*Episode premise spoilers, along with spoilers from episode 7.*
I know this is Other Doctor Lives, but it’s been clear basically from the start that these write-ups are Paddy Considine reviews as well. And what an episode this is for him. Matt Smith is great too, in more understated ways, but this is Considine’s episode and he dines out on it! I’m a happy fangirl, even as his performance moves me to tears.
We’ve taken another big time jump—five years have passed this time around. After arranging for Laenor to escape court life, Rhaenyra and Daemon got married and have been hanging out at Dragonstone raising their blended family (including two kids with Targaryen2 bloodlines and another on the way.) They’re drawn back to King’s Landing when Corlys is gravely injured and the inheritance of the Velaryon seat of Driftmark is called into question. Corlys’s brother is challenging the claim of Rhaenyra’s son Luc, and he’s gone to the capitol to challenge it. With Viserys too ill to keep up with his duties, Alicent and Otto have been ruling in his stead, and Rhaenyra is bound and determined to keep Luc from being disinherited, which would further undermine his and his brothers’ legitimacy.
Some big shakeups here. With their husbands indisposed, both Alicent and Rhaenys have been sitting on thrones, but while Rhaenys has a devotion to Corlys that makes her prioritize his wishes, Alicent is using her position to do as she sees fit. When Rhaenyra and Daemon arrive in King’s Landing with their children, they’re unsettled by all the changes Alicent has made. Alicent’s duties, by the way, also extend to managing scandals within the family, and the double standards she holds between Rhaenyra and her son Aegon are striking.
There’s a lot of good stuff in this episode. There are some great scenes between Rhaenyra and Rhaenys, especially a toe-to-toe conversation between them before the big petition over Driftmark. I like seeing Rhaenyra and Daemon’s kids from their respective previous marriages as they’re growing older (they all have new actors again)—for two rather volatile, impulsive people, they’ve both managed to raise some pretty decent children. Rhaenyra’s oldest son Jace looking out for and reassuring Luc in the capitol is very sweet. There’s a great scene toward the end of the episode that brings the whole big messy family together for one hell of a dinner.
But all of that is just gravy. This is Paddy Considine’s episode, hands-down. Viserys has been getting sicker all season—I’m amazed that almost twenty years have gone by since episode 1 and he’s still hanging in there—and this episode finds him in very dire straits. He’s first marked by his absence, by Alicent’s place on the throne instead of him. The second red flag is when Rhaenyra and Daemon enter his chamber and we see that his beloved model of Old Valyria is covered in cobwebs.
When we see Viserys, he’s gaunt, ravaged by his illness and in a haze of drugs that still only dull his pain, not remove it. He struggles to speak and has difficulty tracking who’s talking to him, but he’s still doing everything he can to hold onto any piece of dignity he can find. As tired and sick as he is, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Rhaenyra, and he calls on every bit of strength he has to try and protect her a little longer.
God, I’m tearing up just remembering Considine’s performance in this episode. There are a couple of scenes in particular that have been widely praised, big moments in the episode that are strong contenders as clips to show before giving Considine his rightfully earned Emmy. But what really broke me were the moments when Viserys apologizes for his pain. He’s the one who’s been living with chronic illness and pain for years now, but he repeatedly apologizes to his daughter, his brother, or his wife for having to see it. I don’t think I’ve ever full-on cried watching Game of Thrones, but Viserys made me cry multiple times in this episode.
It doesn’t feel fair to pivot to Matt Smith after my attempts to capture the magnificence of the acting master class I just watched, but honestly, he is very good as well. His performance in this episode is much more lowkey on the whole, making space to let his costar shine, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I appreciate Daemon’s struggle at seeing Viserys after having been away so long—he tries to come in all business, like that can distract from the fact that he’s having a hard time looking at his brother. But at the same time, he’s also fiercely protective, confronting Alicent when he questions Viserys’ care and coming through for his brother in a big way at a critical moment.
He's also fiercely protective of Rhaenyra and, by extension, his stepchildren. He doesn’t come in caping for Rhaenyra, but he stands alongside her and backs her up. They feel like a genuine team, which is impressive, considering that both of them started the series with a strong need to always get the last word in. And evidently, Daemon shares Viserys’ refusal to let people get away with insinuations.
Throughout all of this, even when he’s angry or accusatory, there’s a steadiness about him too. He doesn’t fly off the handle, and even when we get a major “chaotic Daemon is back in town” moment, he does so with a casual air, not breaking a sweat. It’s an interesting balance to strike with the character. I’ve seen gray-to-villain characters who are tightly controlled and those are dangerously mercurial, but Daemon sometimes feels like both at the same time. I can’t pinpoint what it is about Smith’s performance that’s creating this effect, but it’s neat.
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