00:00Welcome back everyone.
00:08It is Amelia.
00:09I hope you are fine.
00:10House of the Dragons Season 2 Episode 5 is a quieter installment but also
00:15an important one.
00:16The Dance of the Dragons has fully started now after the events of Episode 4.
00:21But this is a chance for both sides of the civil war to assist their wounds and regroup.
00:26While they're doing that, Daemon sinks further into his Harrenhal nightmare with
00:30some very surprising narrative choices along the way.
00:33Daemon's visions at Harrenhal get weirder than ever as Episode 5's installment includes
00:39having sex with his long-dead mother, Alyssa Targaryen.
00:43Daemon's mother died when he was around 3 years old so there's perhaps a sense of
00:47Daemon wanting to feel the motherly love he missed out on while also searching for a woman
00:52who will take care of him and feed his own ego and desires.
00:56It's certainly an, ya rem, interesting scene, although even a bit much insist-wise, even
01:02for the Targaryens.
01:03That vision drives the rest of Daemon's arc, really, as he goes on to declare that he wants
01:08to be king and not king consort.
01:10Matt Smith is superb here and clearly having a great time.
01:14He gets to be utterly despicable and arrogant and rude and all of Daemon's other charming
01:19qualities and yet also manages to find the character's vulnerability, not to mention
01:24confusion which is important to making this story work.
01:27I don't think everything here works perfectly, in part because there is so much happening
01:32to Daemon within a single episode.
01:34He goes from threatening the Brackens to coming up with a plan with the Blackwoods, which
01:38is then executed, and then the Riverlords angrily come upon him, without a real sense
01:43of the passage of time.
01:44It also makes some key changes to the book in him wanting to be king rather than seeing
01:49Rhaenyra rule and, while that's not inherently a bad thing, the jury is out on how that will
01:54work for the story going forward.
01:56In terms of the fallout from the battle at Rook's Rest, I think the scenes in King's
02:01Landing are where the show really nails it.
02:03There's plenty of drama given King Aegon could still die and Daemon gets to go even more
02:08full throttle into villain mode as he gets to take control like he's always wanted.
02:13Even Mitchell and Olivia Cooke, once again, do great work in their scenes and it begins
02:18to show the cracks in Alicent.
02:19Despite the bad she's done, Cooke does make you feel for her.
02:23The scenes with the small folk were particularly good because it would be so easy to overlook
02:27them.
02:28It's always great to get a sense of the real people who are living and dying underneath
02:33the rule of the nobles, those who cannot find food while their rulers squabble over a big
02:38chair.
02:39It does a nice job showing the escalating struggles and tensions among the residents
02:43of King's Landing.
02:44And I look forward to seeing when that eventually boils over.
02:47Plus, as visuals go, a dragon's head being carted through the streets is a very striking
02:53and powerful one.
02:54Illumin, or not?
02:55Give me some ideas related to my video in comments on below if you like this video and
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