House of the Dragon Season 2 Recap: Episode 8 - The Queen Who Never Was

Ash Walker • 05 Aug 2024 Features

“You are the true queen, Rhaenyra. First of Her Name. Protector of the Realm.”

SPOILERS AHEAD!

“Sense o’ humour’d do you all some good.”

So says Ulf White (Tom Bennett), former barfly turned dragonrider, when his jokes fall flat at Rhaenyra’s dinner table. He’s not wrong; it seems like everyone in the audience has been thinking the same thing since the very first episode of House of the Dragon.

Game of Thrones, for all its horror and blood and bleakness, was a pretty funny show at times. There were brilliant, quick-witted characters like Tyrion Lannister, Bronn and the Hound, always ready to drop a hilarious one-liner and puncture all the po-faced pomposity around them.

House of the Dragon, though, is terribly serious. Aside from the odd snarky comment, comic relief has been largely absent from the show’s first two seasons. That’s why this episode, at times, felt a little different.

Not only did we have the cocky blowhard Ulf, demanding more ‘small birds’ and not having any of the Blacks’ manners and propriety, but we also saw some brilliant scenes of bumbling Tyland Lannister’s (Jefferson Hall) adventures in Essos. His unlikely buddy pairing with pirate queen Sharako Lohar (Abigail Thorn) was probably the highlight of the episode, and I hope we see a lot more of it next season.

Otherwise, it was business as usual in the Season 2 finale: Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) is freaking out over Team Black’s sudden influx of dragonriders, and tries to bolster his own numbers by forcing his sister Helaena (Phia Saban) into mounting up and riding into battle.

Unfortunately for him, Helaena refuses to burn people - good for her - and tells him so in no uncertain terms. Twice. She also prophecies Aemond’s death, which doesn’t improve his mood any.

In Dragonstone, Jace (Harry Collett) is bristling (pouting, in Baela’s (Bethany Antonia) words) that these filthy illegitimate Targaryens/Velaryons - Ulf, Hugh (Kieran Bew) and Addam (Clinton Liberty) - have been allowed to claim dragons. It’s clearly because of his own insecurities about his birth, even though he insists it’s not, and it’ll almost certainly lead to trouble down the line.

Over in the shipyards of Driftmark, Corlys (Steve Toussaint) rechristens his ship The Queen Who Never Was, in honour of his beloved, departed wife Rhaenys (Eve Best) - who was killed in this season’s best episode. He also gets into a shouting match with his own illegitimate son, Alyn (Abubakar Salim), who rightfully takes him to task for being a deadbeat dad.

Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) has a surprise visit from Alicent (Olivia Cooke), who tells her she’s fed up with all this war business and wants to just leave it all behind. She also offers to hand her old bestie the keys to King’s Landing while Aemond is off fighting Daemon in the Riverlands. Rhaenyra agrees, but only in exchange for poor old Aegon’s head. A son for a son, as she says.

Speaking of Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), he’s still feeling decidedly sorry for himself after being crispy-fried by his brother, and really who can blame him? Certainly not Larys Strong (Matthew Needham), who seems to be the only one concerned about the king’s wellbeing.

Of course, the ever-scheming Larys also has his own plans for the king, and convinces Aegon to flee the capital for Braavos - with plans to return once the warring factions have finished murdering each other, and reclaim the throne.

And Daemon (Matt Smith) is still knocking about in Harrenhal. Thankfully there are no more trippy dream sequences this week, although we do get a pretty cool vision of things to come, including images of dead dragons, white walkers and Daenerys Targaryen, naked and smouldering, cradling three baby dragons.

It’s enough to get you nostalgic for Game of Thrones’ excellent early seasons. It also shakes Daemon to his very core, to the point where he finally gives up on his ambitions and bends the knee to his wife-niece Rhaenyra.

And that’s about it. For all its great moments, this episode - just like the final episode of Season 1 - felt like a lot of moving pieces into position and setting up the fight to come. A fight that’s starting to seem like it will never actually happen.

Death-Count: None; another largely bloodless episode. Except for the poor people of Sharp Point, I guess. Alas, we never knew ye.

Shout-Outs:

• Rhaena (Phoebe Campbell) is still wandering around the Vale looking for the rumoured wild dragon, like Jane Eyre on the moors. In the episode’s closing montage she finally comes face-to-face with it, and I’m assuming she’ll claim it early next season. Either that or she’ll be unceremoniously burned to a cinder.
• Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale) continues to be a lovely, warm and genuinely funny presence. Perhaps one of the only decent people in this whole show. More of him please.
• Abubakar Salim has been a pretty stoic, quiet presence as Alyn of Hull throughout this season, but he got to really shine in this episode. His rageful rant at Corlys was excellent, and a highlight of the episode.
• Another highlight was Criston Cole’s (Fabian Frankel) introspective, nihilistic speech to Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox). It was so bleak, so depressing, so defeated that it left the arrogant knight utterly speechless. Great stuff.
• That closing montage of armies marching, ships setting sail and dragonriders suiting up really got me pumped for… the end credits. I mean, come on guys! You can’t keep putting off the good stuff forever! To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, eventually you do plan to have some war in your civil war, right?

Verdict: A very solid episode, with some much-needed comic relief, but a bit underwhelming as a season finale. Here’s hoping Season 3 delivers on all of this build-up.

House of the Dragon airs every Monday at 9pm on Sky Atlantic, and can be streamed from 2am the same day.