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\n This episode is light on dragons, heavy on grown men scapegoating Alicent Hightower for their troubles.
\n Photo: Theo Whiteman\/HBO\n <\/p>\n
Team Black? Team Green? Or just Team Dragon? Join forces and sign up<\/a> for our subscriber-exclusive newsletter dissecting\u00a0House of the Dragon\u00a0season three.<\/p>\n The less time Alicent Hightower spends in the company of men, the more she\u2019s blamed for every bad fate that\u2019s ever befallen them.<\/p>\n Down and out on the banks of the Blackwater, Ser Criston Cole waxes elegiac about his last remaining battle: the fight to be memorialized as the greatest warrior in the realm. \u201cThey will sing songs of it,\u201d Ser Criston assures himself from behind a grim mask of mud and sweat and melancholy. Lost in the daydream, he further fantasizes that the earworm of his knightly sacrifice will be so overplayed that even his ex-girlfriend, locked up in the Red Keep, won\u2019t avoid it \u2014 an awkward embellishment given that Criston is talking to Alicent\u2019s brother.<\/p>\n In Harrenhal, Aemond is plagued by nightmares of his (not) dead brother dragging him to hell. When he wakes from the terrors, he complains that the problem isn\u2019t really his guilty conscience tormenting him over his fratricide. The root problem is Mummy, who obviously preferred Aegon. Alys indulgently cradles Aemond to her bosom, and I swear if we get stuck in these dreary halls<\/a> decoding the dreams of another adult male blond, I will throw myself into the Gods Eye.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, on the other side of the Crownlands, Aegon complains to Larys that actually, if you think about it, the reason he didn\u2019t succeed as Lord of the Seven Kingdoms is parental favoritism. The king loved Aemond best because he was a prodigy swordsman. The queen was devoted to her second son to compensate for him losing an eye \u2014 a face only a mother could love. This episode is light on dragons, heavy on grown men scapegoating Alicent Hightower for their troubles.<\/p>\n The irony is that Helaena, whom Alicent did choose to protect above her wicked sons, spends most of the episode rejecting the smothering help of her mother\u2019s love. First, she refuses the carafe of Plan B that Alicent conspires to have the Grand Maester bring. Alicent implores her daughter to think of it as a remedy \u2014 abortion is health care \u2014 but Heleana insists on keeping her baby, who will surely be killed or abducted by the Black Queen. When Mysaria learns that the tonic has been delivered, Alicent drinks the sickening potion herself to throw the Mistress of Whispers off the scent.<\/p>\n The ruse won\u2019t hold for long, particularly if Helaena keeps napping midday. With the Gold Cloaks distracted by roiling violence, Alicent arranges for mother and daughter to escape the Red Keep dressed as housemaids. An ungrateful Helaena stalls, wanting to know what will happen to Jaehaera. She can\u2019t accept that the girl is safer without her.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t matter in the end because Mysaria apprehends the women immediately. Intriguingly, though, she doesn\u2019t report Alicent\u2019s attempted escape \u2014 the first meaningful sign of fracture between Lady Misery and Rhaenyra. Perhaps she withholds the intel because Mysaria is seduced by Alicent\u2019s dire depiction of life at court and what it takes to survive: the value of well-kept secrets, the sky-high cost of having nothing to barter. She reminds Mysaria of the cunning worm she used to be before she had Rhaenyra\u2019s ear. The crown makes people dangerous and deceitful, Alicent warns. Hightowers are good allies.<\/p>\n If Mysaria can find them, that is. When the cats brought in to hunt the rats alert Helaena to the existence of a hidden door leading to a secret passage, even she understands it\u2019s her last shot at freedom. In the dead of night, Alicent and Helaena leave their detention suite and follow the cramped tunnel until it reaches a dead end. They\u2019ve also shut the panel at the other side of the passage, which means Alicent and Helaena end the episode trapped between dark, damp castle walls, a fitting metaphor for what it\u2019s like to be a woman in the nested prisons of the Red Keep: caterpillars in an extravagant cage.<\/p>\n They\u2019re not the only ones on Team Green to end the episode worse off. Oscar Tully and Roddy the Ruin complain they can\u2019t cross the river to Tumbleton because Cole\u2019s swift host keeps racing ahead and burning the bridges. (Until someone mentions the Stoney Sept, I assumed they were talking about the Mander, but they\u2019re still north of the Rush \u2014\u00a0 these guys are nowhere near Tumbleton!) Roddy suggests running the Winter Wolves at the Greens in full force, but Oscar is more cunning. He litters the route to the Stoney Sept river crossing with caltrops, which soon force the Greens off their horses and into the punishing forests.<\/p>\n Bushwhacking is slow work, and there are murmurs of desertion among the beleaguered men. As they lumber along, Gwayne and Criston confide in each other. Gwayne misses home and thinks Criston, a character with zero future, could be at home in Oldtown, too. But Criston has no appetite left for servitude, not in the name of dragons or gods or even Hightowers. When Gwayne tries to persuade him to give up harassing the Rivermen and head straight for Ormund, Criston doubles down. He opts for a more direct but even denser route to the river in the hopes he can somehow still overtake Tully. Men drop dead of exhaustion; Gwayne gets a leech. When they reach the Stoney Sept, they find the Rivermen have already crossed, destroying the bridge behind them.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we failed,\u201d Gwayne says, again suggesting Tumbleton as a new destination. Gwayne does not understand Ser Criston or the depth of his despondency. That man is going to ford that river, and if he doesn\u2019t succumb to the frigid waters, he\u2019ll march straight in the direction of certain death. This is the war to end all of Criston\u2019s personal wars. He is not interested in a new master in a new city with a new set of orders. As Gwayne abandons him, Criston sells the suicide mission to what\u2019s left of his army as an appeal to honor and the Faith of the Seven. I wonder how his men would respond if they knew the truth: the fuel that powers Ser Criston is pure misogyny.<\/p>\n Alicent\u2019s sons, on the other hand, each end the episode with a glimmer in the eye \u2014 their old, maniacal selves returning as their broken bodies heal. Let\u2019s take Aemond first. No one knows where Vhagar\u2019s fled, but the Kinslayer is still holed up at Harrenhal, unsure if he\u2019s Alys\u2019s patient or prisoner. Prisoner seems unlikely given how capably Alys scares away the bounty hunters. Plus she hasn\u2019t turned in Aemond herself, despite the fact that the prize is the one thing she\u2019s always wanted: Harrenhal. Aemond mostly sleeps and complains until the end of the episode, when he gets out of bed just in time to help Alys fight off Ironborn rapists come to kill him. He slays four raiders \u2014 men strong enough to free solo the castle\u2019s vast southern wall \u2014 all while bleeding from the kidney. He\u2019s baaaaack.<\/p>\n Because Aegon is fundamentally pathetic, his comeback can\u2019t reach the heroic heights of his brother\u2019s. At the beginning of this episode, as he chases after another supposed Vhagar sighting, Aegon is so defeated that he allows Larys the Clubfoot \u2014 LARYS! \u2014 to tear into him, calling him a whinger and a bore and a bad king and a terrible man. All valid observations that would have been punishable by death in season two. Instead, Aegon agrees to give up the bootless pursuit of revenge and sail to Essos, as Larys has been advocating all along.<\/p>\n The new holdup is Tyland Lannister (not RIP, it turns out). He comes back from the dead just in time to offer an alternative suggestion: Lannisport would obviously be a safer place for Aegon to lay low, free from the Braavos heat and the diuretic effects of a dates-based diet. In Rook\u2019s Rest\u2019s crowded city center, Larys and Tyland debate the issue way too loudly. Curious, Janos investigates the discarded bag that Larys usually keeps close and inside finds a crown of Valyrian steel. Janos confronts Aegon, who stabs him to death to keep his identity secret but also because he feels like it. As life drains from Janos\u2019s eyes, Aegon gives a twisted smile. Inside that burnt husk of a king lives a childhood bully. If you add Daeron Hightower, who is now minting money that bears his visage, that brings us to three sons of Alicent who think they should rule Westeros.<\/p>\n The Blacks still have just the one claim going at the moment, but given how rocky a start Rhaenyra\u2019s had since declaring herself queen, it might be wise to consider a backup option. And I suppose she has. Joffrey is finally recalled from the Vale, though Rhaenyra dodges her son, only visiting his room when she can be sure he is fast asleep. Later, Daemon tells her she\u2019s blinded by vengeance, which perhaps explains her reluctance to mother again too. If Joff is here, then Jace is really dead. Grief is an iterative emotion; it finds new ways to hit you and you find new ways to process it \u2014 or, in her case, avoid it.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, a spree of cop killing in the capital means there\u2019s no room for human emotion right now. Two Gold Cloaks turn up dead on the streets of Flea Bottom, their bowels and throats gruesomely slashed. Daemon assumes it\u2019s retaliation for Ser Luthor\u2019s violent hunting of the graffiti artists who slandered Rhaenyra\u2019s sons on the city walls in \u201cTumbleton.\u201d Though the queen orders Daemon to surveil the Riverlands for Vhagar, he insists on staying in town, where the bodies are piling up.<\/p>\n Four Gold Cloaks dead, then six. Daemon finds his wife in the Sept, humbling herself before the gods and the Faith, when she should be taking no shit. Why does Rhaenyra care about her heir\u2019s perceived legitimacy? Her power is derived from her stable of dragons \u2014 the scorching breath of a half-dozen beasts. And while we\u2019re at it, why does a woman with a mission to unite the kingdoms against an apocalyptic winter worry about what some disgruntled smallfolk \u2014 dudes with enough free time to grind minerals and plants into a paintlike substance \u2014 have to say about her sons? Daemon leaves Rhaenyra where he finds her: on her knees before hundreds of devotional candles, fizzing away like gnats in her ear.<\/p>\n Which means it\u2019s up to the king consort to quell the mutinous City Watch, who are enraged by the murders and weeks of withheld wages. With much more brio than Ser Criston musters, Daemon rallies his men back to the guard, imploring them to remember the vows they took to keep the peace. The crown owes them money, yes, but there will be gold to spare when Dorne bends the knee. When the Seven Kingdoms become Twelve Kingdoms. When the Twelve Kingdoms become a new Valyria that bleeds into every corner of the old map. It\u2019s not exactly refined to call upon men\u2019s greed, but what else motivates world domination? Rhaenyra has an instinct to build; her husband thinks only to take. Manifest Daemon.<\/p>\n Finally, there\u2019s a break in the Mysterious Case of the Slain Gold Cloaks. A man arrested on River Row confesses to the killings, which he carried out alone on behalf of the rightful king. He was even paid for his efforts \u2014 in shiny gold Daeron dollars. We\u2019re treated to the squelchy scoop of an excised eyeball as Daemon half-blinds the man, then Luthor finishes him off. Daemon brings the ducat to Rhaenyra with a pointed message: This is what happens when you fail to burn down your enemy\u2019s house. It\u2019s astonishing that even in the face of dead comrades, he can still be so smug. A smirk is Daemon\u2019s resting face.<\/p>\n Excessive self-confidence is an advantage when you play the game of thrones. How could a person dare enter the lethal fray without it? But Rhaenyra isn\u2019t the only one struggling to see the whole board this week. The queen is blinded by grief and vengeance; her king is blinded by the immensity of his self-mythologizing. He can\u2019t imagine an enemy he can\u2019t vanquish in an afternoon. That night, Daemon goes to the Red Keep barracks to find it empty of Gold Cloaks. Have they deserted? Could they all be on patrol? He smells the dead before he sees their bodies, arranged behind a long table in a macabre Last Supper. The men\u2019s eyes have been cut, and their intestines have been yanked from their bodies, piled like a buffet, with the words \u201cA Feast for Traitors\u201d painted on a nearby wall.<\/p>\n As Daemon confronts the awful tableau, it\u2019s Ser Criston we hear. He\u2019s name-checking the faces of God as he somberly urges his men into an unwinnable battle. There\u2019s the Maiden, the Warrior, the Smith, and the Crone, who will light their way. The Mother and the Father. And last, the Stranger \u2014 the facelessness of death \u2014 who Criston promises will provide the rest their bodies crave.<\/p>\n Earlier in the episode, talking to Gwayne, Criston describes himself as at long last \u201cclear-eyed\u201d about the world and his place in it. Regardless of what the songs say, a soldier is doomed from the moment he first dons his armor. If blindness like Daemon\u2019s is required for man to enter a war, then Criston\u2019s quiet stand feels like its opposite. The recovery of sight. The dark understanding that there can be no winners.<\/p>\n Meet New York staffers in the comments section to discuss the same burning questions we\u2019re trying to answer in House of the Dragon Club<\/a>, our subscriber-exclusive newsletter. 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