How Will House of the Dragon Season 2 Begin?
Most TV shows keep viewers utterly in the dark when it comes to the break between seasons – but House of the Dragon is a different sort of beast. The Game of Thrones prequel series draws upon some extensive lore detailed by author George R.R. Martin in books like Fire & Blood and other companion texts to the main "A Song of Ice and Fire" novel series. For that reason, hardcore GoT fans have known the basic roadmap of events that will take place in House of the Dragon since it began.
House of the Dragon's showrunners do have two key elements to play with: the pace of the show, and the accuracy of historical accounts. House of the Dragon Season 1 showed just how wildly the creators can subvert expectations in both areas. However, when it comes to House of the Dragon Season 2, there's a pretty good guess as to where things will begin...
House of the Dragon Season 2: A Son for a Son
In the House of the Dragon Season 1 finale, Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) took the old Idiom "An eye for an eye" to drastic extremes, when he used his massive dragon Vhagar to chase down and (accidentally) kill his nephew, Lucerys Velaryon (Elliot Grihault) outside of Storm's End. According to Game of Thrones history – and everything built up in the House of the Dragon finale – it seems most likely that Season 2 will begin with PAYBACK.
In the history of Fire & Blood there is an incident called "A Son for a Son." Following the death of Prince Luke, Daemon Targaryen reaches out to his one-time consort (and brief fiance) Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuo) who is now known as spymaster "The White Worm" of King's Landing. Mysaria hires a Butcher ("Blood") and a ratcatcher ("Cheese") who works in the tunnels of the Red Keep to attack and assassinate one of the children of King Aegon II Targaryen, as revenge for Luke. The assassins take it to the extreme by forcing Aegon's wife/sister Helaena to choose which child dies – and then sparing that child and killing her favorite, instead.
Season 2: Shock, Awe, and Tone
It's a good bet that the "Blood and Cheese" segment of Game of Thrones history will be a big part of House of the Dragon's Season 2 premiere. Seeing how the show treats these major bullet-points on the historical map, we'd guess it would be presented one of two ways:
- It could be the Season 2 opening, which would immediately set the tone for the tragic and gruesome conflict that is "The Dance of Dragons."
- It could be a big set piece in the middle-to-latter part of the episode, as a metaphor for the characters "killing" any hope of peace.
Putting a gruesome child-slaying at the beginning of the Season 2 premiere would be BOLD, but could be effective. Throwing viewers into such a dark sequence (with new or peripheral characters) would be its own narrative vignette separate from the main story – which is everything that an effective prologue should be. The Season 2 premiere could follow the reverberations of horrifying trauma, showing how power, violence, and loss re-shape the main characters, once both Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D'Arcy) and Prince Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney) have lost children to their power struggle for the throne. The show seems to sow deeper conflicts within the two separate camps themselves; Daemon greenlighting the killing of a child would certainly leave room for the Season 2 premiere to explore deepening division between him and Rhaenyra over war tactics; meanwhile, Queen Alicent would be faced with an enraged Aegon on the loose.
Then again, House of the Dragon's Season 2 premiere could just as pick up from the immediate end of the Season 1 finale. The series lore does detail what happened when Aemond returned to King's Landing after Luke's death, and how the Hightowers were shocked and horrified by the event, while Aegon laughed and threw a feast. That kind of beginning would probably make it a lot more palatable to viewers when Daemon has one of Aegon's kids killed later in the episode.