This week on House of the Dragon, the characters are consumed with dragon math while viewers are busy reassessing their allegiances after Team Black’s coldest move to date. While Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) and company mobilized the smallfolk to their cause last week, the latest episode confirms that Team Black sees peasants as little more than a means to an end. However you feel about the power dynamics in this episode, ‘The Red Sowing’ offers intense action, drama, and moral ambiguity. It’s time to dive into the details and see what we can learn; please be aware that there are heavy spoilers for ‘The Red Sowing’ ahead, so please fly far away on your dragon if you haven’t watched the episode.
Normally we wait until the end of the review to determine which side won the week, but after pulling in three new dragon riders in one episode, there is no doubt that Team Black is currently the frontrunner in the Dance of the Dragons. Team Green is largely sidelined throughout the episode. We take a few minutes to watch Small Council members question the latest whispers of a mysterious new dragon rider, and later, Aemond Targaryen (Ewan Mitchell) soils his pants when the newest dragon rider buzzes the tower over at King’s Landing. We also check in with Larys Strong (Matthew Needham) as he continues to entangle himself in the rehab regimen for King Aegon II Targaryen (Tom Glynn-Carney). Only time will tell if this tough-love act is going to win Aegon’s trust.
Our best-used time with Team Green comes in the form of a down-on-her luck Queen Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) surviving a deeply Ophelia-coded camping trip. After remarking that, “Nothing here is clean,” she escapes the confines of the Red Keep and really does seem to consider going out like Hamlet’s famous ex:
[She] fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide/ And, mermaid-like…she chanted snatches of old tunes/As one incapable of her own distress…Till that her garments/Heavy with their drink/Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay/To muddy death. (Shakespeare, Hamlet, iv.vii)
Fortunately for Alicent, she seems to emerge from her swim with a newfound sense of purpose and direction. We’ll have to wait until next week to see where that takes her. Perhaps her moral star is rising while Rhaenyra’s takes a tumble.
We actually spend most of the episode very much on Rhaenyra’s side. While she is wary of Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty) during a tense seaside showdown (the dragons cautiously stepping toward one another brings great tension to the scene), she quickly wins him to her side, emotes a joyful smile, and doesn’t need too much convincing from smallfolk-cheerleader Mysaria (Sonoya Mizuno) to open up the dragon pits to every Targaryen bastard they can get their hands on. Meanwhile, Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) also expresses his joy in a reserved-but-emotionally-loaded “Well done,” for his secret son Addam.
At this point, Prince Jacaerys Targaryen (Harry Collett), who has mostly been a sweet little emerging diplomat this season, decides to become a total supremacist asshole. While we can understand his worry that letting the rabble ride dragons will hurt his dragon-aided claim to the throne – nothing really makes us want to look past his dehumanizing word choice. He refers to the Targaryen bastards as “mongrels.” It’s a tough look for Jace, but also true to life. People who harbor supremacist attitudes are generally insecure and desperate to bring someone else down in service of their own egos. In retrospect, there have been warning signs that Jace is suppressing some resentment. He has complained multiple times this season about what he perceives to be a lack of action from his mother and he has also chimed in with the war council bro-squad about the need for Rhaenyra to stay outside of the main action.
For another moment, Rhaenyra continues to warm our hearts. She puts on a kind, noble face and speaks to the gathered dragon seeds about the opportunity before them; she thanks them for their willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice to the cause. In this moment, she feels like a gracious woman of the people who is carving a path forward for the smallfolk through a sad, but pragmatic decision that might spare the realm years of bloody war.
Instead of granting each individual a one-on-one audience with a dragon to reflect the intimate and personal scenes of dragon claiming we’ve observed up to this point in the series, she takes a very brisk walk to safety before watching Vermithor unleash deadly fire on the entire assembled crowd. Not only that, but we learn she has ordered her guards to forcibly keep the volunteers from escaping. The carrot of choice and honor she offered them was a total farce. This is a slaughter, and she expected it. She spoke of honor and choice, when what she really meant was, “I’m going to lock you power-grabbing nobodies in a dragon pit until you are all dead or I get a dragon rider or two.” It’s a cold, needless act of cruelty from Rhaenyra. These certainly don’t seem to be ideal conditions to give each candidate the best shot at success. It plays out like a desperate and selfish grab for power.
It turns out that the Dragonkeepers were right to take Rhaenyra to task before all of the carnage. Their reasoning wasn’t great. It was more supremacist baloney, but they were right to push back when Rhaenyra claimed that the gods had set the dragon seeds before them. Her head dragonkeeper countered with, “you have set them before yourself.” Boy, was he right. Dragons are not, “the playthings of men,” and once again, it’s the smallfolk who learn a lesson the hard way.
Fortunately for Rhaenyra and Team Black, they only have to clear a low moral bar in order to look better than Team Green. So far, they haven’t indiscriminately executed dozens of innocent rat catchers or locked the masses inside of a starving city (they simply exploited that situation to acquire these crispy corpses for the dragon pit) – but in this reviewer’s opinion, they ceded quite a bit of moral high ground ahead of the series finale.
In any case, at the end of all that darkness, we are rewarded with a cool moment of Hugh standing strong in the face of Vermithor and a delightful moment of Ulf winning Silverwing’s heart by being a total dunce. It’s great to know that some dragons have a sense of humor, and even greater to see our guy Ulf strike fear in the heart of Aemond in the closing moments!
We already established that Team Black won the week in terms of the Dance of the Dragons, but which individual character won the week? That distinction goes to none other than Ser Oscar Tully (Archie Barnes). This little lad throws a masterful changeup when he swaps his innocent, deer-in-headlights vibe at the perfect moment to humiliate Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) in front of the lords and ladies of the Riverlands. It is masterful, because even though Daemon hates being humiliated, he is in over his head, and letting a young child named after a Muppet walk all over him is the only way to appease the Riverlanders who suffered under the open treachery of the Blackwoods. Perhaps those lessons in humility from Alys Rivers last week have already paid dividends.
Oscar makes Daemon clean up after himself by executing the Blackwood lord who carried out Daemon’s bidding. In the end, Oscar secures the army that Daemon so desperately needs. Nevertheless, this moment is enough to throw Daemon into another vision of his brother and another lesson about the weight of power. Perhaps Daemon is finally ready to step back and do his part to support Rhaenyra’s claim to the throne.
Headed into next week’s finale, the moral center of the show is grayer than ever, and that is sure to make for a tense, but engaging conclusion to Season 2.
