Small Council: What did everyone think of the House of the Dragon season 2 premiere?

The second season of House of the Dragon kicked off this past Sunday with "A Son for a Son." What did we think? Read our takes below and be sure to give us yours in the comments!

DAN: I went on a journey with this episode. I was lucky enough to get a screener a bit early, and I watched it multiple times. The first time, I didn't much like it. Apart from the bits with Aegon, who I found hilarious in his well-meaning attempts to bumble through kinghood, much of the episode felt too slow for me, and a lot of the emotional scenes passed me by.

The second time I watched the episode, I liked it more, and the third and final time I was used to the rhythm and was moved by scenes like Rhaenyra finding Luke's remains and her sharing her grief with Jace. I saw more interesting undercurrents in the scenes with Team Green, and the section where the hired goons — who I think we can all just call Blood and Cheese even though they weren't technically named — broke into the Red Keep felt more tense.

And Aegon was still hilarious. I'm basically Team Green now because of him.

I think part of my reaction had to do with expectations. House of the Dragon hasn't aired a new episode in two years, and I expected its return to be more propulsive out of the gate. Once I shed that preconception, I was able to relax and enjoy it more. I think this touches on a bigger issue about huge tentpole shows like House of the Dragon taking longer and longer to put out new seasons, but that's beyond the scope of this blurb. I'm back on board now and it feels good.

Although even if this episode aired right after the season 1 finale, I still think I'd have some problems with how the Blood and Cheese scene went down. For a sequence where a mother watches her young son get decapitated, it felt strangely muted. I wasn't nearly as emotionally distraught as I should have been. I chock this gap up to the staging and direction. The sequence focused on Blood and Cheese's experience as they infiltrated the Red Keep, which was interesting, but I felt like it rushed through Helaena Targaryen's experience when she should have been at the center of everything. There was definitely a disconnect for me.

What did you all think of the episode? How did the Blood and Cheese play for those who read Fire & Blood vs those who didn't? It's good to be back!

JOEL: I felt Aegon was trying to do the right things and to be the kind of ruler is father was, but doesn't know how, and his personality tends toward weakness and it is not hard to imagine him failing ultimately.

Maybe the most interesting character is Alicent. She was used as a pawn in season 1 by her father and no one seems to be taking her advice or points of view seriously, even though she sits upon the Small Council. She is portrayed as lonely, frustrated, and as not having a voice in the running of the kingdom. Her affair with Sir Criston just amplifies this position. She knows it is wrong, as does Sir Criston, but neither can seem to help themselves and are left feeling guilty. Surely this affair will backfire on one or both of them.

ALEXANDRIA: I can’t wait to see Rhaenyra’s anger at Daemon after the ending to the episode. All Daemon knows is chaos. It’s why Viserys chose his daughter as his heir and not Daemon. He knew what he was doing — hiring mercenaries to sneak into the Red Keep and kill Aemond — would backfire, otherwise he would have said something to Rhaenyra. Now Rhaenyra has to clean up Daemon's mess again while still grieving the loss of her son.

I had to watch the final moments a few times to see if I was just anticipating the Blood and Cheese moment too much. In the end, I still feel like a lot is missing — and no, I don’t need to see the deaths of children. I needed more from Helaena. The show’s version of events has taken away the Sophie’s Choice moment Helaena has to face in the book, where she must choose which of her two sons Blood and Cheese will kill. Yes, losing a child is horrific and something no parent wants to go through, but having to choose between your children and then lose the one you didn't pick is far more horrific than what Helaena had to go through on the show. Reducing the moment and Helaena’s actions has reduced the impact, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to believe the next events for Helaena as much as I could in the book. My heart still goes out to her, but not at the same level as it did in the book.

FEDERICA: Let’s start with the end. Blood & Cheese was supposed to be the episode’s climax, but it felt incredibly underwhelming — not because “we don’t see” the murder happen, as some fans have lamented online (the gods know why anyone would ever want to see that), but because as terrible as murdering a little boy in cold blood can be, the audience is used to such cruelty and does not care enough about this little prince they’ve seen once, 20 minutes before he is killed.

I don’t have a qualm with Helaena’s reaction, I find her dissociation utterly believable, not only due to the shock, but also because to me it’s clear that she has already lived this moment in a prophetic dream and the lines between dream and reality is blurred.

At the other end of the murder we have Daemon, and I beg the writers to let him be Daemon Targaryen, not some tame version of him. Cut the ambiguity and give us unwashed Daemon, with the full spectrum of his emotions, his actions and their consequences.

I do think Rhaenyra and Jace had the most emotional scene in the episode. And please note how Rhaenyra only spoke one line this episode — “I want Aemond Targaryen” — but Emma D’Arcy still conveyed a spectacular performance.

I wonder if the writers making Aegon this episode’s comic relief is an attempt at making us all forget that he raped a girl not two episodes ago and was completely unapologetic about it, to the point where his own mother was disgusted. At any rate, being well-meaning towards a couple of peasants while hearing petitions doesn’t erase the fact that he’s willing to burn down entire villages for the sake of war.

Check out more of my thoughts about Alicent and Criston, Daemon and Mysaria in the book vs episode breakdown here.

CAMILA: Okay, let me get to the point: this premiere was tense. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t watch the second half of the episode, with the bits leading up to Blood and Cheese, with my glasses off and through my fingers. I don’t do well with suspenseful moments. Though there were some big changes from how it all goes down in Fire & Blood, I appreciated Phia Saban's reaction to seeing her child being killed in front of her in such a brutal and gruesome manner. The look in her eyes says everything we need to know about what’s going on in Helaena’s head. That makes the lack of her Sophie’s Choice moment acceptable to me. And the episode actually humanized the two men behind the murder. I understand a lot of folks had issues with this scene and call it anticlimatic, but I absolutely do not share that sentiment.

Aegon being a bit more relatable and sympathetic was a nice touch. Let’s not forget he initially did not want to be king. When he was hearing petitions, we see is that he is trying to do the right thing. He understands that he needs the people of King’s Landing on his side if he’s to win the war. Otto losing his patience with him and trying to overcorrect hit some buttons for me and has made me dislike him almost as much as I hate Crispy Cole.

All in all, I very much enjoyed the premiere. I enjoyed seeing Aemond walking around like nothing happened while this is all happening because of him. I enjoyed the new opening to the same intro song we’ve all come to love. But what I enjoyed most was the way Emma D’Arcy commanded this episode while only having one line. If that doesn’t scream power, I don’t know what does.

May episode 2 be just as good, if not better.

DANIEL: I’m pretty much in agreement with the rest of our Small Council that Blood and Cheese was underwhelming. I’ve already talked about it at length elsewhere, so I won’t go into it too much more here aside from saying that I actually did like the way the sequence followed their infiltration of the castle, but felt it totally dropped the ball when it came to adapting the angles of the scene that made it so chilling in the book. I have a feeling it may go over better with viewers who haven’t read Fire & Blood, but even then, I think the scene as a whole didn’t quite convey the brutality of what it was depicting well enough for it to land as strongly as it could have. Which is shame, because Phia Saban turned in a fantastic performance as Helaena.

The pacing of the episode didn’t bother me at all. Game of Thrones typically had slower, more intentional premieres as well, which set the chessboard for the conflicts to come. I like that House of the Dragon kept that sort of tone. And aside from Blood and Cheese, most of the emotional beats worked quite well for me. Rhaenyra and Jace’s scene together was heartbreaking, and her search for Luke’s remains was an inspired supplement to the episode’s book material. Abubakar Salim is a great addition to the series as Alyn of Hull, and I like how the show is already making his relationship with Corlys Velaryon more complex. And of course, Tom Glynn-Carney absolutely killed it as King Aegon the Magnanimous (or King Aegon the Dragonc*ck, depending on who you ask). He gave my favorite performance of the premiere by far. Can’t wait to watch his journey with the character this season!

I do wish we’d gotten a bit more of Cregan Stark, though. Or any time with Jeyne Arryn, whose hairdressers clearly worked magic on Jace’s locks between seasons 1 and 2. But these are the sorts of difficult calls the show has to make when it takes events which were all covered in one chapter of a book and then splits them between a season finale and a season premiere with a two-year gap in between. There are no easy decisions in Westeros!

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.