House of the Dragon season 2 episode 5 recap/review

We recap and review Season 2 Episode 5 of HBO’s House of the Dragon, where both sides lick their wounds and knives stab into backs. 

Spoilers below for Season 2 Episode 5 of House of the Dragon and Fire & Blood, obviously.  

But the Queen That Never Was is gone, and Meleys’ decapitated head is being paraded through the streets of King’s Landing as the horrified smallfolk look on. As a herald announces the sight as the work of King Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), Ser Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel), asks, “Don’t they realize we won the battle?” His second-in-command, Gwayne Hightower (Freddie Fox), responds, “A strange victory…if it was one.” 

Prince Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) and his mother Dowager Queen Alicent (Olivia Cooke) watch from the battlements of the Red Keep as the procession approaches the walls. Alicent notices Aegon’s dagger tucked into Aemond’s belt, but says nothing. She leaves the prince behind to be at the bedside of her first-born son, the usurper king who she sacrificed everything for, who now barely clings to life. 

Grand Maester Orwyle (Kurt Egyiawan) and his fellow healers get to work removing the king’s melted armor, and veteran House of the Dragon director Clare Kilner allows her camera to fully linger on the goopy practical effects through some truly cringe-inducing closeups. Alicent asks the Grand Maester if her son will live; he says that he cannot know for sure, and asks for space to do his work. Aemond gives him none, coldly surveying his brother’s broken body from the foot of the bed as he simply says, “Someone will have to rule in his stead.”

Alicent initially assumes that this “someone” will be her, as she has already proven herself a capable ruler during the many years that her husband King Viserys was too sickly to leave his bed. But times have changed. The realm is at war, and it’s a warrior who should lead it. One by one, the small council members state that it is Aemond, not Alicent, who should rule as regent. After all, as Larys Strong (Matthew Needham) puts it, wouldn’t it be hypocritical for them to put a woman on the throne after they elevated a male heir over his own sister? Even Ser Criston, Alicent’s lover and her last hope for an ally in this situation, agrees that Aemond must rule, although he cannot look Alicent in the eye as he says it. 

As Aemond takes his seat at the head of the table – the king’s seat – Kilner keeps her camera focused on Alicent. We see her frustration turn to fear and overwhelm her as she realizes that all of these men, even her own son, have used her as a means to an end and mean to cast her aside now that she is of no use to them. Olivia Cooke has been putting in great work all throughout Season 2, but Episode 5 really allows her to shine with only a handful of lines of dialogue. Later, when she admonishes Ser Criston for not supporting her in the small council and tells him that he has no right to call her by her name, you really feel all of the bitterness and betrayal that she has swallowed. If Cooke ends up getting an Emmy nomination for this season, this episode would be a worthy submission. 

Back on Dragonstone, Queen Rhaenyra is also having trouble with her small council. Not only was Princess Rhaenys a trusted advisor who the men  listened to and respected, she was a warrior, something that Rhaenyra is not, no matter her dragonrider status. Her councilman Ser Alfred Broome (Jamie Kenna) basically tells her that since she is a member of “the gentler sex” she cannot possibly know about war strategy; Rhaenyra counters that he doesn’t know much more than her since they all have lived during a time of peace, but still the assertion gnaws at her. Her council talks of pressing their advantage on King’s Landing while they have the chance, but refuses to let the queen herself take the initiative, forcing her to sit on her hands and do nothing. 

But not all of the blacks are willing to sit idly by; Rhaenyra’s son Jacaerys (Harry Collett) takes flight to the riverlands to treat with House Frey. Jace knows that Lord Stark is coming down from the north with an army of veteran soldiers at his back; securing the allegiance of House Frey will allow them to cross into the riverlands much quicker and potentially help win the war for Rhaenyra’s supporters. Jace secures an alliance with the Freys by promising them lordship of Harrenhal and the protection of himself and his stepfather Daemon (Matt Smith) and their dragons – but his words very well may be an empty promise. 

Daemon had promised the Blackwoods that he would bring fire and blood to the Brackens in exchange for the swords; when we first see him in Season 2, Episode 5, he sits atop Caraxes clad in full battle armor, demanding that the Brackens renounce Aegon the Usurper and bend the knee – to him, not Rhaenyra. Surprisingly, the Brackens refuse, which enrages Lord Willem Blackwood (Jack Parry Jones); Daemon says that stubborn, unyielding men like the Brackens are just the kind that he needs for his army, and suggests that Willem “show them [his] worst” to persuade to join their side. 

The waking visions that have plagued Daemon since he came to Harrenhal visit him once more. This time, we see him and a mysterious woman with Targaryen features in bed together. As they become intimate, the woman tells Daemon that he was always a better fit to be king than his brother Viserys, confirming all of the things that Daemon has thought about himself for years. It’s only when the woman refers to Daemon as her “favorite son” that the rug is pulled out from under us – the woman is his own mother, Alyssa Targaryen (Emeline Lambert), and Daemon clearly has some sort of Oedipal desire for validation from her despite her being long dead. 

Thankfully for Daemon (and the audience), he’s quickly pulled out of this disturbing vision as Ser Simon Strong (Simon Russell Beale, giving big Samwell Tarly energy) tells him of the repairs that must be made to Harrenhal if it is to host the great army that Daemon seeks to raise. When the subject of paying for these repairs comes up, however, the room grows tense. Strong suggests that Daemon ask Rhaenyra to offer up the gold, but the prince dismisses it, saying that he will pay for it himself. He even goes so far as to demand that Strong refer to him as “my king”, as the title “king consort” seems a bit unnecessary to him.

Alas, not everyone in the riverlands is willing to show him the respect he thinks he deserves. The Brackens come to Harrenhal in the middle of the night, demanding an audience with the king consort. According to them, the Blackwoods have raided and pillaged their lands, slaughtering the innocent as they fly the red and black banners of House Targaryen. They may bend the knee to avoid further carnage, but they will never raise their swords in Rhaenyra’s name. Once again, Daemon fails to accomplish what he set out to Harrenhal for, and you can sense his power and control here slipping away. 

House of the Dragon is ultimately about families and the toxic, repetitive cycles that can tear them apart. While the show has made the connections between Daemon and Aemond explicit before, in Season 2, Episode 5 the lines are drawn with more subtlety. Both of their arcs in this episode speak to their plights as second sons spurned by the inequities of their birth, and both men are keen to wrest control over their fates by any means necessary. Daemon even goes so far as to tell Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) that he will take the Iron Throne for himself; Rhaenyra is welcome to join him and rule by his side, if she wishes. Episode 5 seems to confirm that Rhaenyra was right all along to mistrust Daemon, but this betrayal must ultimately come with a price.

Ditto for Aemond, who stands in the Red Keep’s throne room gazing at the Iron Throne with longing when his sister Helaena asks him, “Was it worth the price?” Given her seemingly supernatural gifts, Helaena most likely knows exactly what Aemond did to get his brother out of the way. He doesn’t say no to her question, but he doesn’t say yes either; here’s hoping that the gray area between Aemond’s ambitions and the consequences of his actions will be explored more in the coming episodes. 

All of Rhaenyra’s ravens to Daemon have gone unanswered, so she decides to send Ser Alfred Broome to Harrenhal to deal with him directly and remind him of the explosive confrontation the two of them shared in the first episode. Despite this move, Rhaenyra grows increasingly frustrated with her reliance on a husband who may or may not be actively betraying her. “If I must be supplicant to my own husband, what does that make me,” she asks Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno), her mistress of whispers who is quickly becoming a close confidant. 

Mysaria tells her queen that Ser Criston made a mistake by parading Meleys’ severed head through the streets. The smallfolk see it as an ill omen, one they expect Rhaenyra herself to answer for with fire and blood. Between this, the famine as result of the blacks’ blockade, and the near-death of the king, the city is on a knife’s edge and could turn to Rhaenyra’s favor at any time, as far as Mysaria thinks. “What you cannot do, let others do for you. There is more than one way to fight a war,” she says. She sends the queen’s handmaiden Elinda (Jordon Stevens) to King’s Landing, but the specifics of her mission there are kept secret from us for now. 

Making it into the city is no longer the easiest task, as Prince Regent Aemond has ordered all of the gates shut to those coming in – and more importantly, those trying to make it out. Hugh Hammer (Kieran Bew), the blacksmith who asked the king for gold to make siege weapons, is one of these would-be refugees. Hugh, his wife, and their sick daughter are barely making ends meet, as the king never paid him the money that was promised to him. As their daughter’s condition worsens, the family tries to make it out of the city, but a riot at the gate keeps them shut in. 

Hugh’s characterization could not be farther from how he is depicted in “Fire & Blood,” where he comes across like a combination of The Mountain and Bronn the sellsword from Game of Thrones. His character on House of the Dragon is far more interesting than what is in the source material, but unless some larger changes are coming to his storyline down the pike, there is some worry that the sudden shifts that his character undergoes might seem like plot contrivances rather than genuine character development. 

Back on Driftmark, Lord Corlys has sunk deeply into his grief, unable to stay within the empty halls of his castle, High Tide. His granddaughter Baela (Bethany Antonia) finds him at the docks of Hull, wallowing in his sorrow at the loss of his wife. Baela has come to offer Lord Velaryon the position of Rhaenyra’s Hand of the Queen, a proposition that he immediately takes as another instance of the queen asking too much of his house. Baela implores him not to blame Rhaenyra for his wife’s death; Rhaenys died the way that she wished, the way that Baela herself hopes to meet her end one day.

Baela says that she will see Rhaenyra ascend the Iron Throne, as Rhaenys had wished as well. Corlys, perhaps finally heeding the words of his late wife, tells Baela that he wishes her to be heir of Driftmark. To this offer, she says, “I am blood and fire. Driftmark must pass to salt and sea.”

Prince Jacaerys finally returns to Dragonstone, where his mother seems more angry at her own inability to act than at her son taking off without her leave. Despite her council’s pressure for her to act, the blacks have no dragon that can answer to Vhagar, not while Daemon and Caraxes are still unreliable. Jace points out that they have no dearth of dragons, as Vermithor and Silverwing, the old mounts of Rhaenyra’s great-grandparents, live in the caverns underneath Dragonstone. 

When Rhaenyra points out that they have no riders to mount such dragons, Jace points out that there are several Westerosi who, while not bearing the name Targaryen, do have Valyrian blood and may yet prove to be dragonriders. Rhaenyra warms to the idea, saying that they could look through Dragonstone’s records of every marriage made between Targaryens and those of other houses, and perhaps track these “dragonseeds” down. “It’s a mad thought,” she says as the camera cranes upward, revealing stacks upon stacks of scrolls that may yet reveal the secret to the blacks’ victory. 

Rhaenys’ death and the Battle of Rook’s Rest was arguably the first major moment of House of the Dragon’s Season 2, an explosive action set piece that also featured the death of one of the show’s (admittedly few) likable characters. Episode 5 writer Ti Mikkel wisely decides that it’s better to slow things down than try to top it, choosing instead to focus on the aftermath of this loss and pushing the characters and their relationships in interesting new directions. 

Daemon’s increasing boldness in his claim to the Iron Throne is fascinating to watch, even if it runs counter to the book in a way that might cause adaptational issues up ahead. The illicit relationship between Alicent and Cole continues to demonstrate new shades in their characterizations, and it was exciting to see the younger generation of characters – Jace, Baela, Aemond – come to the forefront of the story and take charge of the narrative in a way they haven’t really been able to before. It would have been very easy for Season 2, Episode 5 to feel like filler, but the character development on display makes it essential. 

Season 2 Episode 5 of House of the Dragon, “Regent”, is now available to stream on Max. Read our reviews of Season 1 of House of the Dragon!