Before Season 2 of “House of the Dragon” began in mid-June, HBO hadn’t released a new episode for about two years; so with the premiere days away, we published a guide to the show’s sprawling cast.

Seven episodes later, much has changed. Westeros is divided by a civil war between the Blacks, who support Rhaenyra Targaryen’s claim to the throne, and the Greens, who support her half brother Aegon’s. Characters have died, been maimed or disappeared. Meanwhile, the common people — known in the show’s parlance as smallfolk — have played an increasingly large role, adding several new faces to the show. It seemed like time for an update.

Whether you’ve picked sides or simply want to catch up in time for the Sunday season finale, here is a look at the major players now.

I updated my guide to the cast of House of the Dragon for the New York Times. It’s a gift link!

Speaking personally, I think this week’s episode of BLAH, on this week’s episode of House of the Dragon, is one of the best we’ve ever recorded in almost 13 years of podcasting. Listen and decide for yourself, here or wherever you get your podcasts!

In Sunday’s episode, Queen Rhaenyra, played by Emma D’Arcy, recruits commoners of noble blood — the illegitimate children of Targaryen royals, known as dragonseeds — to see if these dragons will accept them as riders, in order to expand her army. Most die in fiery agony, but an unassuming barfly named Ulf claims Silverwing.

“I worked out quite quickly that Silverwing is one of the kinder dragons and, I believe, the most beautiful,” said Tom Bennett, who plays Ulf. His performance is different as a result: “It’s the first time you ever get to see someone flying a dragon laughing.”

Vermithor was something else, said Kieran Bew, who plays a commanding blacksmith named Hugh. The significance of the character, who has been seen throughout the season, is revealed when he claims the ill-tempered dragon.

“We talked about how Vermithor is the Bronze Fury — an angry dragon,” he said. “From a performance perspective, knowing that leads to the choices Hugh makes during the claiming. You’ve got to make yourself big, man.”

I talked to showrunner Ryan Condal, VFX supervisor Daði Einarsson, and actors Clinton Liberty, Tom Bennett, and Kieran Bew about how House of the Dragon creates its dragons for the New York Times.

Elsewhere in the realm, Rhaenyra’s husband, Daemon, has other matters on his mind. (His daughter Rhaena, coincidentally, is off in the Vale on a dragon hunt of her own.) Oscar Tully (a commanding Archie Barnes), the teenage lord paramount of the pivotal Riverlands region, has come to Harrenhal with all his vassals for an audience with the self-appointed king. Daemon thinks this will be a simple matter of cowing a kid, then getting him to cow all the lords and ladies sworn to follow him.

But Lord Oscar is made of sterner stuff. Risking death by dragonfire, the kid dog-walks Daemon in front of all the Riverlords — proclaiming openly his dislike of the man, calling his conduct reprehensible and generally declaring him an unfit representative for a just cause. Finally, Oscar forces Daemon to execute one of his own loyal lords for war crimes if he wants the others’ help at all. Daemon glowers and fumes and … then does what he is told.

On the very day that he is brought to heel by a green boy who better understands politics than he does, Daemon is visited in a vision once again by his brother, King Viserys, maimed and deformed as he was in his dying days. Viserys holds his golden crown in his hands, telling his brother of its crushing weight, of the endless pain it causes.

“You always wanted it, Daemon,” the dream-king says. “Do you want it still?” For the first time since the show began, it feels as if the answer may be no.

I reviewed this week’s episode of House of the Dragon for the New York Times.

Stefan and I discuss this week’s ep of House of the Dragon on the longest-running A Song of Ice and Fire podcast still alive and kicking—available here or wherever you get your podcasts!

The hug lasts 45 seconds before they kiss. Yes, I counted. In the terms of that episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” where Larry hugs Auntie Rae for a little too long, it’s nine “five Mississippi”s. And like any long, drawn-out take on this densely packed show, it stops everything in its tracks.

For three quarters of a minute, we watch empathy, respect, gratitude, warmth, heat, curiosity, desire and, finally, passion all play out in the silent embrace between Queen Rhaenyra and her friend and counselor Mysaria. For the first time in their lives, each of these two very different people has found somebody she sees as an equal, and who sees her as an equal in turn, and the thought quickly goes from comforting to intoxicating. Dragons are flying, men are burning, reigns are teetering, but for as long as that embrace lasts, the world of “House of the Dragon” exists between these two women’s arms.

I reviewed tonight’s episode of House of the Dragon

The new episode of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour on House of the Dragon 2×05 is up! Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

In his series of epic fantasy novels A Song of Ice and Fire, the author George R.R. Martin has based a trio of men-at-arms on Curly, Moe and Larry, the Three Stooges. He has used the superheroes Blue Beetle and Green Arrow as the basis for noble houses’ emblematic sigils. During the events depicted in “House of the Dragon,” the important House Tully is variously ruled over by Lords Grover, Elmo, and Kermit, with a Ser Oscar thrown in for good measure, as if “Sesame Street” had come to the Seven Kingdoms.

So do I think it’s possible that in his book “Fire and Blood,” the basis of “House of the Dragon,” Martin put Prince Aemond Targaryen in control of Westeros just as a cheeky way to illustrate the maxim “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”? I wouldn’t put it past him.

I reviewed tonight’s episode of House of the Dragon for the New York Times.

The new Boiled Leather Audio Hour episode is out! Guest co-host Gretchen Felker-Martin and I talk about the big dragon battle episode of House of the Dragon, available here or wherever free podcasts are sold!

The new Boiled Leather Audio Hour episode is out! Guest co-host Gretchen Felker-Martin and I talk about the big dragon battle episode of House of the Dragon, available here or wherever free podcasts are sold!

From its sobriquet on down, George R.R. Martin’s World of Ice and Fire is largely a bipolar one. Blacks fight Greens. Starks fight Lannisters. And in the prophetic Song of Ice and Fire itself, death wars against life.

The dragons flown by the Targaryen dynasty are an exception to this rule. In the source novels, various maesters and royals speculate that dragons are neither male nor female, capable of switching sexes as needed. True, they are the fire that helps turn back the ice of the Night King and his undead minions in “Game of Thrones,” and the most magnificent and awe-inspiring living creatures in the Westerosi bestiary. But they are also death incarnate, capable of inflicting carnage amid soldiers and civilians alike at an industrial scale.

And if need be, they can be called upon to kill one another, in battles as brutal as they are beautiful. There is a reason scholars within Martin’s fictional universe refer to the Targaryen civil war as the Dance of the Dragons: The conflict is as rapturous to behold as it is repugnant, often in the same scene.

I reviewed tonight’s incredible episode of House of the Dragon for the New York Times.

Week 3 of House of the Dragon Season 2. Week 3 of The Boiled Leather Audio Hour, the longest-running A Song of Ice and Fire podcast still active in the world today, covering House of the Dragon Season 2. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

I was honestly surprised to find Aegon and his buddies still bullying Aemond during the brothel scene in this episode. Historically, bullying Aemond has not worked out very well for people.
Aegon catches Aemond in a vulnerable spot. Picking up the script for the first time and seeing those brothel scenes in episode two and three, I saw a brilliant opportunity to offer a rare glimpse of his vulnerability. You only ever see him in his Targaryen blacks, so to see him in that world — not only that, but then humiliated by his brother — is quite shocking.

When he gets up and walks out without bothering to dress first, so sure of himself even in the face of that humiliation, he seems scarier to me than when he’s riding on Vhagar.
I love that line from Michael Mann’s Heat, when Bob De Niro’s character says, “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” That’s the code his character utilizes so he’s able to maneuver around this world without getting caught by Al Pacino.

Aemond has a similar code that stops him from being hurt like he was as a kid. That’s why he’s able to walk out on the madam in that scene. He’s humiliated by his brother and all his crew, and it’s like this switch flips. The madam is no more. All of these people in front of him? They mean nothing. He stands up, he owns it. “Yeah, I’m bulletproof. Anything you say, it will not work.” Like you say, it’s scary.

I interviewed actor Ewan Mitchell about his work as Prince Aemond on House of the Dragon for Vulture.

“We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think,” George R.R. Martin wrote in his short 1996 essay “On Fantasy.” “To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang.” By that standard, this week’s episode of “House of the Dragon,” a series based on Martin’s book “Fire and Blood,” is spicy fantasy indeed.

I don’t just mean the sex and nudity, though what there was of both blew my hair back on my head. For Martin, fantasy is about more than ribaldry. Describing it as a genre of “silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli,” he goes on to write of how its very largeness, the unbounded scope of its imagination, “speaks to something deep within us.” This episode certainly spoke to something deep within this critic.

I reviewed this week’s superb episode of House of the Dragon for the New York Times. Please note that I’m going to be using gift links from now on, which will enable you to read my NYT pieces even without a subscription

Stefan and I took another good long look at House of the Dragon this past week with a review of Season 2 Episode 2. Listen in!

Stefan and I are going weekly for the duration of House of the Dragon Season 2 with episode-by-episode, uh, episodes! We’re starting, of course, by talking about the season premiere — listen here or wherever quality podcasts are found!

We’re back with our series on the Best of A Song of Ice and Fire, this time looking at a Stefan pick: Daenerys’s big Dracarys moment. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts!

“House of the Dragon” is a civil war story, and civil wars are often described as wars of brother against brother. Your characters make that theme literal.

LUKE Our relationship and our death were very much a symbol — not just of what’s to come, but the theme of the whole piece, really, which is family against family.

Does taking on that symbolic weight add pressure?

ELLIOTT No, because that symbol is built within our relationship naturally, being identical twins. That’s a unique relationship — unique only to identical twins, who are split-embryo. Even a twin who’s not split-embryo … not to sound disrespectful, but they’re more like a brother and sister born at the same time. An identical twin is a beautiful phenomenon of nature.

But you’re playing identical twins in the act of killing each other.

LUKE I think it helps. You’re aware of what they’re up against because of all these years of being a twin. If that was a scene between me and Criston Cole, it would probably be a bit harder. Doing it with Elliott made it easier to get there and sit in that head space. It’s naturally grounded, something you can latch onto.

I interviewed twin actors Elliott and Luke Tittensor about playing twin Kingsguard knights Erryk and Arryk Cargyll on House of the Dragon for the New York Times.

This ability to shock — not in the gross-out sense, although this is often the case as well, but rather in the sense of a sudden, severe surprise — is the greatest strength “House of the Dragon” possesses. Civil wars are often said to be battles of brother against brother; fantasy can make the metaphorical literal. What better way to illustrate the senseless brutality of warfare than by having two men who look and sound exactly alike, who love each other, who say they are one soul in two bodies, perish in a brutal murder-suicide that achieves exactly nothing?

I reviewed tonight’s weirdly untitled episode of House of the Dragon for the New York Times.

Like “Game of Thrones” before it, “House of the Dragon” can be challenging to the prestige-TV palate. Its emphasis on criminal-political conspiracies, high-octane performances by a suite of talented character actors, and family drama in all its forms can be traced directly back to “The Sopranos.” But its use of high-fantasy spectacle and Grand-Guignol violence add notes that can ring as discordant in some viewers’ ears.

Listened to the right way, however, the sound is magical. Condal and company have constructed a drama of chamber rooms and bedrooms, roiling with sexual energy and gendered experience, occasionally marked by near-psychedelic explosions of high-fantasy supernatural spectacle. As women pray and sob and make love, dragons soar, blades are drawn, and eyes are taken for eyes. It’s Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers” via the sword-and-sorcery artist Frank Frazetta. And if it’s what you’re into, it’s magnificent.

I’m covering House of the Dragon for the New York Times this season, starting with my review of the Season 2 premiere.