House of the Dragon Season 2 Episode 3: Daemon’s Vision of Harrenhal Explained

as Dragon Home Within the third episode of Season 2, Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) formally captures Harrenhal. This could solely imply one factor: the present It is about to get even weirder.

Harrenhal isn’t solely The most important fortress in Westeros and probably the most cursed. lengthy earlier than the incident Dragon HomeHarren Hoare, King of the Islands and Riverlands, oversaw the development of Harrenhal for 40 years. 1000’s of laborers died within the course of, and Harren’s armies even felled giant tracts of the sacred weirwood bushes to brighten the fortress. Nevertheless, the large monument Harren constructed to himself (and his personal greed) proved no match for the hearth of Aegon the Conqueror’s dragon Balerion, who worn out Home Corridor eternally.

It’s stated that Harrenhal has been cursed ever since, as each home that has ever owned it has both turn into extinct or suffered nice misfortune. Now that Daemon is answerable for the fortress, he is about to see the consequences of the curse firsthand.

In Episode 3, we obtained a chilling glimpse of Harrenhal on Daemon’s first night time within the fortress. energy, the rattling of his bed room door, and Alice Rivers’ (Gayle Rankin) mysterious assertion that that is the place he’ll die. Most memorable, nonetheless, is Damon Younger Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock, reprising her function from the primary half of season one) is seen stitching Prince Jaehaerys’ decapitated head again onto her physique.

“You are at all times coming and going, aren’t you?” Rhaenyra scolded him. “I’ve to scrub up afterward.”

What do Daemon’s visions of younger Rhaenyra imply?

Matt Smith in Home of the Dragon.
Photograph credit score: Ollie Upton/HBO

For Episode III director Geeta Vasant Patel, this imaginative and prescient and the function of teenage Rhaenyra in it offered a wealthy alternative for Daemon to replicate on the occasions of the previous two episodes, in addition to his function in The quarrel with Rhaenyra (Emma Darcy) begins within the second episode.

“An important factor about Rhaenyra on this scene is that she is aware of him,” Patel informed Mashable. “He had simply been rejected by the older Rhaenyra, and he felt like he now not knew Rhaenyra. The Rhaenyra he actually knew was younger Rhaenyra, and he fell in love together with her and adored her. So when he Younger Rhaenyra checked out him with judgment and criticism as he walked into that room, that was his sword of belief, that was his concern, that the one who was telling him to let his guard down wasn’t truly Consider him and assume he’s a monster.

There’s additionally Blood and Cheese , the place Daemon faces a bodily reminder of his function in orchestrating Jaehaerys’ homicide. “When Rhaenyra informed him, ‘You simply killed a baby,’ that was the primary time he was processing it,” Patel defined. “Quite a lot of instances we do not change until we care about somebody and so they make us change. To me, that is what that scene was about.”

Patel continued: “As Matt acted out this scene again and again, and we obtained deeper and deeper into it, there was a second the place I noticed his entire face shaking with ache as he realized that he did one thing. He was so linked.

This was just the start of Daemon’s imaginative and prescient of Harrenhal.

Matt Smith in Home of the Dragon.
Photograph credit score: Theo Whitman/HBO

Daemon stays at Harrenhal to rally a military for Rhaenyra, and you may wager we’ll see extra visions. With the third episode kicking off the emergence of those goals, Patel, showrunner Ryan Condal and different members of the present’s group had a number of conversations about what these goals ought to appear like.

“Quite a lot of fantasy exhibits have their visuals processed in some ways. They’ve quite a lot of sound and possibly totally different pictures. You may go to totally different ranges,” says Patel. By way of type, Patel strives to replicate a imaginative and prescient of on a regular basis life.

“At that second Dragon HomeTo me, a imaginative and prescient is a dream,” she explains. “After we dream, it is so actual. That is the scary factor about goals. You do not know for those who’re dreaming.

Due to this, Smith and the actors he interacted with within the numerous visions have been inspired to floor their performances in actuality. However as we see in episode three, this enhances the thriller of the dream. The picture of Rhaenyra buzzing as she stitches Jaehaerys’s head again collectively is especially chilling, and serves as an introduction to Harrenhal, a haunted home that is solely simply starting to unfold its claws on demons.

new episodes Dragon Home It airs Sundays at 9pm ET on HBO and Max.