'House of the Dragon’ Season 3, Episode 3 Deep Dive

(clock ticking) - Greetings. And welcome to House of R, a ringer versus podcast on the ringer podcast network. I'm Mallory Rubin. Joining me today, we are a wash in dilemmas and deficiencies. - It's Joanna Robinson. - Who else is joining us today? - Preston, you're right. - Yeah. - Big moment for Preston. - It's a big rad episode. So we thought we'd give Preston a place of prominence on the table here. - Yeah, guys, where's the lower third to identify Preston and share his social handles? We are here, of course, to dive deep, or family deep. Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep into episode three of season three of House of the Dragon, Renera triumphant. We will get right to it after this. (upbeat music) - All right, as usual, that was a lie. We're gonna do programming reminders first before we get into anything. Here's what's coming next week is a busy week. I believe that we are publishing five podcasts next week on this feed. Is that true? We will have. (laughing) - Nice, just on so wide. - Relatively quiet week this week with just the old two. But, coming up, talk to Thrones on Sunday night on the very special guest. - That's right, special guest. - CR, for the first time ever, won't be on Talk to Thrones. - He's in Canada. - I'm not totally rolling out that he's like, guys. I've learned how quickly Dragons move. I'm flying in, I'm back. - Okay, we'll see. - On Dragon, waiting from Toronto. Okay. - Maybe it'll just be a text or two to read, who can say? We'll have a special guest on Sunday for Talk to Thrones and then we will, of course, be back with our deep dive on episode four on Tuesday evening next week. In addition to that, list stop. We did not get to list stop this week. We had an unavoidable scheduling conflict that there was nothing to be done. There was nothing to be done, but we will be back for episode, a quick catch up on episode five and then episode six, which will be the newest episode. We'll be hitting them both inside of one pod. - We meet Akasha in episode five. We will talk about it. - We can't wait, can't wait. Only a couple episodes left of that, which is very sad, sad. And then it's a big Nolan week for us because we have one episode left in our Nolan Revisited project, Oppenheimer. - And then, of course, next week is the release of a little movie you might have heard of called The Odyssey, which we've seen. - Which we've seen in Guess what? It was fucking great. - Oh my God. (laughing) - I was so good. - So it all goes according to plan. We have a special guest for Talk to Thrones and a special guest for Oppenheimer. And then the special guest is us for The Odyssey and also Homer, Homer always welcome on this podcast. - Always, Opie and Adi Week. - You can't make that fetch happen. You keep trying in our text. - We'll see. - You're very influential. - Maybe you can. - I had forgotten I will say how often they actually call him Opie in the movie. And so I think I'm halfway there. - Okay. - I am just like the audio. - You can make audio happen. - It's only been like a few years since that story's been out in the ether and I don't know. It's still new. - He's due for a rebrand. - Yes, new. How can everyone follow along, Joe? - Oh wow, great question. If you wanna see our shining slightly sunburned faces. - Lightly. (laughing) - Slightly. (laughing) - And also. - I spent the entire weekend exposing my skin to Dragon Flame, aka the sun here in Los Angeles. And I'm at that fun stage where I'm still freshly sunburned but also appealing. - And all the nice. You can't see a single peel. All people can see is their youthful glow. And then press dead if you wanna see Preston's place of prominence on the table this week. - Right, yes. - You can watch us on YouTube. - That's right. - You can watch us on Spotify. - That's right. - You can follow us on our relatively recent handles at house of R, not outhouse of R. - No, but someone did create that handle. - It's do we knew you weren't bad, babies? - I was like, should we do it? And then I was like, no one will actually do it, but then they did it. So Carlos really delighted in texting us about that. - So Instagram, TikTok, email us, hobbits, and drag into Demo.com. We got a lot of great emails for this bit. Spectacular episode of House of the Dragon. Plus a few critiques from folks as well. We wanna get into all of that. So that is how folks can follow along. And just follow the pod, what about that? - Yeah, follow the pod. - Do it. - Subscribe. - Yeah. - Like, great. - Smash that like and subscribe button, why not? - Do it. Spoiler warning. For today's episode, obviously anything that happened in the third episode of season three of House of the Dragon, fair game today. If it's ever happened in another episode of Game of Thrones television, either in Game of Thrones or in Night of the Seven Kingdoms, it could come up today. In terms of the text, you know what? I would say honestly a little lighter than usual, maybe in the main section of the pod, in terms of passage. - Way lighter than usual, 'cause there's, we are well off, we're on the map, but off the map of-- - Do you want to break out the map? - I don't, don't just right here. I think I need to redraw it for next time. But, yeah, this is not really a, this is like one of our favorite episodes of House of the Dragon and it is I think extremely faithful to George R. Martin's themes and also has barely anything to do with anything that happens in Fire of Love. - So if you were passages as we go, then maybe on a usual deep dive, but if you're wondering about any book spoilers, fear not, those will all be sectioned off at the end in a separate zippy book spoiler section. We'll warn you right before we start that section and get a helpful, terrifying sound effect. - You'll be able to decide. This might not be sort of a faithful, direct line-to-line adaptation of something in the book, but the seeds are being sold. - Wow, that's a lot. - The seeds are being sold. - Yes, there is time aplenty in the coming days to discuss the royal tipple. - But for now, it's time to pod. Let's get to the opening snapshot. (dramatic music) - Shh, okay. Season three, episode three, Renera triumphant. - 56 minutes. Still a full media hour, a very media episode. All conversations. - This was a great lake. Ooh, shorter runtime, oh my God, my Google Doc is nine times. (laughing) We always love when that happens. Joanna, we were one week off in our episode name title, guess. - Me, that was my guess. - Renera triumphant, one week off, but here it is, delightful. Do you feel prepared to guess the rest of the episode titles for the remaining? - Absolutely. - What is it, how many we have left? We have got five left this season and eight next season. - Let's make it a bit on Talk The Thrones every week for us to guess. - Great. - And do you wrong? - We never know. - Yeah, when she sat her shapely butt on the throne in episode two, I was like, here she is. - Renera triumphant, 'cause that's what the section of the book is called. - Yes. - But they saved it for here, which is much better because you're like, Renera triumphant. (laughing) Triumphant. - Triumphant, great stuff. And we are back with the duo that brought us the second episode of the season, which we also adored. This is once again written by Sarah Hess and directed by Claire Killner. They're both EPs. - So. - Claire has directed some of our favorite episodes. Sarah is also the co-head writer of the show. So the squad, the dynamic duo is back and you can feel it. - I'm tremendously happy to see Sarah Hess's name on these two episodes, 'cause she gets a lot of grief from the cranky fandom for some reason. I don't know why a lot of it gets, well, I do know why. A lot of it gets sort of shuffled up on her. But, you know, I thought this episode was fantastic. - Yes. - Really fantastic. - Wonderful. Tell me more, give me your quick opening snapshot table setting. Takes in case anyone didn't already watch Talk to Friends. I mean, what are you doing? Go watch. But also, let's not assume they have. Let's just tell them again. - Sure. - Why did you love this episode of television? Why did you love this episode of House of the Dragon? - Yeah, wow. - Great question. - Hey, thanks. - Thanks so much for asking them. - It's an honor and a privilege to throw that your way and hear what you have to say. - Thank you. (laughing) - I think, you know, as we talked about on Talk of Thrones, the way in which this is an unusual, it's like just a swing. It feels like a swing from the show. And, you know, Game of Thrones definitely took narrative swings, but it didn't usually take like formal in terms of like the form of the thing swings. Other than I would say like wins a winter, that section of wins a winter, which you and I both really like. So like that, I think I would like of this most too. That unusual stretch inside of that episode of Game of Thrones. And so to open wide the possibilities of what they could do in the future. I saw a lot of book fans really excited that this felt like to them like, what a POV chapter feels like in a lot of a song of ice and fire. And then as we discussed on Talk of Thrones and as many people in the fandom have mentioned, this feels like the kind of treatment that Daenerys Targaryen deserved on Game of Thrones, which is just sort of like a more thoughtful, slow role, examination of the toll that it can take to be a Targaryen at all, to be a woman trying to rule to be all kinds of things and just the reality of ruling and all these other pressures. So I just thought it was fantastic. Like really, really good stuff. And as we've been talking about since, you know, the very first season, Fire and Blood is a story told by a bunch of snide gossipy dudes about like a bunch of bros being like, so these, you know, bitch queens, et cetera. The corticons. Yeah, you and me. I'm gonna keep going with that until you agree to put it on the march. Yep, 'cause you've been very resistant. Yeah, bitch queens, I will. Bitch fist. I would, but Court of Communities is a no. - The pitchfist, I feel like, is really embedded into the DNA of the podcast. - But it's just sort of like, okay, you know, and as we talked about a lot in our separate coverage of Thrones, or talked about some, you know, that was a show primarily written by and directed by men. And not to say they didn't do some tremendous storytelling work with a lot of their female characters, some of our favorite characters of all time. But the contributions from women in the writing staff and the directing staff were laughably low. And, you know, here we have two backed back episodes written and directed by women. And again, we got some listener feedback that not everyone loved every single choice that was made around sort of the gendered aspect of ruling, we can talk about all of that. But I'm just really excited to have this team of creatives considering the length and breadth and depth of Red Nira, with a performer like Emma Darcy at the wheel of all of it is fantastic. - It really does feel like we're being treated to the performance for the ages. And I think Emma has been sensational since, you know, the first episode, episode six of season one, but this season is just astonishing. I think the story sort of put them as a performer in a tough spot in terms of showing us everything that they could do. And here, it's just a, you know, much deserved spotlight for an incredible performer. I was telling someone yesterday, I was like, I think Emma Darcy might be one of our best actors, just like full stop. But I would like to see, I know they've done some theater, but I would be really eager to see sort of more of, I'm excited to see what they do sort of post-Renira going forward. - Same. - Also an incredible showcase this episode for Matt Smith as usual and I can't wait to see what he does on Quinn. - I think the, we've been sharing a lot of texts about Quinn. - That was the fastest I've ever guessed who they were doing. 'Cause it was like one glimpse of an ear and I was like, I know that ear. - Yeah, this is finally when I take the plunge, I think. - Really? I think so. I've wanted to check it out for, I mean, they almost got me with Jamie with Vecna. They almost got me with the heated rivalry boys. They've almost gotten me so many times. I had not seen summer I turned pretty, so that was while I was intrigued by the, just kind of, you don't know what your team, Connor and Team Jeremiah. - Well, I feel like I know. - Yeah, you, I feel like I know. - Yeah, you, you have a head on your shoulders. Should we do, so for people who don't know, Quinn is audio-erotica? - That's right. - Narrated most recently by famous men, Sean had a sea of the pit, did one. - Yeah. - Yes, they got Jamie Campbell-Bauer, Vecna himself to do one. So, have you listened to any? - I've not. - Okay, should we make, should we do the first one? - Maybe, like in, during a quadruple close down. - I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. - By any time, Panic, thank you. But the five of us is to enjoy it, just for the sheer pleasure. - No, we're pleasure. - I think we should definitely do like a Quinn episode. - At least. - Pennsylvania for next Valentine's Day. - At least by next February, that's what I was gonna say. - Here's the scary thing. It's somehow July. - And so next February will be upon us before we fucking know it. And those podcasts are always a treat and a joy. So great, Carlos, if you wanna just add that to the schedule right now, Quinn, Adi, - Good to you, I'm gonna go for the next Me Day, Quikki. It's always nice to get ahead on the plan. - Yeah. I also just loved this episode. - Did we get Quinn's sponsor? - Quinn, call us. - Yeah. - We're your target demo, I think. - I like how, maybe in part, because it is a person's name, I'm like treating Quinn a brand and coming as one person. - Yeah. - Quinn, call us. - I mean, she'll be on the phone soon. (laughing) - I thought this episode was wonderful as well. I enjoyed, you know, it's always fun to hear. We talked about this last episode. What were some of the King Kong and Kill Bill, like, insposed with the creative team we're citing. It was fun this time across the various, you know, making of House of Dragons built inside of the episode, et cetera, Adi here. Things like, you know, West Wing, which I think you and Chris had both invoked on Talk to Thrones, but also something like Conclave, like, a more recent film that I really enjoyed. I thought that was really interesting, or as Charles put it on the big picture, the Catholic voting room, I mean, it's an accurate description. It's an accurate description. I love that film, Shout Out Reef Fines. One of the great loves of my life, as you know. As you know, I agree with everything you said. I thought this was wonderful. The writing was sensational. The performances were great. The focus and kind of tone and vibe. The way that the visual directing choices and treatment signaled certain things to us in key moments. But also, like, you know, you called this out at the beginning of Talk to Thrones. And this was something I think we were all really struck by the sound design of the score is always great. But these moments where there's a heartbeat in Renier's ear and the combination of the visual fog and he's coupled with that sense of, like, something pressing in on you. And when is that stress? Something feeling overwhelming about your day? When is it doubt? And uncertainty, the different, like, treatments and aspects from the craft perspective in this episode that signaled something to us about where the characters were really expert? And just like, again, we talked about this on Talk to Thrones, but I think it would feel weird to not say it on the deep dive as well, where we have been talking about this George R. Martin quote for, like, five years of podcast together to get a real, like, made in the image of what was Aragorn's Tax Policy episode of House of the Dragon, where George, as we love to mention, in this Rolling Stone interview in 2014, kind of explained a little bit of the ethic behind the way that he thinks about not only Rolling is hard, right? That's a direct quote from that larger quote, Rolling is hard. But the kind of thing he wants to focus on in his story, which is the level of detail, the burden, the kind of decision that rulers have to make. Even though, like you said earlier, it's an episode where maybe we're not gonna have as many direct little things from fire and blood to payer. In some ways, it's, like, the truest form of adaptation because it's the adaptation of the spirit of the exercise. - I really think it's just the mo-- And it's, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how the House of the Dragon creative team is feeling with the reception of these episodes. But I've been thinking, it's been on my mind because George came out so strongly against them. And then there was all this sort of chatter about the previous season. For them to amidst all of that, put their head down and make these episodes. And for these episodes to be the last two, some of their finest work, and I've heard really good things about four, you know? And so it's just like, that's impressive. Don't give up, just keep going. - George, arm arm himself might call you trash. And you're like, guess what? Here's a diamond, George. We made something that is so dedicated to your fondest intellectual and emotional pursuits in terms of your creativity. We made you this. You're not gonna like it, but we made it. And it's for you and it's for your fans. And I just think, what if he loves it? I, what if he's talking about the little baby orcs and their cradles and also loving this episode? - Will he blog about it? Do you think, if he does? - I feel like they're probably like, don't blog about how I see the dragon. And that message came from like KCB goal professional. So it's just my guess, but I knew the fuck knows. I feel like for any or see in KCB boys, they're just sort of like, is there a way we can just like, get that blog, entire blog, remove from the internet? - Good old, not a blog. I love when he rips off a football blog. - Yeah. - Get some jets or giants takes in there. Back in the day when he was like, just crutching, Daniel Jones and Sam Darnell tape. What a time that was to be on the internet. My goodness. - I really agree. - I know you've always been a big Danny Dimes tape cruncher. - Absolutely. - Yeah, absolutely. So you got a couple questions on the, on what we like to call the BB wise, 'cause we're our starwars fans. But how long has this been going on? What was the question we got? How long since Viserys died? - Well, we get the sum months directly from high septum ballman in this episode. - Right. So 129 AC is when Viserys dies. And 130 AC is when Renera takes the throne. So some months, some months. - Jace died, would you say like a couple days ago? - Yes. And it was a couple days that Ulf and Hugh were like, we're gonna wait. - Yeah, and then we're gonna piece it out. - The amount of time that Ulf and Hugh and Adam hung out, I love that you didn't implicate Adam, even though he was there. - He was blameless. - Ulf and Hugh and Adam were hanging out near Heron Hall. That's how many days has been since Jace died, right? So something to think about in terms of what might be on Renera's mind. - That's right. - Yeah. - Fresh and the grief, but also missing gold. And people lining up with petitions for now the ruling queen. And what should we do about there? And every advisor has a question that everyone in the hall has a comment about the candles. A lot to do. - Do as is long. - Do you think. - Yeah. - Anyone ever asked King Angon Targaryen about the candles or King Viserys Targaryen about the candles? Why are we asking the fucking queen about the candles? - Wow. - And it's a good and fair question. However, I would offer as a follow up, why does Renera not have a, why is Renera not more prepared for this? Why are they all not working? - Oh, absolutely. Like we're not gonna bring the council from drag and so 'cause they suck and they do. No consideration for the fact that the prior regime might have taken the gold. - No plan for the coffers being empty. No consideration for anything. There's a lot to get through, but also there would have been more things to anticipate. As usual, I put a lot of the Sumpa Sarah's for not properly preparing Renera for anything. - Well, absolutely. I can't remember if I included in the outline today, but we got some emails from people who like sort of went back through and looking at like. What was Ranera doing when she was a cup bearer in those small cancel meetings and like, what's true is that Ranera? Young Ranera are like a hot blooded that she was, is she like wanting to be on her dragon and she wanted to be like doing and like, fighting and like, adventuring and like, and the bowels of a pleasure that they're on goal and staring at me fat out. Being Kristen Kohl and like, you know, doing whatever she wanted, drew the line at Aranges in Cinnamon though. But like, I do criticize Viserys, I loved criticize Viserys for not preparing her enough. But also was she not, like, a very assiduous student at the same time in terms of like, observing this sort of thing. But yeah, you know, and I will give Ranera, you know, when, when Cerleth, there's like, hey man, I'm a gold cloak. What am I doing is ahead of your queen's guard. She's like, let's get Damon to like, she's like, let's delegate some work to some people. She's trying. But I just still cannot understand the audacity of people in the hallway being like, what do we do about the candles, Ranera? I was like, are you kidding? The candle one coupled, like, I think immediately after that with, I mean, you know, the greens and the arbor and the price of wine, it's tripled. It's like, that for sure, someone else can deal with. For sure, that said, difficult to have faith in limited set of counselors already. And more difficult still. And we're going to get into some of the details and maybe reads on the episode where you could say actually was this what was happening with Desiree and instead, I will say my one critique on the episode, and I think one that is shared by you and by a lot of people is potentially baffling drag and centric decision making from Damon and Team Black. I'm just like, so happy to blame Damon for that. He cannot even drag him. I'm so happy to blame Damon for his like, because his entertaining is Matt Smith's like showboding performance. And again, this is like another sort of like doctor who like, and then sort of like performance from him where he's just showboding. Rats have come uncommon lodge, you know, like, he's just having the best time with this theater that he fucking picked up the wrong kid and and oops kind of forgot to take the dragon with them. It's maybe remembered. We'll talk about that. But like, but yeah, I mean, that's an undeniable oops, but it's one I can really see good old David Targaryen making. Yes. And I do think that one of the through lines of this series and interests of this series is not just the hubris that we talk about a lot, but also just mistakes. You know, Allison made a mistake because everybody names their kid egg on the characters make mistakes. However, I think a dragon rider saying that dragon can stay there is beyond let's just say now we got a couple emails about this. I hadn't seen this like theory, but you and I were so puzzled why a city dragon keeper showed up to share the news. And Chris is like, is tuppleton a big dragon keeper town like like completely reasonable question, I think, why is this dragon keeper bringing the news of tuppleton. Right. And so a theory that a couple of our listeners put forward and I guess is going around. And if this is true, I would just say the episode should have made it clear that like some dragon keepers were in the midst of taking to Sarian from the high tower camp. Yes. Two kings landing and then they were sort of like beset and besieged by the high tower man who oops did not take the rose road home. Right. But rather scooped up the blue queen herself and then took her inside the gates of tuppleton. Right. And that makes a lot of sense as to why that dragon keeper was like, first of all, you know, must. Yes. And secondly, involved in the news at all whatsoever. But we really needed Damon on his way out of the camp be like, dragon keepers. Exactly. And there are multiple dragon keepers around to Sarian. Yeah. We're looking at to Sarian. Because they have this of the they have their own dragon keepers at the high tower camp. So clearly this could like another interpretation of why is this dragon keeper here and study. Yeah. Is the dragon keepers were like, Hey, you can't take a whole last dragon inside of a town like that. Yes. You know, and they sort of like defected because they're like, this isn't how you treat a dragon. Which is supported by cannon when the dragon keepers at dragon someone were nearer executed the red sewing were like, we don't support this. Yeah. And we're not going to participate. Right. So that's sort that to me felt inside of the episode based on the lack of any scene where Damon is like luxuriating in the delicious drama. I'm being like, ah, uh, love thing. One more thing we're doing. It's a half a sentence to say. And of course, we're going to be taking the dragon as well. But that didn't happen. So it just it opens up a line of even like questioning and honestly, they could add it now. Add it now. And I'll pretend it was always here in will buyers this birthday like Netflix in ADR. Yeah. When the camera's not on him in a small council. See just be like, oh, and the dragon keepers are on their way with to Sarah. Shirley Tyler died at the gullet. And also the dragon keepers are on their way here with to Sarah. Don't worry about it. I think you solved it. And no one will ever complain about anything again. No. Great. Get that Starbucks stuff out of there. And uh, remember that. That was tough. That was bad. Really bad. That was bad. That was a dark moment. It wasn't Starbucks cup, but it was a cost of it. It was a cost of the cup. Should we get to the deep dive? Let's do it. God. Okay. We were sort of already starting to talk about the scene just now. So let's start with a cold open. This is before the opening credit since before we spend the rest of the episode in Ranera's point of view in this like day and life day plus-ish in the life in the job stretch for Ranera. Uh, here's nothing I'll say. Yeah. If a big note for Ranera in this episode is delegate which it is. Yes. Sure. Did she not delegate this task to demon and did he not fucking up completely nine ways from Sunday? Like, you know, that's from saying it's hard to trust your counselors if they're doing shit like this. I mean, you don't have that many you can trust in the first place. Yeah. She's not going to call Kelta Garback in now to ask for more help. She doesn't want to see that guy again. I am actually curious if we're like completely done with him. That would be an interesting choice. Joe, this is a this is a this cold open. The scene that we get is a change. This is new canon to have Damon on caraxies with Ulf and he you silver wing and Verma Thor just go fly over to demand surrender from the high tower army. I had if I'm being completely honest when I watched this for the first time I was like I kind of can't help sometimes have this just like on reflex response from like what the fuck is happening here. Then I really loved it because it makes sense. First of all, just logically you have dragons. I was thinking of Chris's question about like can the dragons move to quit. It's like you can move pretty quickly on a dragon. Why would you just not go tell this army that they had to bend the knee and do it with force and might of three dragon three dragon right. Big drag. Yeah. So I was like okay, this is actually like this makes sense as a thing that they would do. The reason I really loved it is because we got to watch Matt Smith and James Norton and the scene together and it was like just the absolute fucking euphoric bliss. Did you see you know the HBO social media account is just having the time of their life. Thrive and cranking out. Thrive and like it's so like they did this ahead of time. They did this on set. They were ready. So they did the love Island like a new bomb shell is entered the villa for James Norton when they're like a new villain has entered like Game of Thrones or whatever and it's just like him on set in the Templeton like whatever it is just sort of like sponsoring in. But um yeah I'm just I'm thrilled and we talked about this on talk thrones when I'm just like thrilled at this use of warm and high tower is this like you know you think of some of those sort of like later season thrones villains like a new villain is here and what does that what does it mean when we're up against a Ramsey Bolton or you know what what what is the flavor of villain and this villain is smart yes so prepared smart ready ahead scary and does not give a shit about vows I mean they made you swear and swear so many vows it's true but this one was pretty clean like clear cut yeah and he's like what else sure I'll bend the knee he tells us so much about him yeah frankly like some of it is just the fact that the entire army is behind him and he is not concerned for a second about any of them being confused or unhappy thinking they were about to get to go home and then it's Templeton where he has that army in his power right so that's notable but yeah the fact that he did not hesitate for an instant to swear a vow that he knew at this point definitively he had no intention of keeping he has fake Darren ready he has the kid and the look on his face when Damon asked for Darren where he's like delighted to give it so proud of himself yeah having the anticipated which makes sense like you take hostages and thrones but he knew he was ready so like how long I mean we're just guessing this point but how long in advance do you think he had this plan was it from the moment he got allisense scroll or was it from he got a raven saying like a oi kings landing fell you know what do you mean like how quick was that that bleach job right it was fresh no roots were showing reject but it takes a really like multiple bleaches to get that is that sure white blonde yeah I don't know these things I rely on you for all like purple shampoo for that like it is tough to get it that high so he had to do it a couple times you know you can't do it too quickly we're also your hair will fall out so it is right yeah right right uh so maybe it's more recent then because his hair looked beautiful yeah it was intact yeah hadn't like dried cracked starting to fall out no microbang issue oh that's a buffy reference that's a buffy reference that I'm now prepared to make speaking of hair can I just read this email we got for a listener shani who got me with a subject line uh we've talked about uh our guy John rocks in whose orman hi towers like second and command right and his his sort of nickname is bold b-o-l-d John rocks in yeah one of our listeners sent us an email shani titled Bold B-O-W-L-E-D, John Rockston. And I was just like, yes. Shawnee said honestly this scene gave us everything. To Sorry, I was like, I don't know her about fake Darren. So John's haircut that came straight out of the 1990s, South Asian mom kitchen bull cut factory. Don't ask me how I know. I love John Rockston's haircut, but I am now forever gonna think of him as Bull's, John Rockston is in Bull Cut, John Rockston. - I have no notes. - Yeah, no, no, I'm really into it. - This is great. I was really struck by the salt in the pepper too, as somebody who is, as you know, rocking a lot of gray stripes in my hair. I looked at Bull John and I thought, he gets it? - A bull cut in the future, you think? - Could I rock it? - Yeah. - A bull cut. - You could do it. - Let me tell you something. I had a bull cut when I was a kid, and I will send you some pictures. I cut my own hair out of it. - So should we post this? You cut your, no, I didn't cut my own hair off. You cut your, yeah. Cause I was just like, I just really was like, you know, my mom was like, "Get your ears pierced." And I was like, "No, I'm gonna cut my hair off." And now, you know, and then I rocked it for a while. - You're like, I might have the feeble body of a woman. (laughing) - I can spare it on my kid. - A bull cut kid. - Exactly. - It was exactly what I said when I was in a first grade. When did you have a bull cut? - You know, elementary school. - I was like, yeah, but in earlier, really. - Great. - And then it became like a banged bob situation. - Okay. - Okay, I'm prepared to post this. - But definitely. Oh yeah, it was the 80s. We all had bull cut. - Might have been 91 for me. - Yeah, you were in 80s early now. - You know, like, yeah. Everyone had a bull cut. No shame in the game. - That's great stuff. This stretch, Joe, yeah. So we get everything we just talked about with Ormond, where we're like, okay, serious new player, serious new threat. This kind of dawning recognition will come for Reneira at the end of the episode when it is too late. He has taken trouble to end. He has duped them on the Darren front. Desiree and his inside the town. We're watching this. And this is an exciting thing. I was thinking back. We talked a little bit about, you know, you shared emails about like some of our bad babies. We're saying, oh, Taiwan on their mind with the Ormond intro in episode one, right? We talked about that. We talked, I think about the condol comments about how like this is the Taiwan of this season in terms of like means and money, right? And the standing of the high towers. But this is also where you get the Taiwan vibes in terms of just preparedness. And what are you doing in the shadows to best your foe before they even realize you're there? - And to your point, just like fully in command of the situation. Like as both Aegon, see, I'm not gonna throw Reneira entirely under the bus, but as both Aegon and Reneira have shown themselves like really ill suited to rule, you know, as did Joffrey, you know, et cetera. And then you've got someone like a Taiwan Lanister and Ormond High Tower where they're like born to rule. Iron fist, bit of an asshole, but everyone falls in line. Because like Reneira, whatever Reneira's made problems, Aegon has so many problems. Whatever Reneira's made problems is like this uncertainty, this vassalation, you know what I mean? She's sort of like, if she didn't want to, if auto presents his neck, she doesn't want to cut his head off and she's like, no, you do it, Damon. That's more of a show of strength than crying and wobbling while you do it, you know what I mean? If she's like, hey, the solution is to hunt in the King's Wood. And Coral's like, we don't do that. She'd be like, so the fuck what? Now we do, 'cause my people are starving. You know, even like you lead with confidence and certainty, I don't do as I say not as I do Reneira, but like, lead with confidence and certainty, and that's what a Taiwan would do. And that's, you know, so the fuck what? Okay, Joffrey's the bastard, so the fuck what? I'm the queen, you know what I mean? And I've got six dragons. - Six? - Yeah. I did note that Damon neglected to mention also we have three dragons who are already dead. Let's factor that into the team black dragon. - Four million dragons. - That's a damn it. Yeah, I think one of the things that I showed admired about this episode was the way that it paired with what you're saying, this like undeniable aspect of Reneira needing to consider what everybody else is thinking and whether to care, right? And so sometimes Reneira does something bold, like I don't know, serve a bunch of rats to the mid, the mid here, Lord some ladies of the crownlands. Don't worry, no consequences, it'll be fine. And it's like what is everybody saying after that, right? So like the question of whether a ruler is overly cognizant of that or chooses to care, that's like one of the things that Damon kind of challenges Reneira on in this episode is who gives a shit. We can do what we want, which is also a very flawed way of thinking about it. - But I think you have, I mean, to Chris's great point of like you can't be like a Targaryen Democratic Socialist, is that what he said? Right, like if you're like, I deserve to rule because of the divine right of kings and I've got a big fuck off dragon. Then like, I mean, I want a Democratic Socialist, you know, I wanna like go live in Mamdani's Don, like I'm like about it, right? But like you can't be those things unless you're like elected and she's not. So she's like, I'm the ruler. And so you just say like my rule, my word is law. Like that's what you have to do. I'd be great on the throne, no, I wouldn't. I'd be very bad at it, but like you'd be wonderful in all respects. And your banquets would be resplendent. You would hear the positions with the plume. I feel like if Tywin served a bunch of rats to nobles, people would be like, that a fucking bad legend, for sure. - A king. - And Ranera does it and they're like, that one was Cuckoo Birds. You know what I mean? - And it's a part of the gendered, but that part of it. - But part of that is just like consistency and certainty and all these other things. - What do you go over time? - Yeah, the standing you have in the wrong. No question about it. I think also like, this is another fun thing about the Damon mistakes and like his level of arrogance and entitlement in this episode. Like Ormond and Damon are both playing each other here. But only Ormond understands that, right? So that's like a real dimaret for Damon. That he is, you mentioned the word theater earlier. And the theater for Damon of indulging here and somebody else's, his enemy's misery, that was like the bad, I mean, it was all great, but that was just, he couldn't wait to mention Otto. He couldn't wait to kind of like put a little bit of spice on the word, you know, peace. Like this is all bullshit to him. This is like a farce to engage in this. At all, as he goes back and he says, "Tranera, "we should have just incinerated them." - Right. - Like, which we'll get to. Was Damon right, maybe, do they have some points maybe? - But he's getting played and he has no idea because he's so sure that the might is right if the Targaryen rule is the only thing that's gonna carry the day that he's not bothering to pay attention to what other people are doing. - Well, hubris abounds here as both for Niren Damon are like, "Wars over." And it's like, accept vaikers at large. Do you think Renera did that? See, I don't think Renera did that in this episode. Damon set it out loud multiple times, including here Laura's ended later. He's like, the war's over. Obviously by the end of the episode he has to confront that that's not true. Renera, I feel like, is very focused on, okay, what is it gonna actually take to govern? And now that we're here, and that's something she has to challenge Damon on and massage the challenge Damon on. Damon's too busy, like, oh, we know what you want. You want to castle, you want all the shit that we're not gonna give you? Let me mock you about that. - It was a great idea. And in me, like, just a moment. - Great management stuff. - All the good stuff. - Unbelievable. This was just an incredible scene. And of course, we'll get to the fake dare and stuff more as we go. Anything else on this opening, Joe, before we move on? - No, let's go to Damon or anything else? - Let's go to the tapestry. - Oh, I guess we should just remind everyone that Orman said one king is as good as another previously. That feels notable, given that he again, swore Val that he doesn't intend to keep. I have to wonder, like, is he thinking that way about his allies or just his enemies? - Opening tapestry update. What is new here this week, Joanna? - Or Nira, Trampfin is here. - Yeah. - But most importantly, your favorite podcaster in Westeros. - Right. - Massaria, chart, chart topic. - Has made the tapestry. - I can, I can sense a hit. - Massaria is like, I know a liar. - We're in the wake up. - Queenmaker, Valor Rubin. You're like, "Amy Polar should have a podcaster." - Massaria? - Put her in a tapestry. - Joanna, gasp the loud. I saw I'm a sorry on the tapestry. I'm sorry, gasp the loud. - Damon's also here. - Yeah. - Coralus, Allison. - Yes. - Helena. - Yeah. - Arat. - I'm gonna be honest with you. And this is, it's not news to you or anyone else that I need glasses, but I did initially think that it was autos decapitated corpse. - Because the red has like some red. - Maybe on the whiskers. So I saw this just kind of shadowy shape and then blood on the front. And then I did some freeze-free mohoney action. And I was like, that's, yeah, is this a corpse? That's, I don't know, but I realized it was a rat. And I was glad I caught that before we bought it. - And then you and I both had some questions about the depiction of the small folk here. I guess it's meant to be, I think what's interesting about this is like, usually the tapestry shows us what has happened. - Prior episodes. - So for the small folk to be here, sort of like it could represent the petitioning small folk that coming in front of the throne in this episode or the people who show up to get a single root of beggar from runner off the back of a cart at the end or whatever the case may be. - It's an incredibly specific choice of the combustible. You could've gone with anything. - Root of beggars, like genuinely, objectively the funny is special. - I quite agree after hearing it. - Maybe a person? - I don't know. - Wonderful. - Wonderful. - But, but yeah, like the small folk, the besieging small folk, like in the rat and like it all kind of feels like what happens on this episode. - Very interesting. - That would be kind of fun to just like show us, you know, little, little hints and glimpses of what's to come in the episode. [BLANK_AUDIO] in future. Other shows do that. That's right. They do. Battleston, right? Yes, that's exactly right. Yeah. The tapestry, after it's kind of blotted with the blood of all those small folk, then it just splits. Yeah, it seems right down the middle. Breathing about Helena, hands turn looms, full of greens, full of black dragons of flesh, weaving dragons of thread. As you know, I'm always thinking about Helena and Bugs. And some of her early season, little prophetic words of wisdom. Should we, you know, in the widow's Bay era? Yeah. Should we get into needle point? That's just a question in general. And if we do, should all of the quotes that we stitched be Helena prophecies? It's a great question. You've asked me over the years about like many hobbies we should take up, and I feel like we should take up skateboarding before we do this. Well, you're, I mean, an archery. There's like a few others that I feel like-- You can't really do this on the public record to learning to skateboard, so we know. I mean, we literally have to. We have no choice. I mean, but we haven't started yet. While we've been busy. We haven't been busy. And we're frail. And I'm going to get hurt. We are very frail. Archery is the one I'm most excited about, but we could also needle point. That's also a cool badass thing to do. I mean, why not both? You know? Archery paired with the Odyssey would be good. That would be fun, not the way of time in the next couple of weeks, but so it goes. Okay, those should be open and credit updates. Great stuff. Maybe they're like, we're just going to put the small folk in because we don't want to keep updating this. Could it be that? I guess. Just unlock forever. Sure. No more updates. Small folk. Doesn't look great for them. It is great as a small folk. Kind of sucks. I mean, we could, we won't. Or we'll wait, but we could do an entire pod just on the incredibly obnoxious rich bro. Things that Damon says about. They're forever, they're appetizing. I always want to be fed, but it's just that's just as usual amazing stuff from that's fed. Okay, Brunira. Time to begin a real normal one here, Joe. And I think we should begin it by staring in our dead father's bed and listening to the whistle in the air and thinking about our dead mom, thinking about our dead mom and our dead dad and talking about the ghosts because the air is thick with them, but it's important to note not unhappy ones, not unhappy ones. Well, this is interesting because that room is full of certainly memories like the one Brunira chooses to share here, like thinking about being child and going to share a special time, like a more innocent time, right, with her family before everything went to shit. So many awful things have transpired in that room. And I mean, I guess the blend even was there at the end, you know, you have something like that bed where Viserys lay dying. Yeah. And also Aegon with his burst cock. So same bed. Same bed. Same bed. I would just say, hey, Brunira, get a new bed commissioned. Yeah, it was like a good suggestion from Missaria. Yeah. What about a fresh mattress? New bed. Some new linens. Sorry about it. Different room. We got a lot of rooms. The wreck heath is fucking huge. Now, as a matter of principle, if I became queen, I would not want to have to take a lesser room than the royal bed chamber. I would take my sleep. Why not three? I'll take three other rooms for the one royal bed chamber. Yeah. Yeah. You use the main one for whatever your equivalent of Lego building is as a hobby. Maybe that's where you learn to skateboard. Correct. Or do you need a point? Or both at the same time. Yeah. Again, or both. And then yeah, you have a different chamber for sleeping. All sorts of I have this a great idea. Take all the rooms. This is where she appealed to Viseris. This final plea. If you chose me and you wanted to be me, stand for me. Right? Take a walk. Take a long, long walk. And he did. It's also of course where I met his namesake. The way that he responded to knowing demon was there all day man. Amen. Amen. Amen. But a lot of groom shit has happened in there too. I have to ask you. Yeah. When you heard the air is thick with ghosts. Did you think of Luton? With what? What does Luton say? I share my dreams of ghosts. This really gave me Luton vibes. I was thinking about Alan recommend in sense. Billy when he goes the air is full of spices. Rather spices than ghosts, but you know what I mean? Never a bad time to mention Alan recommend. Sure. Or sense and sensibility. Carl Brandon. I'm excited for the new sense and sensibility. Mixed. Mixed. Deeply mixed. Mixed. Yeah. Okay. It doesn't feel like a quite at the dobbins level of like I won't. Oh man. I have shared this. Many texts about this. Great stuff. Damon shares what we already noted. He says we should have incinerated them all. And I'd like to ask you if you agree. Listen, maybe, maybe not all, but maybe like a few just to teach him a lesson or actually think Chris's advice was the best advice. Which is like leave. Let's say our more rely. I would always pick Adam or Bella personally. But like let's leave our most reliable dragon rider to just hover flap above them as they go back down the rose road, which is what they said they were going to do. Keep eyes. Keep eyes. Maintain eyes for the skies. Yes. Garell with moon dancer or sea smoke. That's a great idea. I mean, they're too busy scouting for vegar. Which is a poor priority. Yeah. Fine. Fucking fine vegar. Yeah. It's huge. It should be a huge priority. And you can't spread the the dragon math too many places because then you can't defend the capital. It is tough. It's an unenviable position to be. And I don't think the solution is just trust or manite dower when he bent the nuance and allow 15,000. He said he was going to he was full of shit. No surprise. Um, here's the thing. Reneira later will invoke the word conciliator, which like, of course makes us think of Jairus. The first that was his monoclarge. Jairus, the conciliator. You know, in this idea of like how you incorporate that intention into your rule is an important consideration for the ruler. The idea of like the part of the reason that Ormond was able to prep fake Darren, you know, we could think of something like theon, right? Being being raised after the great joy rebellion at, yeah, at taking hostage and raised at Winterfell. This is like a practice in the kingdom. You do that with plenty of the houses who aligned with team green. You can't show this level. Oh, you can't do this with the Ormond high tower and the high towers. You just can't. They're the house that staged a coup. They're the houses staged a coup. They do a coup. Remember, Alison's led the sitting there on the jack mattress of her nude having just masturbated son, Egon's still an incredible choice on the show's b-ass jacks. Do the old jackpap. Is that a model that cast from mattress cells? Uh, it might be. It might be. Yeah. Yeah. It's a hybrid. It's not observant. Yeah. Okay. White. Um, you are the challenge. Right. You love that. The thing in breathing and it's like, well, that's why the priorities are Darren with Caesarean. Yeah. I understand. I understand this because Darren with Caesarean seems like the easiest get. Let's get that one. Figure it out. Amen. That's a scary one. But we got to get vague our name. Amen. Yeah. And Egon, we can't find him. We don't know where he is. And she's trying. Reneer is trying. He's like, we had to find Egon. And Alison's like, he's burned. No one knows what he looks like to say. He's dead. It's fine. Yeah. And Reneer is like, how dare you try to spare him? And then also kind of a good idea. I'm going to do it immediately. Wait. I'm going to just put that into action immediately, which was. Alison should be on the high council. We did get. I'd be amazing. We got an email from a listener. Oh, I forget. I do not remember their name. They had the perfect diplomatic solution for not diplomatic, but like, everything solves the dance. Okay. Here's the thing. Yes. But here's the thing. You mentioned to Harris, the Consolator. And I was thinking about like, Reneer is not the first or the last reformer monarch. There have been reformer Targaryens and there will be reformer Targaryens. And it often does not go well for reformer Targaryens. But I was like, Jeharris and Good Queen Alison, like, how did they get so much stuff done and not piss people off? And so it's just an interesting thing. Visitors is always cautioning us to look at the history books and sort of see. This was the solution that our listener came up with. Mary Bala. Don't worry, Bailey. You don't get to say what you do. Mary Bala to Darren. Okay. And then like, the high tower still have like a high tower king. Coralist still has a descendant on the throne. You know, all of that happens. And then Reneer could be like, my air is a woman. It's Bala. Sure. You know, and that's what I'm doing. Things are going great between Bala and Reneer. Absolutely. Absolutely. But I'm just saying if we're thinking the long game, we're thinking intelligently, this is maybe an interesting solution. Our listener also suggested in this setup that Bala could like top-dom Darren, given their age differences in a real Marjorie Tarrell kind of situation. And I agree. Interesting. Marjorie Tarrell on our minds across this episode, as we hand out food to the common folk, etc. So always we clash with the with the faith. Exactly. I think that it is the kind of creative and thoughtful and difficult, but thus maybe right approach that Reneer would be open to. I mean, Reneer was the one at the small council back in the day who suggested that Allison and Reneer figure out how to patrol their children together to bridge this gap. Now, of course, that was motivated by self-preservation. But like, what isn't And ultimately, right, it's human nature. else was ready for that. And so I think this is, it's an interesting, you know, thinking of Jeharris and Alessane on the heels of Megor and a realm in turmoil and chaos and right in the scene, we have like Renera invoking Viserys. He comes up many times in this episode, Missouri. I will ask what would Viserys have done. But like Viserys is a peacetime king. Exactly. So you're on the heels of peacetime, different than coming in on the heels of turmoil and destruction and despair, Megor, the cruel. So that's, that is an interesting distinction. Some of it is like that the relationship between Jeharris and Alessane was, I mean, that is ultimately, I thought it was really notable that we Damon really tells on himself a lot in this episode. I do think he's right here, that they should have just toasted everyone, toasted everyone. I'm very worried about the general kind of, like, burn them all vibes coming from our dynamic duo of Damon and Renera in this episode. It's concerning, brings up some dandy-centric stuff for us all, obviously. But in this particular case, I think that what he's saying is not without merit and consideration, Renera saying I need to prove myself worthy of my father's choice. Justify it. Justify it. And so much of this episode is about legitimacy. Emma Darcy talked about this on the inside. The episode, right? This is about this, this obsession with the legitimacy. And some of it is those symbols of what had gone have every symbol of legitimacy was his, right? So I need a version of that with, okay, I can't have a coronation. Well, at least in anointing. But some of it is just proving worthy of the Sarah's choice. And the prophecy, like, Damon is looking at it not as like, I think this is such an important, it's a distinction that I love in them as characters in a couple, like both a, um, insexual marriage, but also two members of the darkarian dynasty, people who want to rule, et cetera. Damon has now embraced the prophecy after his herald trip. And he is like, what this does is this confirms my idea that we are gods. This confirms the lot, like our line, we are chosen ones when Mira is, of course, falling many times into the, the fanaticism trap, which comes up many times in this episode again, but also it's like still connected to the core visceris inheritance of the protector, protection, protecting the realm. And that's not as Damon is not what he is doing on it all. It is interesting to think like, it is this a solvable tension, right? It's like, Reneira having to confront the fact that the path to the throne having gained it now, but keeping it certainly is like at odds with that mission, that core mission, once you're seated upon it, and like, is that something you can find a way to reconcile and navigate, like maybe, maybe not. That's kind of a bummer. I was curious to ask you if you, um, if you thought that that fucker auto-hide tower got in Reneira's head a little bit with those final words, that curse really, that's what I was going to say. So the justify, I need to justify my father's choice, but it's not just that. I think it's also justify what happened to Luke and just if I would happen to Jason, just if I all of the things that had to happen to get me here, it has to have been worth it. I need to have been worth losing my two beloved sons who hid their faces in my skirts when they were little. Like that's, it's a lot of justification and it's not just her father's choice, it's all these other things. And that's one of the buttons that Damon is really trying to like intentionally push, right? Like will those deaths and sacrifices, will we let them be in vain? Which like, there's wisdom too, but also it's kind of manipulative. This is so fat. I love, I was just really talking about it. I think one of the reasons we love this episode so much is because we do root for Reneira. We believe Reneira belongs here. We want Reneira to prevail. We care about Reneira we're invested. We love Damon for very different reasons. To watch these characters air and make mistakes and be so human. And sometimes to make those mistakes and air for reasons that make complete sense and sometimes to do it like through folly, what's better than that? I know. They're getting to watch that. I mean, especially if you've been like staunchly team black. So yes. And this is not me throwing our own social team under the bus at all, but like the social clip that came out of the talk these rounds was just like, is Reneira a bad ruler? And I'm like, not a bad social head, but like not at all really the sentiment that we were going for necessarily. Like I'm not saying Reneira is a bad ruler at all. I'm saying both Aegon and Reneira were ill prepared for this role. And Reneira, especially even more than Aegon has inherited an absolute fucking mess in terms of like an empty coffers, you know, rat infested candles, et cetera, et cetera. But like people she can't trust all these other things. Like she's set up to fail. And also her own human folly is getting in her way. I think there's a lot in the mix here, but it's not just like woman bad at being ruler, break back the guy who raped people. You know, like that's I'm not, I'm not about King Aegon at all. You know, but to have been team black, to have been pro Reneira and say Reneira was cheated out of her rightful inheritance. We're obviously team black over team green except for Chris Ryan, et cetera, et cetera, fuck that guy, Kristen Cole like all this sort of stuff like that. And then team black gets in here and they just like, yeah, own goal after own goal, honestly. Sports Joe. Yeah. Roll cup, Joanna. Never got so long. Joe, it's time for Reneira to meet the heaviest air quotes possible, Darren. Fake Darren. I thought that the scene was absolutely incredible. And I was cracking up watching this. And I just love after quite some time of being really perplexed by not introducing Darren. And then to the story, we got some little kernels, little. I love that you feel like this is just like, I don't mean in and full. I don't disagree with you. I just, I just love that you are like so delighted by this. It's how I'm choosing to read it. It's like we fucked around and made you wait. Yeah. We're going to make you wait. And now we're going to, we're going to really really fuck her out for one episode. And I should say I ended up really loving all this, this, this Darren stuff. And thought it revealed many interesting things about the characters and their relationships to each other. I'm relieved and really pleased that it only was a one episode gambit. I think it would be very hard to extend. I agreed. So, you know, a lot of their squirreliness around this this season obviously was to preserve this little switch of rue that they're doing here. But like, what if they had just announced this actor as Darren Targaryen and then like in the trailer as, as they did last week, you hear Darren's name and you see this blonde kid in the trailer last week. So, what if they had done that in a previous trailer and they've just been like, this is Darren. And then they just said, JK, it's not this blonde kid. It's someone else. Was that have been like better or worse? Like, I don't know. You're, I'm glad you're asking this because this had not occurred to me. But now that you're posing this, not announcing Darren had people like asking why. Yeah. And what was going on. And thus maybe a little bit more prepared for some like shenanigan in the plot mix than otherwise would have would have been the case. So, I don't know if there's some sort of sag after a rule why they couldn't do that or something like that. But like, or maybe once you announced Darren, then it's like, why isn't Darren like the junk gets and stuff like that? I don't know. I guess it could have been any number of things. But, um, here is this clearly not, yeah, a probably aged child. Great stuff went after this meeting when you're like younger than I thought. That was really great. That was really, really funny. So funny. Really good. Uh, this entire introduction is amazing. But before we get to what we want to just talk for a minute again about the filmmaking from Claire Kylner here, because so much of this episode is delivered to us via the walk and talk. Moving through corridors, the pace of the day, sometimes the score really increases in tempo to pair with like what Reneira is talking about or where Reneira is going. Or weaving in and out of a given passage way to try to ask Reneira a question of whatever varying significance or just why didn't you ask somebody else about these candles as you I think very rightly noted. Um, this Claire Kylner quote from the House of Dragons built special. I thought was just like, it's been so cool to hear Claire talk the last couple weeks about the approach to making these episodes. I loved this idea of being behind her. Like behind the workings of her brain in a way, just a simple camera move, but it's like crawling around her head to her ear and then the world in front of her being out of focus. This idea that we're like position right in Reneira's mind and that stress again, the sound, the sound treatment and sound design really, um, heightening that. And then you look ahead and you can't tell where you're going. Right? In the, I love that. Also in the small council scene or one of the small council scenes when she's at the window and the camera's just on her face and everything else is like blurry out of focus behind her. Um, I thought, I thought all that stuff was so good. We got a great email from Western Nicole, who was like, this maybe really want other POV, you know, types of episodes. What if we had gotten like a tywin episode, right? Um, how incredible to see a season master of manipulation like tywin, how cool would it be to see how far ahead he was thinking when he was writing all those letters? How thrilling would it be to see what people would dare to ask of him? I would bite my own toe off to say that's Kate Fair reference. Um, is it? Um, oh no. Yeah. So Kate Fair, I wouldn't do it. Um, but, uh, yeah. So is there a character that you would have loved to have had like a POV? I think tywin or Tyrion would have been like one of these extremely competent hand to the king, uh, situations would have been really fun. I would want to say like everyone, you know, give me a Jamie, give me a grand. Yeah. Yeah. Give me a pod. Why not? Give me a hot pie episode. Give me a hot pie. Yeah. You've got to brown the butter. But then we actually see the browning of the butter and understand how true that is. - What about famous Hot Pie episode of Game of Thrones? - I would watch. - What about like moving forward now, though, is there another house of the dragon character you would want to like see receive this treat? - I mean, maybe Orman Hightower, I'm like really intrigued by him or Alice Rivers. What's the day of life in Alice Rivers? - That was what I thought you were gonna say. - Okay, fair enough. - Until you guys hear actual answer, Lairus. (laughing) - Okay, genuinely, it's Lairus. - I mean, so we almost can't do it because we can't know. - We can't know, we can't be intrigued. - Yeah. - Yeah. - You mentioned it, yeah, the West Wing walk and talk. The episode that I, and we got a couple of emails about this, but I promised you this is already on my mind. I was really reminded of the drug trip episode of Widow's Bay in the way in which this film, this episode was shot. Obviously, it's not inspired by that because they were made sort of like contemporaneously, but in that episode, if you watch Widow's Bay or whatever, and in this episode, we're constantly find the character sort of like in the middle of a scene. We just like drop into the middle of the scene. We don't have any like establishing shots. The one more it really clicked for me is when she jostles awake in the carriage. And that's just like in the drug trip episode of Widow's Bay, if you've not seen it, it's an incredible episode. But like Matthew Reese's character is just constantly like coming to in the middle of something. And it's just sort of like, and he's been here the whole time, but not really here. And so, following Raniera's sort of like wandering mind from one scenario to the next really reminded me of that, which I love that. Do you think that Raniera has done any mushrooms inside of the span of this episode? I don't know, it was in that tee. She didn't drink it, but it was in other cups of that tee. Really good question. Who's the saying? Also, like, you know, we haven't gotten to the Jace ghosts part, but I was just thinking about like, I was thinking about Damon, like sort of coming to, and the way in which King's Landing has, King's Landing has become like a heron hall of kind, of a kind for Raniera. Like, it's the heirs thick with ghosts. That's a heron hall, seeing her dead son in the hallway. That's it. She's in a haunted castle, and it's her home where she grew up. Yeah. And I just, I just kind of love that, you know? No hot witch or where would paste just your fucking trauma. Okay. What a bummer. I know. What a hot bummer. Bring me that hot witch. Oh my God. Dad. Yeah. She's not yet asked for a hot witch. She has asked for a coronation. We have so many moments across various throws properties where we're like, okay, Ned doesn't want the hands turning in. And then it's a fucking calamity. Viseras is like the attorney for my air fucking calamity. So just hearing these words out of Raniera gives me like, Tony. Yeah, exactly. Like good, kind of like, oh no. Celebrations that in opportune times, let's focus on other stuff. Love. Yeah. And of course, Missouri is like, hey man, show of wealth is not, this is not the moment. I remember. I remember when King Charles was coronated and everyone was like, really? The people of the UK cannot pay their gas bill. And you're having a big, fancy coronation. And I was just thinking about like, how far we traveled from like, Charles and Diana's wedding and the whole world being like, what a moment, you know, we deserve this. We need this, you know, to being like, get your fucking riches out of my face. I don't want to see it. And so, you know. Not Damon Targaryen, that wasn't his reaction. If he watched Charles's coronation in our actual world, that might be the most like, channeling Bill's spirit moment for me in the history of our pod. What year was gave it to us? 1300s? Oh god. Oh god, I'd like to just enjoy watching Ranera introduce herself to her own brother, who she has never met, because I thought that this was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. We've not met. I'm your half sister. And our father's chosen air. You've flown in service of your brother, the usurper. What have you to say? Which part is your favorite? I don't know. You're super, baby. That's a calm, like, what have you to say? The very matter of fact, like angry teacher, like, what have you just said? But she's like trying to be like, like, have like, saccharine and sweet. Like a little like, like, fricking Julie Andrews in sound of music, but also just like. What are you saying? This is why I feel like you're a half sister. Ranera, I'm a Darcy. So funny. Just the comedy in this episode is so delicious. This is one of the moments that really makes me feel like they're like, let's just lean in to like, how long we waited for Garam, because the idea that these, we got a little bit of it with Damon, like, you know, oh, well, that nephew, like, these characters, literally in TV land. Don't know each other. We should just, we should clarify. Like, yes, in the book, Darren is also a high-tower ward. Like, he was raised in Old Town, that's true. Like, he has, he and Jason, for example, were milk brothers, right? They would have seen the red head of hair on the baby. They have met this character. This seems like Allison gave birth and like, the baby's still covered in placenta was like, whisked away to, you're not covered in placenta. Anyway, like, whisked away to Old Town. Sort of like, still wet and muleing, you know what I mean? Like, yes, this is exactly what it seems like. And Allison's like, alright, once in the last five years, but then has to ask, you know, go in and season two, like, what's my own kid like? Like, these characters don't, so that also unlocked while it was a little puzzling maybe to begin with. It unlocks our ability to, to, to run out again, but like this, which I, I think like you could say, like, is this improbable? But to me, it feels like kind of a proud tradition of like, Thrones, false identities. Oh, sure. I mean, like, Alan's been shaving his head so that the like, white blonde, Valarian hair has not grown in, you know what I mean? Like, hair is a, is a, is a big thing in, in Game of Thrones in terms of hiding people. Well, don't tell Egon. He's still like, I'm not in this episode. I did miss Egon and Lyres, but still walking around with that telltale hair. But at night of the Seven Kingdoms, understand that hair can reveal who you are and you might want to shave it. But it was really funny because, or there's a deleted scene somewhere out there in the universe of Orman and let's say Bold John Roxon, having like a cup of, late at night, bold, John Roxon, having like a cup of cigar in their tent, a pipe, let's say, late at night. And Orman Hightower is going to be like, you know what, those fuckers don't even know what he looks like. We could just put a complete, we just like, let's bleach, let's, let's torment a child and threaten his mother and bleach his hair and send him on his way. They don't know what he looks like. That's exactly the same thing, Allison Hightower says. That's right. They don't even know what he looks like. That's right. He's just figured now and we hit him. So, you know? So, I'm not the shave his head. Had you ever as a hair expert heard that term bleached? Were you familiar? I, of course, had no idea. It's like new to me. I think only because I've read enough, like, well, you've read a lot of fantasy now. I've read it in like, in like, fantasy now. I'm sure I've come across it. Yeah, it didn't include. Yeah. Do you have a favorite thrones? Like, I'm pretending to be someone I'm not attempt, either for comic value or actual, like, success. When do you have a favorite-- Arya is sort of, like, sassy, shaggy little haircut. I'm just thinking of that. Yeah. And I think just for the payoff of Gendry, being like, oh, I was like talking about, like, cocks. That was so good. Just wonderful stuff, though, of course. Where would we be without Little Finger? Telling Sansa. Pull up your arm. Oh, yeah. Well, Sansa's box black hair, and I-- Remember a little shay in the area. So good. Very interesting. So great. For Goth Makeover. Remember that moment when she walks down the stair. Vividly. Vividly. Wonderful stuff. Ginger's not welcome. Not welcome. OK. Demon. Yeah. After Ranera says to Daren, to fake Daren, what's Ormond up to? What do you have to say for your brothers? You know, tries to get information out of him. And we realize that this character who is not actually this character will not say a word until forced to at the very end of the episode. Oh, I thought this kid was really good. Fantastic. Fantastic stuff. Damon's like, you're going to have to kill him. By the way, you're going to have to kill him. And the multiple-- the recurring refrain across this episode of Damon, basically, rounding a corner casually or leaving a scene dismissed from the parapet. It's like, by the way, you're still going to have to kill Daren. Really, really got me. I thought it was great. Small council. Before we get there, can I read-- So we get this email. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Is it about no man being as a cursist to cancer? No, is it not? One of our listeners was saying, hey, shouldn't the priority be Vagar? We've already kind of talked about that. But I do agree. And our listener's point was sort of like, Reneer prioritizing taking the red keep versus getting Vagar feels like a more chasing the wrong thing, a symbolic thing. But I kind of think it's just sort of like, this is the opportunity. Allison has said, she'll do this thing. Reneer has decided to believe her. Vagar is absent. Let's take the-- I mean, I don't think the moves of Team Black are terribly bad. We've seen her looking for Vagar worse. They had the fucking seeds. Reneer has sent the seeds to Heron Hall to walk for Vagar. So had, in fact, a counter for that. They abandoned their posts. They left. And now here we are. Where's Vagar? They're in the gullet. And fine-courtly, so I guess. I just can't get over golf being like, we were there at the gullet. I mean, the fucking Hutzpah. I want to talk about the moment that I was like, we're really in an episode now. We're talking. Yeah, tell me. Is when Damon says, let us begin, right? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And then we get that first sort of like, bong of the bell that will follow us. At any rate, we must begin, bong. Yeah. And this idea of the bonging of the bell and how it sort of like takes us into a number of these scene transitions, go forward. Yes. I've got this great email from my listener, Max, about the use of the bell. And he says at first I was a little bothered by it because it felt unearned like a rip off of the more in-world motivating tolling sounds, some other recent shows, Stranger Things, had the distorted tolling of the grandfather clock, which had some sonic similarity. But I was reminded even more of the metallophone tolling of the hours on pharynx and andor, season one, which became the announcements of the passing of time between episode blocks, as well as an ominous countdown to rogue one and and/or self-sacrifice. In my mind, hot D hadn't earned this as an iconic in-world sound, but now we can connect the sound design to what y'all were talking about on talk with thrones. This whole episode has been not just a rewrite of Daenerys' madness arc, but a temporal zooming in, like taking the moment where Amelia Clark was asked to convey an entire absent character arc, in mere seconds, without even the help of dialogue, and giving Emma Darcy at least a full episode to accomplish the same thing. It's like each toll of the bells was expanded, stretched. Each second long interval between bell strikes is now expanded to a full scene of struggling to rule wisely in face of complex challenges. Each strike of the bell is another compromised demand and another set of competing stakeholders who will probably all end up unsatisfied. The tolling now has time to take a toll. I've long felt that hot D is presenting two theories of power. I love this. I should have cut this email down, but I didn't because I loved it. The greens are for a kind of devolved feudal or confederated rule where there's reliance on norms and diplomacy, team black diplomacy, where rulers behave as expected, like adhering to precedent of male only, permit, permit janitor, etc. Meanwhile, the blacks are all political absolutism, where the divine mandate of monarchy means you can be above the rules and norms. A ruler can appoint a successor regardless of inheritance traditions. Political absolutism can be tough to maintain without relying on rule through fear, though, which is the tension for both Reneira and Daenerys. It's hard to be, quote, my way or the highway as a ruler, unless you're cracking eggs to make an omelette. Otherwise, you need to govern through the consent of the govern, which will always require compromise, compromise, and exactly those compromises that comprise the toll represented by the tolling of the bells. So, great email, Max. Thank you so much. I love this idea of this time-dilated version of Daenerys' bell tolling. I don't know if that's intentionally what they were invoking, but I love that idea. Also, we had already talked about it a little bit, but this idea of like, if you're going to be-if you're going to come in with your big fuck off dragons and say we're the boss now, how can you reconcile that with Misseria being like a kinder, gentle ruler? Which is what Reneira wants to be? Like, she does genuinely, I think, care about the people, and she wants to be a good kind ruler, but like, in this very moment, that's not really available to her, you know? Yeah, it's a, it's a tricky one, and like, there's no, because the war is on, and the threats are out there. There's no, like, grace period. There's no room. That's also part of it, so really, not only about the choice to do this kind of conceptual treatment in the episode, but to do it now, immediately, to make us feel what Reneira is feeling, which is like, there's no reprieve in sight, not even for a second, and that's in terms of the decision making and the logic and the logistics of ruling around, but it's also no reprieve from the grief, like you were talking about earlier, right? And so when we think about how little time has passed, you know, we were in episode two when Jason's body was brought in, we were talking about like, what is everybody in that room observing and thinking? Like, we as people who watch the show and read the book and love Reneira are like, bold over by that portrait of grief, right? And then you look at their faces and you're like, what do they see here? They see a break. They see like a break, right? The number of scenes in this episode that gave us a version of that. What are the characters who are watching Reneira? Just ladies serve for rats to people. Yeah, like her hand is in the hallway yelling bastards, you know, and they're just, she's just constantly observed. She's constantly observed. Great, perfect way to put it. And like, I think the best case that Reneira could hope for after something like the rat banquet, the best case is, like, basically a recording kind of quad. You love a party with a theme. I do. You love a party with the theme. I do. Mask case is like a recurrence of the season two, Reneira, the cruel refrain, best case stuff. And the worst case is targ madness, right? And then you add in the gendered elements, like are people saying that about Dave and I see shots like we should have inserted them all, maybe, but maybe not. And so I think we feel very similarly to, you know, to Max wrote the email and we talked about this on Talk to Thrones with Chris and Chris was feeling it like, to really get to sit in the space of each decision in each moment and the anguish of knowing that everybody is judging and watching and waiting. And that sometimes you are actually trying your best and you have the right intention. It's not good enough. And sometimes you fucked up, right? I think that the way that they're like, this is true of the world more broadly, the story more broadly, not just hot D. And this was present with Danny just very badly botched in the final seasons of Thrones. But not just the final. It's like botched, you know, because we see her ruling. Yes. And they even tried to add one of the best characters in the show, Tyrion to the mix to try to like spice it up. But like, you know, and we see her being presented with like upset goat herders and all the dishes of her own, yeah, all this sort of stuff. And it just wasn't done as well as this was done. I will do what Queen's do. I will rule. But like at the end in particular, the the short line between loss and grief and that like fracture, right? Is a woolly naughty road to navigate, but it is part of this text, I think, unquestionably, right? And I loved what I really, really loved. And I've been thinking about the question you posed on talk to Thrones of like, what do we mean by madness when we talk about the Targaryens and how fair is that and how fair is it not? And obviously the answer probably varies character to character, but it Mad King areas. You can't walk it back. I did not. On a very popular answer. Not. I said, I need a rat. And I'd say, I said, not every Targaryen. You stood on that. I said, not every Targaryen is mad, but I did not defend good old wildfire burn them all. I mean, you can't. You're too much of a you're too much of a Jamie stand to ever side with the bad king at the end of the day. That's your true. That's your true. That's your true. That's the he about him right now, like, grimy and hot tub with little bandage. Arms sticking up. By what right? Yeah. There's no money. So let's talk about that. There's no money. There's no gold. There's no coin. The coffers are empty. And the small council is fucking useless. Let's just say it. The mess before callus is like a screaming bastard in the hallways sucks at his job also. It's just incredible energy from everyone in this stretch. So the or while kind of provides this helpful quick reminder in this scene that Thailand. Yeah. It's like, I'm going to divide the coin. Where is it? We have more information from reading the books. The show has not yet revealed that. We'll find out in time the point that we need to know right now is not here. And as basically every subsequent moment in this episode makes clear, that's a huge fucking problem because you need money to do literally anything. Do anything, including a rule, the seven kingdoms, it turns out. So that's tough worrying and not the only worrying thing, but certainly worrying. This turns into like a little debate about or while's trustworthiness, because he kind of is like, let me tell you why this bug is a feature. The fact that I don't know, I've really respected this fact that I don't know proofs that they I wasn't in with them or a while's hustle. It's working. His head is still in his shoulders. So it's obviously working. The fact that this immediately sparked not the first and not the last bickering bout between Missouri and Damon was just delightful. I fancy I can sniff a lie killed me. Damon just immediately saying no one asked you. And and then it just a well actually we haven't appointed any given out any jobs except for Missouri as she is a job, she is a job title. Okay. I would like to say once again, not for the first time, not for the last time on this podcast, then I'm team Ranera. This is a real give Damon this update before the team meeting. What is wrong with every character? Corleys? Corleys later during the petitions when when she says the thing about the King of Kingswood and he's like, hey, maybe a different time. We'll talk for him. And there's like mere moments later. He's like, bastard. Oh my god. You're right. Well, they're not going to get anything productive done in the small council meeting. So let's be discrete and talk about this elsewhere. Because I know you're always like John and Santa have literally one meeting and like have one meeting throughout this. Like if Ranera had had I would say Ranera have a fourth rate conversation with Corleys and be like yeah before he corners you in a hallway say I can't do it right now. I want to know what I will. Just mutter of hall and scamper out of the rooms then like Adam has to say - Dad, she didn't make me a vallarian. He's like, how did the nighting go? And he's like, pretty bad actually. - I got a little fucked and embarrassed in the most important moment of my life. - So like, she didn't like have a conversation with Adam who's like been such a devoted like, dragon rider to her. Like, all of this is bad. Yeah, Misari's got a job. And she's also handed out jobs. She was in a messy, you know what I mean? Like, so let's have a Linda back. - I'm worried. Here's the thing. - Tell me. - So there, you know, Renera makes a lot of mistakes in this episode. And book readers are like, I can see all the dominoes that are gonna fall from these mistakes, right? But then there's like unknown quantities and it's put me in a paranoid Renera state. 'Cause I'm just sort of like, here's a Linda Massey. - Yeah. - I don't know. - Right. - But she's Misari's person, you know what I mean? And I'm just sort of like, and this has nothing to do with Misariya. I'm just sort of like, has Linda Massey done things for Team Black, yes. But where is her allegiance ultimately? And Renera is welcoming right into the dead center of intimacy here. And so it's just put me in the Renera paranoid situation where I'm just sort of like, similarly with like, torn Manrelies here. And like, this is a book character, but they're using him differently. And so I'm just sort of like, what are you doing here? And what's your take on this? And so like, I am like, really, I'm seeing enemies everywhere. - Well, I mean, like you said, so as Renera, I like that you're phrasing that is like putting you in that perspective of paranoia. Like, maybe that's where they want us. I thought, here you say that, like it's me. It's recalling that Chris on Talk to Thrones was like, should we trust this person? When she hands that tea to Renera? It's like, interesting. 'Cause I hadn't thought of that in real time. I thought Renera was just like, I can't believe they have to like deal with not- - Right, she's like, still meeting, but Chris is like, - Chris was like, Renera thinks it's poison. I don't think Renera thought it was poison. But like, should we be wondering? Not if it's poison, but like- - Just as, can anybody be trusted in that point in time? - Cape Fear is infected my brain. - So if someone cuts off their own toe and people are poisoned. - And eats it. - They eat their own toe? - He like bites his own toe off, as well as it. On purpose, he's under the influence of mind-altering drugs. Kapolamy, which is a real drug that you can use to influence people, apparently. So when I saw that tea, I was like, is there a Kapolamy in that tea? Cape Fear has boiled my brain entirely, I'm sorry. I really liked the way you tacked on, apparently. After saying that I'm such conviction in certainty. - No, it's like a real thing. - I mean, it sounds like you know. Yeah, have you ever used it on anyone? - I've just gotten a bunch of people from people being like, have you heard about the good word about Kapolamy? - I feel like it's an anti-nausa drug that is also linked to like the creation of, why were we talking about Cape Fear? - I don't know. - I feel like I'm missing out. - I don't wanna talk about Cape Fear anymore. I've talked about it so much. - Let's talk about legitimacy. Vernira focused here on the coronation. You know, Agons was hasty, hers must be proper, she says, and leave the realm in no doubt. It's not about vanity, 'cause massage like is this the time. It's about legitimacy. We talked about that legitimacy idea already, but just tracking these moments where this is really rearing its head as a concern. And massage, I'm not just worried about the optics, right? She's worried about the practical reality of needing to feed the people, because they just saw in season two, you know, to the hungry rumors or feed, right? The fact that Amon was like close the gates, like I don't give a shit about the small folk being hungry, was something that, as Sylvie, one of the petitioners, reminds Vernira of like, the connection to, and that's another, I'm a Missaria person, right? Sylvie coming back to the mix of that's interesting. They were able to take the lax approach of Team Green to caring for their people and turn it to their favor. So Missaria knows, because they have very recent proof that this is a real thing that they should take seriously. Vernira deciding to care about this and want to feed the people, writing good. - One root of a pig at a time. - One root of a pig at a time, writing good. Pairing that with the botched diplomacy, with the lords, interesting mix and interesting brew in terms of the decisions that she's making here. - I mean, what's true, and we said this on talk of prongs is that Vernira is just like shit at diplomacy. They really could use chase right now, but oh, he's not at the bottom of the gullet, but metaphorically at the bottom of the gullet. He's dead. - You think chase would have been like, I saw Joffrey take a cow pie to the face when the rioters and Kings Landing were hungry. Like, I know what the skin looked like. I know how it can go. - Here's what I think. I think she could have sent chase to the veil. Said she said, "Damon, I'm sure it'll be fine." - Where he murdered his hot wife, Rayor Royce. - I mean, he's beloved in the veil. Full of humor, a lady. - Gerald definitely didn't show up to a royal wedding and like challenged Damon to the death because he's so despised. - So let's say, send Damon on the diplomacy mission. - Yeah. - What should be happening is Damon should go back into battle 'cause that's what Damon's good at, right? So like, get Damon out of the small council room. He's not being helpful there. And send him out to battle. - Yeah. - And if we had chase around, send chase out to diplomacy or something, like surely, I'd bail it would be better at diplomacy than Joffrey's ready. - You think Joffrey's ready? - No, Joff. - Sweet little Joff, when he comes Joff. You know, she tells Luther, like, get him back. He's my air now. Gotta raise him as my air. Maybe he'll just be like, "I'm also an expert at diplomacy." It's possible. - How much taller do you think he's gonna be when he shows up? - I wanted to ask you this. Do you think he's gonna be just like, "I aged five to six years." 'Cause he should be what, 13s, all right? And that, that Joffrey actor was not even close to 13 when last we saw him. - He's like eight, maybe younger. - They should age him up a little bit. - He should show up like Luke age, I think. I think that would be good. - That would be good. - And let's be like, "Don't worry about it." - I'm prepared to not worry about it if it means that these children are finally the right ages and critics of other worlds are still waiting to see again. I'd like to give you an opportunity to talk about Lady Joanna 'cause her near is like, I need you to send word to Lady Joanna and all the great houses. Tell them their queen demands tribute. Remind them who now commands the realm. And that'll be fine because again, it went fine when she talked that way to Boris Prathion in the season one finale. He really rocked with it. He definitely didn't say, "Go home, pup." And tell your mother that the Lord of Storm's End is not some dog she can whistle up at need to set against her foes. What fine, they're all learning their lessons and they're doing great. Lady Joanna, you've been waiting for a mention, you got one. Where is your thrill level? - To the roof. Lady Joanna, Linnister. - She's Joanna with an age. - Yeah, I care to comment on the spelling. - No, my faith. I get mistakenly called Joanna with an age often. You might say Johanna, or Johanna, people do, but-- - Ditions of Johanna. - Yeah, but Johanna, Linnister. I call her Joanna Linnister in my head. - Does anyone call her Joe? - I don't know, you Joe. - The Linnisters have a lot of Joanna's in their families. - True. - Yeah. - I'll never forget, where was the meme of like, if someone calls you this, they're from this place or this, they're from this place. And that was when I realized it only ringer people call you Joe. - Yeah, yeah. - But then I was like, "Your Twitter handle is Joe wrote this. "Can that be true?" - Yeah. - It's a fact. - Anyway. (laughs) - It's just something I think about sometimes. - Yeah, it just comes up sometimes. - But that's how I know. - Our most meworking here is if they call me Joe. - Yeah, they call you Joe. We did a Joe. (laughs) We did a Joe. - Yeah, Joanna Linnister, there's not much I can say outside of the spoiler section. - But you're excited. - But I'm excited, I really like her. - Or while I'll share this to her and I'll update the Damon has disappeared. No sign of vague art for days. The Garrison was killed. The Castel and his sons also slain. And Damon takes a moment to look really sad about Simon before then being like, any word about the hot witch. - With his wife sitting right there. - A barn owl, a goat. - You have to take at least one beat before you tell on yourself in front of your spouse in this way. Like, if wives were narrowed out like, why are you asking? - Dude, this is why he's such, he like nearly takes Ulf's head off when he nights him. He's like sad about Simon's strong. - That's a great read. That's a great read. - I'm just saying this is true. - I'm just gonna give her shit about Ulf at all. And also that Ulf is like, this guy would happily cut my head off and not think twice about it. - Well, they'd be down a dragon rider. He needs them. I really liked Ulf's get up his fit, his fit. - Yeah. - A little wonderful stuff. He's ready to be a Targaryen. - Let's go. - I get it in your English. - Absolutely not. - Absolutely. Incredible high comedy just so, so, so good. Renera wants to send Bala out hunting. Later she'll say send Adam to you. But this is continuing the trend and we have a moment elsewhere in the episode where Renera and Bala pass in the hallway. No words are exchanged. But we are reminded that Renera first of all and more recent storytelling stretch here. Clearly it's like why was a Jason not you? Why did you not save him? There's obviously some tension and blame there. But also just the fact that even when Renera sent Bala out in season two and wasn't willing to send Jace out to scout, willing to risk Bala in a way that she was not willing to risk Jace. So that is unfortunate and troubling. She says here that she'll give anyone who slaves them into an eye heron hole. And this continues something we're tracking. Are you giving your supporters what they want and what they need? This comes up about 50 times in this episode. It has been a through line of this season. Alice, who was so top of fine for Damon that he completely embarrasses himself by making it here. - How rich? She wanted hair and all. - She wanted hair and all. Well, all she needs to do is bring the maim in Targaryen. - Well, easy peasy. - He's there. Was it a kidney, kidney stab? Is that where the kidney is? - No. - That has to be very painful. I have to imagine that's a very painful place to get stabbed by a dagger or a pimple if you got got by a strong son. - I do, I love it. - This is delicious. This is exactly what Alice was saying, right? Like all these people, they're just like, they need it about as a chip, as a carrot. You don't give a shit about it at all. - Plus the way. - Promise to the first. - Yes. Jace had promised this to the freeze. - He did. They did let the winter rolls pass through the twins. What else did they do? they did. Did they fight with the river? I didn't see them fighting with the river. I mean, canonically in fire and blood, they should have, they should have been there. Yeah. They should be in that fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish, fish. Yeah, but they don't need to craft those lyrics. Did we see them? They just let some, they let some smelly old starts through the gate. That's all they did. We really deserve here and all for that. We had to make room for Black Alley to shine, and that in that musical number. There's a rat in the stretch who scurries under Renear's feet, and we're not going to mention every single time that a rat is present in this episode, because they were a lot of rats. But we are going to note this one because this rat has a red apple core, and it's mouth. I just want to say welcome to the team. Welcome to team red apple rat work. We're just thrilled to have you. Preston, who by the way, I definitely brought. Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Is Team Green. Absolutely not. Well, I mean, sure. Okay. If you want to claim that, sure. Yeah. I'll let you have this one. The rodents love the green apples. It's yours. You just gleefully claimed a rat. I'm happy to the, and I'm just saying our rat likes green apples. Our rat Preston likes green apples. I don't believe that's true. Should we ask Sam Whitworth to come back and find out a little walk and talk time. This is a stretch where everyone is just like badgering Renear. You need the queen's guard, put damon on it, the rats reading the candy, the candy might be in the candy, the candle. What do we want to do with the royal bed chamber or cost of wine, et cetera, great stuff. And then it's time for a scene with Allison. Renear just charges into the room where Allison is and was like where the fuck is the gold. Don't pretend you don't know. All right. Wild energy right from the jump, but also reasonable to ask. And Allison, here's what Allison does. Tells the truth. She says, I have no fucking idea. Yeah. Would you blame me? When the green council pulled a coup, they didn't involve me. So I don't, and that's, that was the timing of this when Tyler was like, I split the goal. It's divided. It was in season one episode nine, the green council coup. So Allison does not know that is true. I would refer you to the man himself. This is of auto. Like, what were your dad didn't tell you? Right. But you slew him without ceremony. Just don't show him. There's a later in the same scene auto comes up again. And Renear kind of goes into the distance. We get the rush of the high pitched, like high frequency sound treatment. And that certainly struck me as a moment where our, okay, our other characters observing what we're observing. It seemed like Allison was like, what's happening here? What are you doing? Are you okay? In terms of Renear's response there. And then Helena asked the question. Helena, who of course, has lost his son. Jarris, little Jarris, blood and cheese, tough one. Did killing auto make you feel better about cheese? So do you, like, I'm having trouble really nailing down what I think this, she means here. Is she like, hated that make you feel better? Would it, would I feel better about Jarris if I killed someone or something like that? Or is it sort of like, I know it didn't. So like in my spooky witchy prophecy way, I'm going to be like, you know, because she did this. I feel like, you know, when we first met Helena, she would just say her prophecies out loud to the bugs or whatever, right? And I feel like late in the end of season two. And now she's just sort of like, kind of using it to fuck with people. She did with Amon, right? She's not like the most manipulative person or anything like that, but I kind of feel like she's, you know, she's not just saying her fun little like esoteric diddies anymore. She's just sort of like, did it make you feel better? I know I just didn't read. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how do I want to interpret it. It's, it was funny. Like everything Helena does is really funny. I read it as a, I like that question and thinking about it through that lens. I read it as more of a kind of sweet and innocent, like dude in a human nature moment of like, did it make you feel better? Like how do people kind of cope with their grief and all of the things that they're processing? Like a little neurodivergent question. Just because like, if we compare it to like to that one of one of those Amon moments, they're like seeing Amon looking at the throne and the like really kind of like cutting, was it worth the price? Totally. This felt different. Oh, very show us that it's to your point. Like very totally different mix for sure. I do think it's interesting. Again, as we mentioned this, this episode is not adapted from much that's in the book. And Allison and Renera's relationship is wholly different in the book. But I do like that, like, you know, there's this line queen Allison was fed at wrist and ankle with golden chains. This idea of like the queen and Helena and their golden change their golden fedders through this section. So like seeing them sort of just like here in their chambers, doing relatively fine, not great. But Helena's like, I don't want to be in this room. And we'll talk about that a little bit more in the books, but there's section. But I, you know, I think it's worth mentioning the sauce she puts on like this room. For sure. I don't want to be here. Yeah, definitely. I like on the adaptation front that this is the kind of scene that like wouldn't have made the histories. Of course, no one else is here. So that's really fun. What does she make on the kind of like studying Helena and how she's conducting herself? What does she make of just the look that you know, she's when Renera's like, well, I would have rather killed Edgar and like your mother and I agreed. And Helena's like, yeah, but she's also like, that's fine. I was not a fan. So, so, so good. Will you blame me only for what men have done? Allison's question. Great question. What do you think? Yes, women will be blamed. Yeah. For what men have done. Can Renera take a minute and really say not in fire and blood blamed for what only men have done? And, you know, thinking back to the scene, we so loved in the finale, never says this to Allison. Like, not about their relationship more about the histories. Like, you're going to be painted as a villain. You're going to be blamed. And Allison makes her necessary peace with it to then kind of confront Renera with something that Renera understands as well as anyone. Like, the differences in expectation and perception because there are women in a place of rule that was a very reasonable point to make and savvy of her to do it. Yeah, I think both of there and because again, when Chris asks us that question of like what we thought Allison meant later when she's like your father lived in a dream world that neither of us have ever stepped foot in, right? Or in not a dream world in a world of whatever. And, you know, you and I were both talking about how we felt like that was kind of gendered, right? To say, um, Viserys as a man was allowed to be in this. Also, he lived in peace time. We live in wartime, all these other things. But it was, I thought it was really interesting. We got some pushback from people saying like, no, I thought they meant like because Viserys like spent all day with his legos or this and the other thing. And I'm like, yeah, because he was a dude. Because you can, can you imagine if Renee, if the council had said Reinis, yeah, you are queen, not Viserys, but Reinis. You, the queen who never was, you are the queen. And then she built Legos and she just built fucking Legos all the time. Well, yeah, but you rule. But like she could not have done that. If she had no dragon and she built Legos all the time, they'd be like, what is this? What the fuck kind of targeting her you? What kind of leader are you? Yeah, she would not have been allowed to do that. So Viserys is allowed to be this sort of vacillating kind of sweet and gentle and remembered as a highly competent ruler. Because he was elected by the council as a male ruler and then just sort of like, not questioned. Right. And that's why when like Damon says the things that he says in this episode, but across the series today, it's like he's the only one seeing it clear. I'd, you know, I mean, we like Viserys more than more than, we have more respect for Viserys than Damon does. But for Missaria to be like, what would your, you know, honored father have done? Yeah, and well, why would we do that? Why would we do a Viserys day? Why the fuck would we want to do that? What I really value about the show, you know, because there was all this question about like the timeline of the show and saying like, why did we spend all this time with, you know, these younger actors playing Ranera and Allyson and all sorts of like, it was so important for us to see what kind of ruler Viserys actually was. That's so important in this moment, because if we just had his legacy, then we would, we would be like, oh, good king Viserys, you know, yeah. I really agree. And I think that's, there's, it's paying dividends with all the characters. You know, we have like the, the echoes of Vaman's challenge and what Coralus will do later, which we'll talk about later, but also something like, I don't know, watching Damon so like nakedly dismiss needing to care for the citizens of their realm. Right. It makes you think back to something like the laundry list of council positions that he like couldn't hold and wasn't equipped to hold. It's like, get him out of this, get him out of this small council chamber. It is not set under the step zone. Damon is, get, put him on, put him on triarchy mop up duty. Like, you know, you get him to be thrilled. We told him we were done with the triarchy. Maybe not. Make Damon high general supreme of the Targaryen army. He'd probably fly to ET and just like torch a bunch of people, you know. I mean, he can't wait to dislike globe trot. Damon, wait, I need the camera for a second. Damon. Targaryens don't do well in essence. Ask me how I know. Okay. I mean, he's only seen certain glimpses of the future. He's like, that babe looked hot. Where's she? Where's she? Where's she? You mentioned her in East, and I'm glad you do. Because inside of this Allyson challenge journey, I was, we loved that scene between, that sequence between Rene's and Allyson in the penultimate episode of season one right before Rene's does something unthinkable and still to this day. Let's just be honest. Disqualified. Disqualified. For that episode of television. You can feel the effect of that exchange and that person and and those words on Allison now. still, right? Yet you toil still in service to men. Your father, your husband, your son, you desire not to be free, but to make a window in the wall of your prison. Well, there's the second part of that. Allison desires to be free. And everything that she's doing is to ensure that outcome for her, for Helena and for Jehara. But the first part, the toil still in the service of men. Like, Allison has gone through such a journey. We love a character on an arc of really interrogating how true that was for so long of challenging auto. Like, how would I know what I wanted? You know, you never gave me that luxury and so to say to a Neera, like. - Would you believe me only for what men have done? - Yeah. All it took was one-- - Very satisfying. - Was one trip to Big Batub. Yeah, she only cares. Now all she cares about is, Helena, Jehara. She's like, feminism only. - And like, for like a minute there and at the end, but like not really. - A little bit. She's like-- - And then she's like, let's throw this boy under the bus and also my own son under the bus. - I think the incredible shift in the span of 45 seconds of television, from like, am I supposed to thank you for like sending him to the wall too? All right, I'm gonna reveal very apparently. - She's like, I got two people on my priority list. They're both women. I don't know what I don't know what to do with any of these other men, sorry. - Great stuff. This is where Allison mentions no one knows what Egon looks like. And says basically like, so I'm supposed to hope. I was supposed to hope for the death and capture of my son. Even though they'd agreed to this thing, it's different to have like the, okay, I had to make this bargain, rip the bandaid off and then have to be in this situation of like the slow pulling of the bandaid, hair by hair, piece of skin by skin. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Rainier as I can only imagine. Paired with something like later in the episode, the like I, in the wagon carriage sequence with Missouri, I like, I will look upon the people who took my sons. For me, I will look at them. Yeah. We know what has got in these decisions. Let's talk more about Missouri. But to do this who's getting long for everybody. Missouri is one of the people who is not just working through the ship, but like inheriting some real responsibility, right? One of the only people who has Rainier's trust, Rainier tells Luther, Berkeley Magon Dead. This isn't gonna go well with the high septum. We'll get to that in a second. Missouri swings in and I love this quick beat about like, I've never been to the red key. It's both like larger and smaller. - And it was so wild to like confront that. Like Missouri who's been around since the very beginning and like met with auto and hung out with Damon and done all this sort of stuff, but you know, and but she's never been inside the castle now. - Just a brothel. - You made it girl. - Public tables were the car goals. - Yeah. - Everyone was able to observe everything. - I just thought that was like a fun kind of like demystifying of the red keeper. It's like, oh, there's this mythical thing with the standing and up on the hill, but like you get in there and it's at scale. - Rats all the way down. - A house to run and rats all the way down. I thought that was really great. It was a little beat. And then Missouri asks, I'm sure you can trust Alison Hightower. - What does she make of this? Is this, I really care and I want to protect you or let's get that wedge in there. - She's like Damon untrust with the Alison untrust with it. You know, you can trust me and also my girl, Elinda Massey. - Sure, it's fine. If somebody repeatedly said to the only person that you can trust is me, would that result in you trusting that person more? - But you text me that nightly. - Keep telling us why I'm asking. - That's why I want to know. What would it lead to? - You'd be like, why do you keep telling us every night? - Yes. - And I've told you, Mallory, my phone is bricked from 10 p.m. on. - That's why I text you with 10-0-1. It's the first thing you see when you wake up. Don't trust me, honey, get trust him. - Just kidding, we love Rob. He would be a great master of whispers. What do you think the honey's small counsel for the show would be? Master of law, master of coin, master of ships. - Yeah, I think so too. - What about you? What are you? - Hmm. - I don't think you can pick your own position. You have to tell me what I am. - What? - You love the rules. You're like canonically, see smoke cannot have another rider, actually. - Still really hung up on that? What am I? - Well, you're the queen. - But then, so can I be hand? - Yeah. - Okay, great. - We solved it, great. - And the Mallory can take care of our fleet. - Great. - It'll make you protect our ships. - Fantastic. I think our rub's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. Renera brings up Darren to Missoria. You know, Tropo, Tropo by the prospect of having to kill this small child who's my half brother I've never met. That there reminds me, by the way, on the Damon front in the first, like, you know, we're gonna take care of him as we would all sons of Viserys. - Come on. - Damon, you're trying to kill these people. I mean, he knows it. Stop fucking around so much. Look what happened. I do love him. He's so great to watch, he's fun. This is where-- - Did he kill Breakout, the murder cloak, when he goes back to the veil? - I hope so. - Okay. - Inspired our set deck. It's breezy out there. It's his blustery in the veil. You need a cloak. - I still think that Allison could have probably asked Damon for a motor tip or two before just heading out into King's Landing and their very recognizable garb. Speaking of very recognizable, this is where Jason, the shade of Jason, Morgan and Death walks toward Renera. - He leaned the very last. - Down the hall. And we switch very quickly after Renera sees Jason, kind of affirming what we've been saying. The impact of this loss, understandably so, is going to have a real guiding impact on the decisions that Renera makes. Goes from like, "Ah, I do, am I gonna kill this kid into why should I not kill him?" After seeing Jason. - Why shouldn't I? - Why? - Why shouldn't I keep it? - Why should I not strike him as my own sons were stricken? So, that's worrying. You pair that with something later, they'll like, "I can't get justice." Damon's like, "Justice will be yours." She's like, "I'm not gonna get justice." But the crumbs. - Do you think she was thinking about that when she was eating that cracker? She's like, "Ah, the crumbs." - I had a real crunch to it. - You need to be able to snack quickly and efficiently in the middle of a busy day. - What are those crackers that are sort of like long and wavy? Do you know what I mean? - Oh, yes. - Like white thin and crispy. - I do. - That's exactly what that is. I see how good cheese on them or something. - They can. - Or like a rosemary. You have to come different, different flavors. Delicious. - Yeah, yeah. - Love that. - Is Veneer a mistaking as many other characters in Game of Thrones and elsewhere have? - Justice for vengeance. And is that something we should be worried about? - Ooh, tough. - Probably. - Should we call Batman and should we get our pass in? - I will have vengeance. - It's worrying. It is, oh, worrying. And this is another moment where people are like observing something funky going on with Veneera, the boy who she mistakes as Jace and then Missaria, too. They're like, you just went into a trance. Like, what's happening? This is always the observation as you know it is. And this is where she says like, I, you know, there's a lot to do. Let's question everybody. See if they're loyal to the high towers. Missaria, do it quietly as only you can. Only you can, Missaria's like, fuck yeah, it's working. - Uh-oh. - Is it working with High Septin Bowlman, not High Septin Eustace? - It's not. Tell me why. - Okay, tell me why. - It's not at all. - Well, I thought it was really interesting. This idea, thinking about the faith and as political actors. And this idea that Condal presented on the inside of the episode that the faith are invested in the high towers who hold the seat where the starry scept is in Old Town. - Yes. So this idea of like, where's the center of power for the faith, it moves inside of the Targaryen history, but yeah, right now. But it's not just, I think, like geographical, like, hey, we're both from good Old Town. It's like, think about the makeover that the castle got when Alicent took over. Not all, but gone are many of the Dragon orgy murals and tapestries and whatever. And up with the seven pointed star, you know, and it's all over the place now. And so their prominence and their proximity to power grew and flourished under this targ tower regime led by the Greens. - Yeah. - And so for Renera, who married her uncle. - Not ideal. - And sort of flaunts this idea of the dragons in front of him. He's like, not you. So he's hiding behind this sort of like decorum of like, I haven't seen a body you haven't called the Silent Sisters. What are you doing here? I just anointed your brother, you know, like, but her brother wasn't the named heir. You know what he mean? Like, there's many things that the faith have done here that is dicey. And so he's sort of like, retreating behind in the way the camera sort of lingers on his like, seven point star, Medallion, all this sort of stuff like that. He's retreating behind this sort of like, the ceremony and all of this, this superiority. When in fact, he's much of, as much of a political animal as anyone else. We don't know this guy very well, but like the faith themselves are political actors. - Absolutely, they have an agenda for sure. I love the choice to set this, 'cause like this meeting could have taken place in so many rooms, but to set it not just in the throne room, you know, the seat of power, but with those like statues and pillars of the Targaryen rulers all around them, when there has been such conflict between the Targaryens and the faith. - Yeah. - I was thinking too, I love the high towers. It's like the good believing family that is, perpetuating and propagating and evangelizing on behalf of the faith, I was thinking back to you clocking the second we got to see Orman's beautiful armor that is bedecked as well with like the imagery of the seven, right? - Yeah. - So it's everywhere. The fact that in the past and the canonical timeline, the history of the Targaryens to this point in the story, There's It's been quite a bit of tension between the faith and the Targaryen. - It's uneasy, detent. - Quite uneasy, quite uneasy. And something like, okay, you're allowed to fuck each other. It's gonna have to be like, papered in as the doctrine of exceptionalism. We're gonna make sure everyone knows this is not okay. And we don't think it's right. But you need to be able to like ride your dragons, so we'll allow it. There's always been this tension between like what is holy and what is foul from the perspective of the faith. I think it's fair to say most people, whether or not they believe in the seven, I think it's wrong to fuck people you're related to. But it's like hypocritical because they've thrown their power behind Aegon who married his sister. - You did. - And I mean, that was part of Allison's hypocrisy, too, to like a judge or an era for that and their youths. - But I'm just like, for them to be so affronted and say you're your foul beasts and all these sort of things like that when I'm just sort of like, new regime, same as the old regime. - No problem. - In zestuous with dragons. - No problem. - It's just the different belongs that you don't like, 'cause they don't care for you very much, 'cause they got married under like pagan dragon, blood ceremony, you know? - Remember the blood of the lips? - That's what I was referencing. - And the fist. - And the fist. - That was wonderful. - That was beautiful. - That was all bra, it could have been great to be there. The other thing about the dragons, this is true in something we've been confronting inside of the Targaryen family, but certainly for the perspective of the faith, they can control the dragons. That's something they can use or yield or bring inside of their power. So that's a threat completely. Obviously now, yes, Aegon and Amen have their dragons as well, and sweet Helena and Dream Fire. And both sides had dragons and the dance of the dragons. That's why it's the dance of the dragons. - Dreamy, dreamy. The fact too that like, I felt like when you were really kind of incited this reaction, put the flame was there, and then there was fuel added to it with the like, a dragon appeared to be, am I not the chosen one, right? Like did the gods not choose me and sanction me? And the ice-up to having to concede like, it has happened, it is true. But like, that's a threat as well to the doctrine of the faith. If a ruler can say, well, the gods have picked me and me alone, but also to your point, plenty of times, remembers of the faith would use logic like that to push their agenda. I thought it was really interesting this kind of, the allusions to like blood magic and the blood mages. And this is stuff we've heard Viserys talk about when he was like, building his legos and talking about the history and the doom and all of Valeria and talking about like, where the blood mages worked their craft. - I mean, this is what the dragon or G tapestries are about. Did they fuck dragons in order to make more dragons? - And Viserys was concerned and not everybody else was. Not everybody else was, but a bit of a source of a division between them. It exhorts and comforts and binds together your people underestimated it being the faith at your peril. This is the parting warning from high-ceptible and to your New York, 'cause your New York is like, all right, I got it, you're not into this. This isn't gonna work. You're not gonna give me what I want and anointing, but you're not gonna give me what I want more broadly, which is your support, right, and your sanctioning. So, this is set a couple centuries before Game of Thrones, but we've seen Game of Thrones. We watched the High Sparrow. We watched the faith militant rise again. There are plenty of examples from past timelines in the canon as well of the military manifestation of that conflict between the Targaryens and the faith. This warning is issued for a reason and it is issued with heft behind it. It's worrying. It's worrying, Joe. Renera did not come out on top of that. - No, strange. - Love to see the septons and the silent sisters and the members of the faith like observing the handing out of the food, which, you know, Missouri has kind of like boasting about it. This is, you know, fuck down like this is your anointing. That's a purposeful choice to do that in front of the SAP, where you know they're gonna observe it. - Do you think you would have gone over better if Renera had been like, hey, I dressed up as a nun recently. I let some candles, I snuck in. - I used your faith as costume. - You think that would have gone over really well? - I cosplayed as a believer. Just when it suited me and then not again. Yeah, she should maybe, maybe they're still time to try it. Coralus makes us ask, what did you think of the vibes of this dinner? - Okay, so I love this. I love the way this opens. Renera looks sort of like relaxed for the first time. She has this whole episode and she's like, ah, I'm no longer being observed by a million different people. I'm not around people who need things for me. I'm with Coralus, my number one ally, Adam, who I quite like, Alan, who I'm meeting seems lovely. And like, let's just have a small intimate relaxing dinner then Coralus is like, I have an impossible ask. You know, and she's like, fuck. I just thought, I thought the way that it started with her just being like, let lovely cozy dinner. Let's just do it. We'll have this intimate just us dinner. And then it's like, nope. You're still on the clock, baby. And he needs something from you. I love this. I thought it's, I think it's been really interesting to watch the fandom react to this because a lot of people, many people are saying, that for Coralus to have spent his entire life denying these young men, and then not give Renera even like a minute to sort of process this. - Yeah. - Is frustratingly hypocritical. But also is Renera being a hypocrite in many degrees, yeah. And he calls her out for that. But it's just sort of like, what is Coralus's hypocrisy and all of this? And his urgency is my house's ashes. - I got to figure out how to preserve my- - Legacy. - Yeah. - Legacy. - That was play, I mean, the choice to so publicly shout bastards and the follow-up to the scene later, shocking stuff, in this scene here, I thought it was like so painful to like watch Alan and Adam sit there for this. You know, this thing that isn't theory like for them and is for them also. And I do think there's room for like many things can be true at once. And Coralus has learned some things from his conversations with Alan about himself, about their relationships, has learned to appreciate them. But also like both Coralus and Renera in this scene are very much viewing this through the lens of their needs and their experience are not even about Adam and Alan at all. Like even, you know, when Coralus is like, they've looked what they've done, Renera views that entirely through what Alan did for her fleet and her war in the gullet, Valarian fleet, but the fleet that has enlisted in her service. Adam, she's like, again, the proof that the gods have chosen me. It's all through the lens of what it says about her rule, right? Coralus, when he talks about legacy in his line ending, it's like, that's not for them, that's about him. Do they also benefit from it? Yes, but it's about him. So yeah, there's like, that's what it's Adam want. What does Alan want? Yeah. It's interesting. I'm not a royalist, so I would not really see it this way, but like, Renera having dinner with Alan and Adam and Coralus is like, they get to have a small intimate dinner of the queen on the first couple nights of her rule and the red keep. Like, that's it, sure, it is a gift of a kind. I mean, he's our hand, you know? One of the dragon riders, leader of the fleet. And I think it's a point while made that she is like, granting them this-- Intimacy. Yeah, the intimacy. I thought it was funny though to like kind of look at the, 'cause Adam is very much like, oh my God, it's my honor to serve you your grace and Alan's like, oh, what the fuck? Yeah, you know, they all have their own obviously, like, relationship to each other and to what it means to be in these positions at all. Midnight cuddles, Renera can't sleep. Coral's up with Damon. I love this. He puts his arm out for her. You're a Shakespearean image in the notes here of once again, this like haunted castle, Renera walking around in her 90 and, you know, with the-- with the-- in the candlelight. Yeah. We got this email from our listener, Aiden, who's doing a Shakespeare track or this season and has decided to come up with like a line from Shakespeare to go with every episode of the season. And I would like to put this forth to our listeners and say, like, I would love all their suggestions from listeners of like every week. Send us the Shakespeare line. Are people gonna do this? I don't know, does it feel like homework? I don't know, but like, the Shakespeare line this episode most reminds you of. These are Aiden's suggestions for the first three episodes. Okay. Episode one. Blow winds come rock. At least we'll die with harness on our back. That's from Macbeth. All right, PJs. Episode two, I'm in blood stepped so far that should I wait no more returning whereas tedious as go or also Macbeth. We're-- it's a real Macbeth season. I know, not do a Macbeth quote for the third episode, which was the most Macbethian is a twist. But I'm uneasy lies the head that wears the crown is Henry IV, yeah. So very good. Great stuff. So I'm interested to hear what other people come up with. You know, thinking a lot about-- I was thinking a lot about Banquo's Ghosts in Macbeth inside of this episode. And floating daggers and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, give me your best haunted castle, Shakespeare line. Would you say that the bar is always welcome? I would. You're at the house of our-- I would. Less welcome. Period cramps. Well, you're trying to hear petitions. It's tough. Mood blood interruption here. Our girl, Linda, this is the return. Helping her nearer to prep to her petitions. This is the stack of the cracker, but also those great details of like, should I wear jewels? No, what would that say? The chain for gravity. The sword, dude, does that convey what we want? All of those considerations. How many of them would a man in the same situation need to weigh? I mentioned Avita at the end of the episode, the root of magazine, very ever-per-own. But also, like, in this, this sort of like-- - Uh, I'm their savior, that's what they call me. So Lauren, but call me. Like, what does a woman in power have to wear? Like, Christian, do you or me? Like, like, this, this, I need to be rainbow high. Like, what should I wear? And like, this idea of, you know, the somber gowns that she's choosing here. What are the optics constantly? What are the, if you were constantly being observed, what are the optics constantly? And then they're different for women and they are for men. Visaires can, like, have half his body falling off and it's not a commentary, but if we're near, where's the wrong necklace? Like, gives the wrong message. (laughs) Some negative feedback from our listeners about this period plot line. Tell me. You and I liked it. - Yes. - I did have, and I stand by that. I like it. I like it. I like how it was deployed. I did have a moment where I'm like, isn't this the whole, like, this is why we can never have a female president. She gets her period in, like, the red phone rings and she's incapable of doing her job or whatever. Like, so, um, that's on my mind. We got a lot of listeners, not a lot, but a significant amount of the listener emails saying they hated this because they felt like it was sort of, like, co-signing that in some way, not that it was, but just sort of, like, a woman gets her period. She can't do her job 'cause she's on her period sort of thing. And I mean, I don't think in it, there's any definition, by any definition, that that's what Sarah has some Claire Kellner and whoever else worked on this episode had in mind. I think it was more in line, my interpreter is a more in line with what you said on Talk The Thrones, which is sort of, like, here's the thing that men don't have to fucking deal with and the connection that Claire Kellner makes to the lactating in season one of just sort of, like, these are the things that, you know, it's a thing that a little messy immediately understands. But not some of the Reneira can share with any of the other men surrounding her as to why she can't hear petitions today. It would be, today would not be the best day to hear it or whatever, you know? Yeah. But Sarah's could be like, I need my maggot time, but Reneira can't be like, I need my moon blood time because it's just a different standard. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's why I liked it is because, like, and I thought that the both, like, Sarah has and Claire Kellner talking on, I guess that would have been on the official pod about, like, things like this aren't often, like, written into stories like this or like, acknowledge just like a part of life. And so, like, I liked that it was acknowledged as a part of life for some people, right? And like, the fact that Reneira, I totally understand that critique of like, well, wait, what is the, like, whispered dipshit assumption of how that would affect you? I think the fact that Reneira then goes about the day and, like, has to navigate that. I personally really liked it. I have had plenty of fucking days where I'm like, I have really bad cramps and I feel like shit and I have to sit here and do a podcast and it's hard, but I do it, right? And then I text you complaining about it. That's why I-- No, you tell-- I mean, this is the thing. It's like, you tell me. You don't tell-- I'll talk for two seconds. All the guys who work on our show. Yeah, so, I mean, again, like, I think-- With love and respect, guys. With love and respect, yeah, I just text you with that. I think everybody having their own, like, individual reaction to that in response makes complete sense to me. I think that's a personal thing. I kind of, like, appreciated it being present here and that Reneira wasn't, like, and it's also fine if you don't feel all needed day off. I'd do that plenty too, but wasn't, like, I'm not going to go here in partitions. It just had to, like, all-- because it was part of, it wasn't the whole episode. It wasn't, like, I have cramps and that's the episode. It was, like, people won't leave me alone. I can't figure out whether to kill Darren, Damien, who I thought finally got it. I didn't actually bring him to heal after all, right? The faith, they're not with me. I have to think about whether it's OK to even work jewelry. And I feel, like, shit, like, it was, you know, and the list is even longer than that. It was, like, in the mix with all of these other things that form a day, a week, a part of your mind, the part of your year. And I think, yeah, I thought the-- I hadn't-- like, I think I'll talk to Thornch, we talked about the comp of "Renira Being" in childbirth, in labor, in the season one finale, while the men were plotting. And the war, like, I remember at the time having a similar, like, oh, this could, like, the read on this could be bad and wrong, and this could be mishandled. But I thought, ultimately, the way the show leaned into the fact that this would be something for "Renira," but also, again, the men around her, like, the second-- she's out of commission for, like, even an instant. They move on without her, interrogating that actively in the text, and, like, wanting to-- So she can't take a day off, because what is Damon going to-- Is Damon going to sit on the Iron Throne and be like, "Earn 'em all?" Exactly. You might. But, again, I think it's completely, like, I totally get why it doesn't work for some people. It is time to hear petitions. It is time to sit on the Throne. The rats are also in the Throne, which is tough. I loved-- we talked on "Talk to Throne" about the visual of kind of the framing of, like, the barbs of the blades of the Throne and-- Yeah, yeah, yeah. Seeing "Renira" and, like, this prison, the cut to the rats carrying inside the blade, incredible, grasping the arm of the Throne. All of it just really, really, really great. And, like, we've seen plenty-- you mentioned earlier, Danny, hearing petitions in "Marine." You know, we've seen net as hands hit the Throne and "Here Petitions," we've seen lots of different characters over different episodes and shows. Here are petitions. Certainly, the content that's most top of mind is "Egon" hearing petitions. And an intentional parallel that they leaned into that they really wanted to set up. Yes. You've got "Corley Standing" where "Auto" was standing and doing this sort of similar sort of, like-- Not like that. Not like that. Not like that. So different. "Egon" did, like, he-- he bit back at "Auto." Yeah. He was, like, actually, no. Like, we need to-- Yeah. Yeah. Interesting to revisit that. But also, "Egon," like-- that was such, like, a great shading of that character, because "Egon" who's been a piece of shit, his whole life, is finally, like, actually, I want to do some nice things for the people. What if I could help, but oh, it's too late. Oh, it's too late. I've been a monster in an asshole, and I was never prepared for this, and my father made me feel and wanted to-- No, my cock is burst like a sausage on a spit. Right on a spit. Very tough. One of the people we hear from in the scene is Sylvie, who, as we've mentioned a few times over the years, issued that small, folk-centric warning to demons. This is Amon's brothel, Madame, right? When princes fight, the people who suffer are the small folk, like me. The Amon-Egon embarrassment at the brothel, where Amon was, like, a foxist person about Sylvie? Couple episodes after that. Was that why? Or would it always have happened? We don't have that clarity definitively. Sylvie was in the Alinda, Diana, Missouri, a team of planting those seeds the whispers about. They're up there in the red keep, partying, and shaman down on Gorma Fees while we're starving. Yeah, and all of was one of the people who was, like, what the fuck? Yeah, right? So we get that reminder in the scene, and that's the role that Sylvie played. It was not just a reminder of, like, I helped. It was a reminder of what felt to me like a sh-- kind of a brazen, challenged arena. The people chose you inside it with you are you going to prove worthy of that choice? Are you going to justify everything? Also, I think it's-- what I love about the mess that Ronira is dealing with here, as any new administration has to deal with when they enter the mistakes of the old administration. So, like, why are there so many rats? Because Aegon killed all the right catchers. OK, that's Aegon's shit that she has to mop up. But why is everyone starving? Because you're blocking. Dude, when Mandarly was like-- Maybe it's enough to have them forget that it was you were blockade. I was like, this is just delicious. Delicious and intro. Yeah, but just sort of like it's both Aegon's shit and it's also her shit, because the small folks suffer when the rich folk play their Game of Thrones. And so it's just sort of like, this is what's been going on. Let me ask you this, because you said Game of Thrones. When, at the end of the episode, Ronira was like, what game is he playing about, Ormond, were you like, the Game of Thrones? No, was that you at home? Actually, yes. Did you scare Adam when he said it? He was like, oh, yeah. He's really supportive. That's great. He is great. Small Council continuing to bicker. They're still a complete fucking calamity. This is the who is us argument between Missaria and Damon. This is-- you've mentioned you're not a royalist. It's just kind of interesting in terms of Missaria's. It was so relieving. What? To not have to give a shit about the Taylor Swift wedding. Oh, yeah. But watch all my old Vanity Fair colleagues have to cover it in detail. And I was like, I don't have American royalty. I don't have to give a shit. I've got a real kick out of seeing one of our former ringer colleagues, Tommy Elter, walk out of the garden in his talks, having attended the wedding. Oh, good for you, Tommy. Incredible stuff. Wonderful. Missaria's arguing for democracy, but to further a dynasty. And I guess it's like, well, what choice do you have? Yeah. No better choice than that, I guess. Tough one. What you make of Damon saying the Order of Things invoking the Order of Things? Because that was such a key like reneas for Niera, the Order of Things line. I like the recurrence of that using this logic that reneas had kind of positioned to like force when Niera to acknowledge the state of play, right? And here Damon is. Her husband, one of her theory trusted advisors, one of the only people in this room. Like, well, that's the Order of Things. The very thing that she's challenging this, like, can you ever break the wheel really? It's on fire, long dead and decaying, long in the day. So that's a mention here in this stretch. So we'll just, we'll just note that, move on, note that. And asking what for Sarah should do. We already talked about all this. And we talked on, talk to the thrones about the lyrus, like pursuit of egg on after the particular-- in season two episode one and that like difference. And we're near here seeking that proximity to Viseric's legacy and Lairis trying to get Egon to move away from it, to distance, to use it to kind of work him. And this question that it makes us think of of like, oh, it's an interesting indicator in a character beat. Do you want to distance yourself from the predecessor? Do you want to try to claim proximity because you think you need it for legitimacy? Like what is required for you to try to claim legitimacy and for Renera, to try to behave like Viseric, who was a fucking dipshit tough. The Nightingale Seeds, a fantastic scene. We talked about this a lot in talking thrones. It's so good, but like all of this is really good. Ulf Q and Adam are here. The like, Ulf wanting to be a Targaryen. Absolutely not. Ulf the white, Hugh Hammer, Adam of Hull. Of Hull. The swirly, really funny, really, really tough pain. But then also just like, as we talk, I'll talk to the thrones, like the difference between this and other Nightingale Seeds that we've seen across other West Roacy shows. Let's get a little taste of that, Carlos. In the name of the warrior, I charge it to be brave. In the name of the father, I charge you to be just. In the name of the mother, I charge you to defend the art of the innocent. (dramatic music) - Sae. - Sa. (laughing) It's just amazing. It's not like every single glimpse of a Nightingale or story about a Nightingale has been like pure poetry. Like, you could think of like Jora saying, oh my god, I thought it was gonna like piss in my boots, right? It was taking so long. But there is at least always a sense of import. - An occasion. - Yes, and like what does it mean to the person who's being nighted? - Yes. - You know, and all of that. And it's just sort of like bam, bam, bam. Perfunk three. - Absolutely. In the midst of the wreckage of, you know, them tearing down the old and bringing up the new, it's horrible. And then we get Hugh Hammer kind of repeating his performance from season two, episode one, when he was asking Aegon, hey, you gotta pay me to do what I need to do. He's like, hey man. You said that I could have a living. My kid died and my wife is off to Templeton and I would like to have a life, a little work life balance. But I need to be compensated in order to do that. - When he was like, I'll get back to you. - I'm a wash-in-dolum as a deficiencies. Very good line, really funny. But hey, has this come up before the season? Are you giving your supporters what they want? - What they need and what they want. - What they ask for. - Interesting. And what you specifically told them you would give them. Food for thought. Alison, back in the mix. Comes and asks a very reasonable ask, my father's bones. Can we send them home? And Reneira says yes. There's this little moment of calm and humanity, lovely. You feel all the history between them, Alison, even remarks upon how strange it feels. - Do you feel like Alison was, I've seen some interpretations of this scene as Alison sort of like baiting the hook 'cause she wants Reneira to like talk to her more. Like it's strange to see you like this. That was not my interpretation. Olivia Cook's performance was very much like, it's weird to see you like this. - Yeah, if you know. - It's all more to me like just a really genuine, like those fucking strange. - That's the second word. - This is strange. - I'm used to seeing. I remember when your dad used to be in here making his Lego. - And I remember when I used to have to fuck your dad. - Yeah. - A lot of history between these characters. - A lot of history. And Reneira, who cannot trust any of her own counselors except for Missaria, calls upon Alison's experience. As I heard these petitions, you did this a lot. - And what's so funny is I'm just like, this is exactly who you should be talking to. Imagine if Reneira rolled with Alison in her ear, Doreen team, honestly, to me. - Do you think the members of the newly formed team black small council would be into that? - I don't give a shit. - Reneira's the queen. (laughing) - You will do things in your heart whenever coiled from before you came to the front. This is in the trailer a couple of times. - Yeah. - We thought she might be talking to Eamond, but she's talking to Reneira here. And this is exactly, these scenes is exactly sort of the thing we dreamed of when Reneira was gonna take King's Landing. And Olivia Cook and Emma Darcy were gonna be in the same place again. And it's like, okay, we get to watch them have scenes together and those are always the show at its best. So I don't know how much, again, because they have, do not have this relationship in the books, right? Alison and Reneira are not- - Besties. - Besties behind the scenes or anything like that. But what opportunities does the show have to give us? Alison and Reneira talk about what it's like to rule a rule as a woman or all these other things. I'm really excited for that too. - And what level of, how far will they both be able to push each other and still make room for this? - Like Alison rightly is pissed. She's like, we made a promise to each other. I actually held on my end of it. - Where's Aegon? - Well, you sure. - Yeah. - She's kind of- - Kind of the guards on the parapet. - That was an incredible pronunciation of parapet. Did they not put down their swords? - Yeah. - Did I not get. - Where's Aegon here? - Where's Aegon? - Well, that is exactly what Reneira wants to know. (laughing) - There was a clear deal. - Yeah. - Bring me, Aegon the server. - I mean, yeah, it was said with a lot of decibels and intention and clarity. Also, Reneira's just like outright. I had to respect the candor here. It's like, I can't really see the favorite. That was right now that made me laugh. That was pretty funny. And Alison's like, really fuck. Come on. It's time to serve rats. Great stuff. - Great little detail in the House of Dragons Bill. Or they were like, oh, we had fish heads and we had all these other disgusting bits of the fill foul food. And then Claire Killner came in and was like, just the rats in the grill. (laughing) - Was it worms? - Did they say it was worms? - They did say it was worms, yeah. They didn't specify maggot, but worms. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, really wanted to be like, couscous or vermicelli or something like that. - This is a beautiful sprouts lovely. It was actually really interesting to hear like all those things are edible. Like the beetroot and the, it's kind of excited, like an nutritious plate. If anyone has never watched House of Dragons Bill, this was a really different one because usually they're like, oh, and these dead bodies. And now we know it's fire. - Yeah, yeah. - No, but these are the sigils we use and something like that. - And this was much more like gentle, you know, of an examination, but there were some gems in this one. Like one of the extras at the table who was playing one of the like the mid-tier ladies never see me the rat and me like, what? Like literally just like, the fuck is this? Really made me laugh, very good. So the assembled Joe, they're like, fuck yeah. It's not just Coralus and Adam and Alan who got in there. - Intimate dinner. I know. It is an honor. - Personal invite. - Yeah. - And you know, guests, right? Big deal in Westeros. This is gonna be a meal to remember. Standing up. Oh, I've always supported you on a nearer, like ripping off these little bar ribs about. Oh, I'm sure. It's true, even though I don't recall you saying it. They're like not really clocking. How are nearer feels about them and what is about to happen? And how could you? Because how often would a brand new ruler just on the throne serve rats to be assembled? - The worms are really a bridge too far, honestly. - You were fine with the wrap, but the worms, you draw the line. - The rat looked like beautifully brazed, but a real, a nice like a nice sheen, a nice crunch maybe on the skin. - And glaze? - Yeah, a little glaze. I just think that if the to-do list is this long and work as distressful, this is efficient multitasking. You have a, a rodent problem. And you need to have those rats, I have some questions about that. I know that's a good, that is a good question, actually. I loved this. I do have some questions about torn mandrelly. - Tell me. - Without getting into any spoilers about what we know about torn mandrelly in the book. If the assembled here are mid-tier, nobody gives a shit about them nobles. What is house mandrelly doing here? - Yeah, and even just the geography of it. - Yeah, exactly, because she was like, your house will be rated to house mandrelly, do they have a, I guess they got a, - A pettittair? (laughing) - A pettittair? - In the groundless. - Okay, so the mandrelly pettittair is being rated, I guess. I had some questions about that. So thank you, I'm glad you had the same questions. I was like, what is torn mandrelly doing here? And even like, some people are like, he's not sitting at the table, so he's just observing that. But I don't think that's the case because he's like, yeah, I'm as deserving of anyone else here. She's like, we're gonna toss your house too. He's like, yep, might be at my townhome, for sure. I guess so. - My brown spot. - Yeah, exactly. (laughing) - It's a double wide. - Yeah. But, you know, Dan Fogler's here and torn mandrelly's here. - I'm excited. - House mandrelly. - Yeah, I mean, for Throne's fans, who wanted a lot more of the mandrelly so we got in the original series, it's an exciting comment and the vibes were great. But, I mean, House mandrelly is an extremely rich and powerful house. - Yeah. - So I would not fuck around and find out with them at a rap banquet personally. - Yeah. - But he seemed kind of tickled by it. - That's also why he was like, I don't really give a shit about this. - Yeah, so I'll be fine. - He's like, go ahead, sack my townhouse. - Yeah. - Try and white harbor see what happens. - Exactly. Damon, he's also amused by this show. - Yeah. - He's like, this is a gesture. It's not even gonna make a difference. It's only gonna cover these small folk while I don't even care about feeding for like a minute. When you are a rightly notes, gestures matter, but yes, they need to figure out a more lasting approach. - Yeah. - She's like, she sends them up to the veil. - Oh, yeah, one root of egg at a time. (laughs) We can build back. When have you last consumed a root of egg? - I don't think I've ever had a root of egg. - Should we make them? - So like, I mean, it's like a root. Like you would put it with like your parsnips and you're-- - A root vegetable? - Yeah. - And like a nice sort of like harvest baked-- - That's why I used to spell that. Let's say root of-- (laughing) - Root of bega. - Yeah. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Hybrid of a cabbage and a turnip, is that right? - Okay, yeah. You put it with a turnip. - That's like a bullshit Gemini result. So who knows if that's accurate. Let's see. - You would like root vegetable? - Cue it up with some parsnips and some turnips under and put it under the roast chicken in the oven. Let the juices from the herbs and the chicken like roast the veggies underneath. - That sounds delicious. - That sounds great. - How does a root of bega pair with a rat do you think? - Hmm, quite well. - If I do you could like-- - You could puree root of bega for a nice bed. - Anyway, do I'm gonna roast a chicken and make some root of begas? - That would be great. - That would be great in the fall. - I-- - Not during the summer. I'll tell you that much right now. - No, no, no, no, no. I thought that to like whatever poultry, whatever bird, runnira, and corpus, and Alan, and Adam were eating looked worse than the rat. By the way, I did. - That looked great and like gross. - The chicken feet, that was one of the other things that they said, like with the fish head, was maybe gonna be in the plate initially, but no. - Rats and worms. - That was a really good rats and worms. - Great stuff. Damon, you still don't know who he are. You've achieved so much, kid. (laughs) You've come so far. You fucked your uncle. You've come so far. No, you've done it, right? You're here when the red keep. The war is ending. He's happy to tell you. It's a story just a dragon math. The world is theirs. Here's what Damon has to say. - You have an empire, unassailable. And our children will rule it forever and a day. - You stylus common deers and the world is like the pirates that plague us. - I stylus gods, runnira. - Are you concerned? You worried at all? - The scorps sounded very optimistic. (laughs) Like horror strings. (laughs) - You're the horror strings. - I'm very, very calm and mellow and hopeful. - Can I tell you one of my favorite like pre-season press moments? Is Emma Darcy was relaying this story about how she was like, "We had a lot of Valerian in the script." And I had just had a sense that Matt had not looked at the script and done any prep. So I just texted him and said, "Hey, butt." - Maro's high Valerian day? - This is our high Valerian. - I forget that she's some English school sort of like whatever oral. Like our high Valerian oral or something like that. She's like, "Have you studied? "Have you gotten ready?" - Had Matt Smith studied? - He had not, but then he did. Because she said, "Oh, there's that too." So yeah. - I find the high Valerian scenes just wonderful. And Damon switches to high Valerian to say as the prophecy requires the moving in and out of the common tongue and high Valerian, always delightful. They're just two of also my favorite high Valerian speakers. - Emma might be my very favorite, actually. - Yeah, it is, it's just, it is like, there's a kind of hypnotic ball. - It's very buttery and like rhythmic. - But it's just buttery, like buttery and the rutabake up here. - Yeah. - Delicious. - Buttery Parsons are good. - I quite agree. I love that Damon and Raniera are both in this godly head space, but with distinction, right? There is some, I mean, it's very worrying from both of them, but there is something different about the gods chose me, type of fanaticism, and we are gods. Which in some ways you could say like, Damon's just talking like every other Targaryen, like if we go back to the beginning of the series, the like test the fanira issue to run, to do the fanira. (laughs) - Well, I'm sure some of them are facing some fanira. (laughs) It's some fanira on that family. - JoJo Martin, please name a Targaryen fanira. - Sorry, we deserve it. - We got an anus, so a fanira, I mean, why not? (laughs) - Honestly, honestly. - The fanira Targaryen, it's, if we ever get that character, Brandon O. George, this is George, we're big fans, we believe in you, buddy. (laughs) - Drop wins of Winter, and just write Duncan Egg. - Please! - We've been saying it. - Please! - The, you know, the people say that we're closer to gods, but they say that because of our dragons, without them, we're just like-- - Not dreams. - Dreams, so both of these things are so in the mix here. Dream said, make us King's dragons, and now Damon's also a dream believer, because of his hair and all trip. - Well, one specific sexy dream, yeah. Fucking his mom, and also-- - And Elizabeth. - And Elizabeth. - Seeing Danny, who I'm sure he'd also happily fuck. - Yeah, once you're like, all right, we're kings. Well, it's not much of a leap to say we're gods as well, but the kind of like, the fact that the characters who are saying, aren't we just gods, I'd style us gods, aren't thinking, okay, the thing that makes us that, dragons. So this is where the dragon mapping and the scene feels interesting to me. They've lost three already. Our IPA racks, for Max and Meleys. The thing you're doing right now risks you losing, the source of that power. The thing that allows you to say this and believe that this could be true. Like, where is the-- - Where is the reflection? - Yeah, and the caution. - So that's a calm caution reflection has always been something Damon has been saying before. - I mean, that's obviously not really Damon's brand. I don't know. - Moody man, self a crown and just swaggered his ass into the throne room. - I loved that driftwood crown. - I loved it. - It looked great and the short air is wonderful. This is Viserys, it's like with me, my piece of them, we work through some stuff at her and all. But he renounced his dragon, renounced. And Ranera says, I'm gonna heed and take seriously the lesson, the words of caution that he shared with me about that power, about the illusion of control. What happened at the doom? - Still a source of great mystery in the canon. - The doom of Valera, at the end of the day, whether it's an actual natural disaster, the cataclysm, whether it's, that they do looks too greedily and too deep, you know, whether it's-- - You fuck one dragon. - What the fuck, I mean it? - Warring Dragonless, any of the possible furious in the mirror. - When Nera Targaryen and her dragon-- - When Nera Targaryen. - When Nera Targaryen. - Loved. - Fucking her dragon. - Loved? (laughs) - So many of the world's feature on Nera Targaryen. - She's the star of the dragon or two girls. - Oh my God, this is so good. - The outcome is the same. It's like a reminder, the doom is a reminder of how fleeting it can all be. It's like this, this, this, this, - The illusion, what did you say? - I would say, it's an illusion. It's the lesson from Viseris, who fucked up and made a lot of mistakes that more characters than just Nera should be taking seriously. (laughs) - You still want to kill Daren? Okay, I'm gonna go wash him sleep instead. - Little wood carving. - Yeah, I made me think of when she was with her little blonde babies and their little wood carvings. - Like a how young this kid is. - Yeah, but also do you think? - Do you think, if you were a true Targaryen, he would be carving dragons only. - Yeah. - And you're like a bird. - That's a bird, yeah. - That's just a fucking basic bird. - A bird? - No, I love birds, as you know. That's just a bird, that's not a dragon. - Do I know that you love birds? - I love birds. I've just been awed by hummingbirds recently. Just the majestic creature is incredible. You saw me once look at a pigeon and say nature. - Yeah, that's true. - Do you have a hummingbird feeder? - No, I'm scared. - I was talking to a friend of mine and I was like, I was thinking of getting a hummingbird feeder. She's like, you're gonna give them hummingbird diabetes. - That's what I'm scared of. - Oh, I didn't know. - And also to keep, as I understand it, you have to really be on top of cleaning the like nectar feeder thing and I wouldn't want to, I would really be worried about making them ill. - Okay, that'd be scared. - It's a lot of pressure, but there are flowers that they come and they, like-- - Yeah, she's like, you have enough nectar in the-- - Natural nectar. - Yeah, natural nectar. - You know who's always choosing the natural nectar? - Vanirator. - Vanirator. - Vanirator. - Of course! - Oh my God. - Joanna. - Speaking of bids, they won't die. Should we talk about vaping? - Anything you want to say at first about - Vanirator feeding the people. - We've kind of already talked about it. - I think we talked about it. - I think we talked about that earlier. - Let's talk about Vaman. I honestly can't believe, I can't believe that we talked about Vaman this much. - I feel like we made this happen. - This is like, it feels like we had a reason to do this. - Yeah. - We didn't. - We mentioned seven times last pod. We've talked about the scene a little bit, but what have we not, what have we, what do we not hit that feels really important to just hear about this challenge for us? - What I'd like is that this is not from the book. This is different from the book, but it is a twist on something that happens in the book that I quite like. It isn't adapted to change, right? - Quote. - Quote. - In terms of like, Damon and Ronir is really bright ideas of how to make friends and influence people after she takes the throne, right? As it happened, each of the quote, "Faithless friends left a daughter." Rosbees was the maid of 12. Stokeworth's was a girl of six. Prince Damon proposed that the former be wed to get hard Hugh, the blacksmith's son, who would take it in calling himself Hugh Hammer, the letter to Ulf the sought now simply Ulf White, keeping their lands black is in team black, whilst suitably rewarding the seeds for their valor in battle. But the queen's hand argued against this. For both girls had younger brothers. Renera's own claim to the Iron Throne was a special case to see Snake insisted. Her father had named her his heir. Lord's Rosbees and Stokeworth had done no such thing. Disinheriting their sons in favor of their daughters would overturn centuries of law and precedent in calling to question the rights of scores for other laws for a West Rose whose own claims might be seen as inferior to those of elder sisters. So Renera agrees and she's like, yeah, I can inherit, but no other women can inherit. And I love that section of Renera triumphant. And so here they're like, okay, my bastard sons. are allowed to pretend to be valarians. But your bastard sons don't get to be valarians, actually. So that hypocrisy, coreless on the opposite side of the argument here. But I like this neat adaptive change because we needed something here for the story to needle coreless. Yes. And so they use the same hypocrisy, but a different subject matter. And at the same time, it needles coreless, which is what the plot needed here. So I like it. I love that. I think that the Reneira's relationship to the whispers of the realm, such a fascinating thing to track over time, like this was such a source of insecurity and real active, like fear, right? For the claim and for her sons for so long. And then when it comes time to the sewing, it's like saying to Missaria, well, then let us raise an army of bastards because it's what suits Reneira in the moment, right? It's what Reneira needs in the moment. And so you think of like all the times that Reneira and Reneiss, when she was alive and coreless over the years, have gone through some sort of trial. Oh, you guys think I'm responsible for your son's death, actually, he just like escaped with his boyfriend. It's fine, but I can't tell you that. So I have to allow you to believe this among other examples, right? It was always about trying to compel them back into her good graces. The fact that it's like the moment, and of course, this is in coreless, on Corel's mind, and he basically says like, I have like never asked you for anything and all I've done is like stand up to support you and I don't think that's true. But everybody in an argument has to just like the fact that it's after infiltrating the right keep it sitting on the throne. If this is two days ago, that's not how this conversation goes. There's just no way, right? And if it's frankly pre-gullet before high tide burns and the fleet is in shambles, like all of it, so that I think, I think that Corel is looking at that hypocrisy that you're identifying and the fact that it's not just what is right for Renera and what is right for him and Renera's mind and should Renera be the arbiter and judge of that. It is literally a matter of royals to create a legitimize a bastard, but is that like right and fair? Is it right and fair when you are the most important ally to this person? And would it have gone this way if the circumstances were just a tiny bit different? I think Corel's range is appropriate to shout this in a public space and to obviously so purposefully in terms of the the language choice and the even just like cadence of how this was delivered. Yeah. Mirror, the Vaman sequence from the throne room in season one, which led to Vaman getting his headchapped off-hung hauling out. Like if Renera had said after Corel listed this, I have to like evolve with your head or something like nobody, certainly Luther Largent's not going to say like, are you sure? Right? So again, this is the Renera thing throughout. And I want to, I know you have assembled clips and I want to see them because are I Vaman? No half measures for Renera and it's just constant half measures with Renera. Oh my god, makes me want to watch is that the season three breaking bad finale? Or Daredevil? Yeah, are we watching Breaking Bad or Daredevil? One of those, but the message no matter what is no half measures. Full measures only. Yeah, Corel, let's see this clip. Our children are bastards! It is a matter of legitimacy. Your son, Joffrey, is a bastard. Your son Luceris, whom I accepted as my heir, was a bastard. Law call us. Your son, Luceris, lived and died, a bastard. The number of people in the background of that shot who are turning and listening and clocking. Genuinely insane. I've wanted to ask you this, I haven't had a chance yet. Are you giving your supporters what they need? Well, I mean, this is just, do you think if she had said, would you like a root of Vega? Maybe it would have worked. Just could have gone differently. I think what you said earlier is exactly right. Like, quiet private conversation that's like, I understand why this is important and we'll get to that point. This is not the moment I'm begging you for patience. Bungled it, mishandled it, brutal. But at least Darren's really Darren and at least Ormond Hightower did not take Tumbleton with the dragon inside, right? Neither of those things happened. Everything's, that didn't, that's not how this episode ends. We're good. Oh, oops. It's the wrong kid. It's the wrong kid. Our listener Mikhail wrote this great email saying, "In a night of seven kingdoms, a show that happened really was here." That's not just some random guy. That's Prince Darren Targaryen in House of Dragon. That's not Prince Darren Targaryen. That's just some random guy. Incredible. Really great stuff. That's where the names recurring and royal fashion really pays off across these shows. I was thinking of of our guy Darren the Dreamer because I was thinking about that scene in the hunt episode in season one when Viserys and Allison are standing in front of the fire. One of them was watching where Nier was standing in front of the fire here. That's, you know, always makes me think of Darren the Dreamer and just this idea of the burden of being a Dreamer. I definitely wanted to be a Dreamer myself. Seriously, this fucking cops hammered in front of a fire. What if you just think something better? They won't be. I'm sorry. What if Allison had just been like, oh, just a little bit? Yeah, I got the girlfriend up there. I'm going to just get some of it out of the way sooner. Right. And then, and then Reneira goes back to camps, battered in blood, and they're like, you're queen now. Then there's no civil war. Yeah. And like fast-forward to Reneira now needing to make some of these marriage packs and auto from the grave. It's like, everyone judged when I suggested Reneira on there. He had toddler. Everyone judged. But now it's fine. Allison, this is the, do you, do you wish me to thank you? We're just going to send Darren up to the night's watch. Like, Reneira reveals that she has Darren. That's not a terrible solution. Completely reasonable. And would have been great. Would have been fine. But that was the right kid. Except they also had no plan for what to do with the dragon, which is just maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. This question of mercy, because Reneira in the handing out the food talks about being a merciful queen, Damon, in the Orman scene talks about Reneira's clemency. This idea of clemency of mercy is really present throughout the episode as something that Reneira and Reneira's camp are saying out loud. Yeah. I liked this, Allison. Like, am I supposed to thank you moment? Because the question is like, will you, and especially in Game of Thrones, Ned, Madison, Mercy, et cetera, will your mercy be received as such from the person on the other end of it is always so interesting. Are you giving the people what they're most want or desire? I mean, Allison was like the thing I was fine with, was you killing the other kid? Yeah. Kill all the boys. Let the girls be free. Kill the boy. Let the girls go free. You talked about this on Talk of Thrones, but the instantaneous nature of Reneira, because Allison's like, that's not my kid. But the immediacy with which Reneira can see that. They were girls together. She knows her very well. Yeah. Now, to be fair, Allison was like, she wasn't. She wasn't though, but she was a little like, oh boy. She was like, yes, I've only seen him once in five years, but even I even I know that's not him. It was great how quickly Reneira was like, oh boy, something's amiss here. Forces him to reveal what happened here. We learned that Ormond did this thinking back to even Ormond in the opening scene, putting like a hand on Darren's cheek. It's like, now you think of that as like a menacing. Yeah. Yeah. Remember I'm not comfort. I'll kill your mom. I got your mom. Scary, worrying. But Tradesman. Where did Trades, right? Is that what he says? Yes. They're merchants. They're merchants. The high tower colors though. This is the good news. All the banners have been pulled down. The bedding has been swapped. Yeah. And Reneira orders a little burn them all. Yeah. Bedding edition. And so we have that bonfire that you just mentioned. A very thematically rich backdrop for the Dragon Keepers arrival and the reveal of the taking of Tumble 10. Can I just go back in time to when we were covering the trailer? And I was thinking about that so closely at this bed to be like, who's bed is burning? Yeah. Just some random fucking bed. I was like appearing, you know, bedposts. And I was like, it's not necessarily this bed. It's not Emma's bed. It's not this. It's fire the greatest. It's just a random fucking bed. It was cool to the episode. Then shackle me from these details. No, you know, golden feathers. Exactly. That's the star version of that. The backdrop of like every scene, you know, the banners being pulled down and for it to culminate here, that was the very satisfying. But it is worrying. Of course, when Reneira is like, what game is he playing? What is he up to? Why Tumble 10? And from somewhere in the value here, it's a game of that's exactly. Now, when we do talk to Thrones, you know, we watch on the screen or we hadn't seen the scenes for next week, one of the things in the scenes for next week that we saw watching the sunset Sunday night was Reneira like, okay, I know what Ormond's up to. Tumble 10, like raised my banner. They were loyal to me. And now he's tempting me into attacking a loyal city before we get that little glimpse of the coming on the dragon keeper gives a version of that, which is like just more broadly about, well, wait, it's not just the army that took the the villagers hostage. What about a little baby orcs and their little cradles? What about the women and the children? How can we not think of Danny? You just going to burn all the innocence as well in pursuit of the thing that you want, and ultimately Danny goes, yeah. And it's paired here with Ranera very purposely saying, I will burn them. And then the fighting in Ferno paired with yet another, how many episodes have ended on this just really like incredible lingering shot of Ranera's face? We get it yet again here. Our listener Aiden, on the Dragon Keeper front, said, "The Dragon Keepers continue to fascinate me between this up and the apparent lack of consequences to them storming out of the red sowing. They seem to have some kind of gestures privileged to speak truth to rulers." I really liked that assessment. They are just sort of their own thing. Yeah. I mean, if anyone's going to be able to get away with like challenging the Targaryens, it would be somebody in some position of like magical proximity to. Right. But he's like, "Ranera baked." You can't do that. You can't burn Double-Din. They're loyal to you. And they're right next door. So Orman has ensconced himself with the Dragon and a Dragon Writer. That's Ginger Dragon Writer, and Bull John Rockston, Bull John Rockston and a couple of learned Steel Swords and Hugh Hammer's wife are all in the walled city of Tumbleton. I'm sure it'll be fun. Right at the top of the mandor. This is an adaptive change, but one that I really, really like. Book's player time. Let's do it. Okay. If you don't want to hear book spoilers, leave. Bye. All right. Quickly, our listener, Josh says, during the book's boiler section of the pod, could you include what pages and fire and blood is adapted from? And I would say with the caveat that we are not limiting ourselves in this section, when talking about book's boilers to just those pages, so you can't just like, "I'm just going to say this to Josh or anyone else. I'm happy to fulfill this prompt right now, but I'm just saying we're not just only going to talk about these pages. That's not how we do the book's boiler section. It's all spoilers all the time. A clock baby. But I would say around 4.94 to 4.96 is is ish, what this section of the book is. Yes. Yes. Also, our listener, Chris, has this great email I thought when he says, "When I think back on Game of Thrones, I realized major events were triggered by characters making certain choices." Rob choosing to marry Talisa, John choosing to let the wildlings south of the wall, crashed or giving his children to the walkers, Tywin choosing to let Tyrion be executed, etc. All the characters poking their toes in the ocean, not realizing the ripples they formed would turn into tsunamis that would alter the course of the story. And then in one episode, this episode, we get an entire series worth of consequential decisions from one character. Knowing how the dance of the dragon's ends, I was enthralled to see how the show is setting up those choices to lead down certain paths and I wanted to get your thoughts and how they handled that. So that's essentially what this boiler section is going to be is to be like, "Well, a conversation with the faith. Well, pissing off coreless, well, pissing off all the mid-tier novels, you know, like all that sort of stuff is exactly, it's just anyone watching this doesn't need to know books, but there should be like, "Wow, Renera, don't break some bad outcomes here." I think of all of the, because there's certainly a lot of coreless set up and a lot of Templeton, Tupetraire set up, the thing that felt to me most undeniable in this episode specifically was the shepherd set up. I think that the, some of it is just the scene we want to say who the shepherd is. So the shepherd, and we had like a little bit of a moment with a, you know, a chopping off of an arm during a riot earlier in the series, we're like, "Is this a little wing to the shepherd coming?" So the shepherd, the storming of the pit, basically season, I think we can safely assume, season four plotlines, because it's like late in the book, a figure who arises and masses the, in a high-spirrow-esque fashion, the legions of the citizens of King's Landing who don't feel like they have what they need from Renera, and the, the ranks swell very quickly and gives speeches in the public square. And a lot of the language choice is like specifically stuff we heard from High-Septin Baldwin today, this idea of the profane magic and these related people fucking each other, the dragons, the incest, all of this Targaryen exceptionalism stuff, being very publicly spawned to say, "Why is that a thing that we're worshipping and supporting instead of rallying against?" And the events at the shepherd and the shepherd's presence and burgeoning support triggers, like include events such as the storming of the pit and Joffrey's death, and so the story of the pit is like a bunch of dragons die, like all the dragons that are in the dragon pit die essentially. So like, yeah, huge. I think the tube of trailer stuff is really, really good and stuff, so I think it's great. So like, I love your point that you wrote here on our notes about like, often you get to like see the high-tower forces, so they've like at least clapped eyes on Orman. We don't know exactly how this is going to go, but Ulf and Hugh in Tumble-Tin, the attempt to take Tumble-Tin's will flip. Yes. Dragon-Math Rut-Roh, right? Disaster. Absolutely. Calamity. Okay. So, for Ulf to be like, "Hey, can I have some respect?" The name Targaryen, a castle, something, and they're like, "No, lick my boot, you dumb piece of shit." And then he was like, "Hey, my wife's in Tumble-Tin." I just need a house. And I just need a house, and I can get my wife, and then she's not in Tumble-Tin anymore, and then maybe I'll burn Tumble-Tin for you. But like, Hugh Hammer's gonna flip for a different reason, because he can't get fucking paid and his wife's in Tumble-Tin. And Ulf's gonna be like, "Guess what? I wanted a fucking castle and a little bit of respect." And pure of heart, Adam, is loyal to the very end. I think that the fact that even just like Orman got to basically hear Damon say, "Oh, you want a castle? You greedy fucker. You want a castle? I'm gonna keep like mocking you about how you don't have a baby. Orman can make a more direct appeal." Orman can be like, "Hey, you want a castle? I'll give you a castle." And guess what? It'll be in the fucking reach. Yeah. How good does that sound? Wine for days. Harbor Gold, baby. In general, I think the Ulf and Hugh set up has been really good for a long time in terms of us better understanding how a thing like this could happen, but this really felt meaningful here. And I like that they're, as we've said from the beginning, I like that they're different. Yes. Like, if we're near orders them to attack Tumble-Tin, Hugh is not going to burn a city that his wife is inside of. Kat? She has a name when we know her. Ish. If you say so. Joanna Lister. Tell me. And the Grey Joyce. Yes. Yeah. The often comment made about Joanna Lister was interesting. A character who makes her descendant Tywin look like a kitten. We see no casting confirmation for Joanna this season, but she'd be a welcome addition to season four. If there's time to do her story, Justice, along with Jane Erin, she's another great foil for Reneira in this age of female rulers. Dalton Greyjoy, what's going on with the Grey, like what's going on over there with the Lister and the Grey Joyce is like super interesting. It's a complete side plot, but it's very interesting. They could not do it at all if they want to, or they could do it next season if they want it. That would be fun. We could also just get a couple of mentions that plant the seeds for, like, now there wasn't room to definitively say what happened with Tisserie and in this episode, so maybe there's not room to be like the red dragon attached to the land of sport, but maybe there is. They would be fun. ADR at offscreen in a small council meeting. I do love that the team green, uh, small council whiteboard is still in effect. I know. That's so good. Yeah. So I feel like the, the, not wanting to be in that room because she's seen her deaths in those windows. It's entirely possible. A lot of people are saying on the internet and have written into us saying, has, does she not want to stay in that room by those windows? Because that's where Tom and makes his King's Landing moment. I will not deny that the, uh, that the shutters are similar and they're the dual pillar thing is similar, but like these could or could not be the same windows. It's, there's so much time between these two events. Yeah. So they could have redecorated, but there's enough differences that I can't say it's the identical window. People are like the views the same. I'm like, it's just half the windows on that side of the castle have that view. What are you talking about? And so much more likely to me is not Helena knows that Tom and, but I wouldn't be surprised if, if she decides to die herself, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if they shoot it intentionally to look like Tom and, uh, death, I would not be surprised at all. And if they intentionally intentionally design these windows to be evocative at that moment, I, I think that feels right. I'm coreless. Uh, boy, this is heading toward a, a grim place, um, God, I think that this is an issue because they do become the laryons in the books, so maybe that still happens on the show. It should. I guess the question is, of course, it's like too little too late. Yeah. How big is the rupture at that point? Um, the fact that this, Kazem is opening between them in this episode because of his sons, right? You should know how the, the, the Adam and Helena are part of that. Thinking about, you know, there's a lot that goes wrong for all of these characters, but a really, really like, oh, boy, there's very little we can do to come back from that decision moment is like, citing with Adam over Reneira, right? So this feels like an important setup inside of the show for that decision for coreless. Yeah. Which I'm excited about. Me too. Um, blood on the throne, uh, so we had a lot of emails about this, but we trust me. We were already all over this. I promise you, which is like a soon for both of us as soon as Reneira's like, Oh, shit, I'm bleeding. As in, it's my period. We were both wondering if this is how they were going to do the scene in the book where in Europe cuts herself on the throne and there's drops of blood and people are like, "Oh, she's cursed." And if they're like, "Oh, she's cursed." And we were like, "No, she says her period. Goddamn it." Men don't understand how things happen or whatever, because she bled through or something. And I did, I was like, "Is this, are they going to do that?" I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but in the moment I was like, and then they didn't. And now I still really feel like maybe they're not going to do it at all. But I was, we all had that moment where we're like, "Is this?" I know. I don't know what happened. But could you mistake, because like the trail of blood sure, but there's a lot of specific like cuts on her legs, but did they just think there were cuts on her legs, because there were dropples of blood coming down her legs. Yeah. But then there was like a specific like hand-cut stuff later from clutching the arms. So maybe she'll cut her hand later. Yeah. I still feel like they might do it, but I don't know who knows at this point. So the gold. Your guy, Tyno Lannister, is coming back because he's got to get his eyes poked out and his dick cut off. Maybe. So we can find out where that call is, right? Maybe. You just really want that to happen. You're like, "This is my insisting can't die." Yeah. This is like a lot of my, are we done with this character stuff? Has to do with them getting their dick cut off. Like Keltzger, like, can we really be done with Keltzger? That guy's got to get his dick cut off and his head cut off as well, both heads. Do you think they're just, are we done with Keltzger? Is the Keltzger, is the Kunttax going to be like, is another character going to do that? It feels like Keltzger is not coming back in this story, right? That's an interesting choice. I guess it doesn't have to be him. That can easily be. Someone else can pick up that plot. Interesting. What else? Turned manually. Yeah, this is fun. This is fun. So he's very important to the, the Regency. So this makes you hopeful that we're going to get like a lot of post-Ranira death stuff. I don't know if it'll be a lot, but I just still, yes, I think we need some. Now are we going to be like, what is it like for Torrin, manderly to be like a hand? Probably not. But just like, that's one of the guys she's going to be around. Yeah. Bringing him in early-ish in season three, I feel so that if there's like, like let's say Renira, he and Renira actually like get along, like because he seemed kind of friendly to her. So what if they like get along? And so there's someone after her death who like, supported the Renira regime and is here to look after her kids. That would be great. And make us feel better about the fact that everyone else is deaf. How will he know who her kids are if they're never back in their show? You could, you could blench the hair of any old kid and say, hey, look, I don't think so. Do we do it? I think so. We got it. All right. So she picked off, she pissed off the faith. She pissed off Corla. She pissed off the mid, mid-level, middle-level, nobles. Yeah. Allison's around to maybe get advice. And even though she's helping the small folk, there's a lot of like, for how long it is this enough. And like, Helena's being cooped up and not giving her chickens. Misari is getting more and more powers, more and more influence. And if Misari, if it serves Misari's end to continue to stoke Renira's paranoia, stoke it she shall. Yes. And again, I'm worried about, I don't, I don't, I'm worried about Linda Massey being like, right there. Yeah. You know, Misari and Alinda like gave Renira kind of the only wins she felt in this episode. And I just feel like that's so dangerous to be just like, now she's just going to be like, okay, they made me feel good. So I'm just going to continue to be under their influence. You know? I'm concerned not to know that you've planted the seed. I don't know. But then I think it's also interesting to think about, well, what is, is it even more tragic if like, Alinda is actually sweet loyal, Alinda, with the paranoia. Uh, is so. Like an Adam situation. Yeah. It's so crippling. Do you think we're tipping our hands by constantly being like, Adam, sweet Adam, he's done nothing wrong. We love Adam. He's so great. Probably. Yeah. We should be more more sort of expected about that. Oh, what a fuck up. But Adam can do no wrong. All right. All right. We did it. Thank you. Thank you to Carlos Chiroboga. Scott Lee. Jacob Cornett. Arjuna Ramcapal. Jomea Denneron. Our squad. Please join us on Sunday night immediately after, talk the thrones. No. That's what you're joining us for immediately after, house of the dragon. Talk the thrones with a special guest. Double drop list at the Monday, sorry, re-regret, to not be able to come up. Say it. What else next week? Up in Heimer. I know, Diceus. Opianati. Every second counts here at the end. Bye. Bye.