It’s taken four episodes, but this week’s House of the Dragon fires on two major fronts: Its dragons dance and its diversions from the source material finally, unambiguously let one of the characters be evil.
As House Targaryen descends into a bloody civil war, the death toll has risen and the battlefields run red. Two children have been brutally murdered. At this point, it should be easy to point to clear villains on both sides. Yet every time House of the Dragon has deviated from George R. R. Martin’s Fire and Blood so far, it’s to put major character decisions down to accidents and misunderstandings, effectively letting characters off the hook for their choices: Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) didn’t mean to kill Lucerys (Elliot Grihault)! Alicent (Olivia Cooke) only backed her son usurping the throne because she got her Aegons mixed up!
In Episode 2, when Daemon’s (Matt Smith) hired assassins asked what they should do if they couldn’t find Aemond, the scene cut away before we could hear his answer, a narrative cop-out meant to shield the character from the weight of his decision. If we didn’t explicitly hear Daemon name an alternative target, we couldn’t blame him for the murder of a child.
