“Driftmark,” this week’s episode of Home of the Dragon, featured maybe probably the most intense battle on the present to date: a four-way brawl between kids. What initially appears to be like like a reprise of a training-ground scuffle within the earlier episode out of the blue takes a sinister flip because it retains going additional till a horrible little boy loses a watch after a candy little boy defends his brother with a knife. And due to this, the whole royal court docket is trapped in an R-rated speedrun of the NBC collection The Slap as they spend nearly all of the episode in the identical room, attempting to determine what’s to be carried out about it.
A part of what makes this battle so surprising is that we’ve simply met these children, so when Aemond and Aegon Targaryen confront Jacaerys and Lucerys Velayron in a tunnel, we’re not solely positive how issues are going to play out — and Home of the Dragon isn’t a present the place nice issues occur. The battle goes shockingly far, as Aemond grabs a stone and appears intent on killing Jacaerys earlier than Lucerys leaps to defend him with a knife, blinding Aemond in a single eye.
The fallout from this includes nearly all of “Driftmark,” as King Viserys should mediate the ensuing battle between Queen Alicent, Princess Rhaenyra, and all different offended events. The dispute rapidly stops being in regards to the kids and clearly turns into in regards to the rising rift between Alicent and Rhaenyra, to the purpose that Alicent, wanting a watch for a watch, threatens to chop Lucerys’ out herself.
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Photograph: Ollie Upton/HBO
In some methods, “Driftmark” carefully echoes “The Kingsroad,” the second episode of Sport of Thrones. In it, the younger heroine Arya Stark makes a brand new good friend, Mycah, a baker’s son, who’s subsequently bullied by the petulant and merciless Prince Joffrey. When Arya stands as much as Joffrey, he knocks her down and her pet direwolf, Nymeria, bites his arm to defend her. The top result’s a scene fairly just like the one in “Driftmark,” the place the royal household and different concerned events try and resolve the dispute between the kids in a manner that may even remind the adults of their place.
However whereas the premise is analogous, what follows diverges in vital ways in which additional illustrate how Home of the Dragon is a unique form of present than its predecessor. “The Kingsroad” in the end resolves with Arya’s father, Ned Stark, being compelled to make restitution by killing his daughter’s direwolf. It’s a gutting conclusion to a battle that was successfully Sport of Thrones in miniature, the place good individuals are steadily devoured so long as they proceed to defer to an inequitable system that rewards chilly self-preservation that’s detached to honor, regardless of how a lot lip service it offers it. But regardless of its fixed grimness, Sport of Thrones did have a streak of optimism about it, believing that a few of these children would outlast the horrors, and even perhaps change the world for the higher.
The kids in Home of the Dragon haven’t any such rosy outlook. These children are fucked. Aegon and Aemond are merciless, and whereas Rhaenyra is the present’s protagonist and her kids look like candy boys that gained’t develop as much as be bratty little hellions, there isn’t a room for the optimism of the earlier collection. So far as anybody in that room is worried, the throne is now empty, and sides should be taken for no matter comes subsequent — and they don’t seem to be above utilizing kids or homicide to get it. Issues are usually not going to go effectively once they all get to King’s Touchdown, and even when little Jacaerys and Lucerys make it via with their goodness intact, it’s their lot to be on the heart of an influence wrestle with no actual good final result, the place nobody has something however egocentric pursuits in thoughts.
By the top of “Driftmark,” Viserys is unable to achieve a judgment that makes anybody glad, hoping everybody simply makes peace. In doing so, he solely deepens the rift that has opened up in entrance of him, and made positive that his kids (and theirs) are doomed to battle.
