Photo: Ollie Upton/HBO
Spoilers ahead for episode two of the second season of House of the Dragon.
There is a certain amount of inevitability built into House of the Dragon. We’re watching events that already have a definitive ending in George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, and that happened a couple centuries before Game of Thrones. All the characters we see on screen in HotD will eventually die, both because of the natural passage of time and because, you know, there’s a widespread, devastating war going on that was infamous by the time GOT came around. Tragedy is to be expected.
But… can we laugh? Yes, HotD is gloomy. But this season, the series is more pointedly using humor to puncture its characters’ hubris and homicidal acts. Aegon’s vulgar rants against Rhaenyra are so full-chested that they veer into ludicrous. Otto telling his daughter Alicent to keep her sex confession to herself is chuckle-worthy. The Kingsguard having a break room in the Red Keep opens up all kinds of possibilities about the complaining they do in there while hunched over their brown-bag lunches. And twins Erryk and Arryk, whom no one can tell apart, battling to the death in a duel full of pratfalls, confused onlookers, and smashed furniture? Silly excellence.
There is a thin line between tragedy and comedy, and the Cargylls swing and slash their swords across it this week. Of course it’s sad that they both die. That they give their lives for masters who can’t identify them on sight, though? There’s a bleak, nihilistic strain of comedy there that HotD is getting better and better at deploying. For your consideration: After Otto calls Criston and Aegon’s assassination attempt on Rhaenyra a “prank,” but before the rival-Kingsguard members’ blood stains Rhaenyra’s floor, the seven silliest moments from Erryk and Arryk’s identical-face-off.
Arryk hiding from Erryk behind a pillar
We’re starting with Looney Tunes stuff, folks. Director Clare Kilner adds tension to this sequence through Arryk assuming his brother’s identity and then taking a long walk through Dragonstone, past serving staff who ignore him and attendees who are busy replacing the map table’s candles. We know Arryk was already made by Mysaria back on the beach, so theoretically he’ll get found out eventually. But there’s something so funny about Arryk spotting Erryk and dodging around a corner to avoid him, like he’s playing hide and seek against a particularly incurious opponent. If this is the kind of protection Erryk is giving this castle, maybe Team Black was always doomed to have something major happen on their premises! Why does this kingdom have such serious security problems?
“BROTHER!”
How else to start a fight than to scream at each other? This is a moment straight out of the Highlander school of acting, and I approve.
Also, I think Arryk and Erryk don’t call each other by their names because HotD wants to exacerbate our uncertainty about who is who in this scene, but you can track the lads by their wounds, specifically Erryk’s scratch over his left eyebrow.
Elinda and her little tray
We know that the Red Keep staff leaked info to Mysaria back when she was a Flea Bottom power player known as the White Worm; training for and loyalty among those King’s Landing servants didn’t seem so hot. But look at Elinda, Rhaenyra’s lady in waiting. This woman is so good at her job that she doesn’t even drop the tray of Rhaenyra’s sleeping draught when an assassin bursts into the queen’s private quarters. Elinda is horrified and flustered and yet that tray does not slip, a moment of physical commitment so absurd that I have rewound it three times to laugh. Is anyone at Elinda’s level?
The hesitation before the attack
In every David Attenborough-narrated wildlife documentary series I’ve ever watched, there’s a scene where two animals of the same species fight each other for dominance. And often in those scenes, there are a few seconds where the two opponents size each other up, take in each other’s abilities and anticipate what they’re going to do, before ramming their horns, antlers, heads, claws, or bodies together. I say all this because: The split-second when Arryk and Erryk, who still share a bond despite their divided loyalties, pause before attacking each other reminded me that their house sigil is a gold goose. We’re kind of watching two birds slapping the shit out of each other, and now I’m giggling.
The tennis-serve swing
As long-standing members of the Kingsguard, the Cargyll twins have theoretically drilled and trained for years in swordfighting and hand-to-hand combat. So why do they only have one offensive move, the wide overhand swing and grunt? Arryk does it, Erryk does it, and their mirroring creates a very hyperbolic We are fighting, and we hate it! vibe. Honestly, it’s almost like these dudes are doing their own take on Challengers. (Did I just suggest more incest in this already incestuous world? Oops.)
Decorative planter down!
This looks like a stone planter holding flowers also carved out of stone, because everyone involved in decorating Dragonstone was super-literal about its decor. Whatever it is, Arryk slipping, falling onto it, and shattering it into a million pieces as Rhaenyra scurries away is a solid physical gag. I don’t know if Westeros has bananas (what is their produce-agriculture situation?), but I’m imagining a peel here somewhere.
“Which is Erryk?”
Ser Lorent coming to Rhaenyra’s aid is nice. But the fact that he contributes literally nothing but this question to his queen — for which she has no answer! — is a real indictment of them both as colleagues, allies, and friends to Erryk, the twin who put himself in danger defecting from King’s Landing, freeing Rhaenys and her dragon Meleys, and stealing Rhaenyra’s father Viserys’s crown so that Rhaenyra could be coronated with it. Team Black, you really should have invested in nametags.
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