Viserys finally gets his son, Aegon, but struggles to maintain a healthy relationship with Rhaenyra. A third dragon is introduced and Damon serves up Caribbean crab cakes with the crabfeeder!
There’s a three-year time gap from the last episode till now. King Viserys and teen queen, Alicent Hightower have had a successful pregnancy and welcomed baby Aegon. The king and queen didn’t stop there as Alicent is shown expecting a second child.
Checking in on Daemon, he and Corlys without the king’s consent are attempting to take the Stepstones back from the Crabfeeder. The series hasn’t spent much time on the antagonist, but the bodies being fed to crabs are gruesome enough to show how dangerous he can be.
The fiery sequences show how threatening the mission is for Daemon and his men. The fight isn’t going as planned as Daemon and his dragon Caraxes are pierced by arrows. Daemon and Caraxes retreat, but not before sending the Crabfeeder and his men retreating to the caves.
No matter what period this world takes us to, I think it’s fair to assume that almost all the Lannisters are slimy wherever they are. Now in King’s Landing, Ser Tyland Lannister timidly details the losing efforts of Daemon and Corlys in regaining the Stepstones. The bad news bothers Viserys, but it’s nothing that wine can’t handle. Besides, the kind is preoccupied with Aegon’s second birthday and a royal hunt has been planned in his honour. The series plants an exciting easter egg for the die-hard fans being that the royal hunt takes place in the same woods where King Robert I was severely wounded by a boar, in the main series.
Under a tree, Rhaenyra hits the books while Samwell plays her tunes. The anger is growing, but her new stepmom Alicent stops by to invite her former best friend to the royal hunt. Rhaenyra isn’t feeling the love. She and the king not being able to properly talk this out doesn’t help, she kindly declines. The queen doesn’t approve and demands that Rhaenyra show up.
Despite the tensions between the king and his daughter, Viserys still wants Rhaenyra to inherit the Iron Throne, even though several lords are quick to pull the king’s ear telling him that Aegon should be named the heir. At Aegon’s birthday party Ladies Redwyne along with others report to Rhaenyra about the Crabfeeder, hoping that the king would eventually intervene. We’re introduced to a new character, Larys Strong in this scene.
Assuming that Aegon will be named the new heir, Rhaenyra is now getting unsolicited marriage proposals from Jason Lannister. Instead of enjoying her wine, Rhaenyra sets the glass down and storms off toward her father. The thought of her being sent off as a wife for political gain did not end well, as the Rhaenyra and the king end up in an embarrassing heated confrontation that brings the celebration to an awkward pause. It’s not a good look for either of them, but she takes off on her horse with Ser Criston Cole tailing her into the woods.
Back to the party, word gets out that a rare white stag was spotted in the forest. The sighting of the animal does not sit well with the king, being that it was reported during Aegon’s birthday. According to Otto Hightower, “the stag is the king of the King’s wood”. Jason Lannister asking the king to marry Rhaenyra didn’t go so well either, but Otto suggests that Aegon and Rhaenyra could be something that hits “closer to home”. Yes, this is weird and gross, but no surprise if you’ve kept up with the books or the series. Also, this is in ‘Fire and Blood’ so another nice touch was brought to life from the book.
Thinking about it this could work for Rhaenyra. Think about it, she’s not pressured to marry so she can still go off and do what she pleases, plus it’ll be a good 12-15 years before Aegon and Rhaenyra could do anything anyways. Just speaking about situations that we’ve seen in this world. If that doesn’t work Rhaenyra has a third offer from Ser Laenor Velaryon, the son of Corlys and Rhaenys. I’m sure that’ll set well with the princess.
Back to Rhaenyra and Ser Criston, they’ve set up camp for the night, but they’ve got an unwelcomed visitor as a boar attack. Criston quickly handles the situation saving Rhaenyra, but Rhaenyra goes Hamm (no pun intended) stabbing the boar repeatedly, letting out the frustrations she’s been holding in. At least everyone back at camp will get pulled pork sandwiches out of this.
With Rhaenyra spilling pig’s blood to let out her anger, the king is knocking back countless glasses of wine to deal with his issues. It’s becoming a problem and a sign of weakness as he shows great range confessing to Alicent his obsession with having a male son. Sadly, we saw how far this obsession went as it led to the deaths of his ex-wife and infant son. Viserys is clearly in his head about naming Rhaenyra the heir to the thrown. Alicent doesn’t do much as she just awkwardly stands there and listens.
The morning after, the king gets good news. A stag was captured, sadly it was not the White Hart that stood as a symbol of royalty in Westeros before the dragons took over. Viserys still kills the animal, but in a sad pathetic way that ends with applauses. Ironically, the true White Hart is shown before it takes off.
Back to Daemon vs. the Crabfeeder the fight is still not going so well for Daemon and his men. Vaemond, the younger brother of Corlys goes behind his brothers and Daemon’s back and urges the kings to send aid. Daemon’s nose is pointed too high to the sky to ask for help, even though he’s losing the Stepstones.
The Crabfeeder and his men are accompanying the caves and there are plenty of flesh-eating crabs awaiting more foes. Both sides are tired, but Daemon has no more time to plan and needs to show leadership now. His men are low on food, losing trust in him and they have no dragons. In the first episode, we saw how deranged and twisted Daemon could be, and in case you forgot, audiences were reminded when he viciously attacked the messenger that informed Daemon about the aid the king sent.
Now on a boat towards Bloodstone, Daemon begins his suicide mission. The main series made it hard to attach to characters because you never knew who was going to die. This scene felt like one of those moments. No way Daemon should’ve survived this one-man attack, but he did. Slowly but surely help arrives for Daemon and we get more dragons. Unfortunately for the Crabfeeders men, they meet Laenor Velaryon on his dragon Seasmoke who quickly turns their foes into a crab boil. Offscreen Daemon easily handles the Crabfeeder, slicing him up.
The Crabfeeder was slowly built up as this scary menacing foe for the series, so not seeing how Daemon took out his enemy was a shame. Still, we got a great shot of Daemon walking out the caves with the upper torso of the Crabfeeder and his intestines dangling out. The show relied heavily on dialogue, moving the story in a positive way that balanced out nicely with Daemon standing tall in the end.