‘House of the Dragon’ Trailer Freakout
01:56:33 Share

From the host that brought you to Coding Westworld and Westworld the Recapables comes the Ringer Prestige TV podcast on Westworld. I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Danny Heifetz. And I'm David Shoemaker. Welcome to Westworld Season 4 on the Prestige TV podcast feed where we're going to break down every episode of Westworld Season 4. Every Monday, the day after the show comes out on the Prestige TV podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcasts, but get them on Spotify.

This episode is brought to you by Alien Romulus, the scariest movie of the summer. Alien Romulus is now playing in theaters everywhere, including IMAX. This movie looks terrifying, and I cannot wait to see it. Alien Romulus comes from Fede Alvarez, the director of intense horror movies like Evil Dead and Don't Breathe, and it is produced by the legendary Ridley Scott, the mastermind behind iconic films like Blade Runner and the original Alien.

Can't wait for this one. Alien Romulus, rated R, now playing only in theaters. Get your tickets now. This episode is brought to you by Experian. I don't know if you've ever looked in your subscriptions on your phone and noticed that you had like four or five subscriptions. Maybe you didn't realize you were still paying for, or maybe you got some email for something and you're like, I thought I canceled that. Well,

This is what happens. These days, anyone could be missing out on savings from subscriptions they've totally forgotten about. It's not just the ones you forgot to get rid of. It's the ones that they have better deals. And that's where Experian comes in. It's like a personal assistant for your subscriptions. It can cancel over 200 plus subscriptions in categories like streaming services, meal kits, entertainment apps, and more. You could save an average of $270 per year

Plus, they'll even let you know if your provider offers you a better deal to stick around. Find out how much you could save by downloading the Experian app today. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed. $270 a year average. Estimated savings with one plus cancellation. Paid membership with connected payment accounts required. See Experian.com for details. I've decided to name a new ad. I'm your ad. War is a footnote.

Do you think that Ram will ever accept me as their queen? A woman would not inherit the Iron Throne. Because that is the order of things. When I'm queen, I will create a new order. Greetings and welcome into the Ringerverse here on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin and it is my absolute pleasure to invite you not only back to Westeros, but also...

to join us on the ringers nexus podcast feed for all things fandom joining me today now that she's finished telling me that all the dragons roared as one it's my house of our co-host

Joanna Robinson. Molly Rubin, what a fun thing to say. All the dragons roared as one right before a civil war. Yeah. What a thing to say, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Love a pep talk. Mm-hmm. It's a great tone setter, and it's a great tone setter for us because we're here with a little pop-up pod today, Jo. We weren't meant to be here today. We did not think to meet you here, dear listener. But then the official...

for a little television program you might have heard of called House of the Dragon dropped a few days before we were expecting it to. We thought this was going to come to Comic-Con. It came early. So here we are to go over some highlights, some takeaways, things we're excited about a month out from our return to the land of ice and fire. Okay. Programming reminders quickly.

We'll be back still on Sunday. Sure. We already got the Rings of Power trailer and potted about it. Sure. We already got House of the Dragon trailer. We're potting about it right now. We'll find more things to talk about. There's going to be Marvel news. There's going to be all sorts of stuff coming out of Comic-Con. We will hit the highlights on Sunday. Then we are heading into a quieter week for the ringer verse.

hesitate to even say it out loud. How dare you? How dare you? How dare you curses? We simply must issue the programming reminders and thus I am compelled to say out loud that we are heading into a quieter week. No Midnight Boys or House of R planned for next week. At the moment, we are gearing up for the content-mageddon that is coming our way. But...

The junior mints have a treat coming. Because Mint Edition will be breaking down the first three episodes of Harley Quinn next Friday on the heels of that season three premiere. You can follow all of that by following the pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And by following the ringerverse across our myriad social feeds, we are everywhere.

And of course, bear in mind our friendly neighborhood spoiler warning, which we're going to chat about in a bit more detail in just a minute or two when we run through the source material that is germane as we talk about the trailer today. So put a pin in that for now, then we'll follow up on that in a second. Joe? Yes, Mallory. What television program are we here to talk about today? Okay, we're here to talk about the HBO series House of the Dragon. Ever heard of it?

a prequel series to HBO's Game of Thrones. I'm already just like, I've lost my mind already. We've barely started. My Zoom muted you on the second I ever heard of it. Like, preemptively, oddly. Yeah, it's complicated. Spoilers are complicated. But we want to be very respectful of people meeting this at all levels. So...

Do we want to talk about this now or do you want to talk about it later? What do you want to do? No, let's do it. Why don't you hit the show team highlights here to give everybody that context and then hit the reading list and we can talk about the spoiler warning a little bit there before we dive in. I love to do this. So, okay, 10 episodes of House of the... I keep wanting to call it Fire and Blood. 10 episodes of House of the Dragon are premiering August 21st.

This show is created by George R. R. Martin. Mallory, ever heard of him? And Ryan Condal. And the co-EP on it is Thrones MVP director Miguel Spocznik. He is also directing the premiere and a handful of other episodes. There's also just a wide range of directors on board for this, including a couple women, which is something Game of Thrones didn't have. So that's great. The reading list is...

which doubles as our spoiler warning is this. Fire and Blood, the Targaryen history book that George R. R. Martin wrote, that is the main source material here. Inside Fire and Blood are essentially these two novellas that he released in other collections, The Rogue Prince, which was in the collection called Rogues, and The Princess and the Queen, which is in the collection Dangerous Women. Technically, in theory, all that stuff is on the table, but Mal

feeling like a little, like we don't want to lay out every single thing that's going to happen. Because unlike, what's true is that unlike Game of Thrones, unlike the back half of Game of Thrones, we know the major beats of this story, right? So that's an advantage that House of the Dragon has in that we know where we're aiming towards. Volume 2 of Fire and Blood may not have been written yet. Stop me if you've heard this one before. But he...

The germane aspect of the canon is, in fact, covered in Volume 1. And so the bullet points of this aspect, this stretch of the timeline, yeah, it is known, as they say. They do say it is known. So, but we want to be able to, yeah, really respectful of people who just want to, like, know the basics. That's what we're here. We're here today. We're doing the basics. And maybe in future, we'll be doing more.

everything everywhere all at once. But right now, basics with a little depth to it. You know, we're just trying not to like

talk about every death and every twist of the knife as if everyone has read the source material. You know, one thing we can say that spoilers are totally fair game for as a little television program called Game of Thrones. Sure. And, you know, even though those books remain still, the Song of Ice and Fire books remain still to this day unfinished. I believe in you, George, written for you every day, buddy. Uh,

He's working on it. Plenty of the volumes were out when that television program premiered. And you wouldn't have wanted to spoil Ned's beheading or the Red Wedding for people, right? Even if you were able to

imbue your analysis and your chats with all of this other insight from the text. And so I think we will try to take a similar approach in general with our House of the Dragon discussion where we're bringing the source material to provide that depth and the context and parallels across history and more insight into the characters and their relationships and their family ties, et cetera, alliances, treachery,

right now, today, here's the balance we're going to try to strike. And we're feeling this out in real time, right? We're just, we're being honest. We're feeling it out in real time. Can I give an example? Yeah, please. Can I give an example from the Thrones show? Yeah. So let's say like in a trailer for season two of Game of Thrones,

We saw an image from the Battle of Blackwater and we say the phrase Battle of Blackwater, right? So everyone knows it can be a battle of Blackwater, but we don't say exactly what happens and what the wildfire lace surprises are and all that sort of stuff and who comes out on top. So like to reference things, but not...

you know, give the detailed outcome, if that makes sense. Who are these players? What are the broad strokes of this story? Also, anything, this might seem like very obvious, but I'm going to say it anyway. Anything that is insubordinate

in the trailer clearly stated clearly shown or heavily implied in the trailer is fair game so we will be talking about what is presented to us in this trailer what has been shared on the press tour in marketing the show and so that's ultimately where we're looking to to to how we're looking to navigate this who are these players

What is this story about premise plot and the basics of the early days of the dance? That's all on the table today. That's all fair game. If you don't want that, if you want to go in totally clean, you probably didn't even watch the trailer. And so I'm probably not. I don't know why you're here. Yeah. Great. Great. Great to have you here if you are here.

If you want to get familiar with these new silver haired, silver haired characters who are in your life, that's what we're here to help you with today. There's one more quirk of this, of the source material. And we talked about this, I think in our very first episode,

teaser trailer discussion, but Fire and Blood is written very subjectively and from multiple people's point of view. You've got a couple different sources here on that story. And so George, in the writing of it, will say, well, according to this source, this happened. But according to this source, that happened. And that

Slightly, slightly spoiler proofs this show because even book readers will not be able to definitively tell you one way or another what exactly happened here. The show is going to tell us because George R. R. Martin is more directly involved in this.

has given his blessing for everything. So when the show says, when the book says, did she try to seduce him or he tried to seduce her? And then the show is going to tell us one way or another what happened, but we book readers don't necessarily know. So it's like a, it's, it's, it's, it's slightly, slightly spoiler proofs a show. And then also it's a gift, um,

to these showrunners to protect them against book sticklers, which I am guilty of being, definitely. I have a t-shirt that says that didn't happen in the book in the game's font. But yeah, a book stickler who's going to be like, well, that's not what it says in Fire and Blood. Me, I'm quoting myself. Well, that's not what happened in Fire and Blood. And the showrunners are going to be like, yeah, well, that's a super subjective version of the story. Yeah, there's one of the big...

that came out was this Nick Romano spread in Entertainment Weekly, a long article, lots of new images from the show. And there was the following quote about the

unreliable narrators of the source material and the objective nature of the show in there. Quote, Condal confirms House of the Dragon, which he hopes will be a, quote, companion piece to the book, will be, quote, the objective account of the Dance of the Dragons. So this is even something that they're kind of embracing and acknowledging up front. There's a lot of room to play. And hey, even when there's not that subjectivity,

Sometimes they change things that happen in the book. So who the fuck knows? Honestly. Sometimes. We're talking about history books and novellas and plenty changed in the literal thousands and thousands of pages of A Song of Ice and Fire, which I really look forward to reading.

Finishing one day. Can't wait for wins. It's going to be soon. I can feel it. It's going to be soon. I really believe. I support you. If we get to anything that we think goes slightly beyond, we will issue an in-the-moment spoiler warning. That's our...

That's our approach. Okay. Enough of that. How about the hype, Joe? One of the things I really felt this week, and this is anecdotal, you know, it's just like the people I'm chatting with on Slack or via text or, you know, I saw like a person or two in the flesh this week, but mostly, mostly in digital, digital correspondence. This really felt like the week where there was a notable change in enthusiasm among the masses.

The Entertainment Weekly article, we've got a couple big James Hibbert pieces in THR. Comic-Con is coming. There's a little special three-ish minute video from HBO about the making of, and then the trailer. And people seem...

Like they're in Jack Shepard, we have to go back mode. People are ready. They're ready to return to Westeros. Now, we've been there, right? We found ourselves really gearing up for this when we got the first teaser trailer, the first glimpse months ago. And...

I started my rewatch, my Game of Thrones rewatch, just to kind of like immerse myself in the world again last week. And I'm already through two seasons and I couldn't be having a better time. I'm just having a blast rewatching Game of Thrones and dipping back into the text. I'm really looking forward to continuing to rewatch and reread over the next few weeks before the show premieres. I'm incredibly hyped and excited. And this trailer felt like

it sparked that fever pitch again. Are you feeling that as well? Oh yeah. And like, I, it's really fun to do this on the heels of,

Sometimes it feels like a little whiplashy to be covering Rings of Power and House of Dragons at the same time because Amazon's like, here's our big splashy trailer and HBO's like, here's our big splashy trailer. That being said, when I take one step back from my sort of ping-ponging between the two, I just think how lucky I am that both of these trailers look amazing and we get these incredible shows. I am...

You know, yeah, I think I had already gone through my process of I'm ready to be burned again. So this just like keeps and hopefully not be burned. Hopefully I will be a Targaryen like and fireproof and just have time of my life with this show. But yeah, I'm thrilled. I'm really excited. And like and especially the last couple of days rereading the source material, just like

Putting some mute music on and just diving into the prose and remembering how delicious and specific and detailed George's world is. I don't know if you know this, Mallory, but he's good at this. And I'm just having a great time diving back in. And I mean, part of that is a lot that's part of this

The Entertainment Weekly push, the THR push, that little three-minute video they put out. Are these like peppered in all these assurances of we hear what you didn't like about the ending of the last show without, you know, overtly trying to bury Weiss and Benioff because like Miguel Sapochnik's... Or maybe overtly burying them in some degree. I mean, it was just like whatever. But, you know, Miguel Sapochnik...

is I think still pals with Weiss and Benioff. So it's not really about like, those guys didn't know what they were doing. It's just sort of, okay, if you don't like this, here's this. And I think, you know, especially this, this time, this, this particular fight, though it will get big and spectacly, starts with a lot of that throne room maneuvering

that we love so much in the early seasons of Thrones. So it's not just going to be... Palace intrigue is on display in this trailer. Absolutely. I loved this quote from when I was reading one of the novellas earlier. This quote was, the armies marched and met in savage battle. Much of the slaughter took place on water, blah, blah, blah. It was a war marked by stealth, murder, and...

and betrayal as well. A war fought in shadows and stairwells, council chambers and castle yards with knives and lies and poison. Give it to me, George. That's what I want. So with knives and lies and poison is vintage George. I love it. Perfect. Perfect. I love it. What were some of your other big takeaways from the articles and the other material that we've been privy to over the past few days? Um,

I think one thing that I didn't know and maybe I should have known already is that they filmed part of this in the volume, which specifically like the dragon writing was filmed in the volume. I thought that was really interesting. And dragon writing might be like the perfect thing to film in the volume because we've been talking in some of our other shows about the limitations of filming in the volume. This is, of course, if you, I don't know, maybe you're just joining us for this and you have been hanging with the ringer verse, but like the, the,

technology that they've been using to film a lot of the Star Wars shows, which...

forces you to film in sort of a somewhat of a small floor plan, but offers you incredible realistic vistas and lighting, digital vistas and lighting behind you. And so if you're on the back of a fake dragon, like this might be- You really feel like you're soaring through the sky above Dragonstone. Yeah, and that's really fun. That's really interesting. I didn't know that. And then the other thing, the major thing I think is what broke in THR about the potential anthology nature of,

of this show that the House of the Dragon is how they're branding any Targaryen stories they may want to tell in the future. And so potentially that they're going to do Dance of the Dragons, this great civil war in Targaryen history, might be three to four seasons.

Which is interesting because I was like how... It really helped me figure out maybe how they're going to pace this out, right? And then they could go back in time and do Aegon's Conquest if they want to, the origin of the Targaryens in Westeros. Or they could hop forward and do the Blackfyre Rebellion. There's a bunch of different Targaryen stories that...

uh, that they could tell. And it's such smart branding to umbrella that under this house of the dragon. So we don't have to like, what's this new show? What's this new show? What's this new show? You know? Um, I thought that was really interesting. How about you? What, what, what stuck out to you? I was similarly struck by the anthology possibility and, um,

I'll admit slightly confounded by it, not because it's in any way surprising that if this show is a hit and something that people love, they would want to eventually do the Blackfire Rebellions or Agon's Conquest, but more because I think there has been a lot of engagement in the press with the idea of like,

whether it was the right thing to do to go back to another battle for the Iron Throne, like whether that was the what the story that they should return to. And so there's a part of me that's like, OK, well, how likely is it that they just do that again in either direction? That said, there are so many other

and expanded Westerosi universe stories in development. You know, we've got Duncan Egg. We've got a Sea Snake prequel. We've got the Jon Snow sequel possibility. We've got the animated shows that are in development. Some other things that we've heard about that there haven't been updates on, 10,000 Ships, et cetera. Like even with things like The Long Night,

officially off the table, there's still all of this stuff happening. And so maybe it doesn't feel like you're only telling stories about one family vying for the Iron Throne if you're also telling all of these other stories too, and maybe more than one of these things happen at once. My other thought about the anthology was just Aegon's conquest. I think so a lot of people...

I think picked dance is like the show they would want to see next. Right. That was a pretty popular pick among fans. George is number one that he wants to. Yeah. George is number one, which has been cool to hear him talk about a little bit more in, in, in recent, in recent days, I really wanted Robert's rebellion or a guns conquest and dance is like thrilling to me too. So I raised that just to say, starting 200 years before the events of a game of Thrones, um,

And then going 100 years in either direction and then maybe doing the other one feels like we're a little all over the map. Why not just start with Aegon's Conquest if you want to do them all? But I guess they thought this was going to be the one that was going to bring people back. And so that's fine. What do I know? I mean, you know plenty, but I think...

Robert's Rebellion is so... Robert's Rebellion, I understand that. Not that, but if you want to tell Aegon's Conquest eventually and Blackfyre Rebellion's eventually, either start closest to where we were and then keep going back in reverse order for prequels or start with Aegon's Conquest and then inch forward. I mean, that said, one day we'll be back at the Doom of Old Valyria for sure, right? So we're going to get it all eventually if people watch. And I can't wait.

I can't wait. I want it all. I'm greedy, as you know. Any other big picture thoughts, Joe, on...

the tone of the trailer, the hype, the nature of the press tour so far that you want to hit before we dive into some of our takeaways? I don't think so. We're going to get into more specific timeline stuff in a second. Yes. So I think, you know, no, I'm just I'm excited. I'm so excited to do this with you, Mallory. You and I have been talking about that, about how we've been doing this separately for years and now we get to do it together. So I'm so hyped. I can't believe I get to talk about

Game of Thrones with you. Can't believe I get to talk about House of the Dragon with you. Can't believe I get to talk about Fireblood with you. Can't believe I get to talk about all these dragons with you. What a time. I'm thrilled! All right, here's what we're going to do today. We're going to do a classic House of our Smuggle. We're going to have some buckets and then we're going to, you know, have a chat within each bucket. And who knows how many sub buckets there will be or how many drops of content inside of each bucket. We're going to do our seven highlights.

From the trailer, the seven things that we want to talk about the most after watching this joyous, near three-minute-long trailer. Will our pod be three minutes long? No, it won't. No, it won't, folks! Already isn't. You know, Joe. Yeah. Egon.

Called himself Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, even though Dorne wasn't in the fold at the time. And they never really honor the true math over in Westeros. And so we won't either. We're going to say seven, but who knows? Who knows? Why don't you kick it off for us? Where do you want to start? We're going to dedicate this section to our dear friend and colleague, Chris Ryan, who watched the trailer, then texted us excitedly about one specific thing, which is...

This is needle drops and wig watches. Wig watches is for me. Needle drop is for Chris Ryan. Ramin Djawadi, the composer of Game of Thrones, is back for House of the Dragon. And good thing because it wouldn't be Thrones without him. But a lot of people noticed something. What's interesting is like a lot of people noticed it, but not everyone noticed it. And that's because they did something really interesting with the needle drop on this trailer. It's not quite a needle drop.

it's not quite putting a contemporary pop song over this. This is more what Ramin Djawadi does over on Westworld, where he'll take a known pop or rock song, and then he'll reimagine it in the tone of like a player piano over on Westworld. So in this case, he took Venus and Furs by the Velvet Underground and Westeros-sized it over the trailer here. Um,

And Venus in Verse is a fantastic song. And I don't know whose choice it was. They haven't given any interviews about this. I don't know if like oftentimes Romaine is just like told which pop song to reimagine by the folks at Westworld. So I don't want to say like this is Romaine's choice. Yeah.

And he's like, and he's also said time and again, I don't usually pay attention to the lyrics of those songs that I re-imagined over on Westworld. So I don't know if anyone's paying attention to the lyrics, but I am. And this is what I will have to say about Venus and Furs. This is not like a song that is like S&M subtext. It's...

That's the text. Medus Inferno is based on a seminal work of S&M. And there's lyrics about whips and leather boots and all this sort of stuff. But the main thing that I think translates over here is this idea of the narrator in this song...

Being bored and weary and needing some violence and excitement to get him going. And we enter Westeros here in a time of peace. And there is this idea of almost like war has to erupt.

It's like it's been simmering under a lid too long and we have to have an explosion of violence. And so that was sort of my best takeaway on like why that particular song. Also, it just sounds incredible. So, yeah, I mean, Javadi. It's an incredible mood.

I mean, the whole trailer was a mood in the best possible way, but the musical accompaniment, the scoring was really sublime. I just like ported me back. So, so when I was, when I was reading George, uh, over the last couple of days, I was just playing that song on a loop and it loops very well. I recommend it as a moon satyr moon satyr Mallory. Do you have like, do you have a favorite like Thrones trailer that used a pop song in the past?

I love trailers like love in some ways. They're one of my favorite art forms and I often prefer them to the eventual fully realized product. And I think that Thrones has always put out excellent, excellent trailers.

One of the reasons that I love Thrones trailers typically is because, you know, I like to go frame by frame and parse every detail and try to figure out what's coming, right? Pick up clues from the books, et cetera. So perhaps surprisingly, my all-time favorite Game of Thrones trailer had barely any footage in it and was actually more of a, like, set piece than clues of what was to come. Yeah, it was the...

season seven teaser trailer, Long Walk, which was set to the song Sit Down. And it's the trailer where Jon and Dany and Cersei are just walking, walking through their respective domains. And then they all sit down on their thrones. And then you get that cold wind rising at the end and the glimpse of the Night King's eye. And I don't,

I was trying to think, thinking back on this, like if I've ever been more excited for anything in my life, seriously, than I was for season seven of Game of Thrones when I watched that trailer for the first time. It's like, was I more excited for maybe like lining up at midnight for Deathly Hallows or something like that? Like it was, it's that, that high up there as a memory. I was just like, what an amazing time to be a fan of a thing that I love. You know, then there were some tough moments after that, but...

watching that trailer. I was re-watching that trailer because you noted it as your favorite and I was so into it. I was like, this is so good. And then at the very end when we get the pullback to the eye, I was like, oh, this is where they're setting expectations that the Night King is going to be the most important thing. There's that cool moment where Cersei lets out her breath and it's frosty. That's so cool. And then you pull out to the Night King as if to imply that

here's the biggest picture of all. And I'm like, hmm? Yeah. I know. I know. It's a great trailer. It's a great trailer up until the last three seconds. So good. I love the lyrical accompaniment, though, like watching Jon and his just pouty expression, walking with all of his burdens and his worries as we hear those who feel the breath of sadness. Ah, it's just great. Sublime. Remember the moments before season seven of Game of Thrones?

Great. What about you? What's your fave? For me, it's a very footage heavy. In fact, it's like, it's a hilarious trailer to watch now because they would never put out a trailer like this because it shows way too much. And it was sort of, you know, this is a season two trailer and it's set to Seven Devils by Florence and Machine. And it's absolutely my favorite. And there's just, there's so many choice trailers

juicy perfect quotes from season two i think is one of like the for for the dialogue one of my favorites um in terms of like aria's tywin's cupbearer and all the tyrian palace intrigue stuff you know what i mean and cersei's legacy scene with aria still an all-timer yeah exactly so like all the like dialogue wise season two when you're gone

Season two is like my top, right? And so for that, do you have a preferred dialogue season over season two? I'll get back to you after I finish my rewatch. I would have to think about it. Season two is... Season two is not my favorite season, but I think Tyrion...

It's certainly the best Tyrion season. It's the best Tyrion season. And since Tyrion says the best things, then it's sort of like the best dialogue season. There's a lot of good Varys stuff in that trailer too. So yeah, I'm a big fan of that. Great Varys season. All right. Should we talk about wigs though? Speaking of Varys. I mean, I just got to say. Okay.

A cornucopia. What a time for wig watch with Joanna Robinson. I mean, this is a bounty. A bounty! And it will be every week throughout this show. Yeah. By the way, wig watch is just for fun. Like, we're not... I don't know. In this trailer, it might help you with some of the time frame stuff. Tracking the haircuts over time. I think I have... I think I figured out a timeline for...

I'm just going to, I'm going to do a Damon Targaryen wig watch and it's this. We've got the long Legolas wig is what I'm going to call it, right? The very long. Very Legolas wig. That's the earliest I think we see Damon.

And then something happens. Short hair. And he cuts off his hair to spike and buffy length. We're using platinum blondes only as references here, right? So spike and buffy platinum, short crop length. And then the easy breezy shoulder length, that is the furthest along in the timeline. So long leg loss hair, cuts it off for some reason. Maybe something sad happens. Sad things happen and we cut our hair. Who knows? And then we grow it back out. Shoulder length.

That's the Daemon Targaryen arc. Do you have a favorite wig that you saw in this trailer? No. No. I just don't have the passion for wig watch that you have, but I have the passion for listening to you do wig watch. The Midnight Boys have some thoughts.

about House Valarian, which they will share. And by the way, for the record, Valarian is what they're calling this house, and we'll talk about those characters in a second. But Mallory and I are going to have an adjustment period because that's not how we've been pronouncing it. I've said Valarian for my entire life as a Thrones fan. We're going to try to match the show saying Valarian. That's what we're going to try to do. I'll do my best. The Midnight Boys have some thoughts and feelings on that. I will say...

I think Rhaenys' wig is really interesting. Queen Rhaenys...

She's got like the bump it bump and also like some braids in front that go up to it. And then the long straight classic Targaryen fall. I don't know. I think it's a fun combination of Valarian and Targaryen on her head. Best has been talking about the wigs, right? Like this is really something that, yeah, that Eve is embraced. Eve would do a whole wig watch with me. I'm pretty sure. So, yeah. Yeah.

Tune back in in the future. The house is already here. Oh my God. Can't wait. Why the heck not? Why not? This episode is brought to you by Peloton. You know, for me, fitness has always been about finding that groove, whether it's hitting the pavement outside, which I've done a lot of, or dialing up a sweat session indoors.

Whatever it is, summer just amplifies that drive. It's the prime time season to level up your fitness routine. Peloton gets that. They've got programs that cater to every runner out there. Seriously, 457,000 members have worked out with their running programs. And especially in the summer, if it's super hot, you don't want to work out outside, stay indoors, hit the Peloton. So whether you're training for a marathon or just looking to improve your pace, they've got you covered with everything on the Peloton Tread, Tread Plus, or

or the Peloton app. It's like having your own personal coach with you or right at home in your living room. Call yourself a runner with Peloton at onepeloton.com slash running. So let's talk about some of the main players. And this will be, again, kind of a snapshot, a table setter for some of the primary participants in this season of television who were featured heavily in this trailer and have been featured heavily in the trailers to date. So,

If you listen to this and you're thinking, boy, a lot of these characters have incredibly similar names, you're not wrong. And also some of them have the same names as characters you already know from Game of Thrones because such is the Targaryen's Walt. Welcome to Team Targaryen where we are incestuous and not very creative with our names.

I will say, to their credit, at least they moved away eventually from anus. They got away from that eventually-ish. As we all do. As we all do. Great stuff. We're going to talk about some time frame clarity that has come from this trailer, from the recent articles, etc. We'll be hitting that in a bit, and that will be germane in terms of some of these characters, so stay tuned. Okay, let's start with the King...

For now. King Viserys I Targaryen played by Paddy Considine. My favorite. I love him. Just seems like he's having a blast. Paddy. Not Viserys. Viserys seems troubled. Viserys...

was chosen at the great council of 101 AC, which we'll talk about a bit more later when we get to the timeframe that the show is going to cover. He was chosen to succeed, to secede Jaharis, his grandfather ruled from 103 AC on one of my favorite Viserys facts. Joe is that he rode Balerion, the black dread. That was the name of my, my last car that I had. I was called Balerion, the black dread. Yeah. Incredible.

But you, unlike Viserys, took another rider after Balerion left you, left this mortal coil. I think it's so interesting that Viserys is not a dragon rider anymore when we meet him here. And he's got the quote in the trailer. He says there, presuming he's talking about dragons because the shot is of a dragon egg, there a power man should never have trifled with. That's interesting. Well, you know.

Heading into a show about the dance of the dragons, the Targaryen civil war where a Targaryen fights Targaryen and dragon fights dragon. He might've been onto something. It's possible that he was onto something. Um, another thing that we hear from him in the trailer is at the 52 second mark, I will not be made to choose between my brother and

and my daughter his daughter is reneera targaryen one of the main characters in the show the the crucial casting and character in the show this has been something that's a potch and condal have been talking about that this is like the most important role in the show which has been really really cool and interesting to read brother damon targaryen the rogue prince

A character I'm very excited to spend some time with. And the general vibe for Viserys is that, I'll just read a quote from Paddy himself in the EW article. The mantra we had for him was that he's a good man, bad king. Summation, he says, because he just wants to please people and keep the peace. But also, Viserys has an ego.

What are your table setting thoughts on Viserys I? I like similarly from that article, I think it was that George likened him to King Lear. I thought that was really interesting. I'd never thought about that framing for Viserys. But to go back to that line we open with about, you know, the dragons roaring as one, like this is what he wants. He wants to make a choice that every single Targaryen or every single one of his subjects will agree with and approve of.

And you can't. That's impossible in a question of succession, right? And so we'll see what happens, man. But his desire to please everyone, yeah, makes you a weak ruler because sometimes you just need to make the hard choice and stick by it. And this is not something that this man wants to do. And I think the idea of that Viserys is ruling at the height of

Targaryen power. These are the time of the most dragons and the most Targaryens and the most everything. You know, this is the height that they reached and every empire has to rise and then fall, right? That's the cycle of history. One of the things that I think is just a really rich text with Viserys is

is that he, as the fifth Targaryen king, the fifth Targaryen ruler following Aegon, Aenys, Maegor, Jaehaerys, should know that better than anyone because of the way that he came to be on the throne, chosen at the Great Council. A previous crisis, which we will see in this show, in the early moments of the show, presumably. Gotta heed the lessons of the past, my guy.

It would be nice. It would be nice. It would be nice if the kings could learn from the kings that came before them. But that is usually not the case. Certainly wasn't with Robert Baratheon, right? Like, did Bob learn anything? Bobby B. Did Joss learn anything? No. Certainly not. Certainly not.

What about the would-be rulers? What about the would-be kings and queens, the would-be heirs, the players who were vying to be next in line, the Kendals, the Romans, the Shivs? You had a very funny succession tweet. Oh, should we talk about Damon for a minute?

Played by Matt Smith. In the whole world. Could you be more excited to see Matt Smith as Damon Targaryen in this show? I could not be more excited. I'm thrilled. Martin had a great quote in these... I think it was THR about...

the kinds of characters we will see in this show. And he said, there's no Aria character. Everyone's going to love. They're all flawed. They're all human. They do good things. They do bad things. They're driven by lesser power, jealousy, old wounds, just like human beings. Just like I wrote them. Love that for George. Um, and flex at the end there from George and Franklin. Yeah. Um, and what I love about the intro of Prince Damon and the rogue Prince, like the very first lines, um,

says, over the centuries, House Targaryen has produced both great men and monsters. Prince Daemon was both. In his day, there was not a man so admired, so beloved, and so reviled in all of Westeros. And I've talked to someone who had seen the, I haven't seen any episodes.

But I was talking to them about, I was like, do you think there's like a Tyrion in this show? And this person was saying like, I feel like Daemon has to be Tyrion and Jaime and like a bunch of characters sort of smooshed all together. But like a Tyrion, Jaime Lannister cocktail, give it to me immediately. Yeah.

immediately. Sign me up. Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, Damon, the Rogue Prince, is like such a highly specific character and rendering, but also very emblematic of the type of figure that we're going to become accustomed to spending time with inside of this slice of the world. There's going to be a lot of

vacillating for us as viewers with our own allegiances, who we're rooting for and who we're siding with, who we're repelled by at a given moment in time, and also a lot of oscillating with the characters and the relationships and alliances and rivalries that they have with each other. Again, this story is about a civil war inside of the Targaryen family. So there's a lot of maneuvering and a lot of disappointing people who don't want you to disappoint them

Daemon is one of the signature fighters in the realm, right? He's like a fabled warrior. You get these great looks at his armor with the dragon wing helmet. Ridiculous. Real hype beast energy from Daemon Targaryen. He wields Dark Sister, one of the Valyrian steel blades that we're going to see in this show and one of two ancestral Valyrian steel swords in House Targaryen along with Blackfyre, of course. And he's also

It's a dragon rider. You're going to do a dragon. You're going to lead us through a dragon segment soon. So we'll save that. But we get some great shots of him and his dragon Caraxes in this trailer. And our guy's a bit of a player, you know, in more than one way. Playing the game and playing the field, Joe. So he's in so many different aspects of this story. One of the things that we see a lot of in this trailer is...

Damon with the city watch with the gold cloaks during, during the few minutes that we get to glimpse here, we see this at the 49 second mark, the one 55 mark, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And this is,

The power that he had at his disposal inside of the dynamic and interplay when everybody is trying to make their move is like a fascinating wrinkle in terms of what he has at his disposal and how that might, you know, one of the great shots that we get is Damon and Otto Hightower, Viserys's Hand of the King, Alison Hightower's father, standing across each other, facing off on the bridge at Dragonstone, right? Guess who's not a fan of Damon Targaryen?

Auto high tower. Right? So it was just like delicious to get these little glimpses of all of these different dynamics. And as you noted already, so many different hairstyles across this vast swath of time, these decades that this show is going to cover. A style king. Like not only does he have giant massive wings on his tourney helm that he wears, just like a ridiculous helm that he wears into this tourney that we see in the trailer. But he's,

But the City Watch got their gold cloaks from Daemon. Like, he branded them and gave them gold cloaks. Brought the drip to King's Landing. So, and I think it's important that we see all these shots of him drip lording around the city because Daemon isn't exactly like...

Princess Diana, the people's princess, but he is like a man of the people in a way that a lot of the other royals aren't. Like he likes to hang out in the streets, in the brothels and all this sort of stuff like that. And that's an important part. That's what the kids are calling it these days. He likes to hang out. That's an important part of his character. And if you have like some, any ACAB feelings, you might feel them about the gold cloaks under Damon Targaryen. So there we go. Let's chat next on the would-be ruler front.

about Rhaenyra. Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, the realm's delight. Delight. That's a lot of pressure, man. The most important role in the show in many ways. It's a quote from Ryan Condal to Entertainment Weekly. How do you think your life would have gone if you had grown up being called the realm's delight? Mallory Rubin, Baltimore's delight. I'm into it. Let's give it a go. That's a lot of pressure, man. A lot of pressure.

I think what's been so interesting, so there's like so much room because as we say, like the source material for this show is a history that's really fun to read, but still pretty bare bones as compared to the depth of the novels that George R.R. Martin has written. And so there's a lot of room to deepen our understanding of these various characters. And I think listening to Emma Darcy, who's a non-binary actor, talk about

Their concept of Rhaenyra and Rhaenyra's relationship to gender has been fascinating to me. It's fascinating to me that Darcy auditioned with Arya dialogue. I never would have really drawn a line between Arya and Rhaenyra. But I think it's so interesting in terms of... We get a lot of lines in this trailer and in other trailers about like,

and whether or not the realm will ever accept them as a ruler, right? And this gives us flashes of Cersei, you know, saying, I should wear the armor and you the gown. Like, Cersei's frustration of, I would have been the best ruler ever if I... And then she eventually gets sent on the throne, and that didn't go great, Cersei. But I think that's such an interesting dimension that they want to explore with Rhaenyra in all of this. Yeah, absolutely. And we get...

One line in the trailer, it's at the 133 mark. When I'm queen, I will create a new order that, you know, invokes like palpable Daenerys wheel breaking energy there and break it. Here, Emilia Clarke. Yeah. We should say, too, that Rhaenyra and Alicent are.

Rhaenyra, Alicent, Daemon, and Viserys are going to be like the four most central players in the early run of this show. The same actor is playing Viserys and Daemon across the timeline. But Rhaenyra and Alicent, two actors...

are playing each character. So we have a young Rhaenyra and a young Alicent. That's part of the extent to which they were featured in this trailer. Um,

in addition to some of the things that we've heard in recent interviews has like helped again to kind of clarify the timeline and how much of the early run of season one will be spent in the lead up to the dance and then how much time we'll be spending in the dance itself. But yeah, you know, at 125 we hear, do you think the realm will ever accept me as your queen? Later we hear, I am to inherit the throne. She will block my way. She being Alicent. There is the daemon,

as Viserys Ayr through line of much of the trailer. And there is the very overt and clear establishment of the Rhaenyra-Alycent opposition. And both of those things were very central in this trailer. A quote that Condal gave to Entertainment Weekly that I really loved where he says...

They are central female characters who were at once credited and also blamed with this particular war. But because the history is written by men, we were really interested in the dynamic forces that a certain medieval level of innate chauvinism puts on the two women. So book readers will have their ideas about Allison and Rhaenyra, and I think this show is going to challenge a lot of those ideas. But just as Rhaenyra...

Darcy, Emma Darcy read Aria dialogue for the Rhaenyra audition. I thought it was so interesting that, um, Olivia Cooke is playing Alison auditioned with Cersei lines. I think of Alison as sort of like Cersei by way of Marjorie, but I, you know, like sort of if you, if you put that particular cocktail together, but I think that, um,

So like Arya versus a Cersei, Arya versus a Margaery. Like that's, that's fun. That's fun. I love it. Let's talk about Alicent Hightower for a moment. The daughter of Otto Hightower, who was hand to Viserys. And this is one of the sections where I'm going to just issue an in-context additional, out of an abundance of caution, spoiler warning and say, fast forward 30 seconds. If you don't want to hear this, though, I think this was very clearly established in the trailer. You've been warned. Okay.

Viserys' new wife. That is the big change for Alicent going from being in the world of the show. This is clearly going to be like a central dynamic. Rhaenyra's childhood friend we see at the 204 mark and they're praying together sitting at this table and then this shot later where they are apart, distanced.

from each other, like, you know, Thor and Jane inching apart on their couch. Yeah, where was Mjolnir in all of that? Exactly. Our hearts were never one, we hear Alison say in that shot. And to the marriage point...

To be honest, I think that's a fake out quote. I don't know that she's talking about. I think that a lot of what we're seeing back to back or it's an implied reply to one character or there's an image of a certain character overlaying the quote from another character. Yeah. How much of that actually ends up aligning? I would guess it's like 40 percent. That's how it is. And 60 percent fake out or just dramatically compelling trailer editing, which I support and stand by. Yeah.

Always in for a trailer fakeout. One of the things I was interested in, though, in those shots of Alicent and Viserys accompanying those shots at the 1-11-ish mark, it's Rhaenyra, according to, if you turn on the subtitles, if you turn on the closed captioning, it's Rhaenyra who says, you are the king. Your duty is to take a new wife. Fascinating. Wow. That that would be coming from Rhaenyra. Yeah, and in the source material,

You know, there's there's lines about Rhaenyra pouring wine for Alison at the what, you know, like initially supportive of this. It's weird for your best friend to marry your dad. Like, let's be clear. And this is something that they've said a lot in the press that they are making Rhaenyra and Alison sort of best friends when they're younger. When your pal becomes your stepmom, it's a lot to process. But if that's one thing. Yeah.

But in the trailer, it's clear that Viserys names Rhaenyra his successor. That's what he says, right? Yep. If there's a threat to that, that's a horse of a different color. A threat.

A threat to your claim to the throne. Yeah, and again, I think we get that overtly in the trailer. I am to inherit the Iron Throne. She will block my way. And we cut from Rainier saying that to Alison Eidauer's face. So I think they are establishing what this, what one of the central dynamics of this story will be. One thing for your BFF to marry your dad. Another thing for her to threaten your job security. These are two different levels of stakes we're talking about here. What did you make of...

The sequence around the 210 mark of the trailer where we hear Renise saying to Alicent, have you ever imagined yourself?

on the Iron Throne. I'm into this. I love this. Can I talk about Rhaenys first? Please, yeah, let's do it. You want to just take us into this next category, this next cluster of characters here? Okay, so we're calling these the power players on the margins pulling the strings. This is not an exhaustive list because in Westeros there's always... Because that's everyone. Not as many as everyone. Yeah.

the big three here, I would say maybe, uh, our auto high tower. Mallory's mentioned him a bunch. That's Alison's dad played by Welsh icon. Racy funds, my, my fellow countrymen. Um, and then just very quickly say that him, him saying in this trailer, I consider the matter urgent. Just took me back to be in on the battlements with Joffrey during the, during black water. Did you see that? She had urgent business.

Wow. Your job impression truly shakes me to my core. I love it. Vranus Velaryon. I did it. I nailed it. I crushed it. Is known as the queen who never was. And she was in contention to take the Iron Throne from

When Viserys got the throne instead. So she was in contention. Viserys got the throne instead. She's not suffering too badly. She's married to Lord Corlys Velaryon. God, I am going to get it. I am going to get it. Lord Corlys Velaryon, known as the Sea Snake. The Sea Snake. Incredible. Incredible moniker. Richest man in Westeros. And Steve Toussaint, who plays Corlys,

audition with Thailand, Taiwan dialogue. This was a delight to see all courtesy of Nick Romano at AW. I love I'm, I'm obsessed with the fact that he asked everyone whose dialogue did you audition with? So Corliss giving us Taiwan energy and,

The thing about Rhaenys, who is a really interesting character in the source material, I feel like they're expanding and complicating her role here. That line that you mentioned of her whispering to Alicent is giving me, like, Olenna, Queen of Thorns. Like, that's kind of what I feel like I'm getting off of her. And just one fun fact from the source material. Rhaenys Targaryen.

wrote a dragon to her wedding. Um, I just, I just love her. I think she's incredible. I'm, I'm so excited. Like this is, this is the character I feel like I'm going to love the most. Oh, I like that. So that's, that's a good prediction for, for personal affection. I like that. Yeah. Um, I'm really into that Olenna comp that is quite compelling and seeing and hearing, um,

All of the different glimpses that we've gotten so far, it's not just the political maneuvering and the deeply ingrained bitterness and resentment from being passed over before, which is something that House Valerian... I know that's not how you just told me to pronounce it. Valerian? We're trying. Doing my best. Valerian. And...

and Rhaenys feel, because that also, that didn't just impact her, right? That impacted Laenor, her son. The way that Rhaenys is the voice, one of the voices of Rhaenys

the affront of the patriarchy inside of this story, right? A woman would not inherit the Iron Throne because that is the order of things. That's what we hear in this trailer, 127-ish. And that's spliced in an interesting way. Like, this is one of the things you were mentioning earlier

of a piece of what you were mentioning a couple minutes ago about the kind of fake out of who's talking to whom because it seems like that's in reply to Rhaenyra, though if you look at the light and the outfits, it's the prompt that triggered that in the trailer is a different scene, it appears, with Chris and Cole. But then...

It comes back to her saying that or appearing to be engaging with Rhaenyra directly in a different scene still about this idea. So this is going to be a recurring through line of this conflict. And the fact that she was passed over, that Viserys earned the throne in the Great Council at Harrenhal,

It's because nobody wanted a woman on the Iron Throne. That's why she was passed over, right? And that wasn't even the first time that she was passed over. They had a great counsel for a reason, right? And so she knows as well as anyone in the story what it means to have the claim, to be in line, and to be a person who would do the job well and never get the chance, not have the people in your life support you for the thing that you know is yours. And so I'm excited about that dynamic moment

between them and that almost like a mentorship role. But then inside of a story like this, nothing's going to be pure, right? So when does mentorship become warped for somebody's own aims and own ends? Yeah, true. Intriguing. I mean, the other thing that's really interesting about Rhaenys is that she, because Viserys

Viserys's dragon died, R.I.P. Valyrian, and doesn't dragon ride anymore. She's the most experienced dragon rider in the show. Right, right. Baller babe. Love her. Anything else on the Corlys or Otto front? Yeah, we should maybe say that the Valyrian family here has been, you know,

Corliss and then their children are cast with non-white actors. And this was something, you know, that, that Condal and Sapochnik, you know, have said like basically enough fantasies with all white people, like, let's not do that. And Condal has said, whether or not it's true, he has the cover of George R.R. Martin saying like, I always kind of thought it might be that way. And so, you know, if people are pissed about it, they could take it up with

with the man himself, George R.R. Martin, like, you know, this is an idea he had. But the Velaryons have been in Westeros longer than the Targaryens. They were here first, came over first. And, yeah. So that will, you know, when we're talking about an added layer that's interesting is if we're talking about...

natural kids versus bastard kids, this adds an extra layer to all of that, which should be interesting. So let's chat about some of the warriors, some of the other figures who we glimpse in this trailer and glimpse in a new way. We got some real time with people we had not spent meaningful time with in these trailers previously. Let's talk about your guy, Eamon One-Eye. You're a big Eamon One-Eye head. How am I?

how many guys am I allowed to have? I want them all. But yeah, Aime and One Eye, I mean, you have to admit. So like, in case you don't know who we're talking about, it's the guy with the eye patch in the trailer. It's all right there in the name. We also do see him as Aime and Two Eyes in this trailer though. Yes. In his younger days. Um,

Maybe skip ahead if you don't want to know who Aemond is, the character you saw in this trailer. But this is Viserys and Alyson's second son. And he is... I mean, we just see him fighting in extraordinarily exciting ways. And when he's a kid, clambering up the leg of a dragon, which we will get to in a second. And...

he just cuts such a figure. Ewan Mitchell is such an interesting face and like between the cheekbones and the hood and the eye patch is just sort of like, who's that guy is, is the vibe he gives off in this, in this trailer. I was really, really, really hyped to see multiple, multiple glimpses of, of Eamon in this trailer. He's, he's a piece of work. Kristen Cole, one of the characters in this show without silver hair. Yeah.

A knife of House Cold. A rare brunette. Yeah. A rare brunette. We get to see, I mean, he is in this trailer a lot and he will be a key player in the story. We get to see some fun Morningstar action. He's like known for the Morningstar melees and besting a couple key players in the tourney field. And we get to see him going head to head with Damon and

in the melee at Maidenpool in this trailer, which was like a super fun to see. That's at the 22 second mark. That was just a delight. But he is peppered throughout. He is, he's got a lot of, his TRT, his total runtime in the trailer is high. Any, I'm really like reluctant to say anything else, but is there anything else that you want to say about Kristen Cole? I'm curious how, there's a lot of different ways they could go with Kristen Cole. Fabian Frankel is, I believe,

Part French? I don't know. They could go full Dornish with him if they want. He's from the Dornish marches, which is not actually Dorn. But they could go full Dornish with him if they want to. He's not really an Ober Martell type figure, but they could give him some of that panache if they wanted to.

But I, yeah, I'm, I'm really excited. And there's a lot of, a lot of people eyeballing Kristen Cole in this trailer. So, you know, handsome guy, handsome guy, smashing the melee, smashing shields. We get to see him in some Kings guard. Yep. Incredible. We get to see him in some Kings guard armor. We get a lot of different fits and a lot of different looks and they're all wonderful. They're all wonderful. Harold Westerling.

Shout out to Outlander and Graham McTavish. McTavish? McTavish. McTavish. Lord Commander of Viserys's Kingsguard. Are you getting any whiffs of Ser Barristan Selmy off of him? That's sort of what I'm... That's what I'm quaffing. Interesting. I'm trying to think if I could imagine anyone saying about Harold Westerling, he's like a painter, or...

who only used red. Not sure it's clicking for me, but maybe. We'll see. We do get a couple interesting shots. We see him in that. So there's this courtyard sequence. We'll talk about this a little bit more later when we talk about some of the sigils where Rhaenyra and Westerling are looking down among the assembled. Cole is there. A lot of other sigils that we can spot. And he's right there, sworn shield. We also get this quite compelling little moment around the 107 mark.

stopping Damon's advance with his blade. Fuck yeah. Something I love about that, like, so that scene where he's standing up on the sort of dais with Rhaenyra, um, and it looks like Kristen Cole is being added to the Kingsguard. That's what it looks like is happening in that scene. Something I'm obsessed with is like between the two of them is this object, um,

that has seven slots in it with seven little figurines with that, like has the sigil of the various houses of people that are sitting there. And you can see like sort of Kristen Cole sigil and they're going to like slot them into the seven spot. So seven spots in the Kings guard and something that like I'm aware of, but I don't know that they've ever really underlined in the

Game of Thrones TV series is like what a coup it is for a house to have someone represented in the Kingsguard. What a like political coup it is. So when you see these assemblage of houses that

like in your house Tarly it's like yeah we're house Tarly and we got someone on the Kingsguard love to see the striding huntsman always love to see the striding huntsman yeah that's a good point unless you're Tywin Lannister and you are absolutely furious and irate that your heir has it's a little different a little different decided to join the Kingsguard to

Fuck a sister instead of continuing your line. It's the second part. That's really the issue, right? It's the sister fucking. That's the main. Hey, get ready for some more incest, folks. We're back in Westeros and the incest is back to Horwin Strong.

Yeah. Break bones. Irrefutably one of the most iconic sober kits in Thrones lore. Strong guy in case you can't tell from the nickname break bones.

His dad, Lionel Strong, is Lord of Harrenhal, and he has a couple lines. Again, it was really helpful to turn on the closed captioning of the trailer and get to see the character names. Thank you. Thank you so much. And Lionel had some lines in the trailer, which was really interesting. Don't know how much we want to say here, but are there any Harwin Strong thoughts that you do want to share with everyone?

Not yet. Yeah. Not yet. We'll get there. In terms of, like, captioning characters on the trailer, though, Reggio Haratis is another name that was captioned on the trailer, and that's not a name from the book. That's new. That's a show. That's a whole-ass show-invented character with a trailer line. I wonder if it will be a composite character or just totally new. I'm curious to see. I think a lot of people expect that...

because the last name Harad is that this is like someone from Pentos and there are plenty of opportunities for someone from Pentos to have things to say to one Daemon Targaryen. So yeah. Indeed. Okay. So that's a snapshot of the players on the board. Again, you know what? Come back to House of R for more conversations around all of those figures and more. Jo, take us to our next bucket here. I'm so excited for this one. Yeah, this is a great one. Dragon dreams. Okay. I had a dream.

that Viserys says in this trailer. And this isn't the first time we've heard dreams mentioned in a teaser, and that's sort of what made me stand up and pay attention. Because dragon dreams are interesting. We'll talk about them in a second. But the fact that they've hit the concept of dreams a couple times in these teasers in trailers is very interesting to me because in a previous teaser, we got the line, dreams didn't make the Targaryen kings, dragons did, right? That was the end of the first teaser. I got to chill. Yeah.

So dragon dreams are so, you know, you might be a little more familiar with like wolf dreams if you're, you know, hanging out with the Time for Wolves in A Song of Ice and Fire with House Stark. My jam, as you know, yeah. But dragon dreams are similar, a little bit more, I think of them as a little bit more prophetic and a little bit more symbolic. I love a prophecy. I love...

The way that George R.R. Martin uses objects and symbolism and prophecies are almost like little riddles for you to try to figure out and apply to things. They're just laid in with clues. Yeah. There's one from Fire and Blood, a dragon dream prophecy that's like, when the hammer shall fall upon the dragon, a new king shall arise and none shall stand before him. And we presume that that is about

Robert Baratheon and everything that happened after if we're talking about hammers falling on dragons. So there aren't a lot of dragon dreams in Fire and Blood, the source material, but there aren't any. And that's because it's not a subjective narrative the way that A Song of Ice and Fire is. It's, as we said, sort of

told by various people. It's not, we're not inside anyone's head. So we're not dreaming with anyone at all. And so the fact that they are reintroducing this and this concept into the show, um, I think is really exciting. The dream that Viserys mentions in this trailer. Yeah.

because dragon dreams don't necessarily come true is the thing about dragon dreams. And, and the thing about prophecy and premonition inside of a fantasy story, what does a character do when they are attempting to avoid a certain fate? They always, always,

the self-fulfilling prophecy. So he says the dream, it was clearer than a memory. And I heard the sound of thundering hooves, splintering shields and ringing swords. And I placed my air upon the iron throne and all the dragons roared as one. And that's the opening note for the trailer. That's the first.

first thing we hear and I'm just telling you that all the dragons won't roar as one that's not gonna happen unless you want to interpret it a different way we'll talk about it but one thing from A Song of Nice and Fire that I loved is this quote from Eamon Targaryen talking to good old Sam Tarly I love this I love this one and

And he said,

You know, and Daenerys, of course, had her dragon dreams mostly about her brother. So I just think that dragon dreams and prophecies are really important. And one other thing that I'm just going to smuggle into this bucket is we get a shot of Viserys' hand on the Iron Throne and he's cut himself on the throne. This happens in the book. It's a whole thing. We'll...

discuss what happens after. We'll discuss that later. But I love this idea in the book that happened several times, this idea that the Iron Throne is almost a living thing passing judgment on a ruler. Let's just say it's a bad thing if you cut yourself on the Iron Throne. There's this one line, we're referring to a different monarch, but there's one line where

a leader cuts themselves on the throne and the wise men whisper, like, it's as if the Iron Throne had spurned them. You know, that the Iron Throne itself is a living thing making decisions about the rulers. So I love the shot of Viserys' bleeding finger. It's a harbinger. Prophecies and portents and dragon dreams. I love it. And the other thing, too, like, with the Targaryens in particular, you know, they are in...

Westeros in the first place because of Denise the Dreamer's Doom of Valeria prophecy, because of the dream that led the Targaryens to flee early, ahead of the doom, ahead of the fall of that civilization and so many other families. That's why they went to Dragonstone and landed there in the first place before the events that would become Aegon's conquest. So the people in this bloodline

have reason to put stock in these dreams. It's a part of their history and a part of their story. I think also, too, it's that the thing about dreams and prophecies and putting too much stock in them ties into, of course, the Targaryen toss of the coin. One side is madness. One side is greatness. And if you spend too much time in dreaming, like, is that just madness? So a fascinating question. This is going to be a great show. Yeah.

I'm so excited to do it. And it's going to be a show that covers quite a few years. And that is one of the things that we were speculating on in our very first chat, Joe, was what timeline were we going to cover here? This is our this is our next item here. The time jumps. A lot has become clear in recent days inside of this trailer, the interviews, the articles, etc. So you mentioned earlier this age of peace.

And what felt inevitable in the wake of it. The most relevant stretch of fire and blood for this story and this show starts with the chapter Heirs of the Dragon, A Question of Succession. And this is the first line. Quote,

The seeds of war are oft planted during times of peace. So has it been in Westeros, the bloody struggle for the Iron Throne, known as the Dance of the Dragons, fought from 129 to 131 AC, had its roots half a century earlier, during the longest and most peaceful reign that any of the Conqueror's descendants ever enjoyed, that of Jaehaerys I. This is where...

We're beginning this show. One of the really exciting things to see in the EW photos is the old King Harris. And we're getting the great council of Harrenhal 101 AC. We've already talked about that in, in, in a few different places today across this episode, but I don't know if that will be literally the first thing we see. It's, it seems possible. Well,

So something we should say that became clear, and I think of the THR article, and EW touched on this too, they're not doing flashbacks. They're going linear. Linear, yes. So it has to start with Jaehaerys. Like, it has to start there. Can we say who's playing Jaehaerys Targaryen? I thought this was really fun. So it's Michael Carter, a.k.a. Bib Fortuna from Star Wars, is playing King Jaehaerys Targaryen. What a year. Yeah.

For Bib Fortuna, you know? Great stuff for Bib. Great stuff for Harrenhal. Back in the mix. Love that already half-burnt Harrenhal. Yeah. It makes me miss our time with Arya and Tywin, like you were saying earlier. Just chatting about dragons and hubris and legends of lore. And a man in a cage, you know? Indeed. So...

Broadly, this show is set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones began in 298 AC. It ends in 305 AC. That's the time span that the show we've already all seen covers. So the Great Council, 101 AC, that's where we believe that we are starting, right? And then Viserys is crowned in 103 AC. The Dance, 129 AC to 131 AC. So the...

The reveal in the THR piece of the 10-year time jump midway through the season, revelatory, coupled with another really interesting insight. Here's a quote. There are additional multi-year time jumps within the 10-episode season as well, a structure more like the way the crown unfolds over the course of its entire run than like Thrones. And then there's a condol quote.

Mm-hmm. This is how you tell the story correctly, Condal said. We're telling a story of a generational war. We set everything up. So by the time that first sword stroke falls, you understand all the players. So again, they're not hiding what the story is actually about, that this is the story of the Dance of the Dragons, the Targaryen Civil War. They're going to spend a good amount of time in the run-up to that. Yeah, and I think, I think,

A lot of us were trying to do the math on like, how can this person be like a teen bride and then the parent of a teenager and, you know, over the span of a season. And so if there is, if there are multiple, multiple jumps, um,

That makes a lot of sense. I'm excited for that. And it's interesting because Thrones, Weiss and Benioff, when they were doing Thrones, were so allergic to the flashback, right? They cut flashbacks from the first season. They didn't even do a flashback until season five. Yeah. Sure, then you're the frog. Yeah. And then so sparingly, you know, like Tower of Joy, et cetera. But they're not doing flashbacks here, but...

To give us that ramp up, I think is really important because I don't think you can just start with

Rhaenyra and Alicent as adult women and not understand the context of their childhood. Right. Yes. Long before we are with the greens and the blacks, the forces at the heart of this conflict, we need to know everything that informed how we got there. A couple other just canon timeline orienting points here. Hit the fast forward button once if you don't want to hear this.

105 AC in the canon, in the text, is when Viserys names Rhaenyra his heir. So it's interesting because one of the things we get in this trailer around the 115 mark is Viserys saying, I have decided to name a new heir. David's saying, I'm your heir. So presumably that is that moment where he is naming Rhaenyra.

Again, his daughter from his first marriage. And then another timeline insight here. Hit the button once if you don't want to hear it, though. I think this is fine. We've already talked about this a lot. The wedding. Maceris and Allison's wedding, 106 AC in the text. Will they change some of those years? Seems entirely possible. Who knows? But broadly, that's when these things happen in these stories that exist currently. So there's a lot of time after that union before things...

Really go to shit. Really go to shit. Any other timeline centric stuff that you want to hit or anything about the great council or even just the dance itself that you want to mention? I don't think so. I'm just, I think, you know what, we see a battle in this trailer. Yeah. And, and Miguel Sapochnik is, is famously a battle director from Thrones and,

But I do not think we're going to get a ton of battle stuff in season one. I think it's largely going to be palace intrigue. Something that they've been promoting a lot in various stills that they give out and stuff like that is Daemon Targaryen stealing a dragon egg. That's an exciting thing that will happen. There will be a battle of some sort at some point in season one. But I don't think you should expect it to be a battle-heavy season going in.

I feel safe to say, right? Yeah. Maybe. Absolutely. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. And the fact that we get that palace intrigue across the timelines is so, so exciting. Like, I can't wait to go to the Great Council of Harrenhal. I can't believe this is a thing we get to watch. Boy, I am so excited. I really can't believe we get to go to the Great Council of 101 AC, Jo.

This has been on your bucket list for years and years and years. You're like, I cannot wait. Take me back to Harrenhal. You know, I often think of Jaehaerys' would-be heirs. You know, Aemon, dead. Balon, dead. Needed an heir. What was he going to do? 14 claimants.

Rhaenys. Jahaerys' first son in air, Aemond. I'm just going to say it. Child. If Rhaenys had become the queen, none of this would have happened. If it had been Queen Rhaenys, none of this would have happened. We would have all been thriving on our dragons still. Still to this day.

- This episode is brought to you by Experian. I don't know if you've ever looked in your subscriptions on your phone and noticed that you had like four or five subscriptions. Maybe you didn't realize you were still paying for, or maybe you got some email for something and you're like, "I thought I canceled that." Well, this is what happens. These days anyone could be missing out on savings from subscriptions they've totally forgotten about. It's not just the ones you forgot to get rid of, it's the ones that they have better deals.

And that's where Experian comes in. It's like a personal assistant for your subscriptions. It can cancel over 200 plus subscriptions in categories like streaming services, meal kits, entertainment apps, and more. You could save an average of $270 per year

Plus, they'll even let you know if your provider offers you a better deal to stick around. Find out how much you could save by downloading the Experian app today. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed. $270 a year average. Estimated savings with one plus cancellation. Paid membership with connected payment accounts required. See Experian.com for details.

This episode is brought to you by Vitamin Water. Food, entertainment, sports teams. New York City is one of those places that oozes choice. It's got something for every taste. So it's fitting that Vitamin Water was born there. It's a product of its environment. Colorful,

Have you seen one? A dragon. No, the last one died many years before I was born. There was Giscard, and Valrion, Vermithrax, Aesovius, Arcanine.

Meraxes, Vhagar, and Balerion the Dread, whose fire forged the seven kingdoms into one. Let's talk about the dragons. Yeah. Shall we? We saw a lot of dragons in this trailer. A lot. There's a lot, but like, actually, we saw a lot of shots of dragons, but I don't think we saw a lot of different dragons, and here's what I want to really emphasize. So, like,

In the THR piece, we find out the show has at least 17 dragons. Incredible. On Coyote. We only met, obviously, three. Daenerys has three children in Game of Thrones. And Drogon, like, they all looked kind of different. Drogon was bigger. The coloring was a little different on the other two. Like, you could pick them out of a lineup.

But what you should know about the source material is that these dragons are wildly different colored in the books. And not only that, but their fire matches the color of their dragon scales. And I'm really hoping that they bring that back because that would look stunning in a battle to have the color of the fire match the color of the dragon. You know, you've got...

bright red dragons. You've got white pearlescent dragons. You've got golden dragons. You've got pistachio green dragons, pale pink dragons, all this sort of stuff. And so I'm hoping we see all of those different shades and options and sizes and ages and all this sort of stuff. But dragons are so fascinating in this age, obviously, because they outlive

They're humans, which is so interesting. So you've got dragons with like institutional memory that stretches far beyond the humans that are riding them. You've got dragon riders that claim dragons that have already been ridden by very famous people previously in history. Or even in this show, you'll have a character who rides a dragon, dies, and then another character is going to take over. Which is like a really consequential thing because of the bond between dragon and rider. Yeah.

Something I love, you know, we're all of us familiar with that idea of bending the knee in Game of Thrones. So when they talk about dragons, they talk about them bending the neck, bend the neck to your dragon rider. There's more infrastructure around dragon riding at this time, of course. Like we see in the trailer, we see saddles, we see armor. There are, there's the dragon pit. Yeah, dragon keepers. You know, dragon keepers, which according to THR, a monk-like order that takes care of dragons.

Thrilling. Exciting. But here's who I think we saw in the trailer very, very specifically. Okay. We saw Caraxes. This is the red dragon. With the saddle that we see Damon sort of like nuzzling and like goofing around with in his Legolas wig. We see Caraxes for sure with Damon. Yeah. 145, 223 in his darling armor. Yeah.

Yeah. Paraxis 100%. Vhagar, who is... Vhagar, who is... That's the foot, right? That's the claw. That's Vhagar. Big and bad and old. Yes. That is the foot we see. A small blonde boy crawling up a...

of a leg that's Vhagar. And then the one I think we see the most in the trailer is Syrax and that's Rhaenyra's dragon. And that's sort of like a more golden bronzy dragon that we see in the trailer. And, which you see a bunch of times. And,

That is it, except for that dragon egg that Damon has his eye on, which is also like bumping around. But we're going to see so many more. We see the dragon egg like roasting. We see a dragon egg in Damon's arms. Yeah.

You know, keep an eye on that egg. But I think that if you just look at the difference between the red of Caraxes, the black of Vhagar, which Vhagar isn't actually black, but I don't know if it's going to be. It's a nighttime shot. So maybe the green of Vhagar and then the gold of Syrax. Yeah.

That'll give you your indication of how different these dragons are going to look in this show. And I'm really excited. And they said that like some of the dragons in the show are going to be like bearded, like Komodo dragons, like all, all like, um, all that stuff is really exciting. Is there a dragon who we, again, we can't say for sure which, which of the dragons are, or which in the trailer you got, but are the, is there a dragon who you feel confident we didn't see yet who you're most excited to see?

Sunfire. Sunfire is my pick too. So it's Seasmoke in the running. Also just two incredible names, Seasmoke and Sunfire, but Sunfire's gotta be the pick. Seasmoke, pale silver gray and white. Sort of blends into the mist on the ocean, right? And then Sunfire, gold with pale pink membranes and golden flames. And I think Morning too, which is pale pink with black horns and crests.

Yeah. Good shit. There's so many good dragons. There's also the cannibal. Yeah, I should say this, obviously. There are these wild feral dragons that have not bent their neck to anyone that are hanging around Dragonstone. Dragonstone's just lousy with dragons. And yeah, so there's the cannibal, which...

as his name might indicate, likes to eat other dragons, like, you know, grab dragon courses, stuff like that. But there's like Vermithor, the bronze fury that's just hanging out of Dragonstone because it belonged to King Jaehaerys and it doesn't have, so it's retired on Dragonstone. It doesn't have a new rider. So yeah, dragons. Gotta catch them all. Are you excited for your dragon merch? Are you going to get like plushies for all your dragons? Like, what are you going to do? I can't think of an answer to that.

But is it like plushies or is it like figurines or is it like a Lego build? What is it? Oh, you know, I don't usually do the Legos of...

I do Legos of like buildings and helmets and stuff like that. Cause I think it's harder to capture the essence of a face, but I have a, every dire wolf plush. I've got the pop dolls. I've got the Funko pops for the dragons too. I don't have dragon. I need, I don't think I have a dragon plush from the Thrones run though. I do have, I'll send you a picture. I have a great fucking picture of halo with all of the dire wolf, dire wolf pup plushes on one couch cushion together. And it just looks like he's one of them. Great.

You have all of them? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I love... Lady! Dire wolves. Not lady! Lady's good! All right. Shaggy, shaggy, shaggy. Okay. Speaking of things we may have glimpsed before, let's talk about some places and some things. Some familiar, some new. We've hit on some of them already, so this will be kind of rapid fire. A lot of time in the throne room, and we did chat about this already, but it is...

So central in this trailer that this is not the Iron Throne that we have spent time with in Game of Thrones. This is sprawling and vast. As you said, you're going to cut yourself in the EW Nick Romano piece. There was a nugget about how there are 2,500 swords for this version of the Iron Throne. And as we talked about in the initial teaser trailer pod we did,

George, not shy over the years about expressing his frankly dismay that the Iron Throne in the show was not this uncontainable behemoth of metal shards that he envisioned and sketched out of the text. So we're, uh...

We're getting closer to that here in the throne room. How are you? How are you feeling about this iron throne? This more book accurate and dangerous iron throne? I think it's really cool. And I think I love the image, I think, in Nick's piece about how they have to put like little green tennis balls on the points of the swords in the downtime so that nobody hurts themselves. Love that. Slightly terrifying. Yeah.

slightly terrifying. You mentioned the dragon pit already. This was cool. Really cool to see. So at the 33 second mark, we have a dragon flying over King's Landing. We pan up. And as we pan up, we see it intact in all its glory. Eons before the ruin that we will visit in the show that we have already enjoyed together. And you feel that this is like at the center of

of King's Landing life. This was really, really, really neat to glimpse. What did you make of the dragon pit? I loved it. And I think what's really cool about the skyline, if you want to call it that, in King's Landing is there's no Sept of Baelor at this time, right? That wasn't built till 161 or Baelor ruled 161, 171. So like not a ways till we get to the Sept of Baelor. So it's like, it's a different skyline. It's a different city. We get a shot of like

dragon statues downtown King's Landing in the bustling metropolis that is King's Landing. Passed by the statue on your way to a bowl of brown. Delicious. Nutritious. We also see right at the

foot of the dragon pit, you can kind of glimpse the relative position at the 41 second mark in the trailer. You see this torny ground. And again, we get a lot of glimpses of torny activity. And this is obviously always kind of a fun setting for a sequence in one of these shows or one of these stories. But it's neat to think of like the proximity there too. Well, and also like, so...

Something that Condal and Sapochnik said is like, you know, we have the freedom. Basically, we have the freedom to build a bunch of stuff in King's Landing that you don't see anymore because King's Landing was sacked many a time before the events of Game of Thrones. But the tourney ground is so it's such a funny budgetary comparison. Like Sapochnik and Condal very graciously were constantly saying, like, we have much higher budget than Weiss and Benioff did when they started. But like,

Remember the tourney from season one of Ned Stark's tourney and how that could have been filmed in a parking lot somewhere. R.I.P. Sir Hugh. Not a scratch on that armor. Oh, God.

We get a lot of Dragonstone in this trailer. A lot. We get the bridge. We get the castle. As mentioned already, we get Damon and Otto on the bridge. They're opposing forces facing off. That's a really cool shot at the 121 mark. A lot of Dragonstone.

That's our only shot as far as I can tell in this trailer of Masaria, who is Damon's sort of like consort. But I love Sonoya Mizuno and I'm really excited she's in the show. So I'm excited to see more of her. But we just see her sort of like standing right behind him there. Shout out, Devs. Shout out. I know you like when I mentioned Devs. Shout out, Ex Machina. I love that movie. I don't know if this is actually correct, but.

But I wondered if at the 45 second mark, when we're with Rhaenyra and Laenor, this island shot, it's this island shot at first, and then we cut to them in that same setting. Drift mark? Could be. The seed of house...

Valerian? Valerian. The Baltimore accent just wants to say Valerian. I just have to say Valerian in my head, silently in my head first, and then say, do the opposite of that. Valerian. Valerian. So I'm wondering if that's Driftmark, but who can say for sure? And then, Stepstones. Again, this is

This is just pure speculation territory, but we'll be speaking for a minute here about some stuff that happens in the cannons. Definitely stepstones. Yeah. The battle, everything that we're seeing on the battlefront, this feels like this is the war for the steps. We see Damon there. We see the, the sea snake there. This has got to be what this is, right? Yeah. I wanted to ask you if you thought, again, this is just speculation, um,

But when we get those shots of Damon with the short hair and the crown on his head, do you think this is after he has declared himself king of the stepstones of the narrow sea? I do. That's why I put it after the long hair.

And that's why I think it's long hair, short hair crown. Skip ahead. This is the first line about Daemon in the Rogue Prince. The only crown that Daemon Targaryen ever wore was the crown of the Stepstones, a meager realm he made himself, blood and steel and dragon fire and soon abandoned. So yes, 100%. That's what that crown is. Feels like it. We also get, again, skip ahead if you don't want to know. Please skip ahead. The Crabfeeder. Cragas.

Drehar, if that's how you want to pronounce it. Okay. So is this at 218 the mask? The guy in the mask. Yeah. Okay. So that's who you think that is. I was, I had a couple different theories. That was one of them. I wondered, this is probably wrong based on just like the setting. I don't think this would make sense, like what we can see behind. But I did wonder, could it be Vagon or

Here's a quote from Fire and Blood. King Jahara still had one surviving son, Vagon, an archmaester at the Citadel, holder of the ring and rod, and mask of yellow gold. Doesn't really seem like his vibe, that shot. I'm willing to entertain it. I think it's the crab feeder. Especially since, please skip ahead. Please skip ahead. We see men tied up on the short. Yeah, yeah.

Good stuff. Okay. Steel corner. I mean, we've talked about the steel already. We talked about Dark Sister, Demon's Blade, but, you know, and when we did talk about the cat's paw blade in our first...

House of the Dragon pod many moons ago, but it is so prominently featured here at the 219 mark in Allison's hand as she is charging at Rhaenyra saying, where is duty? Where is sacrifice? We see an overhead shot at 224 of this moment where they are in conflict facing off and there are legions of

people surrounding them, including Westerling and Cole. Chris and Cole and Damon are doing their own little dance over here on the side. And then at 227, Rhaenyra replies and she's like, appears to be, it's a tight shop. It appears to be holding the blade at bay saying, now they see you as you are.

are. Now, if you've read Fire and Blood, you know what this is. You know what's happening here. But if you don't, that's exciting, too. And it's cool. I think that they're featuring this like moment of real conflict. It's a very Cersei moment for Alicent, is it not? Discharging? I don't know. It's yeah, it's there's there's a lot of Cersei energy. It's true. Yeah, I'm curious to see how much of the Cersei vibe is there as we go.

I don't say that as an insult. I have a lot of love for Cersei Lannister. Cersei rules. Blackfire, maybe this is in Viserys' hands at 116. It's not canonically established that he wields Blackfire, but it seems logical based on who it

who wields it before and after that it would have passed through his hands. And he's holding a sword that seems like it's being featured. So I feel like this is going to be Blackfire and we're going to get both Blackfire and Dark Sister in this show, which is awesome.

Oh, there's so much Dark Sister stuff to talk about. I can't wait. I can't wait. Remember what I said, said Blood Sister instead of Dark Sister when we were doing our first pod? People wanted us to name the pod Blood Sisters. It's never too late to change a working title. That's what I've said. Are Juno listening and just sweated thinking about changing all the logos? Can we whip up a new logo? Shoemaker, are you there? Are you listening? Speaking of art and visuals, I

You want to do a little sigil corner here, Jo? I know you love a sigil watch. I do love sigil watch. It's so fun. Yeah, I mean, I think the main thing that people have been talking about is that the Targaryen sigil looks a little different than it might look on your Targaryen shot glass.

four, four feet of the dragon versus two. There's a, I mean, I don't know. We need to go into, there's a whole entertainment weekly breakout article on why the Targaryen sigil looks a little different. Ryan Condal talked a lot about it a lot. And then he also teased that there might, we, we might find out more about it as we go. But I think more interesting is seeing some of these like lesser houses, um, in that assemblage in the scene where Chris and Cole looks like he's about to join the Kings guard. Um,

A Shea at Maron, he's not on Twitter. One of the best to ever do it. Uh, one of my favorite people, um, calls out like house Malister house, Corbray house, Tarth has Craig kill possibly house Tarly, which like, you know, that, that one I could have done myself and maybe house Karen. So like, uh,

I love a sigil. Thrones always had just really fun... You love merch way more than I do, but I'm not entirely immune to merch, and especially when there's just sigils to be slapped on things, I get kind of excited. That's the real why-do-you-change-the-sigil answer. New merch. New merch. Yeah.

And I'm here for it. West of Westeros. More merch. New merch. More merch. It was fun to see the Malister Eagle. That was a treat. And you could sort of see Kristen Cole's shield that he's holding in the...

Daemon melee sequence, but there's a very clear shot of that in one of the EW photos, the black pellets on the Scarlet field. That was, that was really fun to get to see. And also in the trailer later, it's like two 14 to 15, um, not in that same sigil spotting sequence, but you get a, you know, a horse kicking back and, uh, Baratheon, Baratheon sigil.

On the shield, always great to see. No wolves, because the North is not really involved very much here. We got a quick Stark mention in the last trailer. They gave us that in the second trailer. What do you think is the best sigil of all time in Thrones? Oh. The best, like just the coolest, or like the one I would want? The one you want, your favorite.

Oh, man. I mean, I love the dire wolves so much. I almost like can't not pick the Starks as basic as that is. I do really like the the House Valerian, the little seahorse. Really cute. I like that. We get a shot of that on on Corliss's helm. And I love how the seahorse is very horsey.

It doesn't look like a seahorse. It looks like a sea hyphen horse. Like it's got little like hooves. It's amazing. My least favorite is definitely House Tully with love and respect for the Lords of Riverrun. I could pass on a fish as my sigil. That's a no for me. Also House Tyrell's dumb flower. Family duty honor. Is that the right order? Maester Lewin.

Yeah, you crack and brand impression. I thought you meant to crack and I thought you were saying House Greyjoy. I got to do House Greyjoy. You love the Drowned God. I do. I aspire to sit on the Cecil Brown. You want to live on Pike. You love Pike. I love Fogg. You always talk about your salt wives. I mean, I'm forever banging on about them.

Um, any other like things in places stuff that you wanted to mention? Seven pointed star necklace on Alison. Very prominent. We also get the great, you know, she's, she's wearing green. We get to see Alison green and Rhaenyra in black, the greens and the blacks. That's, uh, some, some fun, uh, the visual action there with the wardrobe. In the shot where she's wearing the seven pointed star necklace. She's also wearing a dress that is very Cersei takes the iron throne dress. It's very, very similar. Um,

So again, like it's not a one-to-one comparison, but they are putting, you know, drawing those lines there. So yeah, I'm excited. And like, again, like what we talked about with rings of power, like,

The watch word seems to be familiar but new, right? So they want to give us stuff that makes us feel like we're in the world we understand, but a bunch of new and dazzling stuff so we get excited about discovering fresh things. Yeah, I'm for it. Also, we're just going to be spending like a lot of time in King's Landing. So, you know.

Let's switch it up with some of the things that we're used to seeing there. It's great. Let's give another quote about Dance of Dragons. The first battles in the Dance of Dragons were fought with quills and ravens, with threats and promises, decrees and blandishments. Palace intrigue, baby. Bring it to me. I'm here for it. By the way, I just probably don't need to say this at this point, nearly two hours into our trailer breakdown, but just in case. The Dance of the Dragons, the Targaryen Civil War, not to be confused with...

A Dance with Dragons, the fifth book in A Song of Ice and Fire. George! George, why would you? Why would you? George! All right, Jo. Lastly, we're going to talk for just a minute here about some of the stuff that we don't recognize or aren't seeing.

Okay, number one is this weird shot of this, like, so, okay. We get several shots of the small council. Viserys' small council. Otto Hightower's there, et cetera. They appear to be voting, and they all have these weird balls in front of them that I guess they use to vote.

That would be my guess, just based on the fact that balls are sometimes used to vote in shadowy organizations. But there's this weird close up on one that looks like a glass, like a huge, like a billiard ball, but like designed like a glass eye. I don't know what's going on, but balls and councils and voting seems to be involved.

I want to shout out someone we didn't see. And this is just indicative of what I love about Thrones. An actor that I really love, a character actor, Bill Patterson, who's like a Scottish actor who's been a gillion different things. He's playing the character Lord Lyman Beesbury. He's on that small council. So technically, you'll see him. He's Master Coyne. He's on the council. You don't really see him, but he's there. And he's a great actor.

And he has a role to play in all of this. But he's just the kind of figure, like Bill Patterson is just a great actor. I'm excited to get a Scottish accent in Thrones. That's exciting. But like he's a great actor and he's just one of those marginal characters that it's just going to be fun to spend time with. And that's what you love about Thrones is like you get there's Jon and Daenerys and Arya and all of that. But there's just like, you know.

you know, Bronze John Royce or like all these others, like marginal characters that you get to know and love and get excited about. And so like Lord Lyman Beesbury, I'm excited for him. Shout out, shout out, shout out House Royce. House Royce will have a part to play. I want to mention something here that.

We'll earn the fast forward a minute if you don't want to hear it. And I guess at that point you can just leave because we're almost done. This is it. We're close to the end at least. All right. You've been warned. Where's Aegon? Aegon II, who we have not named yet today, but I think do need to spend a minute again with the properly issued contextual spoiler warning here.

Aegon II is the other claimant for the throne in the Dance of the Dragon. This is Alicent and Viserys' first son. We, I think, get the back of his head, right? Yeah, we get his hair in the scene where Alicent is like, you know, if Rhaenyra becomes queen, she will cut off all other claimants to the throne.

So Tom Glyn Carney is the actor who's been cast to play Aegon. And I have no idea why we have, you know, he's been in Dunkirk. He was in The King, like a bunch of other stuff. I don't know why we haven't seen him yet.

He's important. I'm like really confused by this. I'm trying to figure out why, you know, we talked about this in the first, like, because at the time we didn't even know who was playing him. Like, was there a chance that he was going to be coming into the story? Maybe even much later than we had anticipated. My, I mean, Amon, his younger brother, Amon, one I, who we talked about earlier is, is featured in the trailer. So that leads me to believe that like the kids are going to,

be in the mix when they should be in the mix. It's not like something like drastic is going to change about the timeline. Right. But I wonder, I don't know. Maybe they just want to keep that as a surprise that, that he's going to be a major figure in the story. But I wonder if given that line about whether Alison had ever imagined herself on the iron throne, maybe there will be more time spent on the idea that she could be pursuing this for her own ends, as opposed to,

For her kids. Her heir. Yeah. That's my only kind of theory. I don't know. Really interesting. I feel like maybe they just didn't have a cool shot with him.

I mean, it could be that. That he just looks like a handsome young man in a blonde wig, whereas like Aime in one eye is like, look at my eye patch. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I don't know. It's the line where we think we see the back of his head is at 150. And it's Allison saying if Rhaenyra comes into her power, she can cut off any challenge to her succession. So that does feel like it would be that would be him with the head, as you said.

Strange. Anything else that you haven't seen or they haven't teased or allowed us to glimpse yet that you're wondering about? I don't think so. Nothing that I'm like, and I don't feel like they're trying to hide the ball on anything other than maybe. I don't either. I feel like they're showing us what the story is about. The heir to the throne. You know, I can't wait to see all the other dragons and what they all look like. Same. That's what I'm excited for. Yeah. Same. All right. We did it.

I can't wait to watch this show. I can't believe it's only a month away. I am really just like incredibly, incredibly, incredibly excited to get to talk about this with you. I can't believe we get to do this for 10 weeks. We'll do a preview pod too. We're going to be talking about this for months and then years because they're just going to keep making more seasons and more shows. We're back.

Mallory, as we've already determined, you are the realm's delight. And I am just honored to be in your presence. Oh, my God. All right. We did it. You considered the matter urgent and so did we. So thank you for listening to today's episode. And thank you to our protectors of the realm, Carlos Chiriboga, for producing this episode.

Arjuna Ramgopal for his additional production work on this episode. And Jomia Deneron for his work on the social for this episode. Remember, tune back in on Sunday for our Comic-Con roundup. Maybe we'll get more Thrones footage. Who knows? Who knows what they'll show us? Until then, our hearts remain as one. ♪

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You might say all kinds of stuff when things go wrong, but these are the words you really need to remember. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. They've got options to fit your unique insurance needs, meaning you can talk to your agent to choose the coverage you need, have coverage options to protect the things you value most, file a claim right on the State Farm mobile app, and even reach a real person when you need to talk to someone. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.