Milly Alcock was "eager" to come back to House of the Dragon

In last night's new episode of House of the Dragon, "The Burning Mill," we got a surprise appearance from Milly Alcock, the actress who played Young Rhaenyra Targaryen for the first half of the show's first season. She showed up in a dream sequence; Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) had taken the spooky castle of Harrenhal and found himself wandering its damp halls at night. He stumbled on a room where a young Rhaenyra was sewing the head back onto the body of Prince Jaehaerys Targaryen, who was killed in the season 2 premiere by assassins sent by Daemon. "Always coming and going, aren't you?" Rhaenyra tells him. "And I have to clean up afterwards."

The dream is obviously about guilt; Daemon must feel bad about his assassins veering off course and murdering a child. Wouldn't you? As for why Rhaenrya appears as a younger woman, showrunner Ryan Condal told Entertainment Weekly that it has to do with unresolved issues Daemon has from earlier in his life.

"Instead of warfare or dragons or images of horror, it was really more of him being haunted by these people who he had done wrong by in his past, particularly young Rhaenyra," Condal said. "That's the girl who took his claim, not elder Rhaenyra, played by Emma D'Arcy. It's that version of Rhaenyra that removed him as the heir to the throne, and then was named heir and took his claim. As you'll see his story at Harrenhal unfold, there is an element of Daemon having to reckon with his past and choices that he's made and things that he's done."

In the trailer for the next episode, there's a brief shot of Daemon in the Iron Throne room, which isn't really something he could do in the flesh right now, so it looks like these dream sequences will continue:

Keeping Milly Alcock's cameo a secret was the show's "greatest feat"

As for getting Milly Alcock to come back and play Rhaenyra, apparently it was an easy sell. "We were excited about the prospect. Milly was eager to come back and everybody was excited to have her back," Condal said. "She's very busy, so it was a tricky thing to navigate around the schedule, but we essentially had her in for a couple of days right at the start of production."

Specifically, Alcock is busy making a Supergirl, a brand new DC movie where she plays the title role. It's great that she took a bit of time away from that to reconnect with her old buddies from Westeros. The harder challenge was making sure that her cameo didn't leak ahead of time. "I think one of our greatest feats was keeping that a secret all the way through, given the fact that it happened right at the beginning," Condal said.

To seal the deal, everyone lied through their teeth. While the first season was going on, Condal said that he had no plans to bring back Alcock or Emily Carey, who played the younger version of Alicent Hightower, in House of the Dragon season 2, although he clarified that he wasn't "closing the door on anything." Meanwhile, Alcock herself flatly denied that she would return. “No. It’s done," she said early in 2023.

I guess it's possible they didn't know at those points that a cameo was a possibility, but the it's fun to point out the denials in light of the new scene, so let us have this.

Will Milly Alcock pop up again? My gut says no, but after this I wouldn't put anything past the producers. New episodes of House of the Dragon drop Sunday nights on HBO and Max.

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