Not only did Gwayne ditch Criston Cole just in time, he got to take a bath, eat a nice meal, and show up Ormund. Good for him.
Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO
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The House of the Dragon Scorecard is an accounting of the events of this week’s episode, “Faceless Men”, in which points are awarded to characters on a scale of 0 to 10. Points will be awarded for any or no reason.
It would be fun to see what an episode of House of the Dragon looks like from the perspective of the people in town. None of these nobles or royals or knights. No dragonriders. Just a solid hour where we follow a few of the smallfolk, preferably ones who frequent a local tavern and have loose lips and lots of opinions on the things that are going on around them. Cheers, basically. I would like to see the Cheers version of House of the Dragon, but with Ulf’s buddies and maybe Sylvia from the brothel clueing us in to the word on the street as all this is going on.
Did you hear Alicent is being held hostage in the castle?
I heard Rhaenyra’s council is bickering and throwing things at one another.
Who do you think is flying that mysterious dragon that murdered the prince?
God, I bet they have such great, unhinged opinions on all of it. I’m a little annoyed that I can’t hear them. I bet you are now, too. Well, unfortunately for both of us, the only unhinged opinions we’re getting this week are coming from me.
To the points…
Rhaenyra is chasing ghosts, man. Trying to please a father she idolizes, one who also kind of caused this whole mess by marrying her best friend and clinging to power long past the point he was fit to do so. Everything is my father this and my father that, none of which is doing a single thing to address the reality in front of her. There’s no money. The people are getting fed up. There are rats everywhere, both figuratively and literally. She’s making bad decisions, sometimes ones that are cruel, whether it’s out of pettiness or inexperience or both. She doesn’t seem to be having a very good time being queen.
This brings me to the funniest part of this week’s episode: Rhaenyra slicing her finger on a pointy part of the Iron Throne she worked so hard to claim. Maybe you like your metaphors subtler. Maybe you like little winks and nods that require a depth of knowledge and careful reading between the lines. Me? No, thank you. Bash me right over the head with the most obvious stuff you’ve got. I’ve got other things to get to. I’m not made of time.
See, you think it can’t get much worse than “you and your secretly pregnant daughter — desperate to flee the castle you’re being held captive inside — get tricked by a cat into trying to escape through a secret passage, but you get trapped in there in the dark.” But then, whoops, now you’re on a secret mission to assassinate your evil son while your daughter remains captive under the watchful eye of your former friend who may or may not view that unborn child as a threat to her quickly crumbling rule.
A big part of me hopes Alicent discovers that she loves being an assassin. Just running around wearing cloaks, slinking into and out of castles, slicing the throats of all who cross her. Let Alicent have some fun, I say.
I’m at a weird place with Daemon right now. Like, he’s right, kind of. Rhaenyra is trying to have it both ways as a ruler, and her refusal to address a collection of very real problems in a definitive manner is causing even more problems — her soldiers are quitting en masse, assassins roam her streets, her dragonriders are going rogue left and right, etc.
But he also wants to solve most of those problems by raining fire down on the innocent and guilty alike to quash dissent and create a fear-based power structure where he essentially becomes a god, which … I don’t like. What I need is something like 70 percent of Daemon. Sand off the authoritarian edges a bit. Just chill out a little, dude.
But I guess if he did that, he wouldn’t be Daemon. You can see my dilemma here.
I still want to know where Vhagar is. I’m actually kind of mad the show hasn’t told us yet. There was a second or two where I thought — hoped? — we saw Vhagar when Rhaena emerged from her cave/lair and looked off into the sky at a dragon swooping through the sky, but then I spotted the second dragon and realized it was just Baela and Addam. What the hell, man?
The silver lining here is that I can continue dreaming up fun things Vhagar is doing until we have hard evidence to prove otherwise. Right now, I’m really enjoying the thought of Vhagar going from town to town doing small cons to sustain a life on the run. Lots of disguises. Sunglasses, aliases, the whole deal.
[Extremely celebrity-gossip-blog voice]
Hot new couple alert! We’re hearing whispers from our team of snoopers in Harrenhal that Alys and Aemond — yes, the witch and the one-eyed prince — are shacking up in the leaky old castle! Is the rain setting the mood? Has she cast a spell on the missing royal? What will we have to start calling them — Alymond? Aelys? Your guess is as good as ours, reader.
But wait … it gets more interesting:
One of our little spies claimed to have seen her lugging around a chest filled with dragon eggs. Are there little winged babies in their future? Are they moving too fast? Sound off in the comments!
To recap:
• Strutted around like a peacock.
• Almost got himself murdered by assassins because he was so blinded by their stink and his own self-regard that he couldn’t see it coming.
• Threw up a little.
I get excited every time he shows up on the screen. What a doofus. I would pay $50 to see him get trapped in a porta potty on the third day of a three-day music festival.
Ditched Criston just in time. Identified and killed a bunch of would-be assassins. Got to take a bath and eat a meal.
It’s all coming up Gwayne, baby.
It’s nice that we now know he hates Ormund because it opens the door for a situation where the meek little prince that Ormund is basically using as a pawn burns him to death with one of the dragons he despises. Something to keep an eye on.
There’s really not much of a universe where any of this ends well for Helaena, right? She spent most of this episode moping and sighing and begrudgingly accepting small spoonfuls of soup, and that was before her mom was sent off on a secret murder mission. Barring some kind of wild “her visions become useful in a way that allows her to make a move or two in her own self-interest or in a way that Rhaenyra can exploit” situation, it looks bleak.
I would like Helaena to be happy. I don’t think it’s going to work out for either of us.
Hey, let’s check in with the dragonriders:
• Hugh disobeyed orders and left his watch to sneak into town to see his wife, who was understandably not thrilled to see a guy who ran off to wrangle a dragon while she suffered numerous atrocities trying to fend for herself.
• Ulf disobeyed orders and tried to sneak back into town to hang out with his tavern buddies, only to be caught by Daemon and embarrassed in the middle of the street in front of a crowd of people, some of whom probably know his tavern buddies and will relay the story of Big Bad Dragonrider Ulf getting slapped down in public.
• Rhaena disobeyed orders and left her hideout to go ask permission to try to see her sister, only to be chewed out and slapped in the face and told to go crawling back to her icy mountain cave, continuing her inadvertent quest to re-create the origin story of the Grinch.
Sometimes I watch this show and find myself wondering how things ended up where they are at the start of Game of Thrones, with no dragons to be seen. Then I see what the dragonriders are up to and I say, “Oh, I get it now.”
It’s good to find a job you enjoy, whether that’s blogging about television shows or heaving people through a hole in the floor and watching them plunge hundreds of feet to their death. An important thing Lady Jeyne and I have in common.
She played this one wrong. She knows she did. She found out Helaena is pregnant and thought she could use it as leverage, as a way to protect herself in case Daemon started exerting more influence, but then Alicent went and blurted it out to Rhaenyra anyway. Now she has to take out a gossipy maid to cover her tracks. This is the game she chose to play. It sucks when it doesn’t work out. Not as much as it sucks for the gossipy maid. But still.
I bet, when he stumbled into Aegon and Larys and decided to team up with them after being shoved into the ocean and left for dead, he did not expect to be digging graves in the woods this soon.
Life comes at you fast, Tyland.
On one hand: There is not much I can think of that is funnier than Criston, in rapid succession, getting fooled by fake-dead soldiers, realizing he’s surrounded, dramatically pulling out Alicent’s handkerchief and smelling it and tying it to his sword as he prepares to die a noble death on the battlefield, and then thwap thwap thwap thwap thwap thwap: taking a series of arrows to the chest and face that were fired by a lady dressed up like Braveheart and standing hundreds of yards away. Just a perfectly humiliating way for this bozo to go out.
On the other hand: I’m … going to miss him? I think? I had gotten so used to kicking him around that there’s going to be a void now. I don’t know. I’m not comfortable with how this is making me feel. Let’s move on and never discuss it again.
My editor at Vulture has informed me that this is the name of the mysterious archer who iced Criston from across that field. This is useful information, both so I can properly award the points and so I know what to get tattooed across my chest later this week.
Bullet points:
• Tricked Criston and his men with the zombie soldier ruse.
• Terrific hair.
• Looks adorable in his battlefield outfit, like a little Mr. Military Man.
I love him.
Good news: He got in that one nice line to Corlys about how Rhaenyra isn’t the only one who dragged her feet on acknowledging him.
Bad news: Well, guess what … assassins and/or kidnappers have come for Corlys again.
Questionable news: I wonder how that next conversation with Addam is going to go, the one where he has to say, Okay, so Dad is gone and I’ve been smooching Baela a little …
About that last part …
Look at Baela. One week, she’s got Addam fussing over her and making sure she takes a nap. The next, she’s got Alyn breathing heavy and leaning in for a smooch. She’s got both of the Hulls twirled around her finger. Will it all end well? No, of course not, and this is where I point out that, in the event the brothers go to war over her affections, only one of them has a dragon. But these are little things we call tomorrow problems. We can deal with them then.
This is now the second episode this season that has ended with Corlys seemingly dead but probably alive. That’s a pretty incredible percentage. A solid .333 batting average of “Is He Dead?” cliffhangers. Not even the most dramatic soap-opera characters can pull that off. Good for him.
Between the smelly assassins Gwayne thwarted and the guy Daemon busted and stabbed through the ear, it was not a great week for undercover assassins on this show. An enterprising businessman could see this kind of inefficiency and start an assassin training school in Westeros, kind of like whatever is going on with the ballerinas in the John Wick universe. This is, at its most basic form, the free market at work.
I love that this poor kid got called back to the castle and the only times we’ve seen him are when Rhaenyra pops into his bedroom to watch him sleep. A great gig for the actor who plays him, too. Two full credited episodes where all he has to do is lie still and maybe have a nice lady stroke his hair. I am also available for roles like this, if any casting director is looking. Offer only, no audition. Please reach out to my agent.
Alys the Witch: 39
Mysaria: 35
Alicent Hightower: 32
Alyn of Hull: 32
Helaena Targaryen: 31
Daemon Targaryen: 28
Alysanne Blackwood: 25
Larys Strong: 25
Rhaenyra Targaryen: 24
Hugh Hammer: 23
Corlys “The Sea Snake” Velaryon: 23
Gwayne Hightower: 23
Grand Maester Orwyle: 22
Addam of Hull: 22
Baela Targaryen: 20
The Rats of King’s Landing: 19
Ulf the White: 18
Daeron Targaryen: 18
Ser Torrhen Manderly: 18
Rhaena Targaryen: 17
Ormund Hightower: 16
Oscar Tully: 14
Tyland Lannister: 10
Ser Simon Strong: 10
Sylvi: 9
Admiral Sharako Lohar: 9
The One Guy at Harrenhal Who Saw a Massive Fire-Breathing Dragon Swoop Toward the Castle and Reacted by Shouting “Dragon!”: 9
Joffrey Targaryen: 8
Lady Jeyne Arryn: 7
Aegon II Targaryen: 6
The High Septon: 5
Fake Daeron Targaryen: 4
Otto Hightower: 2
The Poor Shepherd Daemon Torched and Said Was Sheepstealer’s Rider: 2
Jacaerys “Jace” Velaryon: 1
Ser Lorent Marbrand: 1
Ser Criston Cole: 0.00000000001
Lord Jasper: 0
Various Undercover Assassins: 0
Aemond Targaryen: -92
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