‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2, episode 3: Daemon’s Harrenhal vision, explained

As of Home of the Dragon Season 2, episode 3, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) formally holds Harrenhal. That may imply just one factor: The present is about to get an entire lot spookier.

Harrenhal is not simply the most important fort in Westeros — it is also essentially the most cursed. Lengthy earlier than the occasions of Home of the Dragon, Harren Hoare, King of the Islands and the Riverlands, oversaw Harrenhal’s 40-year-long development. 1000’s of laborers died in the course of the course of, and Harren’s armies even minimize down swaths of sacred weirwood bushes to furnish the fort. But Harren’s huge monument to himself (and his personal greed) proved no match for the fiery breath of Aegon the Conqueror’s dragon Balerion, which snuffed out Home Hoare for good.

Since then, Harrenhal is alleged to be cursed, as each Home that has held it since has gone extinct or suffered nice misfortune. Now that Daemon’s in command of the fort, he is about to witness the consequences of that curse firsthand.

We get teases of Harrenhal’s creepiness all through Daemon’s first evening within the fort in episode 3. As if Harrenhal’s leaking, craggy ruins weren’t sufficient, Daemon additionally has to cope with an unknown pressure rattling at his bed room door, and with Alys Rivers’ (Gayle Rankin) mysterious assertion that he will die on this place. Most memorable, nonetheless, is a imaginative and prescient Daemon has of younger Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock, reprising her position from the primary half of Season 1) stitching Prince Jaehaerys’s decapitated head again onto his physique.

“At all times coming and going, aren’t you?” Rhaenyra reprimands him. “And I’ve to scrub up afterwards.”

What does Daemon’s imaginative and prescient of younger Rhaenyra imply?

For episode 3 director Geeta Vasant Patel, this imaginative and prescient and adolescent Rhaenyra’s position in it introduced a wealthy alternative for Daemon to reckon with the occasions of the previous two episodes, beginning along with his falling-out with Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) in episode 2.

“Crucial factor about Rhaenyra on this scene was that she is aware of him,” Patel advised Mashable. “He simply bought rejected by older Rhaenyra, who he feels he would not know any extra. The Rhaenyra he actually is aware of is the younger Rhaenyra, who he fell in love with and who worshiped him. So when he goes into that room and younger Rhaenyra seems to be at him with judgment and with critique, that could be a sword by way of his belief. That is the place his concern lies, that the one individual he is let down his guard with really would not consider in him and thinks he is a monster.”

There’s additionally the Blood and Cheese of all of it, as Daemon is confronted with a bodily reminder of his position in orchestrating Jaehaerys’s homicide. “When Rhaenyra tells him, ‘you simply killed a child,’ that is the primary time he is processing,” Patel defined. “Loads of occasions none of us change, until we care about somebody and so they make us change. And to me, that is what that scene was about.”

Patel continued: “When Matt did the scene time and again, and we stored going deeper and deeper into it, there was one second the place I noticed his complete face shake with ache, as a result of he was realizing what he did. He was that related to Daemon. All of us had tears in our eyes in that second.”

That is simply the beginning of Daemon’s Harrenhal visions.

Matt Smith in “Home of the Dragon.”
Credit score: Theo Whitman / HBO

With Daemon remaining at Harrenhal as he raises a military for Rhaenyra, you possibly can guess we’ll see extra visions. And provided that episode 3 kicks off the presence of those goals, Patel, showrunner Ryan Condal, and the remainder of the present’s staff had many conversations about what these visions ought to appear to be.

“Many fantasy exhibits have visions which can be processed in so some ways. They’ve a whole lot of sound, perhaps completely different lenses. There’s completely different ranges you possibly can go,” Patel stated. Model-wise, Patel pushed for the visions to mirror on a regular basis life.

“In terms of Home of the Dragon, for my part, the imaginative and prescient is a dream,” she defined. “After we dream, it is so actual. That is what’s scary a couple of dream. You do not know when you’re dreaming.”

Due to this, Smith and the actors he interacts with in numerous visions had been inspired to maintain their performances grounded in actuality. However as we see in episode 3, that enhances the uncanniness of the goals. The picture of Rhaenyra buzzing whereas stitching Jaehaerys’ head in place is particularly chilling, an introduction to Harrenhal as a haunted home that has solely simply begun to sink its claws into Daemon.

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