‘House of the Dragon’ Season 2, episode 5: Daemon’s strange sex vision, explained

In case you can depend on the Targaryens for something, it is incest.

The household on the coronary heart of Home of the Dragon has a longstanding custom of marrying sibling to sibling, cousin to cousin, and, within the case of Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Daemon (Matt Smith), niece to uncle. Nevertheless, Season 2, episode 5 takes us absolutely into Oedipal territory, with Daemon having a intercourse dream about — drumroll, please — his personal mom, Alyssa (Emeline Lambert).

The dream is yet one more installment in Daemon’s mysterious Harrenhal visions. However whereas these beforehand centered younger Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) or his late spouse, Laena Velaryon (Nanna Blondell, who additionally makes an look on this episode), this one focuses on somebody we have by no means seen earlier than within the present.

In the beginning of the imaginative and prescient, we do not know the girl Daemon is kissing and caressing is definitely Alyssa. She’s clearly a Targaryen based mostly on her hair, however in any other case we do not have a lot to go off of.

She hypes Daemon up in voiceover whereas placing Viserys (Paddy Considine) down, telling him, “You had been at all times the sturdy one. The best swordsman. The fearless dragonrider. Your brother had nice love in his coronary heart, however he lacked your structure. Viserys was unsuited for the crown, however you, Daemon, you had been made to put on it. If solely you’d been born first.”

At this level, you are most likely pondering, “wow, this unknown girl appears to know so much about concerning the relationship between Viserys and Daemon. I’m wondering who she could possibly be? Wait. Certainly not…”

That is when Home of the Dragon delivers an incestuous elbow drop proper to the intestine. “My favourite son,” the girl declares, and the small print of Daemon’s imaginative and prescient fall into place. That is Alyssa Targaryen, daughter of Jaehaerys I. She was additionally the primary rider of Meleys, that means that her look within the episode following the deaths of Meleys and Rhaenys (Eve Finest) carries further weight.

Alyssa married her brother Baelon, and, based on Hearth & Blood, had three kids: Viserys, Daemon, and Aegon, who died earlier than he even turned a yr outdated. Alyssa died not lengthy after that final childbirth. Nevertheless, based mostly on the blood on Daemon’s arms and on Alyssa’s physique because the imaginative and prescient ends, it looks as if Home of the Dragon is implying that Alyssa died whereas giving beginning to Daemon. (Or the blood, when coupled with the distorted screams within the background, is yet one more gesture to the violent acts which have haunted Daemon throughout his time at Harrenhal, and the violence he sanctions the Blackwoods to commit towards the Brackens this episode.)

After all, if Alyssa did die throughout Daemon’s childbirth within the present’s canon, there is no means she would actually know something about Daemon being a fierce dragonrider or fighter. Even by the e-book’s telling, she died when he was round two years outdated. As in all of Daemon’s prior visions and goals, Alyssa’s phrases are only a magical projection. It is telling, then, that she solely has good issues to say about him.

Characters Daemon knew and was married to for years, like Rhaenyra and Laena, hang-out him with tales of his worst insecurities and actions. However since Daemon by no means had a relationship along with his mom that he can bear in mind, the forces at play in Harrenhal warp her into somebody he can take consolation in. (Possibly just a little too a lot consolation.)

The Alyssa in his imaginative and prescient appears to spice up Daemon’s ego, as he later reveals to Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) that he plans to take King’s Touchdown for himself. Rhaenyra, he says, can select to sit down at his aspect. That Harrenhal DIY mission is beginning to look just a little treasonous there, buddy!

Fortunately, we are able to at all times depend on Alys to place Daemon in his place. “It is a pity, do not you suppose, that you just by no means knew your mom?” she asks.

This is not the primary time that Alys has appeared to know what is going on on in Daemon’s visions. In episode 4, she hinted at how a lot he should have hated shedding out on the Iron Throne to an adolescent Rhaenyra — one thing his imaginative and prescient of Rhaenyra introduced up that exact same episode. Right here, the reference to Alyssa is not any coincidence both: Alys is conscious of the goals haunting Daemon. However is she immediately accountable? (That drink from episode 4 did look fairly suspect.) Or is that this absolutely the curse of Harrenhal at work, along with her simply listening to whispers of the goals on the wind?

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