House of the Dragon, episode four: Ewan Mitchell and Eve Best open up on dramatic battle
The build-up is over. War has well and truly broken out in the successor show to Game of Thrones, with not one but two staggering twists.
TV
Don't miss out on the headlines from TV. Followed categories will be added to My News.
SPOILER ALERT: We are about to discuss episode four in House of the Dragon’s second season, and no detail shall be spared.
Go no further unless you have seen the episode.
Last warning!
The dragons unleashed
First, a quick summary of the episode’s events.
Ser Criston Cole, who is now King Aegon’s Hand in addition to being Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, is leading an army through a region of Westeros called the Crownlands, near both the capital, King’s Landing, and Queen Rhaenyra’s seat on the island of Dragonstone.
The obvious target for Cole’s forces is the gigantic and largely undefended castle Harrenhal (where Daemon is currently being tormented by weird visions). Instead, Cole chooses to head for Rook’s Rest, a small and strategically insignificant keep on the coast.
Rhaenyra, having returned to Dragonstone after her secret chat with Alicent in the last episode, has at last concluded she has no choice but to wage war against Aegon. She suggests flying on her dragon, Syrax, to help the defence of Rook’s Rest, but is talked down. Rhaenys, and her older, more formidable dragon Meleys, go instead.
She’s flying into a trap. Cole, it transpires, has plotted with Aegon’s brother, Prince Aemond, to draw out one of Rhaenyra’s dragons and ambush it.
Rhaenys arrives at Rook’s Rest as Cole’s ground forces are advancing on the castle. Cole lets her roast a few troops before giving the signal for Aemond, who’s hiding in the woods nearby with his conveniently green and therefore camouflaged dragon, Vhagar, to join the fray.
One problem: King Aegon himself, frustrated at being cooped up in the capital and ignored by his councillors, arrives at the battle atop his dragon, Sunfyre. That was most definitely not part of the plan.
Aegon attacks Rhaenys, and instead of heeding Cole’s signal, Aemond stops Vhagar from taking off. He deliberately waits until Meleys has wounded Sunfyre.
Then, when Vhagar does emerge, Aemond orders her to breathe fire on both the other dragons, who are still locked in battle together. Aegon and Sunfyre, fried to something approaching a crisp, crash to the earth nearby, their fate unknown.
Meleys is an older, more experienced dragon than Sunfyre, and she survives Vhagar’s attack, with her ability to fly intact. Rhaenys has a clear chance to flee the battle. Instead, she orders Meleys to turn around and counterattack once more.
As the two remaining dragons clash again, Vhagar seizes Meleys’ neck in her jaws and strikes the killing blow. We see one final shot of Rhaenys, accepting her fate, as she plummets on her now-dead dragon and lands, with an explosion, on top of the castle.
The episode ends with Cole rushing to the site where Aegon and Sunfyre crashed to the ground earlier. He discovers both the King and his dragon severely burned, and barely alive, with Aemond standing over them.
Aemond picks up the King’s dagger, claims it for himself, and walks away.
A brother’s betrayal
Each side of the war has suffered a catastrophic loss.
Rhaenys, perhaps Rhaenyra’s closest ally at this point, had been counselling the Queen towards restraint, and Meleys was one of the few dragons alive with any chance in a fight against Vhagar. Both are now gone.
On the Green side, the full extent of Aegon’s injuries is not yet clear, but we know the King is in bad, bad shape. There will be recriminations, given he wasn’t even supposed to be at the battle.
The key point, though, is that Aemond betrayed his brother. If he and Vhagar had attacked immediately when signalled, making it a two-on-one fight immediately, Aegon surely would have been fine. And that friendly fire seemed pretty damn deliberate.
But will anyone realise what really happened?
Speaking about the episode, Ewan Mitchell, who plays Aemond, hinted at what was going through his character’s head when he held Vhagar back.
“I think Aemond feels that Aegon lacks the perseverance to be king. You know, Aegon even says it himself in that scene,” said Mitchell.
The scene to which he referred was in season one, episode nine, when Aegon was hiding and everyone else was trying to find (and then crown) him. Upon being retrieved, he protests that he’s “not suited” to ruling.
“He says, ‘I have no wish to rule.’ You know, get on a boat and sail far away. And you can see why (Aegon) is more lucrative for the Small Council, because he looks like someone you can control,” said Mitchell.
“Whereas Aemond, the younger prince, does have a political agenda, he does have a very strong ambition. You can see how he might be a little harder to control.”
So Aemond feels he would be a better ruler than his brother. There’s an element of personal animus as well: as we saw several times throughout season one, Aegon bullied Aemond when they were growing up. And the bullying hasn’t stopped in adulthood.
In episode three, Aegon stumbled upon his younger sibling naked in a brothel, in a rare moment of vulnerability. Instead of betraying his discomfort, Aemond stood nonchalantly and walked away, everything swinging in the breeze, so to speak. It wasn’t gratuitous nudity on the show’s part; it told us something crucial about Aemond as a character.
Mitchell conceded that getting his body “physically in shape” was among the biggest challenges he faced for the role this season.
“It involves a lot of CrossFit, a lot of boxing, a lot of running to, you know, make the audience believe that this kid has very much developed himself into a lethal weapon,” said the actor.
“He doesn’t need a suit of armour. He doesn’t need the brandishing of a Valyrian steel sword to look like he could end your life.”
It’s true. We see Aegon on his dragon in this episode, wearing the same armour as his feared ancestor Aegon the Conqueror. And he’s nowhere near as intimidating as his brother walking naked through a brothel.
“I do I really enjoy, especially in this season, discovering that shadowy side to Aemond,” Mitchell stressed.
“You know, he’s not just that one dimensional character. There is a more nuanced and more vulnerable person underneath that.”
A regal death
In-universe, Rhaenys is known as “the queen who never was”, the crown having passed over her to her younger cousin, Viserys, because of her gender.
Her death – brave, selfless and, given the circumstances, surprisingly dignified – fit the character beautifully.
Eve Best, who plays Rhaenys, said her character knew her chances of defeating Aemond and Vhagar were slim, but she saw an opportunity to “finish” the war and couldn’t turn it down.
“I think she knows that it’s going to be suicide, she knows that the whole mission is probably a kamikaze one,” said Best.
“But if she goes back in, she could just possibly finish it here and now. There’s the potential to finish it. And I think she’s facing up to that, and knowing that’s what has got to be done.
“Going back in is almost 100 per cent a kamikaze move, but it’s the opportunity to end things there and then, and if that means sacrificing herself, then so be it.
“It’s the most immediate way to avoid the biggest amount of bloodshed.”
Best felt that Rhaenys’s death, when it came, amid howls of pain and dragonfire, was actually quite “peaceful”. In her final moments, you can see the character almost “letting go”.
“It’s a literal, physical letting go. But also an emotional, spiritual letting go of everything. She’s just letting go into the ether. And there’s something amazingly peaceful. It felt like she was becoming increasingly light,” said Best.
“You know, very often people, as they’re approaching their own final moments, do seem to become … it’s like they’re shedding the world, and all the minutiae and this stupid mess and muddle of earthly systems becomes irrelevant. Because none of it matters.”
The final shot of Best on screen, of her character letting go, was the penultimate one filmed. And even the filming process itself involved a fitting parallel with death in real life.
“It was at the end of a very long two-week process of being on the back of that dragon every day and doing a lot of physical manoeuvring,” Best recalled.
“We got to the moment of doing it, and there was a long break beforehand because they were preparing (the equipment), so I had this long build-up.
“I was feeling more and more emotional, that’s the last thing I’m ever going to shoot … and we got to it and it was over in a flash. We did two takes and that was it.
“But that’s exactly the reality of, you know, the thing. It’s just over in a flash. And there’s no time to indulge in it or give it the space that one would ideally like to give it.
“It felt like just a release, and a real relief, just to let go.”
House of the Dragon airs every Monday on Binge.
Originally published as House of the Dragon, episode four: Ewan Mitchell and Eve Best open up on dramatic battle
Reality star shocks with mic-drop moment
A contestant on controversial dating series FBoy Island has called out one of the leading ladies in an elimination that left host Abbie Chatfield gobsmacked.
90210 star wishes she’d never done the show
Jennie Garth has made a brutal admission about her decision to appear in the reboot of the iconic series that made her famous.