TURN BACK NOW if you don't want me to spoil basically everything that I think is going to happen this season. The less-spoileriffic review of Episode 2 is here.
Okay, let's dive into future spoiler territory now.
In the book, Mysaria(? I'm not going to remember how to spell it so I'm just going to call her Lady Misery, sorry) actually is pregnant, Viserys has her banished across the Narrow Sea, she loses the child on the journey, it's another wedge between Daemon and Viserys. Since they're really going for the "Daemon is the main villain" head-fake, I don't know why they didn't go this route. Oh, Lady Misery had herself sterilized to have another You Go Gurrrrllll moment in memory of Roe v. Wade, a case that was overturned several months after principal photography ended. Sure.
They are absolutely head-faking the audience into thinking that Daemon's going to be the main villain. It's understandable because Matt Smith is so damn good in the role, and the quality of the writing so far has been good enough that when you go back and watch these early episodes after seeing the rest of the season (I hope) you'll see how everything he does is in keeping with the two conflicting sides of his character:
- He has Second Son Syndrome, and therefore seeks power and glory and recognition.
- He is fanatically loyal to House Targaryen and, despite his own low opinion of his brother's ability to be king, will never actually try to usurp him.
There's a line that Daemon will very happily dance right up to - including stealing the dragon egg that was supposed to go to Viserys's dead son - but that he will never, ever cross. And that's coming across brilliantly so far.
Ser Criston Cole is now a knight of the Kingsguard. Apparently he is not getting recast when the time skip occurs, which means he's going to go from being six years older than Rhaenyra's actress to two years younger. Okay...
Speaking of the younger actresses, Young Rhaenyra is 22 (so assume she was 20-21 when they filmed this), Young Alicent is 19 (so 17-18), and... well, their characters are going to be churning out kids pretty soon. It's HBO - are you ready to see Rhaenyra have sex? Alicent maybe not, but the saucier details of Rhaenyra's sex life are, um, extremely plot-relevant; Alicent bangs the King and pops out a few more heirs, end of; Rhaneyra has, off the top of my head, four relationships that all affect the plot, and at the very least, two* have to be coming up fairly soon if her older kids are going to be old enough to do much in the Dance.
*In the source material, Rhaenyra has six kids, three in 114-117 to her first husband (officially - it's an open secret that he's gay, hence "two relationships" mentioned above), two in 120-122 to her second (who is absolutely not the father of her first batch, since they don't look like him either), and one in 129 to her second. Episode 2 takes place in 112 or 113. Again, the decision to shove Queen Aemma's death back to 112 was a highly questionable one.
Although... Reiterating that Rhaenyra's younger actress is 22 and her older one is 30, and the actors playing her paramours (at least in their adult incarnations) range from 28 to 39. Given that Rhaenyra's children are younger than Alicent's (although that might be due to their age difference, which the show eliminated) and if the episode titles are anything to go by, Alicent's first child will be born next episode, it's possible that we'll wait until the time skip to get into Rhaenyra's pants. (I won't lie, I originally thought a major reason for the recast* is so the audience doesn't get squicked out the way they did when Arya - who was 12 or 13 when the show started - had sex with Gendry in Thrones's final season. But again, Young!Rhaenyra's already 10 years older than that, even though she's playing a teenager.) On the other hand, it would make sense for the time skip to occur after Rhaenyra's first batch of kids are born so that they can grow up during the time skip. Oh, hold on, her first batch of kids have "old" and "young" actors too, which suggests she'll be popping them out in the next couple of episodes.
*Look, the first season is apparently going to cover 17 years of history, but the older performers are only 8 (in Rhaenyra's case) or 9 (in Alicent's) years older than their younger counterparts. You'd expect the age gap to be bigger, but like I pointed out last time, despite all the You Go Gurrrrllll MESSAGING, they're determined to keep the boobs perky (the most absurd example of this has to be compu-pasting a then-41-year-old Lena Heady's head on a 27-year-old's body for the Walk of Shame in Thrones Season 5).
Other notes: it's weird that the Crabfeeder got this much focus given that he's going to be dead in two episodes. He literally exists so that Daemon and Corlys have somebody to knock over and set up a little pauper kingdom of their own. They're already head-faking Daemon being a major villain, now they're also head-faking the guy Daemon takes out as well? That's unnecessary.
Here are the titles of the upcoming episodes, along with my guesses as to what's going to happen in them:
"Second of His Name" (September 4th, 2022) (guessing 114 AC) - Alicent's first son is born.
"King of the Narrow Sea" (September 11th, 2022) (still 114-115 AC (show), 108 AC (book)) - Daemon and Corlys party in the Stepstones. Either this one or the next one should be the end of the "Daemon is the big bad" head-fake.
"We Light the Way" (September 18th, 2022) - not the foggiest idea. Please let it not be some Lord of Light tie-in with Thrones. Oh, possibly this is where we set up The Big Incest, and we find out exactly what did happen between Rhaenyra and Ser Criston.
"The Princess and the Queen" (September 25th, 2022) (after 117 AC (book; the show could push this as late as 122, I think)) - after the timeskip now, reintroducing us to Adult Rhaenyra and Adult Alicent. By this point Rhaenyra has had her first three kids. (These kids have to be old enough to convincingly ride dragons etc. in 130.)
"Driftmark" (October 2nd, 2022)/"The Lord of the Tides" (October 9th, 2022) (120 AC (book; the show could push this out to 125ish)) - obviously these both focus on Corlys and his family. And his family tragedies. How late can they push this, realistically? Rhaenyra's first son by her second husband is present for key events in 130 and 131 (he doesn't have to do much except stand around and look cute/scared, but still), and has to be born around now. Which means you need an actor who's old enough to be in certain intense scenes to play him, which means he needs to be a certain age by 131; I just don't know what that age is.
"The Green Court" (October 16th, 2022)/"The Black Queen" (October 23rd, 2022) (129 AC) - Viserys dies. It'd be cool if these two episodes largely cover the same event(s), with "Green Court" staying in King's Landing and "Black Queen" staying on Dragonstone.
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