Home Of The Dragon returned Sunday evening, after a virtually two-year hiatus, with a grim reminder of the sort of fantasy sequence this present goes to be. Season 1 wasn’t significantly cheerful, however Season 2 is already off to a fair bleaker and extra wicked begin.

That’s not a nasty factor. ‘A Son For A Son’ is an excellent season premiere. We’re ushered again to Westeros—200 years earlier than the occasions of Sport Of Thrones—moderately gently at first, with our first glimpse of Winterfell and the North for the reason that last season of the unique sequence. It feels a bit bit like coming house.

Definitely the Starks of Winterfell are a lot the identical as Ned and his brood. Right here we see the elder Valeryon son, Jace (Harry Collett) becoming a member of Lord Cregan Stark (Tom Taylor) on a cold tour of The Wall. Stark tells the younger man that he’s loyal to Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) however can not spare his troopers so near winter which, he reminds us, is coming. Jace scoffs at Stark defending the North from “wildlings and the climate” and Stark, each bit as dour as one would hope from a Northern lord, tells him it’s not simply these threats they and the Night time’s Watch defend towards. “What then?” Jace asks. “Dying,” the Stark lord replies. By no means change, Starks of Winterfell.

It’s really a bit humorous how little something has modified in Westeros if you actually give it some thought. In 200 years, Starks will nonetheless be the masters of Winterfell and Lannisters will nonetheless be the rich lords of Casterly Rock and the Targaryens will nonetheless be as white-haired as ever. The identical armaments will likely be used. Know-how could have all however stood nonetheless over the intervening centuries.

If I’ve any complaints in any respect about Home of the Dragon, this may be the one. Two centuries, even in a fantasy model of Medieval occasions, ought to end in huge change. Nice Homes fall. New establishments are born. Struggle and technological development and the top of bloodlines and some other innumerable components reshape society over such an extended stretch of time. In Westeros, the one factor that actually adjustments is that in Rhaenyra’s day there have been dragons. By the point Daenerys is born, they’re all lifeless and forgotten. However the ships are nonetheless the identical and Scorpions nonetheless guard the partitions of King’s Touchdown.

I digress. It’s one thing I think only a few folks care about. It’s not one thing that diminishes my enjoyment of the present. I simply discover myself questioning about it, most likely as a result of I’ve earlier than as a fantasy fan, having learn histories of the Plantagenets and different dynasties and eras.

In any case, Cregan Stark is our first new main character added to Season 2, however not the one one. We even have Alyn of Hull (Abubakar Salim) who we’re launched to as he works to restore the ship of Lord Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint). I’m very completely satisfied to see Salim on this sequence, as I beloved his work in Raised By Wolves and elsewhere, and since on prime of being a terrific actor he has such a terrific voice. I received’t spoil who precisely Alyn of Hull is and why he’s such a major character, although maybe you’ll be able to guess by the response the Sea Snake appears to have when talking with him.

Alyn has a brother named Addam, and whereas these two names are fairly related they’re not so difficult as Erryk and Arryk Cargyll (Luke Tittensor) the dual Kingsguard, now separated by dueling allegiances to Group Black and Group Inexperienced (Rhaenyra vs Aegon).

It’s most likely not misplaced on anybody that this season premiere is designed to problem our sense of which aspect must be thought of the “good guys” and which the “dangerous guys” and I’ll come proper out and say it: The reply is “neither.” Each these sides are peopled with honorable and courageous knights and girls, and each are stuffed with vengeful, depraved and violent knights and girls. And advisers. And dragons. In contrast to Sport Of Thrones, the place there have been loads of “gray” characters but additionally loads of heroic and villainous ones, Home of the Dragon is way much less lower and dry.

In Sunday’s episode, we see Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) holding court docket for the smallfolk, and very like his father making an attempt to do his greatest to deal with them nicely and with honor and generosity—satirically residing as much as his “Magnanimous” title {that a} buddy bestowed upon him in a spur of the second announcement. He’s reigned in by his Hand, the ever-scheming Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans) but it surely’s exhausting to not see the nice in him, even when throughout the Small Council he clearly has little style for governance, and would moderately spoil his son, Jaehaerys.

After which there may be the horrific scene that closes this night’s episode, wherein Daemon (Matt Smith) employs two vagabonds to sneak into the Purple Preserve and kill Aemond (Ewan Mitchell). These males are Blood—a disgraced metropolis guardsman—and Cheese—a ratcatcher. In Martin’s e-book Fireplace & Blood, which this present relies on, the story of those males and their brutal homicide of Aegon’s son was informed by the court docket jester, Mushroom, and a few of the extra colourful traces within the present are plucked immediately from Mushroom’s mouth.

Within the e-book, Daemon doesn’t instruct the killers to search out and slay Aemond. Relatively, it’s left unclear who the meant goal was. Maybe Aegon himself, although he was seemingly too closely guarded for 2 scoundrels.

I’ve been dreading this scene’s arrival in Home of the Dragon since I learn the e-book, but it surely performs out very in a different way right here, although in the identical spirit. Within the e-book, Blood and Cheese discover Alicent and tie her up, gagging her and killing her guard. They then wait till Helaena (Phia Saban) arrives together with her three youngsters, together with the two-year-old Maelor. They then give her a selection between the 2 boys. “Decide,” they inform her, “or we kill all of them.” She picks Maelor, and Cheese turns to the toddler and says “You hear that, little boy? Your momma needs you lifeless.” Then Blood cuts off Jaehaerys’s head with a single blow, and so they flee with the pinnacle, leaving everybody else alive.

Right here, as a result of it’s TV and HBO and which means we’d like gratuitous intercourse, Helaena is the one grownup current and he or she flees to her mom’s chambers, the place Alicent (Olivia Cooke) is having intercourse with the execrable Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), saying solely “They killed the boy.” Alicent’s horrified face is the very last thing we see earlier than the credit roll.

This present could be very bleak, however no extra so than George R.R. Martin’s supply materials.

All informed, a terrific if very somber and disturbing season premiere. I didn’t discover it too gradual in any respect. I’ve been rewatching Sport Of Thrones and I feel there’s a little bit of an adjustment it’s important to make between the 2 reveals regardless of the shared setting, and related music and aesthetic. Thrones, for all of the horrors that befall our favourite characters, remains to be heroic fantasy at its core. Home of the Dragon is rather more grimdark. It’s a narrative of civil warfare the place no sides come out with clear fingers and everyone seems to be consumed by rage and grief and vengeance. It’s nice tv, but it surely positive isn’t uplifting in any sense of the phrase.

Scattered ideas:

• The dragons are all the time cool, and I assumed they had been very well-done right here. Many of the photographs of the dragons had been from a distance, virtually as if we had been being teased.
• I subscribe to Max on Amazon Prime Video and neither the “beforehand on” or the preview of the following episode had any sound. This confused the hell out of me! What provides?
• Rhaenyra didn’t do a lot this episode, aside from discover the charred stays of her son Lucerys after which inform Daemon she wished Aemond lifeless. I think we’ll get much more of her subsequent week. I’m very curious how they deal with her character going ahead within the present and whether or not they’ll follow the e-book or make her extra of a protagonist we are able to root for.

I’ll add some other scattered ideas I’ve if I consider extra to say. For now, what did you consider this episode? Let me know on Twitter and Fb.