Lord Strong got some screentime, Rasputin did a stupid, the Eleventh Doctor stole an egg, and the king decided to not marry a child, so he married a teenager instead.
This episode had no sex and very little violence (which is not to say there's no disturbing imagery; there's a guy getting crucified - done very tastefully, you know what's being nailed where without them actually having to show you - a guy getting eaten by crabs, and a guy getting his finger eaten by gangrene and maggots). It also had just the right amount of Matt Smith. Until the next generation gets up and running, the story runs the risk of being the Daemon Targaryen Show (which I'm totally here for), but they wisely keep him back for most of the episode's runtime.
Spoilers for this episode (book spoilers are in a different post)
There are four things going on here, which are all intertwined:
- King Viserys's health is getting worse. He keeps cutting himself on the Iron Throne and now gangrene is eating away at his fingers. This is making him conscious of his own mortality, leading to...
- King Viserys has an heir, but needs a spare (that isn't Daemon). Therefore, Viserys must remarry. The sensible thing to do would be to pull a Plantagenet at marry his cousin once removed, Laena Velaryon. (Apparently this match was proposed in the book, but I glossed it over as the far lesser slight to Corlys compared to his wife/son being passed over for the crown.)
- Getting the Velaryons on his side would be a good thing since a trio of Free Cities have basically granted Letters of Marque to a pirate king calling himself the Crabfeeder, who has started plundering Velaryon fleets in the Stepstones, and Viserys refuses to do anything about this.
- Daemon stole the dragon egg meant for Viserys's son and intends to give it to his own son, which he doesn't actually have, because he's acting out and wants attention.
Amongst all this, some other plot developments that will lead to future events, but again, that's for a different post.
So, starting at the top: I don't think it's a spoiler to say that Viserys is going to die eventually. Hello, this is, what 174 years before Daenerys Targaryen. None of these people are going to live forever. So, okay, polite reminder of the king's mortality. Gotta do something because they didn't make him fat. (Book!Viserys is fat. It's his defining physical characteristic. By the end of his life he's too heavy to ascend the Iron Throne.) It's fine. Polite little reminder of his own encroaching demise. Gotta have an heir. It's not Henry VIII's leg ulcer, but it gets the job done.
Second (appropriately, we start talking about Daemon here), I think the show's done enough to establish that the spare can't be Daemon. He's not king material. I have more to say about him in the spoiler-heavy post, but suffice it to say that his antics have proven to the realm that he'd make a poor king. And with Rhaenyra not exactly being too cautious, there's every possibility that they'll need another child (preferably a son) of King Viserys to cross Daemon from the golden time he looks for.*
I'm not sure they've spent enough time developing House Velaryon yet, but upcoming episode titles suggest that this won't be a problem in the future. Again trying to avoid spoilers here, but Corlys does play a major role in the story and it is rather significant that his family keeps getting passed over. The "Viserys should marry Laena" thing does come up in the book, for all of maybe one page, but here it gets an entire episode (mostly, I think, to soften the blow of a king in his forties marrying a character who I think is supposed to be 15; 15 is so much better than 12!)
It's so weird that they moved Queen Aemma's death back seven years, because it's causing all sorts of knock-on problems. Again, the future spoilers post has more on this.
Point three: the Crabfeeder. Uh, yeah, he's here, and he's being set up as a creepy villain. Not a whole lot to say about him. A bit more in the spoiler post. Really this episode is just moving that plot along.
Fourth... yeah, here's where the episode starts to break down unless you want to give Rasputin a lot more credit than the writing deserves. Why would you think that you could confront Daemon without a dragon? Unless that was the plan - Daemon attacks him and kills some of his men, he scarpers back to King's Landing and tells the King that Daemon's gone bonkers and declared war on the crown. But if that is the plan, why does Otto have a change of heart and tell his men to "sheathe that fucking steel" when Caraxes shows up?
It's all solved by Rhaenyra of course, not because Gurrlllll Power, but because the show does need to show that she's headstrong and impulsive (not entirely unlike her dear uncle Daemon). And as I say in the spoiler post, Daemon's actions throughout are brilliantly consistent with his character, so well done there.
We had a little bit more bonding between Alicent and Rhaenyra, but, well, given how the episode ended I'm not sure how much more of that we'll have. I kind of wish - and here I guess I'm getting into a little bit of future spoiler territory - that they had slowed this down a bit more. If you're going to go through the trouble of making Alicent and Rhaenyra the same age, why not have their friendship last just a little bit longer? At least until the "Daemon's crown" incident, say.
And on that tantalizing detail, I shall leave you. A much more spoileriffic musing is here.
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