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And it was all going so well…
Hello and welcome (back) to our weekly power-ranking of the characters of the first season of House Of The Dragon.
Need a quick reminder on this 200-years-earlier prequel to Game Of Thrones? Click right here.
Each week, we’ll be listing all of the major characters who have died – OUT! – as well as ranking them from the least likely to make it to the next episode, all the way up to who is the most likely to be ruling Westeros as we know it come the series’ end.
So here we go, the power-ranking for the eighth episode of House Of The Dragon, titled The Lord of the Tides…
OUT! – King Viserys I Targaryen (Paddy Considine)
At long last. At long, long… LOOOOONG last, he’s finally dead. In what will likely go down as one of the longest deaths in televisual history, The King has finally died, but not before doing the best and bravest thing he has done all season.
Getting himself out of bed and walking to his throne all by himself (mostly, except for a very emotional last-minute assist by Daemon), he rocked up at the last minute to protect his daughter and her kids on their path to the throne. It was awesome.
And then it was completely undone when, in his literal final breaths, he confused his daughter for his wife, who then confused their son Aegon for the old King Aegon, which then reignited Alicent’s push for her own awful, awful kids to take the crown.
We will miss nice guy King Viserys, but he was truly not built for this world. Will we ever find out how the throne was poisoning him? We hope so.
OUT! – Vaemond Velaryon (Wil Johnson)
Got his head cut in half when he started bad-mouthing the King’s daughter, setting Daemon up for another in a long line of killer kiss-offs. “He can keep his tongue.” Nice work, everyone.
MIA / OUT? –Â Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint)
In the six-year gap since the last episode, there has been a war happening on the seas again. Would we have liked to have seen some of that sea-based warfare? Yes. But it would’ve eaten in this episode’s decision to go full Succession, which we didn’t want to lose out on, either.
Somewhere in there, Rhaenys’ husband has been mortally wounded, and he’s on his way home to the family. Rhaeyns tells us that they are three days’ sailing away, so everything that happens in this episode takes place over those three days.
Corlys supposedly has “blood fever”, which doesn’t sound good. He won’t be killed off-screen, though. House Of The Dragon wouldn’t do that to us.
MIA –Â Larys Strong (Matthew Needham)
There were enough double crosses, Machiavellian machinations and duplicitous dealings in this episode to have this guy involved, too. This was all strictly family business, so we’re sure he’ll be back next week to continue to muddy the waters for everyone. Especially Alicent.
EIGHT – Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel)
Was barely in this episode, which is good, because we hate him.
He rocked up just to help show off Aemond’s fighting skills, and be beaten by his own student. He wasn’t even around protecting Alicent anymore. WHAT IS EVEN THE POINT OF YOU?!
SEVEN – Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy)
A bit of a rollercoaster week for the maybe future Queen. She’s pregnant again – a state of being that has already killed two women in this show – and for a while it looked like Alicent and Otto were going to outmanoeuvre her family entirely.
Thankfully, the King arrived just in time to save the day, but then he fucked it up himself by not being sure who he was talking to on his deathbed (As a rule going forward, let us not be putting too much weight on deathbed confessions, yeah?).
So while Rhaenyra has strengthened her family’s future by marrying her sons off to their cousins (yuck), it is all about to be undercut by Alicent’s new beliefs.
And after that lovely family dinner was going so well!
SIX – Princess Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best)
There was a moment there when it appeared that Rhaenys was going to make a run for the leader of Driftmark herself, but she – once again, very smartly – can see it is all too much trouble. So she accepted her niece’s offer to marry their kids (again, yuck), which will prove to be massively beneficial to both of their clans.
Plus, by accepting the offer, it spurned on her brother-in-law Vaemond to lose his head… figuratively… and then literally. So after weeks of losing so many allies – her daughter, her son, her husband (kind of), her brother – she’s finally taking some enemies off the chessboard.
FIVE – Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno)
We knew we hadn’t seen the last of Daemon’s former lover, but the singular scene here felt more like a reminder that she exists than anything else. She’s clearly still dealing in rumours and gossip, and has Alicent’s lady-in-waiting delivering her the most-recent juiciness.
What is she up to? No idea. But she’s doing it all from a distance, which is the safest place for anyone to be.
FOUR – All of those new kids from various couplings
There are, somehow, even more kids this week than there were last week. We can’t keep track of them all, but there have been some particular highlights:
- Some of the cousins are getting married. Hooray? But they do seem to actually like each other, so that is … something?
- Aemond has turned out to be an incredible warrior, but his constantly evil smirk betrays just how nasty he has become.
- The Queen’s other kids seem to be universally awful. One of them caused the Queen to literally pay off a maid to keep a sexual assault story to herself. And then gave her the morning-after potion. Awful.
- And the Princess’ kids have all turned out to be pretty great and really nice. Which probably means they’ll be killed off very soon.
THREE – Ser Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans)
The look of disappointment in Otto’s eyes when he thought that his daughter had given up on the idea of taking over the throne. Yep, Otto is rotten to the core, more interested in power than, y’know, his own kid’s happiness.
He positioned himself perfectly to take over from the sick King during his down time, and will continue to play the puppet master now that the King has bit the dust.
TWO – Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith)
To paraphrase a famous Marge Simpson quote: You know, Daemon became the hero of House Of The Dragon so gradually that I didn’t even notice…
Cave-diving for dragon eggs for his new children, helping his ailing brother on the final steps towards the throne, bisecting a man’s head after he besmirched his wife’s name, breaking up a fight between his kids and staring down the blank-eye psychopath that Aemond has turned into… Daemon was awesome this week.
ONE – Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke)
You know how when we met Cersei in the original Game Of Thrones show, she was kind of already a crazy sociopath with grand designs on power and influence for her family? We’re actually getting to see how someone gets morphed into that kind of tyrant in real time here.
We get a glimpse of Alicent’s previous niceness during the dinner scene, but there is every chance she was faking it just to appease The King. It certainly didn’t take long for her to do a complete 180 once she misinterpreted her husband’s final words.
And can we just point out that Olivia Cooke is absolutely KILLING it in this role, clearly relishing every moment of pure, wanton villainy.
House of the Dragon: Episode Nine – titled The Green Council – will be available to stream with a NOW Entertainment Membership from Monday, 17 October.
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