Daemon Targaryen’s episode 6 vision revisits ‘House of the Dragon’s very first episode

For the previous a number of episodes of Home of the Dragon, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) has been haunted by a parade of ghostly visions that double as cameos of previous actors on the present.

First, Milly Alcock returned as younger Rhaenyra Targaryen, then Nanna Blondell reprised her position as Laena Velaryon. However in Season 2, episode 6, we attain what seems like the ultimate boss of those visions, as Paddy Considine dons the crown of King Viserys Targaryen as soon as once more.

Viserys’s return feels monumental as a result of virtually each imaginative and prescient Daemon has had to this point has reminded him of his relationship along with his late brother. Younger Rhaenyra needled Daemon over Viserys passing him over as his inheritor, whereas his mom Alyssa (Emeline Lambert) instructed him that he would have been a a lot better, stronger ruler than Viserys.

So what occurs when Viserys and Daemon come nose to nose? Does Viserys taunt Daemon about his wrecked marriage to Rhaenyra, or his failed makes an attempt to muster power within the Riverlands and change into king in his personal proper?

Not precisely.

As an alternative, what we get is a close to word-for-word replay of a scene from the very first episode of Home of the Dragon. Viserys confronts Daemon for joking concerning the dying of his spouse Aemma (Sian Brooke), and for calling his late new child son Baelon the “inheritor for a day.” He then reveals he’ll be naming a brand new inheritor, slicing Daemon out of the road of succession.

For present-day Daemon, this revisited reminiscence should lower deeper than any fantasy he is witnessed in Harrenhal to this point. It rehashes one of many worst moments of his life, one that also haunts him and drives him to this present day, and there is nothing he can do to cease it. All he can muster is a comfortable “do not” as vision-Viserys begins to say, “I’ve determined to call a brand new inheritor.”

Whereas Viserys’s dialogue stays virtually precisely the identical from this model of the scene in Season 1, Considine’s performances are worlds aside. In Season 1, his grief drove him to loud bursts of anger. He sits excessive within the Iron Throne as he casts his brother out. Imaginative and prescient-Viserys, then again, slumps over. His physicality remembers Viserys in the course of the later phases of his sickness, as if Daemon is viewing an amalgam of his brother throughout completely different phases of his life. There is no such thing as a yelling right here, only a comfortable, virtually defeated sense of grief that matches Daemon’s personal disappointment as he re-experiences Viserys’s wrath.

Not like in Season 1, Daemon doesn’t struggle again towards Viserys’s accusations. All the fireplace of this authentic encounter is gone, changed first by disbelief — “You may’t probably nonetheless be indignant about this” — then an awesome urge to flee. By this level, Harrenhal has damaged Daemon down with its continuous show of his worst insecurities. All he can do is hope for the imaginative and prescient to finish.

Daemon does get a little bit of closure on his relationship with Viserys — or no less than, his ghostly counterpart — in the direction of the top of episode 6. On this new imaginative and prescient, we expertise an alternate model of the previous: One the place Daemon stood by Viserys’s facet as he grieved Aemma, as an alternative of getting drunk in a King’s Touchdown tavern.

“It is best to’ve been at my facet,” Imaginative and prescient-Viserys instructed Daemon earlier within the episode. Now, Daemon holds him as he cries. “You wanted me,” he says. “I am right here now.”

This new imaginative and prescient is the primary time Daemon’s Harrenhal visions have supplied him any respite. It is also the primary time he is actually owned as much as his errors in a imaginative and prescient and tried to make them proper. Clearly, it is too late for Daemon and Viserys’s real-life relationship. However possibly that therapeutic embrace will mark a turning level for Daemon. In any case, he does obtain the excellent news of Grover Tully’s passing proper after he wakes up from that dream. No matter cutting-edge ghost remedy therapy Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) is foisting on Daemon should be working, large time.

New episodes of Home of the Dragon air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.