Daemon’s unusual intercourse imaginative and prescient in ‘Home of the Dragon’ Season 2, episode 5, defined

If you happen to can rely on the Targaryens for something, it is incest.

The household on the coronary heart of Home of the Dragon has a longstanding custom of marrying sibling to sibling, cousin to cousin, and, within the case of Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Daemon (Matt Smith), niece to uncle. Nonetheless, Season 2, episode 5 takes us totally into Oedipal territory, with Daemon having a intercourse dream about — drumroll, please — his personal mom, Alyssa (Emeline Lambert).

The dream is one more installment in Daemon’s mysterious Harrenhal visions. However whereas these beforehand centered younger Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock) or his late spouse, Laena Velaryon (Nanna Blondell, who additionally makes an look on this episode), this one focuses on somebody we have by no means seen earlier than within the present.

At the beginning of the imaginative and prescient, we do not know the lady Daemon is kissing and caressing is definitely Alyssa. She’s clearly a Targaryen primarily based on her hair, however in any other case we do not have a lot to go off of.

She hypes Daemon up in voiceover whereas placing Viserys (Paddy Considine) down, telling him, “You were always the strong one. The finest swordsman. The fearless dragonrider. Your brother had great love in his heart, but he lacked your constitution. Viserys was unsuited for the crown, but you, Daemon, you were made to wear it. If only you’d been born first.”

At this level, you are most likely pondering, “wow, this unknown woman seems to know a lot about about the relationship between Viserys and Daemon. I wonder who she could be? Wait. Surely not…”

That is when Home of the Dragon delivers an incestuous elbow drop proper to the intestine. “My favorite son,” the lady declares, and the main points of Daemon’s imaginative and prescient fall into place. That is Alyssa Targaryen, daughter of Jaehaerys I. She was additionally the primary rider of Meleys, that means that her look within the episode following the deaths of Meleys and Rhaenys (Eve Finest) carries additional weight.

Alyssa married her brother Baelon, and, in response to Fireplace & Blood, had three kids: Viserys, Daemon, and Aegon, who died earlier than he even turned a 12 months previous. Alyssa died not lengthy after that final childbirth. Nonetheless, primarily based on the blood on Daemon’s palms and on Alyssa’s physique because the imaginative and prescient ends, it looks as if Home of the Dragon is implying that Alyssa died whereas giving beginning to Daemon. (Or the blood, when coupled with the distorted screams within the background, is one more gesture to the violent acts which have haunted Daemon throughout his time at Harrenhal, and the violence he sanctions the Blackwoods to commit towards the Brackens this episode.)

In fact, if Alyssa did die throughout Daemon’s childbirth within the present’s canon, there is not any means she would actually know something about Daemon being a fierce dragonrider or fighter. Even by the ebook’s telling, she died when he was round two years previous. As in all of Daemon’s prior visions and desires, Alyssa’s phrases are only a magical projection. It is telling, then, that she solely has good issues to say about him.

Characters Daemon knew and was married to for years, like Rhaenyra and Laena, hang-out him with tales of his worst insecurities and actions. However since Daemon by no means had a relationship along with his mom that he can keep in mind, the forces at play in Harrenhal warp her into somebody he can take consolation in. (Perhaps a bit too a lot consolation.)

The Alyssa in his imaginative and prescient appears to spice up Daemon’s ego, as he later reveals to Alys Rivers (Gayle Rankin) that he plans to take King’s Touchdown for himself. Rhaenyra, he says, can select to take a seat at his facet. That Harrenhal DIY challenge is beginning to look a bit treasonous there, buddy!

Fortunately, we are able to at all times rely on Alys to place Daemon in his place. “It’s a pity, don’t you think, that you never knew your mother?” she asks.

This is not the primary time that Alys has appeared to know what is going on on in Daemon’s visions. In episode 4, she hinted at how a lot he should have hated dropping out on the Iron Throne to an adolescent Rhaenyra — one thing his imaginative and prescient of Rhaenyra introduced up that exact same episode. Right here, the reference to Alyssa isn’t any coincidence both: Alys is conscious of the desires haunting Daemon. However is she straight accountable? (That drink from episode 4 did look fairly suspect.) Or is that this totally the curse of Harrenhal at work, along with her simply listening to whispers of the desires on the wind?

New episodes of Home of the Dragon air Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.