Editor’s note: The beneath includes spoilers for House of the Dragon Season 2, Episode 4.

For much more than one particular cause, an uneasy but anticipatory aura hovered more than House of the Dragon‘s sophomore season. Fans of George R. R. Martin‘s A Song of Ice and Fire novels knew that an infamously violent plot twist was on Season 2’s quick radar: Blood and Cheese, named right after the perpetrators of toddler (and heir to the Iron Throne) Jaehaerys Targaryen’s murder. In December 2022, Dragon writer Sara Hess teased the series’ strategy as not “disappoint[ing],” and some readers placed Blood and Cheese in the similar category as Game of Thrones‘s series-defining Red Wedding — an unforeseen occasion with an effect (at the danger of hyperbole) that is pretty much not possible to underestimate. House Frey massacring the Stark loved ones modifications Game of Thrones‘ narrative trajectory by definitively proving that no character has plot armor and upending the war by wiping out half the significant players.

Even even though Blood and Cheese pushes the Dance of the Dragons toward its breaking point, House of the Dragon‘s depiction entails characters we have not spent intimate time with. Compared to our attachment to the Starks, it is no Red Wedding. Instead, the battle of Rook’s Rest in Season 2, Episode 4 is House of the Dragon‘s accurate Red Wedding equivalent. The series’ initial dragon battle unfolds like a horror film inescapable dread pervades Rook’s Rest from conceit to conclusion, every single improvement escalates the skin-crawling tension, and the final results are a needless slaughter each vast and individual adequate to rival the Red Wedding. Rhaenys Targaryen’s (Eve Best) death hits the hardest for the reason that we’ve recognized her due to the fact Episode 1, but the wider devastation wrought by this opening dragon salvo tends to make Rook’s Rest Dragon‘s watershed tragedy: a gut-punch hinging on intense individual loss.

House of the Dragon

The reign of House Targaryen starts with this prequel to the common HBO series Game of Thrones. Based on George R.R. Martin’s Fire &amp Blood, House of the Dragon is set almost 200 years prior to Game of Thrones, telling the story of the Targaryen civil war with King Viserys.

Release Date

August 21, 2022

Creator

Ryan J. Condal, George R.R. Martin

Main Genre

Drama

Seasons

4

Distributor

HBO

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What Makess ‘House of the Dragon’s Battle of Rook’s Rest Good?

House of the Dragon Season 1’s timing constraints — i.e., juggling characters and time skips — place Blood and Cheese at a disadvantage. The series does not genuinely introduce the victim, King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Queen Helaena’s (Phia Saban) young son Jaehaerys, or Aegon’s affection for his heir, till the really episode in which Jaehaerys is murdered. The tragedy’s central characters merely are not provided adequate improvement for the weight of Jaehaerys’ loss to register.

By the time the Red Wedding happens, Game of Thrones has spent two-and-a-half seasons exploring House Stark’s just about every intimacy. Robb (Richard Madden) and Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley) are day-one particular regulars caught in a predicament that invites concern from the initial moment. That ominous atmosphere grows unsettling hint by unsettling hint — one thing is just incorrect — till the Freys strike. The Red Wedding remains outstanding for its merciless cruelty. Viewers grieve Robb and Catelyn for the reason that we spent hours exploring their complexity prior to they fell to enemy blades.

Rook’s Rest ends with related untold casualties, chief amongst them Rhaenys, a prevalent fan-preferred due to the fact Season 1’s premiere. Any “wins” come at the expense of the fallen, and this currently bleak war will under no circumstances be the similar. Appropriately, the create-up to Rook’s Rest breeds dread. Rhaenys, getting volunteered to lead Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen’s (Emma D’Arcy) initial deployment of their dragons, buries her face in her dragon Meleys’s side. The vulnerable and tender moment underscores the emotional bond in between dragon and rider and humanizes these hulking, fire-breathing creatures. And if the often stalwart Rhaenys is gathering her courage for what she intuits is her final stand, then House of the Dragon is foretelling doom. Until now, no longstanding character has entered a reputable life-or-death predicament.

‘House of the Dragon’ Makes Rook’s Rest Suspenseful

Game of Thrones viewers know that the Dance of the Dragons is a doomed affair. Nonetheless, Rhaenyra’s reluctance to weaponize their dragons sets the stakes. As Rhaenyra tells her son Jacaerys (Harry Collett) about the Song of Ice and Fire prophecy, explaining that dragons must be cautiously made use of protectors of the realm, Rhaenys and Meleys depart Dragonstone and Rook’s Rest’s meager defenses prepare for Ser Criston Cole’s (Fabien Frankel) approaching army.

The current, pretty much preternatural apprehension builds with every single new element the episode introduces. If the Red Wedding makes use of suspicious behavior and “The Rains of Castemere” as portents of doom, House of the Dragon reveals that Cole and Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) laid a trap at Rook’s Rest they want to lure a dragon to its death. Once Rhaenys arrives, Aemond’s dragon, Vhagar, rises from the ground like a chameleon blended into the surrounding forest, and the weight of her movement ripples by means of the trees. Vhagar killing Lucerys Velaryon (Elliot Grihault) has ensured the ancient dragon’s presence as an active threat. Once Aegon impulsively joins the fray atop his dragon Sunfyre, even so, Rhaenys’s impending battle becomes two against one particular. But, in yet another twist, Aemond pauses — elevating the sequence’s lurking suspense. When and how will Vhagar seem?

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None of Cole’s martial victories top up to Rook’s Rest involved dragons. When Vhagar does join the fight, her size overwhelms the minuscule soldiers. Cole is not ready for this level of warfare, let alone Aemond targeting Aegon more than Rhaenys. Once Rhaenys and Aemond engage, the soldiers crane their necks from the ground and stare in increasing horror. And when Meleys effectively spirals Vhagar to the ground, the enormous dragon impacts like a detonated bomb. Countless soldiers die miserable deaths, either crushed beneath Vhagar’s stomping feet or immolated by her indiscriminate blaze. House of the Dragon‘s initial dragon brawl trades the entertaining fight one particular could count on for the horrifying gravity of these in energy abusing their energy. The outcome is senseless carnage no man can match a dragon.

Rhaenys’s Death Is ‘House of the Dragon’s Biggest Loss

Even even though Aegon suffers a case of “what goes around comes around” in this episode, we pretty much really feel for him throughout Aemond’s attack. His mother Alicent (Olivia Cooke) tells him he’s worthless, and now his brother burns him to a living crisp. However, when it comes to counting the battle’s expense, absolutely nothing matches Rhaenys for character longevity and emotional attachment. Despite losing the crown, the Queen Who Never Was often carries herself with nobility. Her words hold the weight of seasoned wisdom. She loves her loved ones and has advised Rhaenyra about the inevitable fate awaiting her as heir due to the fact Rhaenyra’s naive girlhood unintimidated by male posturing, Rhaenys understands the globe in methods patriarchal privilege forbids males from comprehending. She sides with Rhaenyra for the reason that it is the only upstanding selection, even even though her son Leanor’s (John Macmillan) death hangs in between the two girls. Throughout Season 2, she’s been Rhaenyra’s most steadfast ally and advisor, a mentor capable of honesty, empathy, and respect. Her earlier moment with Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim) in Episode 4 testifies to her outstanding character and tenacious will.

Rhaenys knows that Rook’s Rest is a sacrifice play and does not hesitate. She’s the Blacks’ very best combatant, and the move guarantees her queen and her grandchildren’s security for one particular much more day. As such, Rhaenys’s dignity prevails repeatedly throughout Rook’s Rest. Each time she could flee, every single time she emerges unscathed from a dragon fight lengthy adequate to draw a shuddering breath and give the audience hope, she resolves herself and returns to battle. As Rhaenys searches for a hidden Vhagar, the tension stretches like a rubber band prepared to snap like the shark from Jaws, it is the understanding-filled waiting. Vhagar rearing up to snap Meleys’s neck is a jump scare all also reminiscent of Luke’s death and the culmination of Rook’s Rest. Rhaenys marks House of the Dragon‘s initial loss of a longstanding character, and the wrenching consequences are gutting, quick, and individual on a level that Blood and Cheese merely could not handle.

The Tragedy of Rook’s Rest Goes Beyond Rhaenys

It would’ve been fitting for Episode 4 to finish with Rhaenys and Meleys crashing into the castle’s battlements. Instead, Cole wakes to a blistered black ground littered with charred corpses and piles of ash. He touches one particular of his soldier’s armored shoulders only for the cindered physique to crumble apart Cole’s hand hangs in the empty air. We never know these canon fodder soldiers, but we know the overconfident Cole, and he’s shaken by catastrophic destruction beyond his imaginings.

Barely capable to stumble up a hill, Cole finds Aegon inside a copse of burning trees, prone inside the circle of Sunfyre’s alive but shattered physique. The extent of Aegon’s injuries is not revealed, but Cole drops to his knees, his white Kingsguard cloak pretty much lost in the smoke-shrouded forest. For all Aegon’s flaws, a character whose vulnerabilities Season 2 has exposed lies fallen all for the reason that Cole tempted a dragon into battle. For Team Black, the consequences are incalculable: Rhaenyra has lost her strongest confidant and warrior, Corlys (Steve Toussaint) his wife, and Jace and Baela (Bethany Antonia) their grandmother. Rhaenys’s loss ripples all through just about every aspect of the series in the similar way as the Red Wedding, and the haunting aftermath of an impulsively made use of dragon tends to make one particular factor clear: each sides invested also considerably into Rook’s Rest and lost much more than the gamble was worth.

New episodes of House of the Dragon Season 2 premiere Sundays on HBO and Max.

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