House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 Review: The Red Dragon and the Gold
Cast: Emma D’Arcy, Olivia Cooke, Ewan Mitchell, Eve Best, Matt Smith, Matthew Needham and Fabien Frankel
Created By: Ryan Condal, George RR Martin
Streaming Platform: Max
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 4.5/5 (four and a half stars) 🌟🌟🌟🌟
House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 is available on the Max streaming platform. When all the pieces have been placed, the dance of the dragons can actually begin. Even before the airing of this fourth episode, the title had warned us “The Red Dragon and the Golden Dragon”, and indeed this dance took place and brought with it some deaths. We are practically at the halfway point of House of the Dragon Season 2 and a bit of action is what we have been waiting for since the beginning of the series. The strategies, the politics, everything to get to this moment: the moment when the war begins, and the dragons are called into play. Rhaenyra’s desperate attempt to sneak into King’s Landing to speak with Alicent did not have the desired effect but left the Queen Mother with doubts, making her even more unstable (and with an unwanted pregnancy).
Among the most iconic and charismatic characters of House of the Dragon, there is certainly Rhaenys Targaryen, played by Eve Best. After all, it is she who sets in motion the events that will lead to the Dance of the Dragons, indeed, it is the Council’s refusal to designate her as heir to the throne, the first piece of a giant domino, made of continuous and unstoppable streams. Therefore, after episode 4 of the second season of House of the Dragon, we were able to have a chat with her in a virtual roundtable, in which she told us how she approached her character about this fourth episode, so if by chance you are not caught up, know that there will be spoilers on the events of House of the Dragon 2×04.
House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 Review: The Story Plot
At the beginning of the new episode, we are back with Daemon on his quiet journey in the sunny Harrenhal, between poisoned foods and consequent hallucinations. Daemon sees the young version of Rhaenyra, who reproaches him for having to obey the one he was holding in his arms only because her brother loved her more than him, but this time our boy doesn’t feel like chatting and cuts off the head of the dream, only to wake up when Simon Strong announces the arrival of a raven-message for him. Strong also informs him that the castles of Rosby and Stokeworth, northeast of King’s Landing and southwest of Dragonstone, have fallen to the army led by Cristone Cole, swelling his ranks under Aegon. He may now head for Harrenhal, Simon says, so Daemon must raise an army with the local lord, Grover Tully. But as we remember, he is now incapable of understanding and wanting, so Daemon is made to meet his young grandson Oscar Tully, who however does not have the authority to speak on behalf of his grandfather but does not want to “accelerate” the inheritance either. And so it is useless, as Daemon reproaches him, who instead asks who is left among the Blackwoods who can support him more concretely.
House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 Review and Analysis
A cloud envelops the sky, obscuring the sun and everything else. A cloud that gets lost within the clouds, between the red of blood and the blinding heat of fire. The cloud is infernal, inhuman. It evokes inhuman scenarios, announced tragedies, and horrible conflicts without memory. Chaos has definitively taken possession of House of the Dragon in episode 2×04, without leaving any hope of going back. The nightmare is no longer a prospect nor the narrow corner in which the spirit rewinds in the shadows of the night: the Dance of the Dragons has now begun, in the light of day. From here on there will be nothing but destruction. The eternal annihilation of the soul and the flesh, of the spirit and memories. An eternal present without prospects. The chronicle of a disaster generated by chance, and by men incapable of following destiny in the right direction.
House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4, one of those episodes that loudly write the history of this extraordinary saga, will leave a deep mark on the dynamics of the series. Between action and introspection, the pawns carefully placed in the previous episodes have finally exploded, leaving behind a pile of ashes and an impossible future. A wonderful episode that once again evoked some of the main themes of the second season of House of the Dragon, already analyzed in previous weeks. And that inserts others, proceeding once again on a double track in which the parallels between the two factions involved are increasingly explicit and direct. We have been talking about it since the title of the review of House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 Chaos has now taken over everything, including the hierarchical scale. Through a shameless double key of exposition that once again associated the dynamics of the Greens with those of the Blacks, we saw Aegon and Rhaenyra find themselves in a similar position: being Kings, questioned. The absolutism of the role vanishes, during a war.
Not on a formal level, but in everything that really matters when the exercise of leadership is no longer just a question of positions. We have been talking about it since the title of the review of House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4: chaos has now taken over everything, including the hierarchical scale. Through a shameless double key of exposition that once again associated the dynamics of the Greens with those of the Blacks, we saw Aegon and Rhaenyra find themselves in a similar position: being Kings, questioned. The absolutism of the role vanishes, during a war. Not on a formal level, but in everything that really matters when the exercise of leadership is no longer just a question of positions. The king is naked, now more than ever. Cornered by his brother’s irreverence and the inconsistency of his actions, now reduced to mere representation and the need to act as little as possible: inaction is the only fruitful form of action, for someone like him. Aegon realizes that until now he has worn a plastic crown and that he is in no way accepted as an effective ruler. He is not the one who decides the war strategies, nor does he have the authority to impose himself on the attention of his own subjects.
Power, as Varys said, is a shadow on the wall, but Aegon is invisible despite himself and projects nothing other than manifest incompetence. He does not possess the strength or the wisdom: only the physiological immaturity of a boy forced to grow up too quickly to face a mission for which he was not ready. The foolish decision to intervene personally, moreover in a state of complete confusion, marks the substantial end of his tragic reign: he dreamed of Harrenhal, finding the curse within his own heart. Speaking of real or presumed curses, another important parallel of House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 is revealed, once again, in the figures of Daemon and Aemond. United by a blood bond that will lead them to fatally cross their destinies, the two characters, condemned by their second-born, connect viscerally in Daemon’s umpteenth vision: finding himself dreaming of himself in the guise of his hated nephew, he fights the turmoil of his soul with the fragility of a man who knows no other strength than brutality.
The same goes for Aemond: after seeing him face an introspective journey with complex keys of analysis, he reveals himself to the light of day and finds in war the only possibility of being accepted by the world. A world that rejects him since birth, without accepting the consistency of a second-born with superior potential compared to his brother. A brother who repudiates, to the point of trying to kill him. He suffocates his instincts only at the last moment after having caused enormous damage. Ready to do anything to get what he wants, Aemond has taken action. He has highlighted the inadequacy of his hated brother with a contemptuous use of Valyrian that reveals his preparation, without being the result of vanity alone: the language, daughter of an ancient heritage that is linked to the very destiny of the Targaryens, will return even when he sees his brother flying madly towards war. Valyrian is not only an expression of his suitability for the most ambitious roles: it is an expression of the character’s very soul, too cumbersome to be just a number two.
The same can be said about Daemon, prey of Harrenhal and the witchcraft of a woman who uses dark atavistic forces to conquer a place in the world: the concepts of Eros and Thanatos that connect him to Rhaenyra and mortally separate him from her (already highlighted in the review 2×02 of House of the Dragon), come to life again in yet another nightmare. Concluded with the metaphorical killing of the only woman who has ever been able to accept him for what he is, he will wake up with his hands stained with blood: reality seems to loom, going beyond the boundaries of premonition. The value of memory no longer really has any weight, except for Rhaenyra who has decided to fight in its name. And it is reaffirmed, in particular, in the exchange between Alicent and Larys: the voices of history resonate like a distant echo, stripped of their bodies.
The loss of the function of memory is still found in various passages of House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4, even when it comes to action. The last segment of the episode, the spectacular scene of the Battle of Raven’s Rest, is accompanied by an important revelation: Rhaenyra, the only living guardian of the prophecy of the Prince that was promised, passes on her knowledge to the direct heir, Jacaerys, thus introducing the battle through a brutal counterpoint between the real reason for the existence of the Targaryens, destined to unite the world against the threat of the Others, and the bloody civil war we are witnessing. It is not a coincidence, not at all. Just as it is not a coincidence that we see again, in a fundamental moment, the infamous dagger that we have spoken about so many times in dedicated articles. The dagger, the same one that will end up in the hands of Arya Stark and allow her to kill the Night King, is taken by Aemond, fresh from the attempt on the life of his brother Aegon, to point to him after being interrupted by Cole a moment before he could kill him.
The dagger thus becomes an instrument of war but of the wrong war. Aemond, one of the primary incarnations of the Dance of the Dragons, thus takes on an anti-historical meaning: there is no trace of destiny, just as there will be no trace for centuries. History had elected little Aegon by giving him a precious instrument, and the passing of the dagger thus symbolizes a potential passing of the baton between the two. The last minutes of House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 are dedicated to the farewell to a character who will deeply mark the narrative even after her departure. The disappearance of Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen who was not, represents the last desperate attempt to end the war before it can show its terrible consequences in its entirety. After having lined up in the front line to safeguard a fundamental outpost, she makes a decision that says a lot about her character: like Rhaenyra, the protagonist in the last episode of a crazy action that aimed to reach an armistice – knowingly – impossible, Rhaenys does the same.
She had already accomplished her mission but met her fate, even though she had little chance with Aemond: she was trying to end the war with a gamble, as her queen had done. He knew he had no chance, but he knew he had to try. Without thinking of winning the war, a dramatic battle in which the largest armies are nothing but sterile diversions, he was looking for a way to end it. He does not go back, then, to find a possible personal salvation: instead, he launches himself into a mission that had very little chance of success with the sole purpose of eliminating the most dangerous enemy (Aemond), definitively avenging Lucerys’ death and inflicting an almost fatal blow to the Greens. Unlike Daemon, who is so tied to his sinister pride that he wants to be mistaken for a king, Rhaenys sacrifices herself and behaves like a true queen, even if she does not want to be defined as such. Her mission, bold and almost suicidal, leads her to leave a world that has never fully deserved her stature.
In a narrative universe where power ends up in the hands of the most inadequate figures, Rhaenys becomes the first illustrious victim of a ferocious conflict that will leave no hope even for the few survivors. This, unfortunately, will not be a lightning war: it will continue until the world is reduced to ashes, and of the Targaryens nothing remains but a blurred reflection. The reflection of Rhaenys, and of a story that will always go in the wrong direction. Certainly, one of the most intense so far, The Red Dragon and the Golden Dragon brings us to the same tension as the first season finale that saw the death of the young Lucerys. This time too, as then, the protagonist is Aemond who with his monstrous dragon, Vhagar, could have caused the death of two other characters: King Aegon and Rhaenys. This battle represents a crucial passage in George RR Martin’s book, who also this time takes different artistic liberties, but not for this bad. On the contrary.
As anticipated, this episode sees the possible demise of King Aegon who throughout the episode does nothing but manifest his dissent. He realizes that his brother Aemond and Ser Criston Cole have coordinated the mission without him and on the brink of madness, as we have already seen several times, he undertakes a secret mission himself together with his dragon. On the other hand, the Blacks are not at peace. Rhaenyra returns to Dragonstone and must deal with her son Jace, who is so eager to avenge his dead brother and finally get justice. The end of the last episode laid the foundations for the battle, Rhaenyra tried a sort of bargain with Alicent that did not work and she herself admits that she must send the dragons into the field, as a metaphor for the beginning of the war. In this painful choice, she finds the support of Princess Rhaenys with her dragon, Meleys.
In Harrenhal, Daemon continues to have disturbing dreams about the young Rhaenyra sitting on the Iron Throne. The throne room is once again at the center of the visions, as in those of Daenerys in Game of Thrones so also the young Rhaenyra is murdered by the man she loves. But Daemon’s visions are not limited to this, he seems to be destined for madness since the castle of Harrenhal is haunted. This does nothing but distances him more and more from the battlefield as the Hand Cole gathers his army, ever more numerous. All the small towns of the Seven Kingdoms are allying themselves with the Greens, following the death of the little Targaryen that Rhaenyra was accused of. We expected a dance from this fourth episode and a dance we got. The red dragon and the golden dragon saw Rhaenys and Meleys, Aemond and Vhagar and Aegon and Sunfyre. The latter is the smallest of the dragons in size. In fact, during the first fight or, better, during the first dance step, between Meleys and Sunfyre he is clearly ahead for the size of his dragon.
No one had considered the arrival of Aemond and Vhagar especially King Aegon who was sacrificed by a dracarys of Vhagar, with dragon and rider falling helplessly to the ground. It’s Rhaenys’ turn, who, having escaped Aemond and his dragon, decides to try again to attack Cole’s army. As if she already knew the fate that awaited her, Rhaenys insists but finds Aemond and Vhagar’s trap. Dragon and princess exchange a last look before both falling to the ground, while Meleys’ body goes up in flames. The episode ends without actually knowing the conditions of the two wounded in battle and the trailer doesn’t tell us much more. We see a Daemon perhaps ready to fight and Sir Cole returns to King’s Landing, after having escaped yet another death. However, the Dance has now begun, and more heads will have to roll before the end of this season.
House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 4 Review: The Last Words
Highly satisfying episode for its ending. The rating does not reach the maximum because we are only halfway through the season and some narrative choices, especially in the characterization of the characters (Daemon now seems a bit like Bran in his wandering alone and his mystical moments), seem to trace the mother series. But there is anticipation for the next episode, and this fact alone is a guarantee of an excellent job done. The first real battle was a long time coming but we finally got a taste of the Dance of the Dragons, even though we are far from the spectacular battles of Game of Thrones.
