dragonseeds have an uphill battle ahead of them if they want to ride these beasts.