The second season of House of the Dragon premieres in just over a week, and some people have already gotten to watch the first two episodes. Black Girl Nerds put up a fantastic video where they interview members of the cast and crew about the Episodes 201 and 202, with host Jamie Broadnax asking some excellent questions and getting some excellent answers.
For instance, she gets House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal to describe a scene at the end of the season 2 premiere that clears up some questions we had about the timeline of this season. Beware SPOILERS below!
First, some background: At the end of season 1, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D'Arcy) sent her son Jacaerys Velaryon, aka Jace (Harry Collett) off on his dragon Vermax to personally enlist a few great lords of Westeros to her cause; she was on the brink of war then with her younger half-brother Aegon Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney), who had been crowned as king despite Rhaenyra's late father King Viserys I Targaryen (Paddy Considine) having promised her the throne. We know that Jace heads to the North where he treats with Lord Cregan Stark; that's Jace on the left in the photo above and Tom Taylor as Lord Cregan on the right.
Meanwhile, while Jace is gone, his little brother Lucerys (Elliot Grihault) goes to the nearby castle of Storm's End to enlist its lord to his mother's cause. But he runs into trouble when he finds that his uncle Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) is already there trying to do the same thing on behalf of King Aegon. Things are said, uncle and nephew both mount their dragons, and Lucerys ends up dead, what remains of his body and the body of his dragon Arrax crashing down to the bay below.
In the season 2 premiere, titled "A Son for a Son," we know that Rhaenya will mount her own dragon Syrax and go looking for Luke's body. There's even an official clip where Rhaenyra's husband Daemon (Matt Smith) and her cousin Rhaenys (Eve Best) discuss it. Now, thanks to Condal spilling to Broadnax, we know how this incident ends.
SPOILERS: What happens at the end of the House of the Dragon season 2 premiere
Condal sums things up like this: "At the end of Episode 1, where Rhaenyra has returned from her quest at Storm's End and returned with Luke's body and has now cleaned up and put herself together and is mourning in her bedchamber when Jace returns having flown in from the North and comes to try and report to his mother and they break down and they share that really really moving embrace together..."
So Jace will spend an episode in the North, but will return to his family's fortress at Dragonstone by the end of it. We previously learned that the season 2 premiere will pick up about "10 days" after the end of season 1. Presuming that Jace left Dragonstone a bit before this and that a bit more time will have passed by the end of the episode, his trip will probably have taken around two weeks. I'm also guessing that we won't see him visit Lady Jeyne Arryn in the Vale during this episode, although we know she'll turn up at some point, played by Amanda Collin.
As for that really really moving embrace Rhaenyra and Jace share, it probably looks like this:
Rhaenyra and Jace embrace pic.twitter.com/2byYDxKtwA
— Winter is Coming (@WiCnet) June 6, 2024
Rhaenyra lost her son and Jace his brother. That hits you in the heart. I suspect that Emma D'Arcy is talking about this scene in a recent interview: "There's a really sweet scene in this series where I'm basically just talking at Harry Collett, who plays Jace. He's very beautifully lit, and he doesn't really say very much; he just sort of watches me speak. He looked very beautiful, and I just kept thinking, like, 'What an extraordinary young man he's turning into.' And I genuinely found it very moving. And of course I'm not actually his parent...I was very very moved. His hair's amazing now."
His hair does look much better than it did in season 1. If you'll remember:
We'll see what else happens in the season premiere when House of the Dragon returns on Sunday, June 16.
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