The building tension and dread is just so well done on the show. You know you're watching the implosion of all of these people in slow motion but since the greens are the only characters we follow this week (apart from Rhaenys and
) it makes for a fascinating deep dive into their mindsets and it's a great showcase of how quickly a coup like this gets put into effect once the dam breaks (namely Viserys' death). Servants getting locked up, people being forced to swear loyalty to the new ruler (and people being executed on a whim -
) while the identical kingsguard twins Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk are a perfect symbolic representation of what the Dance entails, namely people being put in situations where families are likely to be deeply divided over the succession rights of people who don't consider them to be people worth considering...it all fits together so well. We're also diving a level deeper by having people who are seemingly on the same side trying to outmanoeuver each other because of the subtle ways in which their ideas for what makes for a better future for themselves and for the realm differ.
This is Olivia Cooke's episode and I prefer the show version of Alicent to her book version by a mile. In the book she's just the textbook evil stepmother but the actress manages to make her so much more on the show. A very conflicted but also rigid and oppressed character who perpetuates sexist traditions and systems because of a misguided sense of self-righteousness, duty and piousness. It's also interesting that all the major male characters that surround Alicent all seem to have a weird fixation on her (her father remarks crepily how she looks like her mother, the less we say about Larys' fetishes the better, and Criston Cole seems to be devoted to her in a way that seems to go well beyond being a mere protector). Alicent was compared to Cersei in a lot of ways and in a way their struggles are the same, though Cersei never realises what Rhaenys spells out for Alicent in their big scene together: that Alicent is just serving men within a system dominated by men and that she ought to be mad at the system as it is set up, rather than at women like Rhaenyra who flaunt certain traditions.
Rhaenys also finally gets a lot more focus and I have my own ideas about her rationale at the end of the episode (
).
If you thought the story wanted you to root for any of these royals the last scene hopefully makes you realise how little even characters who are framed very sympathetically by the story think of the poor and the powerless. It's why Rhaenyra can say the smallfolk's wants are of no consequence, why Daemon can have Caraxes walk over a wounded soldier in episode 3 and not even notice and why Laenor, Rhaneyra and Daemon can just kill a random guard so that Daemon and Rhaenyra can get married and Laenor gets a 'happy ending'. Blacks vs greens...that's a useless question. Team smallfolk all the way, which is also how Mysaria seems to see it by the way.
Aegon is just such a pathetic loser but it was interesting to see him have an understanding of
. Aemond is also getting a lot more nuance than in the source text (envious second sons...gotta watch out for them).
The soundtrack was especially powerful in this episode as well.
