‘House Of The Dragon’ Season 2, Episode 1 Recap And Review: Blood And Cheese

House Of The Dragon returned Sunday night, after a nearly two-year hiatus, with a grim reminder of the kind of fantasy series this show is going to be. Season 1 wasn’t particularly cheerful, but Season 2 is already off to an even bleaker and more depraved start.

That’s not a bad thing. ‘A Son For A Son’ is a brilliant season premiere. We’re ushered back to Westeros—200 years before the events of Game Of Thrones—rather gently at first, with our first glimpse of Winterfell and the North since the final season of the original series. It feels a little bit like coming home.

Certainly the Starks of Winterfell are much the same as Ned and his brood. Here we see the elder Valeryon son, Jace (Harry Collett) joining Lord Cregan Stark (Tom Taylor) on a chilly tour of The Wall. Stark tells the young man that he’s loyal to Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) but cannot spare his soldiers so close to winter which, he reminds us, is coming. Jace scoffs at Stark defending the North from “wildlings and the weather” and Stark, every bit as dour as one would hope from a Northern lord, tells him it’s not just these threats they and the Night’s Watch defend against. “What then?” Jace asks. “Death,” the Stark lord replies. Never change, Starks of Winterfell.

It’s actually a little funny how little anything has changed in Westeros when you really think about it. In 200 years, Starks will still be the masters of Winterfell and Lannisters will still be the wealthy lords of Casterly Rock and the Targaryens will still be as white-haired as ever. The same armaments will be used. Technology will have all but stood still over the intervening centuries.

If I have any complaints at all about House of the Dragon, this might be the one. Two centuries, even in a fantasy version of Medieval times, should result in vast change. Great Houses fall. New institutions are born. War and technological advancement and the end of bloodlines and any other innumerable factors reshape society over such a long stretch of time. In Westeros, the only thing that really changes is that in Rhaenyra’s day there were dragons. By the time Daenerys is born, they’re all dead and forgotten. But the ships are still the same and Scorpions still guard the walls of King’s Landing.

I digress. It’s something I suspect very few people care about. It’s not something that diminishes my enjoyment of the show. I just find myself wondering about it, probably because I have before as a fantasy fan, having read histories of the Plantagenets and other dynasties and eras.

In any case, Cregan Stark is our first new major character added to Season 2, but not the only one. We also have Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim) who we’re introduced to as he works to repair the ship of Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint). I’m very happy to see Salim in this series, as I loved his work in Raised By Wolves and elsewhere, and because on top of being a terrific actor he has such a terrific voice. I won’t spoil who exactly Alyn of Hull is and why he’s such a significant character, though perhaps you can guess by the reaction the Sea Snake seems to have when speaking with him.

Alyn has a brother named Addam, and while those two names are quite similar they’re not so challenging as Erryk and Arryk Cargyll (Luke Tittensor) the twin Kingsguard, now separated by dueling allegiances to Team Black and Team Green (Rhaenyra vs Aegon).

It is probably not lost on anyone that this season premiere is designed to challenge our sense of which side ought to be considered the “good guys” and which the “bad guys” and I will come right out and say it: The answer is “neither.” Both these sides are peopled with honorable and brave knights and ladies, and both are filled with vengeful, wicked and violent knights and ladies. And advisers. And dragons. Unlike Game Of Thrones, where there were plenty of “grey” characters but also plenty of heroic and villainous ones, House of the Dragon is far less cut and dry.

In Sunday’s episode, we see Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) holding court for the smallfolk, and much like his father trying to do his best to treat them well and with honor and generosity—ironically living up to his “Magnanimous” title that a friend bestowed upon him in a spur of the moment announcement. He is reigned in by his Hand, the ever-scheming Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) but it’s hard not to see the good in him, even if during the Small Council he clearly has little taste for governance, and would rather spoil his son, Jaehaerys.

And then there is the horrific scene that closes this evening’s episode, in which Daemon (Matt Smith) employs two vagabonds to sneak into the Red Keep and kill Aemond (Ewan Mitchell). These men are Blood—a disgraced city guardsman—and Cheese—a ratcatcher. In Martin’s book Fire & Blood, which this show is based on, the story of these men and their brutal murder of Aegon’s son was told by the court jester, Mushroom, and some of the more colorful lines in the show are plucked directly from Mushroom’s mouth.

In the book, Daemon does not instruct the killers to find and slay Aemond. Rather, it is left unclear who the intended target was. Perhaps Aegon himself, though he was likely too heavily guarded for two scoundrels.

I’ve been dreading this scene’s arrival in House of the Dragon since I read the book, but it plays out very differently here, though in the same spirit. In the book, Blood and Cheese find Alicent and tie her up, gagging her and killing her guard. They then wait until Helaena (Phia Saban) arrives with her three children, including the two-year-old Maelor. They then give her a choice between the two boys. “Pick,” they tell her, “or we kill them all.” She picks Maelor, and Cheese turns to the toddler and says “You hear that, little boy? Your momma wants you dead.” Then Blood cuts off Jaehaerys’s head with a single blow, and they flee with the head, leaving everyone else alive.

Here, because it’s TV and HBO and that means we need gratuitous sex, Helaena is the only adult present and she flees to her mother’s chambers, where Alicent (Olivia Cooke) is having sex with the execrable Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), saying only “They killed the boy.” Alicent’s horrified face is the last thing we see before the credits roll.

This show is very bleak, but no more so than George R.R. Martin’s source material.

All told, a terrific if very somber and disturbing season premiere. I didn’t find it too slow at all. I’ve been rewatching Game Of Thrones and I think there’s a bit of an adjustment you have to make between the two shows despite the shared setting, and similar music and aesthetic. Thrones, for all the horrors that befall our favorite characters, is still heroic fantasy at its core. House of the Dragon is much more grimdark. It’s a story of civil war where no sides come out with clean hands and everyone is consumed by rage and grief and vengeance. It’s great television, but it sure isn’t uplifting in any sense of the word.

Scattered thoughts:

• The dragons are always cool, and I thought they were very well-done here. Most of the shots of the dragons were from a distance, almost as if we were being teased.
• I subscribe to Max on Amazon Prime Video and neither the “previously on” or the preview of the next episode had any sound. This confused the hell out of me! What gives?
• Rhaenyra didn’t do much this episode, other than find the charred remains of her son Lucerys and then tell Daemon she wanted Aemond dead. I suspect we’ll get a lot more of her next week. I’m very curious how they treat her character going forward in the show and whether they’ll stick to the book or make her more of a protagonist we can root for.

I’ll add any other scattered thoughts I have if I think of more to say. For now, what did you think of this episode? Let me know on Twitter and Facebook.