Rhaenyra and Alicent reunite within the ‘Home of the Dragon’ Season 2 premiere — however not the way you’d suppose

The perfect change Home of the Dragon ever created from George R.R. Martin’s Hearth & Blood was making Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) childhood mates.

The pair’s new shared historical past and love for one another made their eventual enmity damage much more, as these two fierce companions had been torn aside and pitted in opposition to one another by the male-led methods of energy in Westeros. Consequently, any scenes they shared crackled with thorny resentment, not simply at one another, however at the truth that they’re going to by no means be so shut once more.

It is devastating, then, that Rhaenyra and Alicent are separated for Home of the Dragon Season 2. The 2 stay far behind the battle strains drawn on the finish of Season 1, with Alicent in King’s Touchdown and Rhaenyra on Dragonstone.

But though the pair are far aside, they’re nonetheless clearly on one another’s minds. For instance, within the Season 2 premiere, we study that Alicent has been sending Rhaenyra ravens within the wake of Lucerys’ (Elliot Grihault) dying.

Outdoors of their characters’ actions, Home of the Dragon additionally makes positive to hyperlink Alicent and Rhaenyra on a craft stage. Whereas talking at a June 3 Home of the Dragon press convention, showrunner Ryan Condal talked about that “in the editing [process], we found ways to connect [Alicent and Rhaenyra]. If you see Alicent going through something deep and emotional, and you cut to Rhaenyra, there is a kind of filmmaking decision there.”

Olivia Cooke in “House of the Dragon.”
Credit score: Ollie Upton / HBO

The clearest instance of those modifying connections within the Season 2 premiere is the scene during which Rhaenyra and her household burn a funeral pyre for Lucerys. The episode intercuts between this sequence and Alicent going to wish within the sept in King’s Touchdown. There, she lights candles to recollect the lifeless, together with her mom Alerie Florent and the late King Viserys (Paddy Considine). She hesitates for a second, then, when Rhaenyra locations the final of Lucerys’ belongings on the hearth, Alicent lights a candle for Lucerys as properly. The gesture, as small as it might be, transcends wartime aggression. It is a manner for Alicent to commiserate with Rhaenyra as a former good friend, and as a mom herself.

The candle-lighting and pyre sequence hyperlinks Rhaenyra and Alicent not simply by modifying, but in addition by imagery. Each their respective mourning rituals contain hearth, but they’re nonetheless distinct sufficient that we acknowledge them as stemming from Targaryen tradition or the Religion of the Seven. Equally, your entire episode has set Rhaenyra and Alicent up as outliers of their respective camps, albeit in barely other ways. Alicent urges warning whereas her sons Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell) starvation for struggle. In the meantime, Rhaenyra grieves the lack of her son at the same time as her uncle/husband Daemon (Matt Smith) champs on the bit to retaliate in opposition to Staff Inexperienced.

The moments during which Rhaenyra and Alicent mourn Lucerys are among the many calmest of the episode, a beat for each ladies to gather themselves and course of the implications of all their actions which have led up to now. Selecting to edit them collectively right here reminds us that though they’re bodily aside, they’re deeply, inseparably linked — and their dynamic stays Home of the Dragon‘s bleeding coronary heart.

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