7 epic showdowns we can't wait to watch in House of the Dragon season 2

In the first season of House of the Dragon, we were introduced to a large number of well-born, opulently dressed, silver-blonde people with dragons and chips on their shoulders. We learned how the relationship between Rheanyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower, once the best of friends, degraded over time as each became convinced that the other would block their path to the Iron Throne. We saw how they passed this prejudice onto their children, who grew up hating each other. We saw how Daemon Targaryen coveted the Iron Throne occupied by his brother Viserys from afar, which might have been part of the reason he married Viserys' daughter Rhaenyra, Daemon's own niece, so he could be closer to it.

Occasionally, all of this simmering resentment boiled over into violence, like when Rhaenyra's son Luke slashed the eye out of Alicent's son Aemond during a childish squabble gone very, very bad. But most of the time it was kept inside. Well, that's all over come season 2. King Viserys dead, and war has officially broken out between his daughter Rhaenyra and Rhaenyra's own half-brother Aegon, the son of Viserys and Rhaenyra's former bestie Alicent Hightower. The gloves are off, there's no one left to keep the peace, and the rivers will run red with blood. Sundays at 8.

Drawing on our knowledge of George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood as well as our impressions of the first season, here are seven of the biggest clashes we're looking forward to seeing when House of the Dragon returns to our screens in June. Beware SPOILERS below!

Aemond vs Alicent

Aemond never got over his nephew Luke dashing out his eye during a family funeral. I can't say I blame him; I use my eye all the time. But Aemond may regret taking revenge. At the end of House of the Dragon season 1, after King Viserys had died but before Rhaenyra and Aegon were properly warring for the Iron Throne, both Aemond and Luke were dispatched to the castle of Storm's End to win the allegiance of its lord, Borros Baratheon. Ideally, both sides wanted to secure the Iron Throne without a long, costly war, but Aemond couldn't help himself. Luke rode away from the castle on his little dragon Arrax, and Aemond pursued on his massive beast Vhagar. Perhaps Aemond only wanted to scare his nephew, but Vhagar had other ideas, chomping both nephew and rider to bits.

Afterwards, Aemond looked like he'd swallowed a case of dynamite chased with a match. He'd been sent on a diplomatic mission on behalf of his brother, the newly crowned King Aegon II Targaryen, and ended up killing his own nephew, the son of King Aegon's main rival to the throne. Before, Rhaenyra was trying to keep a lid on outright violence. But after the death of her son, that's over. And it's all Aemond's fault.

I imagine a scene where Aemond walks back into the Red Keep to tell his mother and Alicent and brother Aegon the news. "So how did the diplomatic mission go?" Alicent will ask. "Well," Aemond will respond, "the thing about that is..."

He might lose another eye.

Fans vs the overwhelming urge to run screaming from the room

Obviously, Rhaenyra does not react well to the death of her son. Neither does her husband Daemon, whom she married years after she had Luke but who still looks out for his family, step or otherwise.

Daemon is also something of a mercurial rage monster who believes revenge is best served scalding hot and poured directly down the throat of your enemy. In Fire & Blood, he sets in motion a scheme to kill one of the children of King Aegon II Targaryen and his sister-wife Helaena Targaryen, figuring that it's payback for Luke's death. A couple of mercenaries known to history only as Blood and Cheese sneak into the Red Keep in King's Landing, find Helaena and her young children, and brutally murder one of them in front of their mother as well as their grandmother Alicent.

We know this scene is coming, and probably coming pretty early on in the season. Back in the day, Game of Thrones was scenes of brutal violence; think of the Red Wedding, or the scene where Stannis Baratheon burned his young daughter Shireen alive at the stake. The Blood and Cheese scene could claim a spot next to those when all is said and done. We don't know if we're nervous or excited, but we expect the scene to test the tolerance of many fans. Might it even go too far, even for a show set in the Game of Thrones universe? We'll find out soon.

Aegon vs alcoholism

In Fire & Blood, after his child is killed, King Aegon goes to a very dark place, and he was already a pretty messed up guy. He asserts more authority over the increasingly violent war effort, but he also imbibes enough alcohol to drown the Seven Kingdoms, so his decision-making isn't always sterling.

Watching the trailers for House of the Dragon season 2, Aegon always popped off the screen. I think season 2 will be when he comes into his own as a dynamic, interesting character who can stand beside of likes of Rhaenyra and Daemon for our attention. He didn't want to be king, but after getting crowned decided to give it a go, only to shot in the heart just a couple weeks into work. He'll have to change and grow if he wants to keep his head above water, which means that actor Tom Glynn-Carney will have a lot of juicy material to bite into. I think he's up to the challenge.

Cargyll vs Cargyll

We've mostly been talking about metaphorical showdowns so far. Let's get into a few actual ones. Towards the end of season 1, we met Arryk and Erryk Cargyll, twin knights of the Kingsguard played by real-life twin brothers Luke and Elliot Tittensor respectively. Once King Viserys died and his heirs started fighting over the Iron Throne, the Kingsguarrd was split down the middle, with some allying themselves with King Aegon and others with Queen Rhaenyra.

That included the Cargyll brothers; Arryk supports Aegon while Erryk is with Rhaenyra. The setup for drama is too good. Brother vs brother, blood vs blood. Even if you haven't read Fire & Blood, you know these two are going to throw down at some point, right?

And you'd be correct. In Fire & Blood, Arryk Cargyll is dispatched to infiltrate Rhaenyra Targaryen's stronghold of Dragonstone by impersonating his brother Erryk. Of course they run into each other, and of course they fight. I'll leave the outcome of the fight for you to discover, but it promises to be an emotional showdown.

Dragon vs dragon

This show is called House of the Dragon. Where are my dragons? There are a ton on the show, and you can bet that they'll start fighting each other now that the realm is at war.

We'll see the bulk of our dragon-on-dragon action in season 2 during the Battle of Rook's Rest, a complicated action sequence the cast and crew spent a long time filming. To summarize, King's Aegon's forces will march on a castle held by one of Rhaenyra's allies. Rhaenyra will dispatch one of her dragonriders to to help, but King Aegon and the Lord Commander of his Kingsguard Criston Cole have planned for this. They have two dragonriders at the ready. What follows will be a brutal battle both in the sky and on land. By the end of it, one dragon and rider will be dead, and another dragon and rider very badly wounded.

I'm keeping the names out of this to avoid spoiling you unduly, but we know all the dragons and all the riders involved. The sequence should thrill us, but also make us curl into little balls and weep.

For as much attention Game of Thrones got for its dragons, we never really saw them clash with each other very much, outside of one dogfight in the season 8 episode "The Long Night." And that fight was lit very dimly, possibly because it would have been hard to make look convincing otherwise. Years have passed since then, technology has gotten better, and House of the Dragon is poised to give us some epic, fully lit dragon-on-dragon battles. The succes of the season could rise or fall on this moment.

Rhaenrya fans vs Alicent fans

We're not expecting Rhaenrya and Alicent to physically fight in season 2; with war officially declared, that will mainly fall to their armies and their dragonriders. They may not even share a scene. However, their conflict remains at the heart of the show, so their metaphorical battle will go on.

In the absence of these two crossing blades, we expect their fans to pick up the slack. One of the selling points of House of the Dragon is that you're supposed to be able to look at either side of the conflict — whether it's Rhaenyra's "Blacks" or Alicent's "Greens" — and be able to find characters you can sympathize with. House of the Dragon is a story about the Targaryen family divided against itself. Likewise, different fans will root for and against different sides. Perhaps households will be divided. Viewers may even be divided within themselves.

Or at least that's the idea. So far, I think the Blacks have been painted more sympathetically then the Greens, but that can always change in season 2. And in any case, Rhaenyra and Alicent have both gathered passionate followings online. Now that the Greens and the Blacks are properly at war, we expect some fireworks between these two camps. Which characters is the transgressor and which the victim? Which crosses the line? Which is justified?

There may be a bigger lesson here about the futility of taking a side in the first place; perhaps, they who fight, lose. House of the Dragon season 2 won't just feature showdowns between characters; it will feature showdowns between fans and even within the depths of the human soul. Sundays at 8.

The dragonseeds vs the Triarchy

Getting back to more concrete matters, there's another big battle from the pages of Fire & Blood that we may or may not get to by the end of House of the Dragon season 2. Rhaenyra's son Jacaerys Velaryon will find himself as part of his mother's dragon airforce, alongside several other new characters known as the dragonseeds. Eventually, they attack a fleet of ships sent by the Triarchy — the same guys that Daemon and Corlys Velaryon were fighting early in the first season — in a fight known as the Battle of the Gullet.

We've heard little about this battle behind the scenes, which makes us wonder if we're getting it in season 2 or if it won't be moved towards the front of season 3. That represents another showdown on the way: the fight between Game of Thrones superfans and the unknown. As much as we've read Fire & Blood, we simply don't know how far into the book House of the Dragon will get this year, nor do we know whether they've changed anything. And if they have changed things, how much? It's very possible that neophytes and old hands will be in the some boat when it comes to some of the big twists on the way.

And then, of course, there's the showdown between hype and time. The second season of House of the Dragon will premiere on HBO and Max on Sunday, June 16, and run for eight episodes. It's just a matter of mastering our excitement until then.

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