\n<\/p>\n
The same likely cannot be said for Daemon, who spends this episode battling hallucinations brought on either by the curse of Harrenhal or the magic of Alys Rivers, its resident witch. His sojourn in those damp, crumbling halls is delightfully gothic and replete with tips of the cap to other genre landmarks. In his visions, Daemon follows a doppelg\u00e4nger of himself and beheads a young Rhaenyra, much like Luke Skywalker decapitated Darth Vader only to see his own face in \u201cThe Empire Strikes Back.\u201d He sees himself with bloody hands like Lady Macbeth. He starts when he sees a black goat, who may as well be a cameoing Black Phillip from Robert Eggers\u2019s horror film \u201cThe Witch.\u201d This is not the sort of stable mind you need at the head of your army.<\/p>\n
Nor would Aemond or Criston, the bloodthirsty ringleaders of the Greens, or Aegon, who is just trying to play catch-up with his brother and his Hand, have hesitated to burn their rivals. For all their faults, the Black and Green Queens are the Seven Kingdom\u2019s best bulwarks against all-out slaughter.<\/p>\n
At least they were until now. Alicent may have realized that her late husband, Viserys, did not in fact mean for their son Aegon to take the Iron Throne. But she\u2019s also realized that it doesn\u2019t matter. \u201cThe significance of Viserys\u2019s intentions died with him,\u201d she tells Larys the Clubfoot, her son\u2019s newly minted Master of Whisperers. \u201cYes it did,\u201d he agrees. As another HBO show once put it, \u201cIf it\u2019s a lie, then we fight on that lie. But we gotta fight.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n For her part, Rhaenyra realizes that Alicent can no longer be reasoned with. Her resolve to go to battle at once shocks her councilors, who for the most part seemed to have mistaken either her mercy or her gender for weakness. She assures them she was simply trying to ensure there was no other path before unleashing dragonfire.<\/p>\n This episode feels like the American answer to last year\u2019s magisterially melancholy and moving creature feature \u201cGodzilla Minus One,\u201d the first Godzilla film to win an Oscar (for best visual effects). The director, Takashi Yamazaki, who also wrote and oversaw visual effects, followed in the footsteps of Ishiro Honda original \u201cGodzilla\u201d (1954) and Hideaki Anno\u2019s nightmarish \u201cShin Godzilla\u201d (2016) in rendering the King of the Monsters as a walking, radioactive primal scream \u2014 against war, against cruelty, against stupidity, against civilization\u2019s ongoing assault against the people who comprise it. The death of the dragons is a stand-in for our own burning world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n