It's one of the oldest tricks in storytelling, and House of the Dragon just peaked an episode with it.
In Season 2, episode 2 of the Game of Thrones prequel, the HBO series seized on classic tropes that simultaneously turn any scene into slapstick and generally irk this twin writer: the Evil Twin and the Fake Twin Gambit. No one loves the Evil Twin trope more than entertainment writers, who've been throwing that doppelgänger spanner into the works for decades through silent cinema, soap operas, horror movies, and comic books. Now it's appeared in HBO primetime fantasy, through the cruel fate of the Cargyll twins, Arryk and Erryk (Luke and Elliott Tittensor), a sequence of fake twinnery with a tragic end.
But did this gambit actually pay off for House of the Dragon? Or was it yet another TV show clinging to low hanging plot devices that declare twins two polarised sides of the same coin and little else?
In a knee-jerk order, disgruntled commander Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel) throws some of that volatile Westerosi male ego around and orders Kingsguard white cloak Arryk on a secret mission to Dragonstone to assassinate Team Green's enemy, Rhaenyra. Arryk is a twin, whose brother Erryk stands opposed within Rhaenyra's Queensguard, so it's an order of impersonation, and essentially, a tragic fool's errand.
Despite the fact that everyone at councils large and small in Westeros know the identical pair sit within each camp, Arryk stalks into Dragonstone pretty much undetected in a sequence Vulture's Amanda Whiting called, "a scheme that seems more like a Punk’d episode than an act of cunning." It's a slapstick game of one-twin-out, one-twin-in, a Fake Twin Gambit scene with Erryk wandering through the halls unaware his brother is replacing him as he goes. It's House of the Dragon cloak-and-dagger but make it The Prestige as a daytime soap starring Chaplin.
"What [the filmmakers] were trying to do narratively was confuse the audience," Luke Tittensor told the New York Times. "When Arryk stands at the door, there’s a moment of you thinking, 'Is that actually Arryk, or is it Erryk?' You’ve seen us do a bit of a Scooby-Doo moment. That’s a little bit of a trick with twins."
Gaining access to Rhaenyra's chambers, Arryk moves to attack the queen. Luckily, Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) saves the day, having spotted Arryk arriving at the Dragonstone docks and raising the alarm. Arryk and Erryk battle in a whirl of identical confusion, despite Erryk's pleas for his brother to yield, and Arryk is slain. Beset with immediate grief and despair, Erryk falls on his own sword. The show plays the duel out slightly differently to how it's written in George R. R. Martin's Fire and Blood. And while the result is undeniably devastating, in some senses it also feels like another series leaning on an Evil Twin trope for dramatic effect.
I'm an identical twin who has been asked "which one's the evil one?" so many times it's made me want to embody such a dumb question and rain that hellfire down on the spot. But I know where it comes from.
Historically, divine twins are a goldmine throughout mythology for examining dualism; Egyptian deities Nut and Geb, Zoroastrianism's Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, Olympian twins Apollo and Artemis, Hinduism's horsemen The Ashvins, West African complex twin goddess Mawu-Lisa. Dark/light, sun/moon, earth/sky — twins are the perfect framework for this kind of either/or storytelling.
Modern pop culture really, truly insists that one twin must be just...bad.
But modern pop culture really, truly insists that one twin must be just...bad. It's a low hanging plot device for writers to unpack these opposing forces of good and evil, but it often reduces the characters to simplistic sides of the same coin. If my twin sister and I were on a TV show, one of us would be have to be an absolute piece of work.
Yes, the show does give Erryk and Arryk the right to choose their allegiances, but House of the Dragon can't help itself, making it clear there's a Good/Evil split through dark cinematography, sinister blocking, and a Big Bad Score as Arryk stalks through Dragonstone. Arryk is basically forced through his sense of duty to accept Cole's order, but the series frames him as a villain, a slithery assassin, with Erryk instead the heroic shining light in Rhaenyra's camp. Then, the final sequence becomes a Pointing Rick Dalton game of "spot the imposter", a stressful watch that plays both as House of the Dragon and soap climax.
One of the main reasons Erryk and Arryk's duel is important is not only because of their twindom, but their conflicting familial polarity. Essentially, this kinslaying tragedy embodies the broader implications of the Dance of the Dragons, the civil war between the Targaryen family, and the senseless violence that will accompany the bloody path to the Iron Throne. There's no good, no evil, only blood and death.
As oath-sworn members of the Kingsguard and Queensguard, Arryk and Erryk are quite literally torn apart by their sense of honor — and the fact that House of the Dragon allows the characters to make their own decisions negates the somewhat frustrating tropes of the Dragonstone sequence.
"We always love that moment of these two brothers who love each other more than anything also being set to kill each other, and there’s a very American Civil War brother-on-brother aspect to it," House of the Dragon writer and executive producer Sarah Hess said in a behind-the-scenes video. "Why are they doing this? It’s because these nobles have decided they they’re mad at each other, and now these guys have to battle it to the death."
One of the saddest fates of Season 2, Erryk and Arryk are buried together, "one soul in two bodies," on either side of the war for Westeros. While House of the Dragon loves to play into the drama, the impact of this scene should rest on the tragedy of them choosing honor over each other, not with one being Evil and the other Good.
And as for me? I'd tell Cole to shove his honor and defect. That's your twin right there.
House of the Dragon Season 2 airs Sundays on HBO and Max at 9 p.m. ET.
