House of the Dragon hopefully sets up better things to come in slow new episode, "Regent"

The new episode of House of the Dragon, "Regent," is a subdued affair. Perhaps that's to be expected after last week's explosive installment, where dragons fought in the sky in a battle that left one important character dead and another irreparably injured. As a Game of Thrones prequel show, as a war drama, House of the Dragon has trained audiences to expect action, movement, and energy, but it seems most comfortable in quiet scenes between characters. I'll admit that I was getting anxious about the season's flagging momentum before last week's showstoper, but if the series has to reset so it can build up to another climax like "The Red Dragon and the Gold," I'm happy to roll with it.

That said, the fifth episode of season 2 is subdued even by this show's standards. It's got some good stuff, but it has the lowest impact ending of any episode so far, and I think the show has a Daemon Targaryen problem that's becoming harder to ignore.

Let's dive into the details, starting with the stuff I liked:

Welcome home, assholes

I think the earliest scenes are the strongest. The Greens return from the Battle of Rook's Rest and parade their prize — the severed head of Meleys the dragon — through the streets of King's Landing. As in George R.R. Martin's book Fire & Blood, what was supposed to be a victorious triumph instead strikes fear into the hearts of the smallfolk, who fear retaliation from Rhaenyra and try everything they can to get the hell out of dodge. "I thought they were gods," one onlooker says. "They're just meat," replies future dragonseed Hugh Hammer. If you want to try and perpetuate the illusion that you're infallible, marching the dead rotting symbol of your infallibility in front of everyone is a bad call. I liked the layers to this scene, and can imagine it having ramifications far down the line.

From there, the Green soldiers carry a covered litter through the halls of the Red Keep. It contains what's left of King Aegon, who is plopped on his bed so maesters can remove melted pieces of armor from his scorched skin in gruesome shots that had me watching the TV through shuttered fingers. Kudos to the prosthetics and makeup people. Aegon has swiftly become my favorite character on the show and I found myself paying rapt attention to his scenes even though he doesn't have a single line. I think the episode is less dynamic for him being unconscious the whole time.

Still, we get some movement. Aemond is chosen to serve as regent while Aegon recovers. That sounds like a terrible idea and probably is, but it's an exciting terrible idea. At first, Alicent tries to put her name forward as a candidate, but is shot down by everyone else on the Small Council; Larys points out that it would hurt their cause to oppose Rhaenyra on account of her womanhood only to install a female regent of their own.

After Aemond assumes his seat at the head of the table, the camera lingers on Alicent as it becomes clear to her how little her opinion matters to the men around her. Not even her sworn sword Criston Cole, her frenemy with benefits, supports her; he reasons later that he's sparing her from the horrors they must carry out now that dragons have taken the field. It's another in a long line of painful realizations for Alicent. She has played her part in raising the next generation of leaders and is now being shunted aside.

A Song of Ice and Fire and Sexism

The Alicent scene pairs with another scene on Dragonstone where Rhaenyra tries to give orders to her council and they talk over her. The connecting theme is sexism. Rhaenyra's advisors feel free to openly second guess and ignore her because she is a woman. I think there's a danger of the show becoming too didactic when it comes to these issues, but these Small Council stay on the right side of the line.

For one, the sexism is worse in King's Landing, which makes sense, since they're pushing Aegon's claim in part on the basis of him not being a woman like his half-sister. On Dragonstone, Rhaenyra concedes that her councilors are partly right to question her credentials as a military strategist since, as a woman, she wasn't trained in the ways of combat like they were. But she has a point that, after decades of peace, very few of them have seen battle anyway, so what's the difference?

Later, Rhaenyra talks with Ser Alfred Broome, the most obstinate voice on her counsel, and dispatches him to Harrenhal to check in on Daemon; she and Broome seem to reach an accord despite their acrimony. So the show isn't depicting Rhaenyra as having zero control over her people on account of her gender, just that she has assumptions and biases to break through that wouldn't be there were she a man, which feels true to life.

We get more nuance in a later scene between Corlys Velaryon, mourning his dead wife Rhaenys, and his granddaughter Baela, who's there on Rhaenyra's behalf to offer her grandfather the position of Hand of the Queen. At first he's loathe to accept, preferring instead to lick his wounds and fantasize about sailing into oblivion. But Baela, showing more personality than at any point prior, talks him back to earth with a fiery speech about how he'd be dishonoring Rhaenys' memory by giving up, that Rhaenyra is carrying on the dream that Rhaenys put aside when she was passed over for the Iron Throne long ago, and that Baela intends to try and push Rhaenyra onto that seat even if it means dying a warrior's death in fire. Corlys and I are both moved. He offers to make Baela th heir to Driftmark but she refuses, knowing her destiny is elsewhere.

I think this is most emotionally powerful scene of the episode, and represents another angle on how the show depicts sexism. There are lots of different, mostly subtle, ways the male characters engage in it. Larys Strong is sexist when strategy demands, it and Criston Cole has misplaced ideas about chivalry and the need to protect the fairer sex; even Rhaenyra's son Jace indulges in this when he weakly explains to his mother that she can't be a warrior queen like Visenya Targaryen of old because Visenya lived "a long time ago." The sexist systems of powers in place in Westeros are so ubiquitous that it's hard for people to imagine alternatives in the future or the past, even when the evidence is right in front of them.

Corlys, having long lived and loved a woman who was almost a queen, has mostly broken through these barriars. My fear is that House of the Dragon adopts a boring, binary view of sexism that marks all characters who engage in it as bad and all those who don't as good. But I think it's proven itself more complex than that.

How do you solve a problem like Daemon?

That said, writing Rhaenyra's husband Daemon Targaryen as a sexist would-be autocrat who plans to take the Iron Throne for himself may be taking things too far. For a couple episodes now, we've wondered if Daemon was raising an army at Harrenhal on behalf of his wife and queen or for himself. He makes his meaning plain here, telling Alys Rivers that he plans to storm King's Landing and install himself as king. Rhaenyra can be his queen if she likes, but he would be in charge.

I don't object to this turn out of hand. Daemon has always been power-hungry. Everything he's done since first getting expelled from King's Landing back in the series premiere he's done to position himself closer to the Iron Throne. That includes marrying Rhaenyra, the actual heir, although I think he loves her as well.

But I do object to what I see as forced, manufactured obstacles the writers are putting in his way. In this episode, Daemon works with Willem Blackwood to subdue House Bracken, who have declared for King Aegon. Daemon isn't willing to burn the rebels with his dragon Caraxes, so instead tells Willem to go guerrilla on them. Willem beats them into submission by attacking Bracken women and children, which angers a group of other Riverlords. They show up at Harrenahl at night to chastise Daemon for being a tyrant, vowing to never follow one such as him.

This seems an interminably large stretch to me. Last week, Criston Cole ravaged the Crownlands and swelled his army as he went. But Daemon uses one brutal, overly complicated tactic in the Riverlands and is cowed by a group of lords tsk-tsk-ing him in the night. I guess you could say these Riverlords are accustomed to peacetime and have lofty ideals about what is and isn't against the rules of war, but they still come across as laughably pollyannaish given what we've come to know about warfare in Westeros.

That Daemon can't get around this also seems out of step. In the first season, Daemon chopped off the head of his former uncle-in-law in open court for speaking out of turn, but now hesitates to make good on promises to flash-fry traitors to the crown. In Fire & Blood, Daemon assembles a host at Harrenhal without difficulty. Here, everything he tries blows up in his face. I don't know why the writers have chosen to make Daemon so quavering and ineffectual a leader after establishing his brutality and competence, but I know it isn't satisfying or exciting to watch. As a baseline, if they wanted us to think he actually posed a threat to Rhaenyra's claim, wouldn't they want to depict him as dangerous?

Ending with a whimper

The last thing we should touch on is Jace, who gets tired of being penned in on Dragonstone and flies to the Twins on his dragon Vermax. He comes to clear the path for the Winter Wolves that Cregan Stark is sending down from the North, but ends up negotiating a proper alliance. It's a good scene, and it's nice to be back at the castle where the Red Wedding went down.

The final scene gives Rhaenyra and Jace some quality screentime, and while I liked their back and forth, I wonder if the show couldn't find any more exciting scene to end on than this. Jace and Rhaenyra put their heads together and decide that they might be able to find new riders for the riderless dragons living on Dragonstone if they turn towards the children of minor Targaryen nobles who married into other families. This leads into the Sowing of the Seeds, an important event, and that's cool, but ending on characters getting an idea that will only mean something to book-readers seems weak.

So there you have it. This episode doesn't botch any iconic book moments like the season premiere, but then again, it doesn't have any iconic moments to botch. What is there is mostly solid setup, with points given for the thoughtful ruminations on sexism and points taken away for the strange choices with Daemon's storyline. Not a terrible episode, but the weakest of the season so far.

House of the Bullet Points

• Daemon's dream sequences continue. In this episode, he seems to have dream sex with his own mother, Alyssa Targaryen. For what that means, consult a Freudian.
• We get a scene between Baela and Jace, who you will remember are engaged. They have decent chemistry, but I wouldn't mind a bit more heat.
• The one Riverlord calls out Daemon for having ordered the death of Prince Jaehaerys in the season premiere. I thought everyone thinks Rhaenyra did that; where did this guy get the idea that it was Daemon?
• Hugh Hammer and his wife are among the many King's Landing smallfolk who try to flee the city after seeing the head of Meleys, but Aemond has shut the gates to them. To be continued.
• Mysaria dispatches a woman named Melinda into King's Landing for some unknown purpose. She meets up with Dyana, the barmaid and former Red Keep staffer. To be continued.
• Towards the end of the episode, Aemond approaches the Iron Throne during a thunderstorm, no doubt thinking about how good he'll looking in it. His sister Helaena is on hand to ask if it was "worth the price." Moody, I guess, but I wish there was more of a scene here. I believe this is the first time these two have ever talked to each other onscreen.

Episode Grade: C+

Episode Reviews:

• Episode 201, "A Son for a Son"
• Episode 202, "Rhaenyra the Cruel"
• Episode 203, "The Burning Mill"
• Episode 204, "The Red Dragon and the Gold"
• Episode 205, "Regent"
• Episode 206, "Smallfolk"
• Episode 207, "The Red Sowing"
• Episode 208, "The Queen Who Ever Was"

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